Dawdling and gawking

It seems whenever we have gone anywhere in the car, we hurried.  If visiting family, we minimized driving time to enhance family time.  Now that we are retired, I have decided this is silly.  Once after the Jerabek reunion, we took a leisurely trip back to Phoenix.  Lillian had not gone to the reunion and Bill, Marvin and John had flown home.  Consequently, it was William, Marilyn, Jennifer and I in the car on the return trip.  Christine was born the following October, so by the end of August, lengthy sitting was becoming a problem for me.  To break up the trip, we began to visit tourist traps.  We enjoyed the world's largest hand-dug well, the Dalton brothers' hideout, El Morro National Monument, Meteor Crater, and Montezuma's Castle.  Not only did we learn some fascinating bits of history, but got some exercise.

Last week we went to Moscow to visit Benjamin.  At my insistence, we took the scenic route down the Lochsa and Clearwater Rivers instead of I-90.  The scenery was marvelous.  We actually stopped to read historical markers, and visited the Dworshak Dam.   At breakfast in Kooksia, we found a SCENIC IDAHO pamphlet.  Instead of zipping home via the Interstate as planned, we could take the White Pine scenic byway and the St. Joe River scenic byway.  So we did.  It was refreshing to drive at a pace slower than the speed limit, pulling over to admire the view when the winding roads became tiresome.  Yes, the trip took two days each way instead of one, but we arrived home refreshed.

Free food

I was introduced to free food by my father.  He found chokecherries during a hike near Riley Lake, where we used to vacation, picked them, and brought them back to the cabin.  For a whole afternoon, we prepared the berries, juiced them through a jelly bag and made chokecherry jelly.  He was sure they had plenty of pectin, and the jelly set up nicely.

My next experience was on a Girl Scout hike.  We found lots of blackberries in a hedgerow and picked them into our hats.  They were added to our homemade ice cream that evening.  Delicious.

Since then, I have scavenged apples, peaches, chokecherries, blueberries, raspberries, currants and other fruit growing wild on untended trees and bushes.  I have also eaten morel mushrooms, nettles, pigweed, purslane, wintergreen, mint and other found edibles.

Once, while wandering in the woods picking blueberries with James, he asked me if I knew where we were.  I knew we were north of the railroad tracks, west of Wolf Lake road, and south of Second River, but I told him I wasn't exactly sure where.  To him, the world was divided into "know where you are" and "lost".  He suggested we begin building a shelter in which to winter!  He was much relieved a few minutes later to discover we were within hailing distance of the house.

Also in Michigan, I took a job picking raspberries.  The owner of the patch had a policy of paying his pickers in berries.  At first, there were many pickers getting a few raspberries for jam, but as the season wore on, they stopped coming.  Since the owner had health issues and was unable to pick the berries himself, I kept coming every day and dealing with berries every night for the remainder of the season.  We had raspberries for years thereafter.

This week, I visited my favorite serviceberry patch and came home with a five-quart pailful. As I reached up to pull down an especially fine branch, I distinctly heard my first husband singing:
"the higher up the cherry tree the sweeter grows the cherry
the more you hug and kiss the girls, the sooner they will marry"

Ricochet

Our family made a mass journey to the hot springs during cousins' week.  It is a 2+ mile hike with the steepest terrain at the end of the trip.  I was plodding along in the rear with the younger grandchildren until we reached the last stretch, at which point they burst forth joyously and I was panting to catch up.  Soon I was having to rest after every ten steps.  I had not realized I was in such poor shape.  Finally, I stopped altogether.  I could see the piles of clothing and backpacks ahead, but I just couldn't take another step.  I wanted to just sit down and cry for my lost youth.  When I had made this hike with my scouts only ten or twelve years ago, I kept up with them fine.  My daughter was waiting patiently for me to recover.  "Just go on up", I said. "I'll come along at my own pace."  She looked me full in the face.  "I'm not leaving you.  I'ts called the buddy system."  I wonder who drilled that into her brain.

Happy Father's Day

My father was a noted rosarian.  Roses bloomed wherever he lived.  I have not had much success with them.  I had heard that Austrian Copper roses required little care and were almost impossible to kill.  I bought two bushes several years ago which I have been caring for and watering, and which seem to be thriving.  Two weeks ago, everyone else's Austrian Copper roses burst forth.  My bushes had no blooms.  I have been watching them anxiously as the buds began to swell.  Still, no blooms.  Today, I looked out the window and the entire bush had sprung into color. They were waiting for my father's touch. Happy Father's day, Papa.

Rainbooooooooh

This weekend, the Missoula Weavers Guild (of which I am a member) hosted the MAWS Conference at the University of Montana.  I drove up yesterday to see my friends, but also to visit the vendors who were holding forth in the third floor ballroom of the University Center.  On my shopping list were a reed and heddle hook and silk yarn.  I started on one end and worked my way counterclockwise around the hall.  In my youth, my mother, knowing my propensity to handle everything, taught me to resist temptation by clasping the wrist of one hand firmly in the other hand behind my back.  The whole shopping process slowed to a crawl when practically every booth had large signs saying PLEASE TOUCH.  I sat on the loom benches, handled the fleeces and roving, purring over yarns in every shade and size.  I picked up the Bluster Bay shuttles and imagined weaving with them and put  them down before I drooled on them.  I found a reed and heddle hook at the third vendor, but decided to go all the way around the room before spending any money.  After an hour, I got to the far end and spotted one of the most beautiful sights this side of heaven.  RedFish Dyeworks was selling silk yarn in an incredible variety of shades, stacked from floor to tiptoe, with reds in one corner, fading consecutively in wraparound fashion through the entire rainbow.   I walked into that booth, and there I stayed.  I had never been inside a rainbow before and the enchantment was complete.  When I left, I took a souvenir.  Twelve 50 gm skeins of 30/2 silk. I bought the hook as I floated past on my way out the door.

Semantics

Today I invented a new word.  Our dog, Hermann, has decided to talk to us.  He discovered that when he breathes heavily, we immediately take notice.  At first, we thought he was having some sort of respiratory crisis.  We ran over to see what was the matter.  He was very pleased, and obviously not in distress.  The next day he did it again, with the same results.  "Ah.  When I do this, my humans pay attention."  In a matter of days, we realized that he was using panting to give us information.  He would go near his food dish and pant.  Sure enough, he was out of food or water.  When we were eating something he really wanted, he would not only sit nearby, but pant loudly for a bite.  Usually, at about ten in the morning, he and Vinson take a walk.  Today Vince was on the computer.  Hermann came to the door of the computer room and panted.  Then he lay down and waited.  Vinson kept doing what he was doing.  Hermann stood up and panted more LOUDLY.  "I think Mr. Hermann is ready for his walk."  Vince came to a stopping point and took the dog,  Hermann looking very smug as they went out.  I decided to name this form of communication, combining participation, anticipation and pant,  I came up with panticipation.  Now I am looking smug.

Fountain of ink

     My mother was the ambassador of the fountain pen.  Long after the ball point had become the new standard, she was still using her trusty Esterbrook.  We had all been taught to use the fountain pen in elementary school.  Each of us had a bottle of Scrips permanent blue-black in our desk to refill when our pens went dry.  To do this, we immersed the point into the bottle and pulled a lever on the side of the pen, expelling whatever ink remained, then as we slowly returned the lever to its original position, a rubber bladder inside the barrel sucked up a new supply of ink. A quick blot with a tissue, and we were ready to go again.
      Once, in fifth grade, I was giving a talk and my classmates were duly taking notes with their fountain pens.  One of the boys in the front row was having trouble with his pen.  He thought he might be out of ink, so he pulled the lever to check.  A spurt of ink flew forth, landing squarely on the front of my white blouse.
      Fountain pens were especially dangerous for left-handed writers.  The ink went onto the paper wet, and if the following hand dragged across the new line of writing, it would smear.  Lefties soon learned to write from below or hook their hands down from the top, resting on ink that had already dried.  The fountain pen had another bugaboo, too.  The ink came down a channel between two sharp points, and if the points dug fibers from the paper, the ink flowed freely and made a puddle.  Each of us had a blotting paper to soak up this puddle as quickly as it was noticed.  Teachers hated blots, and if the work was to be turned in for a grade, it had to be redone.
      I, too, loved my Esterbrook.  The manufacturer made a series of interchangeable points, some especially for left-handed people.  If your point became too dull to write, you could purchase another.  I have no idea how many new points my mother purchased.  She was a prolific correspondent.  Not only did she write to her far-flung children almost every week, she wrote to her college friends, her congressman, her godson, her former students, and, at Christmas wrote hundreds of letters, all by hand.  Her favorite ink was peacock blue.  She always had some on hand.  When Scrips was going to discontinue that color, her local supplier informed her and she bought a whole case.  Even so, she outlived it.

Sing, heavenly moose

The Muses were nine daughters of Zeus in Greek mythology.  They inspired art, poetry, dancing, music, writing and other cultural pursuits.  When humans desired inspiration in these fields, they often appealed to the Muses for help.  When I was in high school, our English class was reading poetry aloud.  One of my classmates had  apparently never heard the word pronounced (myooz) and amused us all by boldly reading  "Sing, heavenly moose!"  I am hoping to have inspiration for the musings I plan to write in this blog.

Arcane weaving terms

I love to play Scrabble, a game that flexes both my imagination and my vocabulary.  Terminology from specialized fields can be problematic if an appropriate dictionary is not used.  I often play what my son calls "arcane weaving terms" such as weft, sett, heddle, batten, pirn, tromp, and thrum.  He is surprised to find them in a standard dictionary.  I assure him that these are in current use, at the same time feeling a connection to my weaving ancestors.  Thrums are what remain on the loom after a project is completed and cut off.  When they, too, are removed, they are commonly referred to as loom waste. In this blog they are the stuff of memories.