SIMCHA FISHER

Happy Thursday! I’m sorry I missed last Friday’s What’s For Supper (and I’m sorry if I caused anyone to panic by posting a WFS on a Thursday. Not that the world revolves around my posts, but I, for one, have been hurled into confusion by much smaller things).

Last week was wonderful but exhausting, and by last Friday, many of my cells refused to cooperate in anything but the most essential functions, by which I mean I fell asleep in the adoration chapel and woke myself up snoring, but don’t worry! there were several other people there. Then I went to pick up a kid and drove the wrong way down a one-way street, and then I sent myself to bed early. So I didn’t get any writing done.

A quick highlights reel of the previous week:

Last Sunday, my friend Danielle stopped by for lunch! I didn’t get any pictures of us, but we had wonderful conversation as usual, and she brought some special hybrid apricots. Anyone who’s ever looking for a gift for me, the answer is always fruit. 

Damien made smoked chicken thighs, and I made a green salad and some pasta salad. For the pasta salad, I used some of my chive blossom-infused vinegar, which has pinked up nicely. Started like this:

and ten days later, it looked like this. 

I love infusing things. I’m really big on projects that take a little effort in the beginning, but then you just have to let time pass. 

I overcooked the pasta, but the pasta salad was still good.

Salami, sun dried tomatoes, feta, basil, black olives, marinated artichoke hearts, olive oil, chive blossom vinegar, and misc. Oh, and I chopped up a bunch of garlic scapes and threw them in, and that was a good idea! They tasted like mild garlic, but with the snappy texture of fresh string beans, so that added some good texture. 

For dessert I made individual blubarb crumbles with the last of the rhubarb, and topped them with fresh whipped cream.

The flavor was good, but the texture — well, it seems I used some of what should have been beyond the last rhubarb, and some of it was so woody, I truly don’t understand how I didn’t notice that when I was prepping it. It was like eating sweet blueberry mulch. I really surprise myself, sometimes. 

But all in all, a tasty meal

and a tasty visit! 

The next day, with some help from Corrie, I culled peaches from the tree. We have thousands and thousands of peaches this year, and if you want them to grow big and sweet, you need to pick off the smallest and malformed and crowded ones. This is not an edifying job, but it gets less tragic every time I do it. It sure was a lot of peaches, and this was just the ones we could reach easily. 

I threw most of them in the compost heap, but decided I might as well pickle the biggest ones. I opted for a sweet recipe, rather than sour or spicy, but I fudged it a bit. As far as I can recall, I used white vinegar, honey, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, bay leaves, lots of fresh ginger, salt, and I guess water. You’re supposed to score the peaches to help them absorb the flavor, but they were so small and tender, I accidentally cut them in half (the pit is just barely forming at this stage). So I made one jar of whole peaches, and one jar of halves. 

Murky and mystical. I don’t do sterile canning; I just covered the jars and put them in the fridge. Gonna try them next week, probably, or the next. I’m guessing they will be good as a garnish for vanilla ice cream. Maybe with a little praline topping and fresh mint. Well, I have no idea. 

THEN WE WENT CAMPING. That’s what the rest of this post will be about! And I will warn you, I allowed myself to get a little lyrical, because it was just that kind of place. 

I spent most of the time without my phone/camera, so I could just beeeeeee there, and not be checking in on stuff, or thinking ahead, or framing stuff, or trying to capture anything, or to know what time it was. 

I gathered our supplies and Damien loaded up both kayaks and the canoe, because this site is only accessible by water. It’s about forty minutes away, and we arrived at the park around 7:00, found a pump and filled up the water tank, and then we packed most of our gear into the canoe. Damien paddled that, and I took one kayak with the second in tow.

We paddled through shallow water and golden light, everything utterly clean, globes of yellow spatterdock standing out here and there, and green lake weed folded just under the surface, rippling with the ripples. We could still hear other campers on shore from behind the trees, calling out and tending their campfires. Then we passed through a row of great rocks, “The Narrows,” and then on into the deeper part of the lake. Then it was only birds, and trees, water, and sky.

A little overwhelmed, we paddled around until we saw what must be our site, just a narrow patch of sand in the bank, and a small clearing in the trees. We landed and were delighted. They said it was a remote site and that is how it felt, with a deep, quiet smell of trees, a thick pad of pine needles underfoot, and not a thing overhead but the cooling sky. We unloaded our gear, walked around to see what there was, then set up the tent and the air mattress before it got much darker. 

And, it was the wrong mattress.

This may not sound like a big deal, but Damien is very tall, and I’m pretty wide, and this mattress was both short and narrow. And we are both old, and also the mattress had a leak. And we were staying two nights. So. 

The sun was setting, and I was distraught (guess who packed the gear?), and we could not think of a single solution other than Damien going back home to get the right mattress, while I stayed to make sure no critters ate our food. First he showed me how to use his pistol, then he went right back over the water, through The Narrows and over the other water, through the park, forty minutes home, grab the mattress, forty minutes back, see a baby moose, back over the water, back through The Narrows, and then through the other water with the right mattress. 

So, this is how you know this was a blessed spot: While I was alone in the night in the woods, I wasn’t scared at all. I was flustered, because it quickly became pitch dark, and I couldn’t figure out how to use the flashlights (I knew they had the new battery tab still on, but it was dark, and I was flustered!), and I lit a fire, but it kept going out, and I had to keep going into the black woods to gather more kindling, and the loons out on the lake were making the most otherworldly, tragical noises they possibly could. So it was a strange experience! But I felt utterly safe the whole time. Eventually I figured out how to use the lantern, and I hung it on the furthest branch of a tree I could reach, so when Damien got back into the water, he would know where to land. (Do you know that NH is 84% tree?) 

This is where something really strange happened: I couldn’t find the water. I kept shining my light at the spot where the land ended, and all I could see was pebbles and sand. I understood what I was seeing: The water was so still and so clear, I was seeing right through it down to the bottom. But I had such a hard time persuading myself the water was actually there. It was like looking straight down from the brink of the Grand Canyon, which is so incredibly deep that the distance down is further than I am used to being able to see horizontally. I knew what I was seeing, but I couldn’t get my brain to register it. Passing strange. 

I just kept relighting the fire and thinking about loons and eating caramel cremes to fortify myself, and eventually I allowed myself to tot up the time it could reasonably take to achieve all the things Damien had to do. I figured about three hours.

I checked my phone. It had been about three hours, twenty-five minutes.

Then I did worry. I allowed myself to think about him not being able to spot the campsite, and for some reason his boat sinking silently into the dark water with no one to know but the loons and the stars, and how much I would not like that to be true, but MAYBE IT WAS.

That part went on for about ten minutes. Then suddenly I heard splashing, and then there he was, with a big mattress and an extra bundle of wood. And I was glad to have him back. 

We were both every so tired and hungry, so I was glad I had splurged on a bunch of pre-sliced london broil, which I salted and peppered, and we threaded it onto the tines of a long fork, and Damien cooked it nicely over the fire

until it crackled, while I cut up some sharp cheddar and buttered some bread. And that was an excellent meal. We washed our hands and collapsed into bed to the sound of nightbirds and peepers. 

Around 8 a.m., I woke up. Haha, just kidding, it was like 4:15. I struggled my way out of the tent and stumbled over to the terlet (we got this wonderful, portable camp toilet, which made a huge difference in the entire trip!), and then went over to see what the world was doing up so early.

This is what it was doing. 

Here’s a video I took

 
and I thought that any day that started out that way could not possibly be bad. I could already feel my brain rinsing clean. 

I went back to bed and dozed for a bit, then got up and scared the heck out of a family of mergansers checking out the bits of cheese we had dropped last night. They had at least a dozen babies, and the whole lot of them whooshed out of there like they had a jet pack. The trail of bubbles they left in their wake stayed floating on the surface for ten minutes or more — that’s how still the water was. 

Damien lit the camp stove and made some coffee, and I sat in the tethered yellow kayak and drank it slowly while drifting. The water was utterly clear, and I watched salamanders and tiny fish bustling around. One big fish that I did not see made a classic “CLOOP!” as he nabbed a careless dragonfly and dropped back home. 

Then I untied the kayak and set out to see the water. There were clusters of rock in the middle of the lake, a few bare and marked with stripes from  different depths of water; some with grasses, pink and purple flowers, and pale lichens, a few with entire trees. A dry tip of broken tree branch poked up through the surface, and it was bleached and bare. I thought I saw a blue darning needle perched on it, and next to it, a green sprout. I maneuvered closer to see, and the green was a grasshopper, and with it was another, in brown, and then I saw two more bugs. In another spot, every single blade of pond grass that poked up through the surface had its one crablike, translucent insect clinging to its stalk. And birds, birds, birds everywhere. I have never seen such a place for living things. 

We kept marveling how quiet it was, and how much solitude, and how remote, because all we could hear was birds. But to the birds, it must have felt like Grand Central Station. They were all hard at work, and there were so many, and so many kinds. Everyone was busy doing complicated, intricate avian things, except for this one nuthatch, who perched near our tent and went, “Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp. Yamp.” And that is what he did, all day long. 

In the middle of the lake, a round, yellow spider startled me by scuttling up my arm. I jumped and blew him off with a puff of breath. I regretted it right away, but he landed neatly on the surface of the water and skated silently beside my boat, skimming right along with me, caught up in my small current. He left a tiny wake behind him, and made ripples before him as he went.

At some point, I paddled back to camp to have some breakfast. I burned a bagel over the stove flame, then scrambled some eggs and added some smoked salmon trim, and had a wonderful sandwich. 

Then I went back out, and I saw a pair of loons. I kept carefully coming closer, and they kept letting it happen, completely unbothered. They are dark creatures with pointed bills, and between them were two fuzzy babies who paddled lightly on the water and kept up a persistent burring, wheezing sound.

 The parents were silent and unalarmed by my boat, although I know they saw me with their round, red eyes.

They ducked their heads and fished out goodies from the glassy water, with droplets flashing and beading on their backs. Their children were plain, but the parents were both dressed to the nines, decked out in an intricate Escher-like design of black and white. Sometimes the babies rode on their backs, then slid down into the water to bob and swim. 

I saw striped rocks; I saw uprooted trees. Nearer to the shore, I heard a flap like a waiter shaking out a tablecloth, and a huge grey heron lifted off the water and departed on some heron business, into the trees. 

Through the narrows and into the reedy, shallow water, where half the surface was dressed with lily pads, I watched a red-winged blackbird hover, then dart, over and over again, picking off a feast of bugs. His shoulders blazed and he sang his rowdy, garbled song as I floated and watched, my forearms baking in the sun, frogs calling, mounds of clouds piled in the blue. A million little fish kept cool in the dim water, and a white moth took her ease on a lily pad. 

And that is how we spent most of the day! Sometimes Damien and I paddled around together and explored; sometimes we went our separate ways. Absolutely nothing to do but paddle and float and look and listen. And not take pictures!

We spent a long, lovely time in the tent reading, and eventually I took a nap, and Damien went out to explore the forest. When I woke up, he had left a bouquet of wildflowers outside the tent. The last time I was so delighted to find flowers was when I came out of my dorm room in college and someone gave me a coffee pot filled with discarded pink flowers a teacher had thinned out of the bed by the office. That was from Damien, too, about 28 years ago. 

I went out with a journal and made some terrible drawings, mainly so I could look up flowers later. The one that baffled me the most was a tough, glossy  one on a long stalk, with five red petals and a green center like a parachute, and complex, ruffled, hairy leaves. 

I later discovered this is an immature pitcher plant, and the pitcher hadn’t formed yet. I didn’t know we had carnivorous plants in New Hampshire! There were also millions of shrubs with elegant, petal-shaped leaves and clusters of small, old fashioned-looking fuchsia blossoms.

These turned out to be sheep laurel, also new to me. 

Later in the day, I went out and in the middle of the water, I happened to look up, and there soared an eagle. He was just lazily circling, with his white tail fanned out. He made half a dozen circuits around the sky and then a little bird showed up and kept darting at him. He ignored it at first, but the little one would not give it up, and kept badgering and nippig at him. The eagle did a short barrel roll to evade him. I was absolutely bugging out and almost fell out of my boat. Then he decided he’d had enough, and glided away into the trees. Freaking birds. Freaking amazing. 

At some point, we went back and roasted hot dogs for supper, and I wrapped a Drake’s fruit pie in tinfoil and roasted that. It was fine. Much like a Drake’s fruit pie, except warm. 

I’ll just share a bunch of photos here from my evening outings.

and this final one, approaching the campsite with the moon overhead

A tiny, prickling rain was just starting to fall. 

We decided we were too tired to sit around a fire, so we just went to bed and read for a long time, gorgeously cozy. I woke several times in the night to hear more and more rain falling, and around dawn it really picked up, and that was when I realized we never put the tent fly on. It wasn’t raining directly inside the tent, but the water seeped through the walls, and by morning, my head and pillow were soaking wet. 

The stove wouldn’t stay lit long enough for coffee, so we just started packing. It was sad. Everything had wet pine needles and wet, splintery wood stuck to it. Damien loaded up the canoe and set out

and I followed with the two kayaks. So very different from when we got there! Our arrival was lucid and golden; our departure was misty, soggy, and grey. 

We made it back to the park landing site and started to unload. A mother wood duck and some ducklings were dabbling around the boat landing, looking for breakfast, and we saw one baby run right across the surface of the water like a cartoon. Then Damien experienced the pleasure of standing on wet pine needles and hoisting wet kayaks onto the top of a wet Suburban, and I helped by putting my hands in the air near the kayaks and going, “Oh! Oh gosh! Oh no!” Then, to make things worse, one baby duck came back all by himself, swimming slowly, looking around, and quacking anxiously, but his family was gone. A bit of a sad note to leave on. 

Eventually we got everything all packed up and took one final look at the water. And the mother duck sailed into view. She headed straight for the reeds, quacked sternly, and then reappeared, headed back in the other direction and muttering to herself, with her errant duckling in tow. So that was all right. 

Then we left, and then we stopped for coffee, and then we drove the rest of the way home. We’re planning our next trip already. It was wonderful.