My friends, I’m mad for the lentils lately.  They make such nice additions to salads. Let me show you what I’ve been whipping up:

Ingredients:  green lentils, red cabbage, currants, red onion, almond slices, olive oil, raspberry champagne vinegar, cracked pepper, salt and cumin.  SO SCRUMPTIOUS!  I make a huge batch so we can eat it for dinner, lunch and dinner again.

Here it is on a bed of spinach with a side of cubed and roasted portobello mushrooms.  Are you drooling?  I am.

I found a banged up bird, a whippoorwill, I think.  I held it for a moment and then left it at the roots of a wild rose to meet its maker in peace and solitude.  Poor thing.  I’ve wanted to see one of these birds up close for a long while.  At night, when I am driving back to the cabin through thick forest, I’ll see these feathered fellows hunkered down on the road and I always think I’m going to drive over them!  But at the last moment, they flutter up like enormous moths , beat the dusty haze of my headlights with their wide wings, and disappear into the dark.  Truly mystical little birds that seem part tweeter, part owl and part toad.  I’m glad I was able to see this one up close.

Does anyone know?  IS it a whippoorwill?

It’s been hotter than a snakes rump in a wagon rut here.  Like, HOT, hot.  I want to spend each and every moment in the river or at the lake.  The past three weeks of my life have been merrily devoured by three batches of cabin guests.  My first friend to visit is South Carolinan and she has a sensitive and intelligent heart.  It was my first time meeting her!  I fell in love.  Another friend who was here visiting is a best friend of mine whom I have known since grade seven.  We are exactly the same and directly opposite.  We are sort of dark and light versions of each other.  You’d have to see us together to fully understand.  It was such a relief to be with her.  My connection with her is so simple, direct and electric.  My third batch of people was comprised of a girlfriend (and fire wife) from Idaho with her two blondo baby girls.  They just left this morning and I miss them sorely already.  Gosh.  How lucky am I?  Robert and I tend to live in remote places and I always feel blessed when people are willing to make the trip to see us where we are.

I was fishing with Robbie on the Twisp River a few days ago and I had the largest cutthroat trout of the day on my line.  He kept telling me that my casting was looking incredible which, naturally, made my heart feel like it was going to burst with pride. I told him, “You’re never around to fish with and I’ve been practicing on all the alpine lakes!”  I put out some smokin’ beautiful lines across fast moving mountain water and deserved that cutthroat, boy howdy.  I think river fishing is difficult.  I’m terribly lucky that I’ve been able to watch Rob work fast moving water with his rod for so many years now.

Lastly, I am the girl who is running a small business with the help of the free wifi connection at the Twisp public library.  Yup.  That girl upstairs by the houseplants?  That’s me.  The connection is so fast here I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.  What was taking me a day and a half to do is now taking me 30 seconds.  I am so thankful for this internet connection.  I cannot even tell you how thankful I am.  It’s like my sanity has been restored.  I’ll be traveling in to town with my computer and thumb drive twice a week to do serious computer work.  It’s good to finally be back in the saddle.  Thank you all a thousand times over for being such patient little crawdads.  Things are going to hopefully and truly move at a more normal speed from now on.

I can’t believe how rapidly the month of July has trickled through my fingers.  Where did it go?  August looms.  I’m looking forward to settling into work for three solid weeks and finding a little rhythm in this new month and then a Willie Nelson concert in Boise at the end of the month with my darlin’ baby sister!

Did you see the moon last night?  It shot up through the gap at the end of our little hanging valley and I wanted to spend the entire night howling my heart out at it.

What a beautiful world we live in.

What a beautiful world.

xx

:::Post Scriptus:::

Look at this guy’s images from the fire line.  Perfectly photo journalistic.  Utterly inspiring.

And, on a night when there’s a full moon and your heart feels haunted, hear Daughter.