A Care Package from New Mexico

A box arrived in the mail yesterday. Plain on the outside, it gave no clue as to the party that was waiting inside except for the return address, LCNM. Our friends there had sent us a care package, a “don’t forget about this place” package, a “can’t wait until you get here” package, and I still cannot wipe the smile off my face.

Inside it was like Christmas, like a surprise birthday extravaganza, a special something cache, all for us. What could produce this much excitement? Well first off was a bottle of hot chile honey. HOT CHILE HONEY! I’m not a tea drinker, but I know a great toast topping if I've ever seen one. MillieJupiter and I made her first loaves of homemade bread last weekend (a pioneer woman’s EASY recipe) that was great and I am going to have to get her to help make it again. I am as happy as Pooh in a honey tree!

Next in the box was some mysterious green powder marked “green chile powder, EXTRA HOT”. I'm wondering if this is a threat or a promise, or simply a warning. We will have to sit when planning next week’s meals and figure out a good place to try it. Perhaps I will make some more of the green chile sauce we had put on hamburgers here. I can’t get great peppers for roasting here yet so this might be the spice to give it some added heat.

The final item in the box, perhaps in the saved the best for last category, was a pound of Pinon coffee. Yes, that delectable drink of the gods I may have indicated I liked and missed from our trip in February. More valuable than gold, it will be lovingly stored in the freezer, brought out for special times like EVERY WEEKEND when I drink my awakener on the front patio communing with nature. I bet it goes well with toast/English muffins and hot chile honey too. Perhaps “Beary” will get a whiff and come a runnin’…

Thanks Clair and Bill and AB, and the Pirate Dogs for the treasures. They will not go to waste.

CoME Episode 11: What I like to do in Massachusetts. What I will continue to do in New Mexico.

In talking to people I work with now, I have heard many, many times “I don’t know what I will do with my time when I retire.” Let me tell you that I am making a list, a long list of things I want to do. This is just one of them.

I am now an earlier riser. This was not always the case. I like my sleep but as I got older I found myself sleeping a bit less after a time shift. I can’t stay up late anymore. Letterman was a regular companion but now I only catch him on an occasional Friday night. I am now an early riser. As a teen, I rarely saw noon. Now going to bed early means getting up early, rarely making 8 am on a weekend, always by 6 am during the week.

Now, I really love my coffee. I used to have several everyday but over the last 15 years, I have had less and less. Usually not more than 2 cups on any day. No soda caffeine during the afternoon either. Otherwise I will be visiting with Letterman that night as well as the other late night suspects. Thus each cup of coffee I drink is somewhat special. When we moved to the country, I began to drink my morning cup of joe, each weekend day, on my porch looking at the forest, listening to the birds, scanning for bears (see The Bear Story) It is quiet and peaceful and relaxing. Sometimes I can talk the DW into joining me although my tolerance for cold is higher than hers. It is not unheard of to have her sitting on our wooden bench wrapped in a blanket, with a steaming cup of “wake up and get the day going”. The problem with this scenario is the weather. It is really only warm enough at 7 or 8 am for about 4 months of the year, 5 if you have a good blanket. I want to do this even more often after I retire.

When we visited LCNM, it was already warm enough in mid-February to be sitting out in the sun doing this. Warm enough such that the DW will be a willing partner. I am looking forward to sitting on a patio, looking at the mountains in the distance, listening for birds, scanning for road runners and drinking a nice hot cup of Pinon coffee. Ahhhh, Pinon coffee (drools in excitement).

We walked into a breakfast café our first morning in Ruidoso. After being knocked back by the wonderful smell of fresh baked pastries, a second whiff announced coffee, fresh hot coffee. Pinon coffee. It is a wonderfully aromatic blend, naturally sweetened by the Pinon nuts. Pine nuts are often used in Italian pastries and this sweetness is just fantastic.

The first breakfast led to another the next day and another later in the week. Yea, well maybe the delicious handmade southwest/Native American/Hispanic influenced pastries helped (mrsfabp was particularly taken with the Mexican wedding cookies…) We bought a bag of Pinon coffee, got out our coffee grinder at home and enjoyed it for a number of Saturday and Sunday mornings, making the transition back to New England tolerable after our SouthWest adventure. I'll tell you more about Pinon coffee in another post.

Now, I have to get some Pinon coffee, mail order pronto!

Chronicles of the Mass Exodus Episode 3: The Bear Story

I was looking at some modern New Mexico sculpture on day and ran across some pieces by Frank Andrews. He is an interesting artist who is not shy about sharing where he gets his ideas for petroglyph sculptures from. "I hike into prehistoric rock art sites in the desert Southwest, take photographs and make drawings, then convert them into sculpture patterns in my studio. My raw materials are copper tubing and copper welding rod. I bend different sizes of tubing to the image of my pattern, hammer the pieces flat on an anvil, then assemble the figure by welding the elements together with an oxy-acetylene welding torch. The design is then coated several times with copper welding rod to build up a texture that replicates the texture of the original stone image." His pieces are nice, the kind of thing you would find hanging on a wall somewhere.

This got me thinking about the different Native American symbols prevalent in these cave/wall carvings. Avia Venefica wrote this about the symbolism of the bear: the bear imparts this advice to both our ancestors and us today - Because the bear is cautious, it encourages discernment to humankind. Because of a fierce spirit, the bear signals bravery to those who require it. Because of its mass and physical power, the bear stands for confidence and victory. Because it prefers peace and tranquility (in spite of its size), the bear calls for harmony and balance. These seemed to me to be such strong yet gentile images, I felt drawn to them. Years ago I had bought my DW some green Jade bear fetish earrings. This past Christmas I bought her 2 more different pairs as well as a couple of hand-carved bear stones to make into a necklace.

This summer we had a visitor. I got a call from our next door neighbor and he said a bear had attached his bird feeders and made off with one of them. A couple of my DW’s early morning walking buddies had seen a bear, near a creek where we live, with a couple of young cubs. They dashed across the road. No more early morning walking for a while. We also heard about a couple of reports of a bear sighting no more than a couple of roads away from our house. It was against this backdrop that my story about the bear is set.

I am in the habit of drinking my coffee while sitting on our deck off the front of the house. I look into the forest that surrounds our property and listen for the birds and various rodents of the day. I only do this when the weather is not too cold, not too wet, not too hot and humid. That is about 6 days a year in Massachusetts. No, I kid you Commonwealth, it really is a few more days than that but not too many more. One Saturday morning, working on cup #2 (or maybe #3) I heard some noise coming out of the bush. I looked carefully, seeing nothing at first, but then a large black shape broke out of the woods. My initial thought – wow, look at the size of that dog. My second, more correct idea – WOW, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT BEAR! He was in a full four paw gallop across the edge of our yard, up the driveway for about 40 feet and then made a sharp right turn near the old abandoned pop-up camper. This sight was interrupted by a phone call from our neighbor telling us the bear had struck again and was last seen headed for my yard. For the next couple of minutes there was the crashing of a large animal through the underbrush deep in the woods before the silence indicated the coast was clear.

Now, I never thought that I was in danger or anything like that but I must say I was enveloped with a sense of calmness. Earlier that morning the DW and I were discussing the possible move to New Mexico and how interested we were in the Native American culture. This bear sort of was the exclamation point to our discussion. A sign that we were doing the right thing.