Wintry Wilds

Okay, I can not tell a lie - the following pictures are not from my most recent weekend in the wintry wilds of Maine. AGP and I completely forgot to bring any of our cameras with us so we were left with having to make mental memories. To be honest, it wasn't all that bad to be away from the lure of the shutter and just soak in all the magic a long weekend in the woods can be.

So here is the deal: as I have mentioned earlier in my loving descriptions of AGP's cabin in Maine, where we stay is completely off the grid - even more so in the winter. The large, summer cabin is impossible to heat in the winter, so we have to move all the essentials to the little cabin where we can heat it efficiently, and you know, survive. And even though we normally take a boat in to the cabin, since the lake was icy, we had to hike in with all of our food and stuff. At night. In the rain.

To put it in perspective, we were probably the only people around for at least five square miles, in a tiny cabin with a tiny wood stove. No bathroom, no running water, no electricity. I really makes me appreciate the luxuries of my everyday life! And also how dangerous it can be to be so isolated. It's crazy how much seeing coyote tracks in the snow can freak me out.

Although it is incredibly romantic to be holed up with your beloved in a tiny spot of warmth (that AGP built himself) in the middle of a snowy and cold wonderland. Just the two of us for miles. Life in a cabin in winter is actually full of a LOT of chores, mostly centered around lugging firewood, tending the fire, and getting drinking water. All day, everyday.

Of course, we found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves outside of the chores. The lake is full of hiking trails and the woods weren't all that impassable. In fact, the first day we were out there it was downright moist. I had never seen the woods so alive in the middle of winter. Although, maybe I have never took the time to really look at all the moss, lichen, ferns, and cold-loving mushrooms that transform a landscape you expect to be barren and frozen into a cryophilic ecosystem, still brimming with life. And at night we played a Cold War themed board game (nerds).

While I wish I had photographs of bright green moss, rocks bearded with icicles, cedar trees that perfectly match AGP's eyes, and angelic captures of puffy snow falling in the hilltops, there's no way I could have captured the full beauty of the landscape. However, it will be there forever in my mind.

Edible Mushrooms: Chanterelles

I love mushrooms. Whether they are growing on the forest floor or sauteed in garlic on my dinner plate, I am a fan of the fungal fruiting body. So it's only natural that once we found ourselves living a life amongst the trees that we would give mushroom foraging a try.

Disclaimer #1: Do not use any of the information in this post for the purpose of identification and never eat any wild mushrooms without the 100% identification of an expert. Be careful, be respectful, and if in doubt, don't eat or pick it. 

We decided to start out with a simple mushroom foraging goal: find our own Chanterelles, a mushroom from a complex and wide family with several edible varieties.

Chanterelles are most distinctively identified by their "false gills", which more resemble wrinkles than the gills most of us imagine when we think of traditional mushrooms. Chanterelles are sometimes vase, trumpet, or horn shaped and vary in color and ecology, and like most mycological curiosities, sit on the blurry lines of taxonomy.

Since I have a knack for keeping my nose to the ground and snuffling out the otherwise overlooked treasures of the mottled forest floor, we found several varieties of Chanterelles during this first year as newbie foragers, with tasty and passionate results. Almost every meal of wild mushrooms was ended with discussion on when and where we were going to find more.

When you mention the edible Chanterelle, the species of note is usually Cantharellus cibarius (lead photo & above) This is what you will most often find on your dinner plate when ordering seasonal wild mushrooms. It is a forager's delight - shining brightly like citrine gems amongst the hardwood forest leaf litter. It's hard to mistake the fleshy mushroom and it's sweet smelling apricot aroma once spotted from afar.

My favorite variety of Chanterelle is the Yellow Foot, Craterellus tubaeformis, and it's closely related ally, Craterellus aurora. I love them in their abundance, almost always frequenting the same mossy stream sides as I am. Their happy yellow stipes remind me that there is edible wonder afoot, sometimes inspiring me to pick dinner and other times just invoking that wonderful feeling of a positive identification.

I probably love them because I am so spoiled to have these fleshy beings throughout my local forest, including a tender patch just down on our riverside that I have anxiously watched grow from their young "button" form into the mature, edible form.

(It is sometimes a bit heavy to think about these secretive bodies, flushing so quietly under the protective canopy, just a stone's throw away from where we search)

But for me, the holy grail of Chanterelle hunting is Craterellus cornucopioide, the Horn of Plenty or Black Chanterelle. And lordy, are these ever hard to find. If not for my hawkish eyes, we would have walked right past these masters of camouflage (heck, we probably even did many times before), for in their purply-blackish design blend perfectly into the leaf litter. Decidedly different looking from its yellow footed and more famously available cousins, the Black Chanterelle wears its fruit in a velvety thin horn and is easily identified by its strong, sweet smell.

We cooked only a small amount of these babies up with a Yellow Foot harvest from the same day and unanimously decided they were not only the best variety we had ever tasted, but that the delightful aroma was absorbed into the rest of the more mild tasting mushrooms. Total culinary score, especially considering how hard they are to find.

Alas, Chanterelle hunting season here in Vermont is coming to an end. Soon winter will be upon us and we will return to our foraging books and field guides with our eyes towards spring and the bounties of a fresh season. So I'll leave you with my favorite picture of Phyllis wearing a Cantharellus cibarius as a hat and looking dashing:

You can read other posts where I gush over mushrooms and mushroom hunting here: 

Getting Rustic in Maine

Pond Life

A Girl, Her Cat, and a Mushroom Hike

Morel Hunting!

And finally, just to cover my ass, Disclaimer #2: Tread lightly in nature. When foraging, take less than 5% of the total patch, leaving the rest to their natural obligations. Understand that allergies and other food sensitivities make trying wild edibles the consumer's risk. Do not use this post as reference or in identification.

Many plants are poisonous some are deadly poisonous. In the end, the responsibility for eating any plant must rest with the individual; for instance there are people who are allergic to certain wild edible plants. - See more at: http://www.foragingcourses.com/disclaimer#sthash.hPPu4FbI.dpuf

Getting Rustic in Maine

I'm back from Maine, ya'll! And while it wasn't Burning Man (*cries*), it was still a fun little getaway. In fact, it was probably the opposite of Burning Man, what with the no electricity, people, parties, etc., we had going on.

AGP and I pretty much just wandered around the pond soaking in all the pre-fall niceties with a couple other Pond-ers. And we of course had a candlelit party or two.

One of the more exciting parts of the short week we were there was the MASSIVE yellow foot chanterelle patch we found while bushwhacking through an unexplored area of the forest. It was pretty jaw dropping to be surrounded by so many tasty mushrooms. I'll tell you more about my foraging adventures very soon!

We also took a sweet hike to the "Moss Forest", which as you can guess, is carpeted in moss. And considering we are in New England and not the Pacific Northwest, it's a pretty stunning sight.

After our pond sojourn we headed west to see the Goosepimp Orchestra and Apel play a small festival in Harmony, Maine. And despite the fact that the festival was pretty much empty of festival-goers, we had a good time getting private concerts and hanging around in abandoned campers. Yes, you heard that right. Eventually we escaped the fest for some nearby cabins and relaxed on the Kennebec River instead of staying to party enough lonely night! Such a good idea!

Pond Life

A few weeks ago, AGP and I were lucky enough to spend an entire week up at his family's pondside cabin just outside of Bangor, Maine. Okay, okay, I know everyone thinks their rustic, cabin-y vacations are special, right? Well, mine was pretty fucking special.

 

The reason this cabin kicks so much ass is because it is completely off-the-grid. As in, we can't even see the grid from where we were. There isn't even a road to this cabin. So, how do we get there? Well, by boat of course! And yea, there is, of course, no electricity, plumbing, cable, internet, and not even any phone service. Très rustique!

What you do get from all of this, aside from the utter zen of being one with a completely untouched tract of nature, is a smattering of propane lights, a totally boss outhouse (built by my very own AGP), and a delightfully vintage wood stove for cooking. Oh, and the lake, being part of the local watershed and mostly free of motorized traffic, is completely safe to drink from - that is, if you don't feel like drinking from one of the many nearby freshwater springs, pumping that famous Maine earth nectar.

Indeed, pond life probably isn't for everybody (I can imagine a few city slickers reading this and being off-put simply by the suggestion of an outhouse, let alone being told they have to drink the lake). But thankfully it is for me and AGP - well, especially AGP since he has a particularly strong bond with his lake, living and working summers there since he was a kid. He not only built the outhouse, but also the smaller guesthouse, originally erected by his grandfather of the same name.

So, what is there to do out there in the wilds of central Maine with no phones, internet, or roads to town? Well: swim, hike, cook, stoke the fire, read, nap, chop firewood, play cornhole, sunbathe, forage, drink gin and tonics, and then when the new day crests the hilltops: repeat!

The forest that surround the lake (the entire shoreline and adjacent acreage is protected land with no developments) offer many exciting hiking opportunities and passive water sports are always an option. What should we do today? Hike to the moss forest? Kayak to Blueberry Island? Hunt for chanterelles?

Oh yea, and the forest is littered with the delicious floor candy us foragers call CHANTERELLES. When we were there in early August, it was a literal fungal bonanza, of both the edible and inedible varieties.

Cabin family time is always a sincere adventure that we are very excited to take part in and sad to leave. Luckily, AGP and I head back there in less than a week, so I will be sure to capture some more of Maine's rustic spirit!

And if you are interested, you can see the whole album at my Flickr. 

Up To Camp

I am headed up into the wilderness of mid-state Maine for Columbus Day. No roads, no electricity, no problem. Have a great long weekend!

That's what's up

I am a lazy blogger. But seeing as how I write a blog that has no followers, I kind of don't feel bad about. I do believe that one day I will have followers, and maybe if they are crazy like I am when I find a cool blog, they will read deep into the annals of my ramblings and find this completely irrelevant post about what I was up to during the summer of 2013

Firstly, I have a job teaching environmental science to young day-campers in the metro-west area of Boston. Even if it is just glorified babysitting (which it is), I find myself rather amused by the activities we have for the children (searching for tadpoles, building forts, running around with rainbow streamers, looking under logs...) and I typically like the children themselves. In my aimless quest for the meaning of life, I have been allured by the field of environmental education and I really like the feelings this job give me. Plus I am home everyday by 1:30pm, even if I do go back into the woods to take pictures of Indian pipes I find with the kids.

Monotropa Uniflora contains no chlorophyll. Instead it is a saprophyte, which means it uses its roots to suck up nutrients from decaying plant matter.

Excuse the poor quality phone pictures.

Secondly, as this job is scheduled weekly, I am often finding myself with weeks off and time to travel. Lucky for me, AGP has a similarly lax schedule and we are often bounding off into the contiguous Norths for some pampered "roughing it". I spent a lovely week in a remote, off-the-grid cabin on a lake near Bangor, Maine that is only accessible by boat and spent the 4th of July weekend camping at Ricker Pond State Park near St. Johnsbury, Vermont. We mostly hiked, and I was ecstatic to forage up desserts of wild blueberries and june berries (commonly called Saskatoons in <3 Canada <3) atop Owls Head. We also visited Peacham Bog, Vermont's largest bog, and feasted our eyes upon pitcher plants with their stately flowers (while the deer flies feasted on us).

A very well protected lake in Maine.

Saskatoons I photographed in Manitoba in 2009. These tasty berries are closely related to apples.

We also have a new addition to the family-- of the feline kind!! I am happy to introduce Tina, our tiny friend, who braved the epic journey from South Dakota as we hauled the tiny house back home mere days after being spayed. In a wonderful tale of happy endings, Tina was the first cat at the Muddy Pumpkin that I loved, while also somehow being the least favorite cat on the farm-- to everyone, but especially the other cats. Tina experienced the brunt of the suffering at the hands (paws?) of the other 12 cats, who bullied her, chased her around, wouldn't let her near the house to eat, and pretty much forced her to live a solitary life on the prairie eating bugs and being really skinny. Except in reality she is super friendly. She is the most feral lap-cat I have ever encountered. So we decided to rescue her and now she spends her days lounging, climbing trees, cuddling, talking (she is one loud-mouthed cat), and getting fat. Expect an epic regarding Tina's story in the near future.

Tina on the first day that I met her in South Dakota last year.

Tina on the car ride across country to her new home... she looks rather happy, doesn't she?

But the best news of all is news that is becoming more and more real to me everyday. Guess what... I'm moving! To Vermont! Into a house! A freaking awesome house that has a river in the backyard and beyond that a state forest. I visited the house for the first time yesterday and nearly cried with joy in front of the home inspector. I won't spoil any of the beautiful details until I have pictures to share, but trust that I am nearly sick with joy even if I underplay it a bit. I just don't want to offend any sensitivities by constantly going around shouting: I AM MOVING INTO MY DREAM HOUSE *DIES*! Here are a few sneak peeks:

The double-decker garage with barn-ish doors.

Nothing says "Vermont" like a post and beam frame and a metal roof!

A poor quality view of the fern-laced backyard and the decent towards the brook.

Oh, and I STEPPED ON A WASP, barefoot. A huge black one unknown variety. Three days later and it still hurts. At least I can be sure that this all just isn't a dream.