Rambling, Man . . .

We've been a little scattered around Of Woods and Words lately.

I chalk this general discombobulation to two little words: deer season. Since the season opener eve last Friday, we've been hopping around between various locales: the cabin, Andy's mom place, and my parents'. In the last week, I've spent more nights in town than I have at the cabin. As much as I often claim to have an "urge for going," something about vacillating between home and your parents' place isn't quite as glamorous as heading to MSP and catching the next flight to say, Barcelona. Besides, being transient comes with a few pitfalls:

Full Disclosure: This is actually my childhood bedroom in Jan. 2005 while packing for a semester abroad

Since we live in an area still recovering from a recent wildfire, the deer population around the cabin isn't especially remarkable. As the undergrowth regenerates, there's been an obvious increase in the deer population, but Andy thought he'd have better luck if he hunted closer to town, where there are deer, literally, all over the place. Between dental appointments, freelance assignments, and various other commitments for me, it's just been easier for us to spend free time in town, especially since we're right on the cusp of "questionable driving conditions" season.

Andy'd had enough of town by this Friday morning ("Too many people" . .  . "What are these neighbor people you speak of?" Please, do remember that town has a population of less than 2000) so he took off for the cabin and I planned to stay with my parents until Monday.

But when I got back from an article interview yesterday morning, Dad mention that Andy'd called looking for my camera. Apparently, Andy'd gotten a large buck near the cabin. Guess that whole hypothesis about there being better hunting grounds closer to town was kind of flawed.

Not knowing if Andy needed some help, I hopped in the car and headed back up to the cabin. There was indeed a large buck hanging in the cabin when I arrived. I wasn't really needed to assist with anything, but Andy sure was happy to have me around to regale with stories of the hunt. To all my vegetarian readers, you'll be happy know that I arrived too late to take the mandatory "Andy with dead deer" photo.  I kind of think dead deer pictures are tacky anyway .. .

The deer was a 17.5" antler spread and a Boone and Crockett club number, at least the way we measured it,  of 112.5. We may have missed a couple of the spread measurements for the Boone and Crockett. (FYI, the record holding Boone and Crockett measurement for whitetail deer is 213.5/8"!!)

I have to admit I'm much more pleased about Andy's success now than I was last year. (Yes, he did shot the deer on the exact same date as last year. We figure he might as well wait until 7:45 on the morning November 12 to go deer hunting each year.) I've already been busily scouring cookbooks and the internet for new venison recipes. It's a good thing I got some practice with venison cooking last year, because Andy figures we'll probably get somewhere between 40-50 pounds of useable meat from this deer. That's about double the amount of meat we got from last year's doe and yep, that rounds out to a cost of  60 cents a pound when you figure in the cost of the license . . . heck yeah!

That's the news from Of Woods and Words. For now I'm off to town (and beyond!)  to catch up with some old friends. Tomorrow's filled with town appointments and errands and maybe, just maybe, on Tuesday we'll put an end to all this rambling.

Man.

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On Being Brave

This morning, I woke up to a winter wonderland. If you've been reading this blog long enough, you know that this didn't exactly make my day.

Okay, so normally, an inch or two of fresh snow outside the window doesn't bother me too much -- it is rather pretty -- but today's snowfall marked my first winter driving experience of this season. Considering that last winter's driving experiences ended abruptly with me on my side in the ditch, it's fair to say that I've been dreading this day. Add to that dread the fact that I'm still adjusting to the manual transmission Baja. How excited was I about the snowfall outside my window? Not very.

But I had a dentist appointment to get to. No amount of dread was going to make this better. I was going to have to be brave.

"The roads are okay," Andy said over the phone from work. "Just be careful. Use the gears to slow down."

I left the house with hour and forty five minutes to spare until my appointment. The trip to town normally takes an hour. When I pulled out onto the main highway, I realized Andy's assessment of "okay" might be a little exaggerated. OKAY?! I felt the hysteria rising my throat. The road hadn't even been plowed.

Nevertheless, our hero presses on . . .

A little ways down the road, after I'd waited at the bottom of a ginormous hill for a very minor accident involving a pickup and a truck and trail to clear out, it struck me: if police officers are just a step away from being criminals, maybe being brave is just a step away from bloody stupid.

On the other hand, I was learning some important lessons. It turned out driving a manual through the snow and slop wasn't so bad. The Corolla had handled like a hockey puck in snowy conditions; the Baja handled like a tank. "This is amazing," I thought. I shifted easy between the gears. I didn't have to touch the brake pedal at all. The car slowed by itself whenever I took my foot off the gas. I felt firmly glued to the slippery road. I giggled a little when I passed an (undamaged) Camry on its side in the ditch. I mean, who does that? (Don't answer that.)

However, by the time I was halfway down the Trail, it was apparent that I wasn't going to make my appointment.  Do you know how long it takes to get into town when you're averaging 28 mph and you've got 55 miles to chug away at that speed? (Okay, I could do the math, but that's never been my forte.) It takes a long time. Like two hours long.

I pulled into Andy's workplace, called the dentist's to reschedule, waited around long enough for the plow to pass me (I'd seen the plow coming up the Trail pretty early into my journey down the Trail, so I knew he must have made the dead end loop and was not far behind me), and kept on going. Chug, chug, chug.

I'll admit, I wasn't having the time of my life. Nor did I feel particularly brave. To be honest, I felt more boneheaded than brave. Driving through all this crap and still not making it to my appointment?  What was the point of that? This farce was nothing but a freakin' waste of time. Think of all the things I could be getting done if I'd just stayed home.

My mood changed considerably when I finally hit dry pavement. I'd just survived my first winter driving of winter 2011-2012. . . . to put it in Bridget Jones speak, feeling rather rockstar-ish.

However, the question's still hanging out there:

Brave or bloody stupid?

Still can't tell.

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Women Who Don't Drive

Women who don't drive kind of fascinate me. Maybe because not so very long ago, I was one. Ever a reluctant driver, I didn't bother to get my license until age 21. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered then.

I know exactly two women who don't drive at all. One is my aunt. She used to drive back in the day, but my now she gets around courtesy of my uncle, grandfather, and coworkers. The other, the manager at the restaurant where I worked the winter before last. Thanks to friends and her life partner, she manages to live in the middle of nowhere sans car. I don't blame them at all. Honestly, driving makes me feel like this:

You might remember back in May, the newly deceased Corolla (RIP) was replaced by the sporty Subaru Baja. The Subaru Baja with a manual transmission.  The manual transmission that I had a very limited idea of how to operate.

Over the summer, thanks to various independent berry picking voyages, I've gotten really good at driving Andy's schmancy truck, but driving what is technically my car still fills me with dread. All summer, I've basically been a woman who doesn't drive. Why fight with the sticky clutch and risk my life when I could just have Andy chauffeur me around my errands?

But there come a time when the codependency has to end. When the grocery store is an hour away and your and your significant other haven't had a shared day off in, oh, I don't know, a month, and since things like eggs and milk are nice to have on hand, there sometimes comes a time when a solo trip to town is necessary.

Today I drove to town. There was a commentary to record, some groceries to get and the car needed gas. The drive wasn't pretty and it wasn't flawless, but I made it and once again, I've joined the ranks of women who do drive.

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Don't's into Do's

"You know," Andy said the other night as we driving down the road, "I can pretty accurately predict your future by paying attention to what you say you'll never do."

"What?!" I spluttered.

And then I thought about it. "I'll never move back to my hometown." Wait a minute . . . "I'll never live in the woods." Oh yeah. "I'll never drive a stick shift." Hmmm . . . 

That's right, as of Sunday afternoon, Andy and I are now the proud owners of Subaru Baja. (It might not be a looker, but I feel like my life could use some all wheel drive right about now.)

You might remember back when I penned my cryptic, "Catching an Edge" post in March. That's when the dear old Corolla and I had a bit of a wrestle with some black ice. The wrestle ended fine for me, but poorly for the Corolla. While I'd like to say we can easily survive as a one car household, the truth is that two months with just one car was plenty long enough.

So when our neighbors put their Subaru up for sale, the opportunity seems right for all involved parties. There's only one problem. I don't drive manuals.

When I really look at my life, I'm surprised by all the "don'ts." I find. I don't eat seafood. I don't drive stick shifts. I don't crochet. I don't, I don't, I don't.

Life is short. Too short for "don't"s.

So when you see me lurching off from a stop sign this summer, you'll know I'm busy turning my "don'ts" into "dos"

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The Morel Mystery or Marooned by Mushrooms in Minnesota?

In the early part of last summer, Andy and I spent a bit of time poking around in the woods, searching for the elusive morel mushrooms. I was researching an article about fire regeneration, so it made sense to take a gander for the mushrooms while I was out snapping pictures of forest regrowth. Morels are reportedly known to pop up in burnt areas in the two – three year window after a forest fire.

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the Ham Lake Wildfire’s start, which burnt approximately 75,000 acres. In some ways, it hard to believe the traumatic spring of 2007 is three years past. But the forest itself has rebounded beautifully and that means that magical window for morels may be closing. If there were ever morels out there to begin with . . . .

That’s where the debate comes in.

Morels are definitely to be found in the southern reaches of Minnesota. Andy and I talked to some fellow morel mushroom hunters yesterday and they said morels were popping up all over the place in Indiana last week. The old timers swear they used to find morels up here. I believe “trash bags” was used as a unit of measurement. But the old timers are also stingy on details and they’re not saying where exactly they found enough morels to fill trash bags.

Last year Andy and I searched and searched. We looked in places where people had hinted at finding morels in the past. We look on high ground, we look on low ground. We look under burnt logs, around tree trunks. All we ever came across were false morels.

These brain-resembling mushrooms are fun to come across (and as amateur mushroom hunters, whenever we stumbled upon some we would assure each other that “we must be on the right track”) but the mushrooms aren’t good eating. I don’t think they’re poisonous, per se, but I also don’t think you’d feel really great if you sautéed them up in garlic butter and tossed them in pasta. Andy maintains that the only place he’s ever seen morels was at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle, where they sold for about $40 per pound.

So the hunt continues.

We set out on Sunday afternoon and found some bitty false morels.

We also found a ton of flowering blueberry bushes. That’s the beautiful of searching for something elusive: you never know what extraordinary thing you might find instead.

We did some good news on the morel front over the last 24 hours though.

Rain!

Mushrooms are known to spring up after a rainfall so there could be some morels lurking out in the newly hydrated forest right now.

Now the trick is to find time to hunt for them. I spent the better part of the day in the car, driving around to interviews. The upside is that I got some great material for a couple projects I’m working on. However, I’m far too road weary for any great mushroom quest. Perhaps I’ll settle for a nice cup of tea.

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