All posts by GretchenJoanna

Unknown's avatar

About GretchenJoanna

Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.

Gumdrop cannot be denied.

cabin, mountains, quotes, , , ,

The granite dome behind our cabin, which we  fondly call “Gumdrop” — Mrs. Bread coined its name — was calling me to make a visit this morning, and I wanted to set out early and eat my break-fast on its slopes overlooking the lake. But because it was such a chilly morning (I know it got down to at least 27 in the night), I waited to venture forth until the sun rose well above the trees.

I’ve written about my dome excursions more than once here, and I debated whether even to mention today’s outing, but I’m doing it for my own memory’s sake. And maybe a few other people also enjoy multiple pictures of boulders and scree and rock in the shape of a river. Visits to Gumdrop always feature treats other than the granitic type: sublime views that make you feel you are on the top of the world.

This time I reversed the direction of my loop around the base and shoulders of this exfoliating hunk of rock, and headed east when I got near, then south, counterclockwise. Every few steps I took, the view changed, and the pointy domes across the lake would be hidden behind trees, and then come back into sight.

I would never try climbing to the top of Gumdrop by myself; once my late husband did that, and he fell coming down and got a big gash on his arm. When you fall on a dome, you fall on rock — that’s all there is, and you could easily be knocked unconscious, or worse. But when I walk around the sides of it, I can’t help climbing upward, because it doesn’t have a flat bottom like a gumdrop candy, and around Gumdrop Dome some of its rocky slopes are covered with soil and trees. Today on the side where I first approached, I reached the limit of what felt safe. This next picture I took from that spot.

Majesty is the word that came to mind as I was thrilling over the grand scenes before me, whichever way I looked. As I braced myself on the slant, and looked out across the still lake, I could not even hear rustling of trees, or any hammering from cabins down below. For two seconds, a fly buzzed, and was silent.

Many features of the landscape are physically large, and majestic that way. But the smallest succulent or infant pine tree is huge in its brave clinging to life, on a rock.

I sat with my back against one slab, and ate a protein bar, drank a little water. I was the only human on Gumdrop; a few ants passed by near my boots. The lake glittered down below. All was quiet.

When I got back to the cabin after a couple of hours, I was looking for that Annie Dillard quote about why she likes mountains better than creeks. But I found this one first, which is particularly about the kind of mountain I like:

No matter how sophisticated you may be,
a large granite mountain cannot be denied —
it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

-Ansel Adams

 

I am surrounded by Your heralds.

cabin, nature, poetry, prayer, , , , , ,

“Your birds awaken me in the morning, and the murmur of the lake lulls me to sleep in the evening. But it is not the birds that awaken me, nor the lake that lulls me to sleep, but You, O Lord, Master of the voice.

“You lend Your voice to the birds and the midnight murmur to the lake. You have lent a voice to every throat, and have put a story into every creature. I am surrounded by Your heralds, as a student by many teachers, and I listen to them tirelessly from dawn to dusk.

“O Lord, Master of the voice, speak more clearly through your heralds!

“The sun speaks to me about the radiance of Your countenance, and the stars about the harmony of Your being. The sun speaks in one language, and the stars speak in a different language, but all the languages flow out of the same vocal cords. The vocal cords belong to You, and You uttered the first sound that began to tremble in the deafness and formlessness of nothingness, and it broke into countless sounds and heralds, as a thundercloud breaks into rain drops….”

-St. Nikolai Velimirovich, from XXVII, Prayers by the Lake

I am pondering St. Nikolai’s plea, that the Lord speak more clearly… If we can’t understand, isn’t the problem that we are hard of hearing? But maybe it is his way of saying, “I am straining the ears of my heart, Lord, to know You better.”

When I found this particular prayer yesterday, it resonated with my own experience here in the mountains, where so much of my attention is focused on the birds, the clouds, and yes, the stars. After a thunderstorm one evening, I went out and found the sky full of them, declaring the glory of God, in their voices that are deep silence.

One afternoon when I sat on the deck reading, the silence caught my attention. At home in the suburbs, I have learned not to pay attention to all the neighborhood noises, and the freeway sounds that come on the wind from a mile away. Some hours are quieter than others, but if I listen closely, there is always the ticking of a clock, or the cars in the street. When I noticed that forest silence that my ears are not used to, I concentrated hard, to discover what might be in it. And all that I could take in was the pine boughs moving in the breeze.

This poem from St. Nikolai’s collection is not really about the voice of God in silence. He goes on past what I quoted to talk about words and stories. It has truly been lovely for me to be slowed down by having fewer matters to attend to; to tune in to the “stories,” as it were, in the activities of the animals here, and to study a few plants. I saw another new-to-me plant not far from lakeside, called an American Parsley Fern:

I could watch the animals all day, I think, from my first-rate viewing perch. Chickadees are plentiful, and a junco made an appearance. I’m thankful that my sister suggested that I bring up some food that the chipmunks would like. This morning two chipmunks came to the slider and ran up and down, peering in with their paws against the glass. Do they know that the seeds come from the other side?

What I have been putting out for them is a mix of seeds and peanuts, and now a gang of Steller’s Jays have come for a share. As many as four at a time were interested.

They are truly handsome birds, with their shiny royal blue feathers. Of course they are greedy, and don’t have pretty voices, but they belong to this place, as it belongs to them. I’m happy that our stories overlapped for a short time, and wouldn’t mind if they did wake me in the mornings — but when I wake everything is still very quiet, and the sky that’s visible between the trees outside my window is turning from gray to pale blue.

Mountain Sourdough

bread, cabin, mountains, ,

When I was getting ready to come up here to my high mountain cabin for several days, I didn’t like the idea of leaving my sourdough starter at home with no one to feed it for most of a week. Then I realized, I could bring it with me. That is what is great about road trips — you have lots of flexibility and options. Every experience of air travel makes me love road-tripping more.

So I did bring my jar of starter, and along with it the likelihood that I would cook something with it, too. Because even if I only fed it every other day, it might outgrow the half-gallon jar I use. I didn’t want to have to throw out, or actually discard, the discard.

I really dislike the thought of throwing away good food such as sourdough starter, which is one reason I keep mine in a big jar, and why I have developed my current bread recipe so that it uses 1 1/2 cups of starter for one loaf. Many people use their discard to make pancakes or biscuits in between bread-bakings, but that is not convenient for me.

I didn’t have a plan for what I would cook, but I knew I could accomplish something like pancakes or even a loaf of bread without reference to a recipe, because I’ve had lots of experience adapting or creating recipes, and nearly all the results were at least edible and nutritious. Last night when I was browsing ideas for sourdough biscuits (which I made a lot of for a big family, but long ago), I ran across a recipe for flatbread, and as I’ve been wanting for a long time to experiment with flatbreads, I went with that.

Last night before bed I mixed the simple dough, of 1 cup starter, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 cup of milk. I covered it to further ferment overnight, and this afternoon made eight flatbreads with it, in a cast iron skillet. There was frost on the deck this morning, and it was 32 degrees when I checked at 7:00, so it was a good day for baking, whether in the stove or on top. And the first day of autumn. ❤

First I cooked them with a little olive oil in the pan. Then I tried each one in half a pat of butter, and the last few lumps dough I sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar as I folded and rolled them out, so that I ended up with a cinnamon sourdough flatbread. If I were to try this again, I might use water instead of milk, and hope to get a chewier bread; the cinnamon-sugar version wasn’t worth repeating. I’m already half-planning, though, that next summer I will bake a simple loaf of sourdough bread in the Dutch oven I saw in the cupboard.

Other than one pie I baked at the cabin, I have little experience baking at high altitudes; my son-in-law made a great pizza here at 8200 feet. Is it mostly cakes that are tricky, up where water turns to steam at 195 degrees? If any of you has personal  experience you’d like to share, I’d be interested.

 

In the weeds and happy about it.

mountains, nature, wildflowers, , , , , , ,

On my way up the mountain earlier in the week I came across several plants whose common names include the word weed: Two tarweeds and two vinegarweeds. They all got my attention by the way they added color to the drying-out landscape of late summer.

When I was still only approaching the foothills, I saw bluish plants dotting the yellow-brown expanse stretching out away from the road, and it didn’t look like anything I had ever noticed before.

It may be that in the past they were not as tall and visible from the road, and that this year’s extra rainfall helped Trichostema lanceolatum to thrive. It was hard to get a picture of it without my socks attracting various stickers waiting in ambush, but this closeup on Wikipedia shows what a graceful flower form is hidden in the overall unimpressive bush:

“The plant is an important pollen source for native bees and other insects. When a pollinating insect alights on the lower lobes of the corolla, and inserts its mouth parts into the nectar-containing lower section of the same tube, the narrow corolla portion above is straightened and snaps rapidly downward brushing pollen onto the insect’s back.

“The volatile oils make it unpalatable to grazing and foraging animals.

“The indigenous peoples of California used this as a traditional medicinal plant, as a cold and fever remedy, a pain reliever, and a flea insect repellent.”

The two species of tarweeds caught my eye a little further on. I think it was mostly Fitch’s Tarweed, Centromadia fitchii, that had turned the slopes and flatlands gold in large swaths on either side of the highway.

But the more photogenic plant I managed to get close to was Heermann’s Tarweed (according to my Seek app), Holocarpha heermannii. Both of these plants are in the Aster Family, but different genera. A lot of tarweeds are in the Madia Family, but it seems that Heermann’s is irregular.

The second plant called vinegarweed grows along the roads in the High-er Sierra. When I first met it in 2009, it didn’t occur to me to taste it; maybe if I had, the idea of vinegar would have been uppermost? But my mind immediately wanted to call it Purple Haze, or Lavender Mist.

It typically gets my attention as I come  around a curve in the road, floating as a long pastel smudge on the shoulder. That first sighting was long before I had any kind of nature identification app, and when I eventually found someone who could tell me what it was (Sierra Vinegarweed or Lessingia leptoclada), that amateur botanist told me that if it had been up to her, she’d have named it Lavender Groundsmoke. The hope of encountering these flowers again would alone be enough to bring me up to the mountains every summer.

The last plant I will share has no connections to vinegar or tar; it is the favorite Mountain Pride, or Newberry’s Penstemon. In an average year, its flowers would have faded to brown by now, and in fact most of them have. But the snow hung on so late here this summer, till the end of July, that the earliest wildflowers had to wait at least a couple of weeks longer to emerge. I was happy to find one bloom of Mountain Pride still fresh and bright. These plants that sit overlooking the lake are a landmark for me, announcing at the end of my journey to the cabin, You have arrived!