Trail Markers

After 12 hours on the road, we are home from our vacation in Maine. Something I love about hiking up there are the cairns that mark the trails on the granite ledges at the top of the mountains in Acadia National Park. I admire the elegant and functional transaction between humans and nature that these deliberately stacked sets of stones represent, and I'm glad for their guidance as well. Furthermore, unlike a modern GPS device, they offer their navigational advice in silence. Much appreciated, cairns.

Persistence of Memory

We’re listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on this trip. All of us have read it, but for different reasons we want to re-visit the book. Personally, my motivation is two-fold: One of my brightest students last year read it over and over, assuring me that it was the best book of the series (if not the best ever written!).

The other reason is that when Deathly Hallows was released, I pounded through the book in a little less than 24 hours. At our house we had two copies, one each, and we spent the entire weekend reading and talking and reading. Three years later I find that I don’t have a very good memory of the book.

When I was a teenager, it used to amaze and amuse me how little recall my mother had of the plots of novels we knew she had read. My brother and sister and I mocked her mercilessly for her chronic case of literary amnesia. Of course at that time my brain was like a sponge, and it was easy to remember even the smallest things in minute detail. How could we know that it wouldn’t last?

Like everything about growing older, no matter how much you’ve seen it happen to others or even have come to expect it for yourself, such signs of aging seems incredible when they actually happen to you. Thus the Harry Potter audio book—it’s almost as if I’m experiencing it for the first time, and you know what? My student has an excellent point—it’s a good book.

Dog Years

I read a novel in verse a few years ago called Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow. Near the beginning he writes:

Everyone has a dog story to tell...
Each dog marks a section of our lives, and
in the end, we feed them to the dark,
burying them there while we carry on.

Today is my dog's birthday-- she's seven. Seven in people years, seven times seven in dog years. According to that common calculation, she is now older than I am.

Happy Birthday, Isabel.

Pancake Madness

Probably the most popular food item on our vacation has been, not lobster, but pancakes. We found a product called The Batter Blaster at the local Walmart. It is organic pancake mix in a whipped-cream-style can. The boys loved it for the wacky novelty of such a thing, so much so that they have each been motivated to cook their own pancakes for breakfast every morning. Of course they started with wild Maine blueberries, but soon they branched out to chocolate chip, then peanut butter. After that there have been all manor of flap jacks flipped around here this week.

I believe it's possible that The Batter Blaster is kind of a gateway food. Think about it-- once they're hooked on it, all someone has to do is slip them some real homemade pancake batter. Soon they'll be jonesing for pancakes seriously enough to start stirrring up their own batter, and after that it won't be long until they're cooking breakfast for everyone.

Yeah, that's it.

Lights, Camera, Action

It rained again up here yesterday, so we took the boys to see Despicable Me at a local cinema. It was definitely a retro experience, a lot like I remember the movies of my childhood. The theater itself was a simple cinder block structure, hung with some heavy velveteen drapes on the wall. The floor was poured concrete and the seats were no frills-- sensible upholstery over modest padding. They did not go all the way down to the screen, thus preventing that unpleasant neck-craning that is sometimes unavoidable if you arrive late to a popular show. It only cost us $27.50 for all five tickets-- twenty dollars cheaper than it would have been at home. The concession stand was also quite reasonable-- six bucks bought a small drink, a small popcorn, and a box of candy. The small drink really was small, too, far less than the 32 ounces they customarily serve in the theaters near us.

We sat back and watched the trailers, and then just as the feature attraction was to start, the lights came up and the manager announced from the rear of the theater that there was "a situation." We exchanged bemused looks. It turned out that 50 kids from a Y Camp were on their way to see the movie, too, and the manager wondered if folks would be willing to move forward to free fifty seats together. "The kids will really appreciate it," she said. Our audience was quite willing to oblige, so they held the movie, and the kids were seated in a little more than five minutes.

Somehow, I just can't see that happening at home.

Breadwinner

The bread machine I mentioned a couple of days ago has been getting quite a workout. We've had fresh bread every day of our vacation. Back in the 90's, these appliances were super popular and those cube-shaped loaves they turn out were everywhere. Was it the Atkins craze or just staleness that pushed them to the back of the cupboard, like many a crockpot before them? Who can say, but today bread machines are like dodo birds. All of that is prehistory to the teenagers in our family, and judging by their initial fascination with the contraption, I'd say bread machines may be poised for a comeback.

I don't really remember being impressed by the quality of the bread they made back then, and the convenience didn't lure me in, either. I never owned one of the devices. In fact, I was only humoring Josh the other day when we purchased the ingredients for his bread, but I was interested and attentive as he poured them (in the order they were listed, as directed) into the square bucket and snapped it into place before pressing a bunch of beeping buttons, closing the lid, and walking away. And a few hours later, the loaf of garlic herb bread that we sliced and dunked into our soup was pretty good. The next day, I read the other recipes myself, and it has been I who has been dumping and pressing and cooling and wrapping the freshly baked bread cubes ever since.

There is something profoundly gratifying about baking a good loaf of bread. It is sort of magical to take such common ingredients and turn them into food so nourishing and so sustaining. In that respect and to my surprise, the bread machine has not made the experience any less satisfying-- fresh baked bread is fresh baked bread. Whole wheat with raisins, walnuts, and pecans, anyone?

Small Blue Thing

Consider the wild Maine blueberry-- so small, so full of flavor and antioxidants. They are in season right now, countless tiny clusters of them ripe beside the trails and along the granite ledges, inviting hikers to pick and eat the sun-warmed fruit as we climb or descend. Each berry a sweet little burst of tart juice-- they make you stop; they keep you going.

I'm sure no one is keeping track of such things but me, so I'll crow just a little: this is my 500th blog post without missing a single day. Yay for writing!