The Life and Times of the Plume — Page 179

The Polaroid Magic

November 29, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I’ve been slinking around the world with a Polaroid camera since spring of this year. I’ve always loved the look of Polaroid images and was unprepared for how magical it feels to use an actual Polaroid camera. Seriously. It feels like petting a star dusted magenta unicorn mane or feeding turquoise hummingbirds tiny sugar cubes with the tip of my pinky finger.

MAGIC!

What I really love about shooting with Polaroid is how sacred the act of making a photograph becomes. Since Polaroid film is rather obsolete, you have to hunt for packages of the stuff. It costs me about two dollars to take a photo, which doesn’t sound like much but believe me, it adds up quickly. I have spent the past four years taking photographs with digital cameras. With one such camera I can take three hundred photographs without even thinking. I just hold the button down and let the machine whir like a little windmill on the Snake River plain. With a Polaroid camera, each image I make is a careful and conscious act. I sometimes stand for minutes on end with the camera to my face, just looking at the various options for angles and light directions before I take a photo….if I take one at all. Using a Polaroid camera has brought intention back to my photographic life. I love it!

Anyway, the photo I have attached to this post is a shot I took a few weeks ago of Farley and I standing toe to toe in the living room. I love it. It perfectly sums up what exactly that dog means to me and probably what I mean to him as well. And that’s a bit of magic too, come to think of it.

Have a delightful evening!

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All Hail The Mighty Borscht

November 28, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I am half Ukrainian, in terms of my family heritage, and I come from the Ukrainian belt of Canada where there is often borscht on the dinner table in the fall and winter. Borscht is a sort of vegetable soup. The ingredient list includes beets which render the entire concoction the fantastic magenta jewel hue that beets are so well known for. When I was young, the color of this soup terrified me and I refused to eat it when it was set on the table before me. The color was too rich and too wild for the palate of my eyes. To make matters worse, my family grew and tended a huge half acre garden when we were living rurally and the cabbage my mum used in her borscht recipe was home grown. Naturally, this meant that every now and again, an itty bitty cabbage worm would bob to the surface of a bowl of borscht, dyed pink by the beet juices, plump and segmented. It was a true horror to behold. My dad, being the wild Ukrainian man he is, responded to the sight of bobbing, pink cabbage worms with good cheer stating, “Ooh! Extra protein!” Before he slurped them up with the rest of the violent looking soup. It was nearly enough to turn me off of borscht for a lifetime.

I’ve grown up a little since those days and beets are one of my favorite vegetables to grow in my garden and eat! Recently, I made my own batch of borscht in my little farm house kitchen. It was delicious. Want some? You can eat it even if your last name doesn’t end in ‘ski’! I borrowed this recipe from Julia Rothman’s Farm Anatomy (which is sweet and diverting) here’s how you do it!

Ingredientskis:

8 cups of vegetable broth

3 medium potatoes

3-4 medium beets

2 small carrots or 1 big one

1/5 of a small cabbage

1 cup of diced tomatoes

1 onion

3-4 cloves of garlic

a big bunch of parsley

3 bay leaves

salt and pepper

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Directionskis:

Chop up the onion and garlic. Peel and grate the beets and carrots. Peel and cube the potatoes. Finely chop the cabbage.

In a pan, saute the onion and the garlic, then add the beets and the carrots and the diced tomatoes. Saute for another 15-20 minutes on medium heat.

Pour the broth and bay leaves into a large pot and bring to a boil.

Add the potatoes. When it boils again, throw in the cabbage. After five minutes, add the sauteed vegetables, lower the heat and let simmer for five to ten minutes. Add chopped parsley, lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for another minute or two.

Serve with sour cream.

[Generally, I followed these directions but I like a chunkier soup and so didn’t grate any of my veggies. Also, beware if you are living in the tater nation: What is generally considered a medium Idaho spud is more like an large potato in the rest of the world.]

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Friday Nightlings

November 25, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

It’s windy in Pocatello today but there’s something else, something zealous and beautiful and it’s blowing all over my bones. I have felt thin but today I feel strong. This is effervescence. This is softness, a yielding to love and grace. This is turquoise marrow mixed with malamute spirit.

We had a beautiful Thanksgiving feast with our friends here in town. The food was delicious. There was laughter, teasing, perhaps even a dash of familial comraderie! I’m glad we didn’t have to travel. All day long, yesterday and today, I have ticked off the items on my personal list of gratitude, thought long and hard about the people I love, snuggled all the furs and feathers around this place, planted a squeeze on RW as often as possible — life is just so good! That seems like a terribly simple declaration to make, but it rings a gong of truth in my heart. Life is good.

Thank you all so much for the beautiful comments you left on my last post! Gosh! You really know how to love and encourage a gal, don’t you!??? I am so glad to have you in my life. Thanks for being here. All of you. And thanks for the light you shine.

Have a spectacular weekend. I’m not sure what I’ll be getting up to. RW and I worked tremendously hard this week trying to finish up all/most business before Friday night in the hopes that we could both have some time off this weekend. Just now, while I was making dinner in the kitchen, I looked over at him and I told him, “I really love it when we both work hard together so that we can take time off, together, at the end of the week. Thanks for working so hard for me, baby.“

At any rate, I’m reaching in my deep, deep pockets, pulling out a fistful of valentines, and throwing them all at you.

I love your souls.

Don’t you forget it.

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Sojourn

November 22, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I make it to Boise at nightfall and manage to get lost downtown while poor Tater has become carsick and is vomiting all over my lap. So far, this trip is not great. Not great at all. Finally, I get my bearings in that cityscape and find myself moving North through the night. All four truck windows are rolled down to freshen my mind and the air in the cab, snow is drifting in from outside and getting in my eyes as I cut a swath through the weather and up the icy highway that runs with the Payette River. Somehow this five hour drive is turning into an eight hour adventure. I’m very tired by the time I reach Warm Lake Highway and the next 30 miles of road take me two full hours to drive. At some point, I consider stopping for the night and sleeping in the truck but I know I won’t be warm enough, even with the dog pressed up against me. I finally reach the Stolle Meadow turn off and the road is socked in with tall, fresh powder. I can turn back and find a hotel room in Cascade, an hour drive away over an icy and snowy pass, or I can creep the final five miles into the cabin and wood stove waiting for me somewhere on this little road.

I choose the little road, drop the truck down into low 4×4 and make fresh tracks into thicker flurries with a deep ravine on the right shoulder of the road I can barely see. The back end of the truck drifts out on me, time and time again, I have a firm grip on the wheel and steer myself out of disasters. My front wheels ride like squirrels through the powder, every inch forward through the snow takes all my concentration and I feel the tension mounting in my shoulders and neck as I hang on tight and keep momentum. I am sure, as sure as can be, that there’s a broad and holy hand on the right flank of my rig, keeping me lined up, keeping me kept. My directions to the cabin read that it is five miles in on this crummy road and I take a wrong and hopeful turn up the mountain at mile five which results in no cabin and a cranky seven point turn on a tight little road flanked by stubby ponderosa pine that are succeeding the forest fire that passed through here a few years ago. The forest around me is blackened skeleton. I think I see white animals passing through the blinding gleam of my headlights. The snow comes thicker than before. I’m terribly tired. Back on the main road, one mile further, I find my cabin on the left, up a little hill. I pull in, punch the combination into the padlock on the door with cold fingers, run for the wood stove, crumple paper with dumb hands, strike a flame with my lighter and watch the dry wood combust into merry flames. I know I’m going to be alright.

Outside, Tater Tot is scratching at the screen door of the cabin, I let him in and feel badly that I lost cell reception two hours ago and cannot let my husband know I am safe and I have a fire. My friends are supposed to join me this evening. They’re making their way to Idaho from Portland. I don’t know it, but they are stranded in Pendleton and have taken a hotel for the night. It’s just Tater and I in our little cabin with our merry fire warding off the cold. I’m too tired to cook. I make hot water and pour it over the dried mint leaves I grew in the garden this summer. I climb into bed with a packet of crackers and read with a headlamp until I am exhausted enough that I know I’ll sleep soundly. Tater curls up beside me and the sweet thrum of his heart is the last thing I remember until morning.

When morning comes it pours forth into my little log cabin and the light is pure as unseen holy things and brightened further by the fresh snow on the ground outside. There’s stretching and groaning and a sore back. Tater goes outside and turns the snow yellow. The fire has gone out. I pop out to the shed and split beautiful, bone dry pine, break a small sweat with the work and carry the wood back to the cabin. I stuff the stove full and conjure fire once more. I haven’t spoken yet this morning and will not speak until later this afternoon when my friends join me. All is quiet. I make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich. I take a walk.

One million wings come striking and the deliciously silly honks of snow geese filter down through the tightness of the sky and the loose weave of tree branches. They swarm so brightly in their undulating homing arrow flight pattern and some pretty trail of black tipped wing beating flutters behind like a banner on an airplane above a beach somewhere in California. The girls arrive. I’m glad they are safe. There is hugging. There is unpacking. There is chatter. I feel merry. We all do. We tend our fire. We go walking. There are snowshoes for floating. There is wine for sipping. There is the chime of laughter, quiet smiles by firelight, something flitting and serious, something solid and kind.

There is delicious dinner, pancakes, breakfast tacos, a discussion about breeding a female goat, a walk to a creek that steams and streams with hotsprings. There is the decent and loving stringing of friendships like Christmas lights on a conifer, sudden and simple covalent bonds of friendships growing like ice crystals on the river banks.

I spend some time watching: I see the water flowing, forming itself as ice when the pulse of the season passes over it. I see the river, white and splitting into crystal fragments, icy feathers, peaceful and stacked tomes of river breath rising. Under the water, the river stones are a choir of chattering teeth and chiming atomics. Something in my soul goes boom. I walk further. I think I am an animal with nothing better to do than live. Survive. Eat. Sleep. I think I am not an animal. I sketch. I make. I read. I pray. I do those wonderful un-animal things that make me special and human.

There is spindrift! Branches tossing the burden of snow onto the broad backs of light and wind. The falling away of the things we cannot hold. The fading of burdens. The flood of forgiveness. The careful drift of compassion. The light beaming through.

Then there is the journey home. I’m not ready to go. We creep out down that bad old snowy road. We wave our good byes. I tumble down from the mountains like the Payette River streaming. My phone blinks and winks with the business of life again. My dear friend had a baby while I was away (I laugh out loud when I see the news! I knew it when I woke on Sunday morning before she had a chance to tell me — I had a feeling.). I phone Robert to tell him I am out of the bush and on my way home. He answers with, “SO! You are alive!“

Indeed. I am.

I cross so much country. So much winter. So much perfume of space and sagebrush before landing at home once again where there are strong arms waiting to enfold me

which is one of the best things about sojourning — the brief stay in a different place so that you can remember the wonderful feel of returning home.

PS I know I’ve told you before but

HOT DIGGITY.

I love Idaho.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: backcountry cabin, idaho

Fresh

November 17, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I’ve been working on a few new pieces this week! I’m an avid fan of drop choker style necklaces and have been for ages. They’re fun to make and are tremendously elegant on the body — personally, I love the way they dawdle down through the personal topographies. So sassy! This week I finished two drop choker style necklaces that feature my cast components (a sea shell and a head of wheat). A dash of 23 karat gold dresses up the bar and pin chain I’ve fabricated for these pendants. I quite like them. They feel superb around the neck and perhaps even a tad extraordinary. I also made this sweet ring which features a horse silhouette and a truly lovely cut of Mexican fire opal. I reckon the design looks a bit like a pinto pony. It’s for a gal who knows how to run free and stay wild.

In other news, I’m claiming my weekend one full day early and am headed up to Boise National Forest tomorrow to meet up with a posse of gals from Portland. We’ve rented one of those delicious little U.S. Forest Service back country cabins that you know I love to photograph! There will be wondrous foods, wines, chocolates, hours spent being crafty, hot springs, fresh snow and the sweet snoring of Tater Tot as he sleeps in my sleeping bag. You all have a gorgeous, restful weekend now. Find a little sabbath for your souls. Do the things that float your spirit high. Your wings are wide.

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