ah, spring...

at the loft

you poor young bloggers, children of the Internet age, this could never happen to you

Spring, 1966. I am packing. I am thirteen. I am leaving New York. Going back to Poland. My father’s stint at the UN is over.

At thirteen, I regard life as a compilation of the past and the here and now. I do not remember thinking about the future. A future is too vague. A future is the next dance, the next math quiz. It never strikes me, at thirteen, that I may never see my NY friends again, that they will disappear for me and I for them.

Enter the Internet. And google. Oh, it’s easy to look up one of my three best friends from those elementary years. Radhika Coomaraswamy. How many will you find that are not her? Jackie Graupner was another search. I thought I nailed it, but writing her was a dead end. Some Graupner got a bizarre email from me. I don’t think it was the Jackie I knew.

But my best friend with the most common name (Debbie Woods) lost out. Forget it. 3,170,000 google entries. And that’s before contemplating the possibility of a name change.


This evening I get an email:

Hi Nina! I'm sure you don't remember me, but I'm your old friend from UNIS. My name is Debbie xxxx (Ocean protects real people with real names) (formerly Woods) and we used to be best friends back in the day. How are you? Please write when you get a chance. I'd love to hear from you. Debbie

Oh you poor infant bloggers. You’ll never know what it’s like to hear from a best friend 40 years back. You’ll not understand that when I stepped on the ocean liner that would sail me back to Europe, Debbie was quickly slipping into a permanent closed file. Because for you, there are no closed files ever. All you worry about is the ways in which you are noted and recognized on the Net.

Poor you. You’ll not know the joy of rediscovery. You have a vision of a future and it includes the world, indifferent people googling you and you them. Poor, poor you.

just desserts

So what happened this year? I moved downtown in the fall. I have no car now. I walk or bike to and from work. Fantastic, right? Healthy! Invigorating!

Not so much. When I lived miles away from downtown I was so disgusted with my driving-everywhere habits that I went to the gym daily, sort of as my penance.

But now I walk, damn it! Thus the gym disappeared from my routines.

Then there is the food situation. If my Wednesday seminar students continue to bring wonderful foods to class (today: Panera bagels and spreads, chips and guacamole and bean dip) I will grow.

Blame it on the students! It’s their fault!

And why this topic now? Why all the exclamation marks?

Because I was showing off to someone recently how easy I am to buy presents for (this was presented in the form of a hint), how I am consistent with the type, size, colors, styles of clothing, for example. Want proof? Look! I biked over to a store yesterday and without pause, snatched a handful of summer duds, biked home and wallowed in the ease (not the biking part) and wonderfulness of it all.

This morning I daintily lifted and item or two out of the bag, put it on and went into shock.

Yes, holding my breath helped. But really, I had no choice. Back in the bag things went. Drive back to the store, throw down the clothes in disgust, glare at Mr. B for letting me down this winter (why didn’t you make me ride you??), resolve to do better in the weeks ahead.

But not on Wednesdays. All rules are null and void on the day of the Wednesday seminar.

get real

Sunny, still cool, but sunny. I have three little cards saying that I am entitled to all sorts of bonuses at Banana Republic (BR). Time to cash in. Time to dust off Mr. B and ride out to BR.

Trouble is, BR is at West Towne, our most distant suburban shopping oasis. I hate it (West Towne, not BR).

Still, $10 off for customer satisfaction, $15 off for shopping in my birthday month, plus some return credit – I have the loot that will expire soon! I must go!

So I bike over. Mr. B is telling me – are you serious?? The winds are at many tens of miles per hour. You are huffin so much it gives one pause. Let’s rethink this.





But I don't rethink it. I persevere.

Later: I have arranged to meet a friend at the Old Fashioned this evening, Madison’s latest eating craze. Why do I call it a craze? Because people are crazily drawn to it. It’s the budget off-shoot of the fancy Harvest. As far as I can figure out, it has sandwiches and mac and cheese. But don’t take my word for it. Twice I had gone there to eat and twice I had walked away thinking my funny bone remains untickled. Nothing on the menu enticed me to stay.

This time I came with hope. Wouldn’t you eat in a place that reflected such spectacular Madison landmarks in its windows?






We came in, we learnt of the waiting time, we left. Give it up.

Sure, I would have spent less $$ had I stayed, but I would rather order two simple appetizers and eat within an hour of entering a place than to have to wait until someone decided that you, rather than the million at the bar, were entitled to a tbale.

And so we ate next door (Harvest), where the view from the inside was huge. Sort of like the view from the outside at Old Fashioned, but looking out now.




Very very straightforward moral of the day: don’t venture out where the wind is too strong and the crowds too overpowering. You can do better. And you cannot underestimate the power of pink: a cosmo helps give perspective.

it’s 7:35, it's light, it’s spring; otherwise, not much happenin’

I do not create a bloggable life. Indeed, most days, like today, are outstanding in their blog-unworthiness.

I got up.
I dropped off car keys.
I worked.
I paid bills.
I mailed bills.
I scrambled eggs.

This takes me to 7:35 pm which, I believe is right now.

I did make one concession to Ocean while walking to the mailbox (with the bills). I detoured for half a block, just to see if men were fishing now that the ice was gone. Indeed, they were. And there were a few other signs of a Madison spring:



hark! it is the orange guy. you either love him or...not. He plays the piccolo. Constantly. Outside. Same tunes, year in, year out.



in my neighborhood, by the lake; a spring dance? no, a twosome at the hoop.



fishing by the RR tracks

sounds and fishbones

No, no, I did not lose my life in the Kettle Moraine yesterday, Chuck (note comment to previous post). Though almost.

A quiet day in the woods of eastern Wisconsin, that was the goal. My traveling pal, Ed and I drive to the Kettle Moraine. We search for the entrance to the State Park. I see a sign in the parking lot: EVENT IN PROGRESS. Event? Like a wedding or a bird watching group maybe? Should we tip toe?

I look at the cars in the lot. Something is not right.





Trunks open? Cages inside? I look toward the field. A crack. Something falls from the sky.

The man is pointing a rifle at the sky, no at me! I am about to be the next Cheney-like victim. I will be giving interviews to the press that it really does not matter that I have 100 pieces of shrapnel in my body!





We leave.

In another leg of the park, we finally leave the car and start our twelve-miler. Not so quiet here either. Crack. Shot heard from the now thankfully distant hunting fields. And the frogs! These guys are mating with a scream! Two ponds, a cacophony of sound.



pond 1



pond 2


The hike reveals no green sprouts yet. No matter. A deer stares at us, then turns her white-tailed rear-end in our faces and flies off. The Moraine dips and crests, giving the feeling of a swaying horizon line that can’t straighten itself out.





At times the birches stand tall and silver and you imagine how absolutely splendid they’ll be when dressed. Revealing so much limb is never optimal.





At other times, trees appear engaged in some macabre twisty dance, some forest tango of gnarled trunks and entwined arms.





Most interesting of all is the fungus. Sometimes it seems like a bunch of spaceships had crashed into the bark: half of a ship in, the other half protruding still.

But the splendid award goes to the family of cranes. Oh sure, I scared them off with my camera. But not until I got them to move slowly, languidly, so that I could take this:





Nothing could top that. Okay, only one thing could top that: a great meal. A great meal can top pretty much most things. We didn’t have to drive far for it. In Delafield, a colorful shack stands by the lake. Fishbones.





It is nearly impossible to choose a main course. Four plates screamed pick me! Pick me! (jumbo prawns in a hearty vegetable Creole sauce served over sweet potato dirty rice and topped with an asparagus and lump crab relish, OR hand-made ravioli stuffed with mascarpone cheese, shrimp, crawfish tail meat, spinach, and shiitake mushrooms served with a chipotle beurre blanc and spinach chiffonade, OR delicate Norwegian salmon, brie cheese, spinach and crawfish tail meat wrapped in phyllo dough, baked and served with a side of red pepper, asparagus, corn and lump crab relish and finished with a chardonnay cream sauce, OR jumbo prawns, calamari, fresh fish, green lip mussels, butternut squash and red-skinned potatoes in a rich shrimp broth)

Too much pressure. More sweat-generating than the twelve-mile hike. I let others do the selecting for me. Outstanding stuff! Oh, there was an appetizer as well, but it all swims now. But let me mention the crawfish bisque. If you go there, you have to order the crawfish bisque.



killer shrimp creole


crawfish bisque

fools

I ask Ed, the guy I often do stuff with: what's that?





What's what? These are trail maps, of course.
Why?
Why what?
Why are you looking at trail maps?
You said you wanted to hike out in the country.

To me, this means getting out of the car, taking a walk, growing tired of walking, returning to the car and driving to get something substantial to eat, having earned it with that "country walk."

Why do we need maps?
So that we know where to go. Let's see, maybe this twelve mile spin up to the observation tower in the Kettle Moraine...
Twelve mile spin? April Fool's, right? When do we eat? Can we go to Milwaukee to eat?

Here the conversation comes to a significant impasse. I see we have issues to resolve (including Ed's allergy to cities). One thing is certain. My blogging wont resume until tonight or tomorrow. When this guy sets out to hike, he means business. When I set out in search of a meal, I mean business. It remains to be seen where this day will take us.

movement

Yesterday at dusk, I was once again making the backroad run from Steve’s Liquor to Whole Foods and I noticed that I was moving along with a train, just a few feet to my left side. Pedaling in the opposite direction was a cyclist, in full cycling gear. There are so many of these guys in their tight black pants and with holey gloves around town, now that the frost has returned to Canada (or wherever it is that it goes to in spring).

It struck me that it somehow describes my weeks, this little scene. I’m moving in one direction, slowly and then wondering if I should be pedaling in the opposite direction, against the tide, then resisting the temptation to flip, pushing ahead again.

It was very poignant, this thought of moving forces with their various forms of locomotion. Really. You had to be there. Maybe you had to be me.

In a second, I reached for the camera and, still moving with the train, I took a photo. The lighting was as you see it. The blur? Come now, we were all moving, the camera is set on an average shutter speed and I'm trying not to kill myself, the cyclist and anyone else in sight. Of course it’s going to blur.

And still, I like the photo. Me moving with the train, then against it, then, finally, turning off (to Whole Foods) while the pattern of movement continued without me.

on a roll

Oh food... By the end of the day, I am ready for it. And on Wednesday, when I teach late in the day, I am ready for someone else to prepare it for me.

Last night that someone was the chef/sushi roller at the Sushi Box.

People in Madison are so attached to Wasabi on State Street, that they will not set foot in a place that holds the enviable position of being far from pedestrian traffic, far from the campus and far from the suburbs. Basically, it’s in nobody’s way except for maybe sick people who inevitably will pass it en route to UW Hospitals. Though why do I think that sick types rarely pause to eat raw fish on their way to get their bones set or kidneys examined? People are funny that way.

So last night, I walked the unattractive blocks of Old University, entered the Sushi Box, pulled out a Sapporo and circled my sushi choices.

That would have been that, and the post may have been shorter and better for it, but for the fact that the chef/sushi roller had the smile of all smiles…





…and so I boldly asked if I could stand over his shoulder and watch (and take photos and basically be in the way, but I didn’t mention that part then). He smiled a “yes” right at me and got to work while I admired his hands. And his polka dotted hat. And the final product. Wonderful, all of it.

did you know

…that if, on March 28th, you stand in the middle of State Street at 6 pm and face the UW campus, you can see a perfectly centered sun, receding over the horizon?

And isn’t it gratifying to realize that next week, that same view will be yours to admire at 7 pm, or even a few minutes after?

northern sights

From a comment to the previous post, I learn that Bloomer, my week-end food stop on a trip up north, is not really regarded as northern Wisconsin.

Perhaps.

However, that was only a food stop. Indeed, it was some distance away from the overnight in Turtle Lake – an indication of how far I needed to go to eat decently (according to my b&b hosts).

Now, you may argue that Turtle Lake is also not “northern Wisconsin.” I would have issues with that. Barron County is north, damn it! While people were strolling on State Street on a sunny Sunday, with temps in Madison crossing the magic 50 degree mark, I was up north, doing this:



the only way to get around

And the lake was frozen, so that when I, in my borrowed snowshoes, traipsed out to the middle of it to take this photo:




…I did not go under. Nothing even cracked beneath me, in spite of the fact that I weighed a ton, having eaten this for breakfast:









So, compare the snowshoe stuff with photos taken on the way back, still north of Madison, north of the Dells, in fact, but still in central Wisconsin:



cranberry fields forever




…Compare that with the photos from Turtle Lake. I mean, come on! Turtle Lake is north.

road food

He’s lived more than thirty years in Madison and has never poked around the northern parts of Wisconsin. My travel companion (what did I call him several posts back? Ed?) is clearly blind to the splendid scenery of forests lakes and farmland. Time to fill in the gaps.

So long as we’re all the way up north to see the maple syrup operation, let’s poke around Turtle Lake some…
Turtle Lake is another three hours worth of driving… five hours, if you take the backroads!

Ed always takes the backroads.

So what. I want to see Turtle Lake. I want to experience a b&b that has won awards for its proximity to nature, wildlife and the Wisconsin way.

There is, however, the food situation. I call the Canyon Road Inn.
So… where can you get some decent local food for dinner?
There’s the steak house…
My travel companion doesn’t do steak.
Well, there’s the supper club some twenty miles north.

I google the supper club. More steaks. And an international menu of (meat) lasagna and chow mein. I haven’t seen chow mein on a menu since I was a little girl living in NYC and they had it as a regular feature in my school cafeteria.

Anything else?
How about the Main Street Café in Bloomer? People from the city go there to eat.

And what city is that? Bloomer is in the middle of nowhere. A few miles north of Chippewa Falls - Leinenkugel beer land. They come here from Chippewa Falls? Well then, it’s a must.

The MSCafe is on…Main Street. It has foods sold in baskets. You know, fried shrimp and fries in a basket. Grilled chicken sandwich in a basket. Cod in a basket. Grilled or fried.

How’s the grilled cod?
Don’t know. No one orders it that way. People take it fried.
And how’s your pizza?
Great! It’s our specialty!

So we order pizza.


pizza and a Linie

If you can forgive the canned pickled mushrooms and the gobs of Wisconsin cheese, and the canned tomato paste, it’s okay. Especially since it comes with a Linienkugel and offers views of the counter, where the old boys (and I mean old) are chewin the fat. Or the fried.

Dressed to kill (with low slung jeans, just like they’re wearing on State Street), sipping a beer with their baskets of food and their plates of pie, they appear to not mind the weather up here, the state of the world.



saturday dinner up north



just like the young folk


Pie, can I get you some pie?
What do you have?
Apple. (Fitting for a place that has every patriotic symbol in the world scattered about, including American flag paper napkins and framed dedications to the heroes of 9/11 at each booth.)

Apple it is. Not great apple, but regular old apple pie, just like you have eaten a million times before in every road-side dining place in America.



as american as

sugar rush

Two thousand taps hammered each year into trees. Tubes connecting to thick hose, carrying the whole clear mess to a tub in a hut, deep in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Boil it all down and you’ve got some 500 gallons of syrup. There isn’t much time to get at the faintly sweet juice of the sugar maple. Maybe two weeks. Mid-March, that’s it. Tap it out, boil it, filter it, then sell it at the weekly Dane County Farmers’ Market. Mother King’s maple syrup.

So whatever happened to the tin buckets catching the drips?
Put an urban kid in the northwoods and there you have it: complete ignorance about maple syrup technology.

It’s all about tubes now, connected to trees then to each other, looking like someone had spun a web of blue around the maple forest (get it right, Ocean, it’s called a sugar bush).



sugar bush



tapping


Inside, the hut smells like you want it to smell: logs burning in the first stove, the syrup picking up a deep amber tone, filling the space with a warm aroma of waffles for breakfast.







feeding the fire



finishing tank


The tubes are so much cleaner than the bucket thing. Animals, bugs, shreds of forest life all made their way into the buckets.

A walk through the forest down to the river, following logging trails and deer tracks, over moist leaves (there are mushrooms here in the summer; you’re Polish… you like mushrooms, no? I like mushrooms) makes you kind of wistful for a grandmother’s house at the end of the run. The type of grandmother who lives in rustic places and does nothing but bake and cook for you all day long. (I had a grandmother like that, back in Poland; I picked mushrooms for her and she’d swim them in butter and chop them into pierogi.)



eau something or other

April 22nd. The first market day for Madison. I don’t use maple syrup much, ever since everybody in Dane County is pretending to be on one diet or other and big breakfasts and brunches belong to the days of buckets dangling from trees. But I’ll stock up. For the future. Liquid gold from up north.