I took a walk up to Bash Bish Falls last weekend.  The snow was still falling but the trail (which is sheltered and well-trod) was encrusted with about a foot of bare ice.  It was quite an adventure.  There were ice-donuts at the side of the path — created by tree-drippings or ski-poles?  I’ll leave that to you:

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

— Wallace Stevens

An acorn is just a tree’s way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. – Shirley Ann Grau

A beautiful autumn, one day trading its bloody august sunset for another’s pale yellow and ice-blue.  I gathered armfuls of acorns from the big Northern Red Oak outside our house.  Euell Gibbons in his classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus recommends making an effort to find members of the white oak family, which have less tannin, a substance that makes the acorns bitter and probably unhealthy to eat.  Woe is me — I got lazy and gathered mine off the back porch.

I tasted one raw and regretted it immediately — the tannin gives it an awful, tongue-shriveling quality that reminds me of unripe persimmons.  But everyone online seemed to agree that every acorn is edible if you soak it enough.  Euell says to boil ’em for a few hours, changing the water regularly.  I decided I’d lose too much flavor by boiling, so I crushed them and tried a cold-soak with regular changes of water.  The Native Americans who ate acorns used to put them in a bag and bury them in a bog or creek for months to a year.  I was pretty sure I could do it faster, but weeks later I had learned the hard way that it’s just not worth the effort.  I could have saved so much time if I had invested just a little up front in finding the right tree.  If you happen to have a red oak and are dead set on exploring its bounty, I highly recommend grinding the acorns first before soaking (a nice description of the process is in Debbie Lee’s interesting article on dotorimuk, a savory Korean acorn pudding).

Nonetheless, I finally succeeded in leeching the tannins out.  The nut meats had changed from an ivory hazelnut color to a lovely dark coffee-bean shade, but still retained their earthy hickory-maple aroma.  I roasted them, ground half into acorn meal and kept the rest as nuts.  They make a nice acorn-corn bread, and a delicious acorn-crusted acorn squash (stuffed with acorns, of course).  I’ve also tried a cookie (oakmeal-rasin, of course) and the leftovers went for the above-mentioned dotorimuk.  Recipes available on request!

Sorry to miss the summer update — I was laid up for all of August and got behind in everything.  It was a really beautiful summer, with perfect weather and everything blooming.  The barred owls stirred themselves into a cacophony every night, the turkeys seem to be enjoying all the quiet farmland (courtesy of Mr Chambers), and the coyotes seem to be enjoying the turkeys.

We were enjoying the fruits of our garden, which Melissa had been slaving over all spring to good effect:

Eva made her annual Hillsdale pilgrimage with her son Ben (joined later by Michael and Ana).  They did some pond exploration, and found a local letterbox on the Harlem Valley Rail Trail.  Whether he’s working or playing, Ben approaches life with ferocity.

Autumn post coming any day now — thanks for your patience!  (Photos of Ben and Eva are courtesy Elisabeth Sperling, who is a really talented action photographer.  Thanks, Elisabeth!)

Finally spring is bustin’ out all over — and about time, too.  It’s been long, snowy winter.

With still about a foot of snow everywhere except the sunniest fields, there are little mossy patches appearing around the bases of some of the trees.  An opossum came round to see what was there, looking a little shell-shocked from the winter.

The precipitation of the summer has continued this winter with a bumper crop of snowstorms.  The roads have been icy (and occasionally strewn with abandoned cars), and the views have been stark gorgeous.  All the winter critters seem to be enjoying the snow — coyotes were out yipping my last evening in the woods, a barred owl hoo-hooting, deer beds and tracks of all sorts everwhere.

The snow has been drifting pretty high — I was waist deep on my last walk — and in places it’s formed  a crust that’s strong enough to walk on…. mostly.  The mossy areas are all full of crunchy needle ice (easily as much fun to walk through as crisp fall leaves), and in addition to the usual cavalcade of icicles there were also a bunch of really interesting snow formations draped over branches like crepe streamers.   I’ve never noticed them before.  Anyone know how they’re formed?