Winter 2018

southwest edible colorado Ca lming your ner ves since 2010

No. 31 Winter 2018

THE ANNUAL STORYTELLING ISSUE She Drove us to the River of Sorrows Sculptors of the Hunt Guest of Honor Inedible My Father Of Pigs and Dragons

My Father

ELDERBERRY'S

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In This Season of Soup

8

The Lesson of the Daughter-in-Law

10

She Drove us to the River of Sorrows

14

Mungo

2018 Workshop Season

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www.ClinicalHerbalism.com/Elderberrys/ 720-722-4372 16

By Sheryl McGourty

CONTENTS

Poem by Jennifer Rane Hancock

By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

By Kierstin Bridger

By Rachel Turiel

Dunes Day

By Zach Hively

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Sculptures of the Hunt

24

Of Pigs and Dragons

27

Inedible

29

Stop the Nonsense

29

The Guest of Honor

By Rick Scibelli, Jr.

By Samantha Tisdel Wright

By Amy Irvine

Photo and Interview by Bonni Pacheco

By Joy Martin

This image was found in a second-hand store in Durango, CO, by Michael Thunder, a local writer, soul searcher, and former owner of the Dragon Tea Room. He liked it, so he bought it and placed it in his house, not having a clue who the soldier is. We liked it, too, so we are publishing it. Who is this compelling Army infantryman? If you know, let us know.

EDITOR'S LETTER

M

y dog, now awkwardly solo that his brother was suddenly gone and buried only two nights before, drank tap water from the motel room’s plastic trash can. No dog bowl. I was that ill-prepared.

The Saab’s back end, compacted with all of my earthly belongings, was inches from the asphalt. I stared at a shiny pilled bed spread illuminated by a beside lamp that cast a weak tungsten glow.

Interstate 80 hummed wet and muted through the thin papered walls. My homesickness was systemic. I was 1500 miles east of what was once my home only two days ago. Tomorrow I would drive the remaining 800. This would leave me two days to get my restaurant open. A restaurant I had yet to lay eyes on.

In downtown Denver, before major league baseball came to town, I was a bartender – and a waiter and a line cook. And for that decade, a devoted user of all the substances that can come with that career choice. So when my father called and suggested I move to Connecticut, where he lived, I had reason to listen.

“My golf course has a bar and grill. It is operated under a lease and it is available. You should bid on it,” he said. So I did, sight unseen and won it. In retrospect this had far more to do with my father’s gift for persausion than my business acumen.

If I managed to maintain my childhood belief in myself and the mystical world I inhabited I would have been a photojournalist long before this point. As a teenager I worked for our next door neighbor, a sports photographer. I ran his film from the field at Mile High to the editors at the old McNichols sports arena. It was thrilling. I collected pictures from news magazines and pasted them on my wall. I carried my father’s 35 mm Minolta only because I liked how it felt.

I didn’t know how to use it which apparently was the beginning and the end of that. It was already a bridge too far. I went to college and ended up with a Geology degree which I chose in the 11th hour based on nothing more than my allergy to the indoors only to learn after it was too late that Geologists tend to sit indoors.

––––– I heard him first. Golf cleats on the cold tile floor. Click, click, click. Sounds like this are somehow louder at dawn. It was my first customer at a golf course grill that was now mine for the upcoming season. A paltry sum of working capital had left me intially working solo.

“Yoo hooooo.?” And just like that, for the unforseeable future I am in the weeds with customers who yell ‘yoo hoo’ and ‘hey’ and walk into the kitchen and laugh way too loud at their own jokes.

My back is to the yoo hooer. I am cooking bacon. Except that I am not cooking bacon because I did not know that a flat top grill takes a lifetime to heat up. ‘Open yet?,” he said as a statement more than a question. ’Not yet,’ I said, with forced civility. “Are you the new guy? This was rhetorical. I was an outsider and he smelled it.

Guys like this – they never leave the neighborhood. It is clear that this is their home and always has been which only serves to under-

score that it is not yours and never will be. “We tee off every morning around this time. The dawn patrol [insert laughter. His].” The patrolman is now in the kitchen.

“I need an egg sandwich,” he commands. And it’s then I have the stone cold realization that I have no eggs. I forgot to order them.

The threat of personal bankruptcy would seemingly light a fire under anybody. But sometimes you just want to blow it all up. My kabuki accounting mixed with exhaustion and chronic homesickness were catching up with me. Sixteen hour days left me too tired to count the money. Every evening I would empty the till, stuff it in my pocket and from there, dole it out. I would pay the dishwasher. The Sysco guy. Beer, for me. Beer, for everybody. A new Chevy truck.

I kept up this charade until the second winter hit and the grill was dormant and I was literally penniless. In a matter of weeks, I would be voluntarily returning my truck to the finance company. It was that or they were going to take it. I took a bus home.

For two more years I was stranded in Connecticut. I now had a hand-out job at my father’s factory – a cold, pre-war building where I tested battery acid using a pipet and a strange red dye. At night I worked for a militant baker with a death stare I can still see and feel. But what financial ruin couldn’t quite spark, battery acid and baker-abuse apparently did. I was 32 (which at the time felt ancient) and a million miles off course. I had no choice but to start again … once again.

I wish I could remember her name, that teacher at the community college in Providence. She patiently taught our night class of adult dreamers how to load film, what an f-stop was and shutter speed and how it all comes together with light to expose the silver on the surface of the film. She taught us the rule of thirds. What it means to document. She treated us as if we had already understood the why. I would take my father’s Minolta, and almost 20 years later, finally load film in it and take pictures around the battery factory making sure to hide my seemingly artsy pursuit from my co-workers for I couldn’t bare the teasing. I took pictures of old hinges. And doorknobs. Radiators and cracked windows. I took pictures of the old barber down the street never asking myself why. I knew why.

I was finally home.

– Rick Scibelli, Jr. P.S. I would like to express my deepest admiration and appreciation for all of those people who make this magazine possible. It is your success that makes this all worthwhile. This includes our talented and irreplacable managing editor (and distributor, coach, talent scout, therapist, and friend), our copy editor, writers, photographers, artists, distributors, bookkeeper, and our co-publisher who, almost single-handedly, makes this engine run. I would also like to thank our advertisers, some of them having been with us since the beginning (eight years ago). Without your support, we wouldn't exist. Thank you for your commitment and your continued belief in our stubborn editorial philosophy. We are proud to represent you.

ON THE COVER So the one on the cover is looking west/northwest out of Silverton with Galena Mountain being the prominent peak in the center. It was taken on Sept. 24 right when the aspens were starting to change. The storm was a crazy whirlwind of every season – dark looming skies accompanied by thundersnow. Super spectacular and the first dusting of snow for the season.

The second photo (above) is taken in Silverton after that first snow and is looking west at Sultan Mountain during sunset. The color on the edge produced courtesy of a light leak. Both images are taken with 35mm slr camera. – Hannah Green, hannahgreenart.com

southwest edible colorado MANAGING EDITOR Rachel Turiel

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Rick Scibelli, Jr.

CO-PUBLISHER Michelle Ellis

COPY EDITOR Mia Rupani

POETRY EDITOR Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

WRITERS Rachel Turiel, Samantha Risdel Wright, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Zach Hively, Kierstin Bridger, Joy Martin, Amy Irvine, Sheryl McGourty

PHOTOGRAPHY AND DESIGN Bonni Pacheco, Michelle Ellis, Rick Scibelli, Jr.

INTERESTED IN ADVERTISING? Michelle@ediblesouthwestcolorado.com Rick@ediblesouthwestcolorado.com

STORY IDEAS, WRITER'S QUERIES Contact Rachel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net Edible Southwest Colorado is published quarterly by Sunny Boy Publications.

All rights reserved. Distribution is throughout southwest Colorado and nationally (and locally) by subscription. No part of this publication may be used without written permission of the publisher. © 2017. edible Southwest Colorado PO Box 3702, Telluride, CO 81435

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My Father Story by Sheryl McGourty

“H

ow ‘bout some steamed carrots, they’re good for me, right?” This simple question had weight. My dad relinquished his trust to me in most health-related matters. Swinging his legs over the side of a stiff and unwelcomed American HomePatient bed, he was prepared to eat. His daily routine was holding an attachment to the world. My father would die five days later.

I spent weeks in his kitchen vacillating between reality and desire. Preparing ginger tea with ghee to relieve his constipation from whopping opiate doses, administering CBD oil for added pain relief and making easy to digest foods for a system that was shutting down. I wanted to believe there had been a misdiagnosis and that my actions would somehow sustain his life.

Finishing the carrots, he asked, “Could you get me a little pistachio ice cream?” This question was dropped with a smirk, the little boy sitting in the body of a dying man. He is the reason I feel an affinity for foods like pistachio ice cream, mashed potatoes, and clam dip.

As someone is dying expectations can ensue. Like movie scenes played out where the dying are making reconciliations, giving and receiving apologies, exposing regrets and sharing memories. What I came to witness is that someone’s death can often closely reflect the essence of how they lived.

In the weeks before he died, we took short outings to nearby beautiful places in Massachusetts, familiar places rich with memory: Indian Lake, Mt. Wachusett, and Rutland State Park. My sister and I would set up a chair for him from where he could look out over the water. The sensory experience of childhood hung thick in the east coast humidity, the ground blanketed with pine needles baking in the summer sun and overhead sounds of insects descended from deciduous trees. On one of our last car rides home together, I noticed the depth of our silence. I had a sudden pressure to initiate a conversation, but quickly surrendered to the Bruce Springsteen station on satellite radio. This has always been the familiar with my father, spaces of quietude, words in that moment could not improve upon the silence.

The days leading up to his death were a miscellany of morphine, disorientation, pain, sleep, labored breathing, cracked lips, dry mouth, repose and quiet. Moments of tearfully listening to Bob Seger, my dad’s favorite, while praying and expressing my love and acceptance for him to make the transition.

On July 18, 2016, my dad died. I stayed in his townhouse for a week before returning to Colorado. I puttered around his place as he

4 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

would, cleaning, opening drawers, cabinets, closets, and rediscovering his cellar. There I found every card I made and the words I had written to him over the years. My dad in his left-handed, neat, and all-caps writing marked the year on the back of each one. I found my first typewriter attempt that read “Dear Dad, I Love You Very Much. Love, Sheryl.” I was seven. That note is now framed in my house, a complete sentiment.

My dad and I shared a few things in common, appreciating days alone and at home cleaning, straightening, sorting, and making sense of our world through quiet organization.

One evening, while looking into the mirror of his downstairs bathroom, I recognized him in my entire being, but what spoke to my soul was our hands. Some months later, I had a dream in which I was watching my dad fold kitchen tea towels with precision. What on the surface seemed oddly unrelated opened into a tender realization of our likeness. There is a lesson in understanding his role in my life, gleaning complex realities in DNA ancestry and a necessary disorientation that death carries which unexpectedly propels us further into the heart.

I packed my dad’s blue suitcase with some of his belongings and flew back to Colorado. Over a year later, the suitcase remains in my dining room. It is a slow unpacking. Many items have taken residence in my home. His bedspread has become my son's, the Pompeian Bronze Company lamp from the 1920s gifts warm light, the camel colored v-neck cashmere sweater hangs in the closet, and when scrunched together around my nose, I can smell him. My hands reach reverently for his potato masher, stainless copper clad pots, and vintage nesting pyrex bowls in primary colors, while my house projects invite his measuring tape, screwdriver, and level to extend their purpose.

At times, I’ve wondered what my last meal, moments, and circumstances might be like. I imagine the feeling of quiet, basking in the splendor of nature and discovering a new intimacy with presence.

My last meal is harder to imagine. I pray it’s not a strange hospital puree with a cup of freezer-burned sorbet.

Steamed carrots followed by good pistachio ice cream was his perfect choice, simple and familiar, much like my dad. 6 A lover of life, language, and embodiment, Sheryl McGourty feels blessed to share a home with her son and dog, both more wise than she.

Sheryl owns Yogadurango yoga studio.

Unknown kite flyer on the Central Oregon coast. Photo by Rick Scibelli, Jr. Shot on Kodak Tri-X.

EDIBLE POETRY PAGE

Breakfast!

In This Season of Soup,

of remembering, gathering, the sugar skulls and crisp leaves like a loved one’s skin, I cook to celebrate your lives, and cry into the onions on the cutting board: my mother’s pinto beans with smoked hocks, chow-chow dollop on top an echo of her Scotch-Irish roots, the split pea soup that was dad’s favorite (marjoram and thyme, thick bacon and saltines) and for my mother-in-law, roasted squash and green chile pureed with tortillas.

The soups all mean love, mean we’ll be taken care of as the days shorten and the air chills.

This is how we love: with steam filling the house and fogging the windows, with earthy beans, squash, corn, the trinity of the Appalachian Cherokee moved south and west to the broader shoulders of the Rockies, with our beloved roasted chiles and heat in the cornbread.

This is how we live: through simple food cooked long in a cast iron Dutch oven five generations old, oiled and seasoned as we are seasoned through birth, life and death and birth again, my young nephew asking for seconds of the beans and drizzling honey from Patagonia on his cornbread In this season we cook and remember, filling our crocks with love, leaving smudges on recipe cards and teaching the next generation the lovely, solemn importance of soup.

– Jennifer Rane Hancock

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The Lesson of the Daughter-in-Law

By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

A

men.

We had finished grace and were about to take the first bites of our Thanksgiving dinner. It was my first trip to meet my in-laws to be, and I was rather nervous about everything: Staying in their home.

Getting along with Peggy and Felix. Knowing which fork and spoon to use.

I had helped Peggy to make the dinner — a two-day endeavor — and she and I had gotten along quite well as we chopped vegetables and rolled pie crusts. She prided herself on her cooking, as well she should have. Though it was a traditional meal, it had many special touches. Lobster bisque. Green beans almondine. A vegetarian wild mushroom soup for me.

Just after the blessing, there was a long but not unpleasant silence as we passed and filled our plates. Felix was the first to speak.

“Peggy,” he said. “The turkey is dry. It’s too dry.”

Perhaps I choked on my mashed potatoes.

In my house, growing up, even if the turkey were drier than sandpaper, no one would have mentioned it. Our family tends toward the superlatively positive — what we call “Grandma Betty-itis.” Great Grandma Betty was frequently known to exclaim, “This is the best ___________ I have ever had.” And I have to believe that she was telling the truth. She was a remarkably happy woman who, though she probably never heard of Buddhism, had a very Zen quality to her.

It occurs to me now that as much as we learn new recipes and new dishes from our in-laws, we also learn new ways to engage with a meal. What I did not yet understand that first Thanksgiving in Connecticut was that this was a usual discourse, and that after almost fifty years, Peggy was not offended by Felix speaking critically about the food.

Still, it was difficult for me to swallow. In subsequent dining experiences, I did my best to not feel offended when Felix was unimpressed. He was a tough customer in restaurants, too, often returning his plate for one reason or another. The soup was too cold. The meat too done. The espresso too weak.

A few years later, I was a bit nerve-wracked about the first holiday meal I was hosting for Peggy and Felix in our home in Colorado. It was Christmas. Eric and I chose to serve a basic Thanksgiving menu, knowing it would be something they would understand and enjoy eating. Luckily, it was just the four of us, so I didn’t feel enormous pressure as a hostess.

8 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

Eric prepared the meat eaters’ part of the meal — the turkey, stuffing, and gravy. I focused on the parts of the meal a vegetarian knows best — green beans (my favorite recipe is to sauté them in peanut oil, then toss with garlic, toasted sesame seeds, salt, and red pepper flakes), mashed potatoes, bread and, of course, pumpkin pie.

Now my pumpkin pie. I’m kinda proud of it. Fresh pumpkin.

Ginger, cloves, and allspice to my own liking. Farm fresh eggs. A flaky butter crust with a rippling edge. Vanilla ice cream on the side.

Let’s just say that folks besides my great grandma have said it’s the best pumpkin pie they’ve ever had.

As I mixed the ingredients, Felix sat at the kitchen counter, supervising. “It looks as if you’re doing a good job,” he said as I scraped the cooked pumpkin from its limp shell.

“Well,” I said, “It’s pretty impossible to mess up a pumpkin pie.”

After an hour, I checked on the pie in the oven. It was not at all set. Knowing that the fresh pumpkin often takes extra time, I set the timer for another twenty minutes.

Still not set. Not even close. I gave it another twenty. Then another. After two hours, the crust couldn’t take any more oven time, and I was flummoxed. That is when I realized I had done the impossible. I had messed up pumpkin pie. I forgot to put in the eggs. I stared at the pie through the oven window, my whole body cringing.

“It’s just a pie. It’s just a pie,” I reminded myself. But I didn’t believe it. So much more was at stake.

I pulled the sweet pumpkin soup from the oven and set it on the stove top. There was no time to make another before the meal. I braced myself for Felix’s harangue.

“Don’t worry,” he said when I admitted my mistake. His smile was soft and somehow innocent. “It will make a great topping for our ice cream.”

First, I laughed in embarrassment. Then in disbelief. Then in full-on love. I hugged him long. Though I didn’t say it, he had given me the best Christmas present he could have — a generosity of spirit that I took very personally.

In the end, we didn’t eat the pumpkin sauce on our ice cream. I threw it away. We ate plain vanilla ice cream. And you can bet it was the best vanilla ice cream I ever had. 6

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer served as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017). One-word mantra: Adjust.

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She Drove Us To The River of Sorrows

By Kierstin Bridger

“He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed yet it was always there. It was the same and yet every moment it was new.”

- Herman Hesse, Siddartha Day 2: I sit legs dangled over water-worn boulders in the middle of the Dolores River.

It’s October, warm enough on the border of Colorado and Utah to recline in the sun. My daughter and husband are beached on stone slabs. Moments ago, I witnessed them swimming a swift stretch of cold rapids. I winced as Scott almost scraped his jaw on a rock. Though both of them are natural athletes, they still surprise me with their daring.

I glance at the cut on my wrist. It’s a noticeable pink line, not as pale as my older scar. It’s new enough to flare ugly crimson when my blood pumps in alarm.

A few weeks ago, in a panic, I reached for the thin cord of our retractable dog leash to steer Hugo out of traffic. With cyclone speed the cord burned through layers of my skin. It’s now a laceration true as a mood ring. I consider it a token of all I can’t control.

While Hugo keeps a close watch near the shore, I take photos. Shallows team with tadpole eggs awash in neon moss. Minnows shadow the waters as our dog angles for a better view; father and daughter on their backs like sea lions. She looks like an adult stretched out beside him. As I breathe in, it feels like the forever of borrowed time. We could almost grow bored here in the lull of the afternoon. It’s funny how the launch of contentment itches at first like any wound in the fitful seconds before it begins to heal.

Day 1: Arrival We stop mid-way for tiny cartons of cherry ice cream. I’m giddy my fifteenyear-old driver allows me feed her while she keeps her hands at ten and two. At her age, I was intimately acquainted with highways too narrow and winding to hold my speed. My body is shot through with a gallery of lash and road rash, lessons in caution etched not just on the surface but deep in muscle and flinch.

Once we pass the manicured lawns of Gateway resort, I’m eager to camp Finding My Way Back. Original pastel by Deborah Sussex (deborahsussex.com).

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anywhere, so long as it’s just us, alone among the fiery wild privet and blazing elms. Earlier this year, after a brief flirt with reckless abandon, Sophia set her compass back to her own true north. In an effort to realign priorities, Scott and I lessened social media, swore off booze in solidarity, and clung to anything that might rebuild trust. I began a mantra I knew I’d continually forget and remember: Holding on, letting go — life’s unavoidable, inevitable surrender.

At the dirt road, Scott scouts for the optimal camp spot. Back when Sophia was a toddler, when playing with frogs in a riverside hammock was her greatest joy, we set out with another family in this same area. Now, as we look for a place for our tent, I have in mind the place we used to camp. Scott remembers wandering much further down the canyon, a place where he and a friend stumbled on a flat swath of land they deemed Shangri-La. I grow frustrated as the clock spins. Desperate for us to bike ride before it gets too dark, I have no patience for hold on, let go. I want to be there already.

Miles later we roll into our site. I want to rally, but I’m grumpy and irritated by the delay. It’s the golden hour before dusk. Bright yellow rabbitbrush radiates against deep blue skies. The sun burns low on brick-colored cliffs, green leaves and ocher sparkle on cottonwoods. The air is sweet with the candy-apple scent of leaves curling in on themselves, grasses curing to straw. As I inhale the sugar-spent toast of autumn, I begin to come around.

The spell that actually breaks my mood comes during our bike ride. After we finish inspecting the riverbank, Scott and Sophia push off again as I stay back on my bike, balanced on a rise of granite. My shutter clicks again and again as I try to capture sun lighting the tips of the coyote willow. When I’m ready to go, my shoe tangles in the pedal. I topple and collapse into a spiny mess of greasewood and assorted brush.

My family hears me shriek. They run back to see me tethered to my bike, helplessly impaled, shaking silently with laughter. Sophia frees my foot while Scott hoists me out with two hands. Limp with hysterics, “Holy Moses,” I say, freeing a thorny branch from my crack. “I knew tamarisk was invasive, but JEEZE!” We make dinner by the light of our headlamps. Sophia, our conscientious vegetarian, cuts careful slices of wild mushroom for her spinach and pappardelle while I mix Moroccan spices for lamb burgers. When she finishes her pasta with chopped walnuts and fresh ricotta, we joke about “roughing it.” I dress our fire-roasted root vegetables and frisée, sprinkle in almonds, mince preserved lemon, and grin at my offering.

Bitter and sweet for dessert: dark, salted chocolate and coffee warmed over the fire. We regale Sophia with tales of how rash we once were, slightly older than she is now, when we struck out on our own. Though none of us remember the opening verse, we sing “Bohemian Rhapsody” while we wait to glimpse the moon’s face through a cloak of woody smoke. This partially-visible moon ascends behind the cliffs at our back and slowly illuminates the canyon wall.

What had only moments before stood in inky silhouette is now 12 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

platinum-kissed by the glow of a waning rise.

Under the silvered landscape we sleep in one tent. My mantra feels less like a fairytale and more like a lullaby. I can feel a shift, a quiet trust. My girl burrowed deep in downy comfort, Scott with a small dog at his feet — Hugo, the chimera, a tired bear cub, a resting dragon, a furnace in Scott’s sleeping bag.

As if unlocked in her dreams, Sophia wakes with the forgotten song lyrics on her tongue. We laze around after eggs and tortillas, then set off for an afternoon hike. We chatter about gap years and college abroad, stop short when we spy what looks to be prehistoric footprints in the mud. Clearly a triceratops, we agree, definitely not wild turkey. We hike socks off, traipsing through tributary. We imagine the Old West, enemies on our tail. If we had to hide our tracks, this river could save us, outlaws, six shooters drawn, trigger fingers prickly with twitch. Us against the world.

This branch of cool water feeds the Dolores, teaches me how to cut through old pain, trace a source, and let its quiet murmur dissolve embedded grief. Single file, we lose ourselves in thought. Then we hear a splash. We look back to see our girl, ponytail swinging, suddenly sprung upright, watermarked by a plunge. “I didn’t trip,” she says, gathering herself. “Nope. Moving along!” We continue our streambed hike, laughing, smiling, together.

Once there was a time I’d thought our daughter would never want to separate, days when we’d ask her, “So where do you want to live when you grow up?”

“With you guys,” she’d shrug, answering as if we’d never have to let go.

Sorrrow and joy ride shotgun down the road of adulthood. I left home at seventeen in my boyfriend’s motorcycle jacket, drove my mother mad with worry. However, Sophia is not me. Her path is carved with more clarity than this river.

Campouts like these are how we hold on when we are most afraid. We tussle and risk. We fall sometimes, but reach for a hand.

The barrage of technology, fear and toxic numb, allow us to forget who we are underneath. We have to dig, scratch the surface, and scrape the skin to reveal ourselves raw and vulnerable, believe trust is taking a deep breath and letting it out until it becomes less forced, recurrent and calm. They say water is stronger than rock. Love is stronger than force; it can override all the bumps, all the hard places.

Sunday night Sophia drives us home, all of us a bit transformed.

Not even the landscape is how we left it. I can see the wind has stripped the dogwood, its red branches are altered; perfectly bright gashes outlined in fresh snow. 6 Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer who divides her time between Ridgway and Telluride. She is author of the 2017 Women Writing The West's WILLA Award for her book Demimonde (Lithic Press 2016).

Her full collection is called All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press).

Kierstinbridger.com

Mungo

By Rachel Turiel Recipe by Col Turiel Hinds

I

t’s 5 p.m., winter. The days are just slivers of light sandwiched between thick slabs of darkness. There are two extra kids at our house, a sinkful of dishes, and piles of discarded clothes festering in sparkly pink clumps. The kitchen table is layered with paper flotsam.

The fridge winks with unaccommodating raw ingredients, which need shaping and massaging into something resembling dinner. My 10-year-old daughter, Rose, and her friends are shrieking, ramped up like teenagers on spring break, drunk on shared enthusiasm. Col, 12, has drawn a cloak of quietness around him, sitting at the table drawing airplanes.

“Do you think he’s changing?” I asked Dan recently.

“How so?” He wondered.

Like he needs us less, like he’s pulling away, separating a little.

More defiance, more sarcasm. He dodges my goodbye kiss when I drop him at a friend’s house, then, unable to fully embody surly tweenhood, mutters reflexively, “love you.” Later, he throws up his hands and huffs, “Why do you think I need to wear a jacket! I know what I need!” I ask Col to come to the table, to brush his teeth, to hang up his jacket; he hunches over his sketch of a Corsair F4U, closing the door of his body on me.

The floodgates of tween boyhood have opened. Col carries a knife and became instant hero at a recent birthday party, brandishing it to separate two conjoined legos. He rides his bike no-handed while eating a tamale, covets lighters, begs to wield his BB gun on the skunks that case the joint of our chicken coop. He zips down heartclenching trails on his mountain bike, and I’m like one of those Russian nesting dolls: If you remove the outside, terrified shell of me, the next layer is like, “Wow, that kid has some killer balance.”

And still, every morning, Col tucks his sleepy body into mine. He murmurs, “You’re the best Mama for me,” and I remind myself to take what is offered with gratitude not grasping. I miss the little boy who once needed large doses of my lap daily. And I want to be the mother he needs today, offering unbounded love and support. And yet, “love and support” is an arrow stalking the moving target of a child growing up.

This is new territory, as is every other geologic layer of childhood that has adhered to the children’s bodies like their own limbs stretch-

MUNGO Ingredients 5-6 eggs 1 cup flour (we use tapioca) 1 cup grated cheese 3/4 cup milk 1/2 cup shredded kale 2 carrots, grated 3 TBSP butter, melted 1/2 TBSP each rosemary, salt, garlic powder 1/4 cup salsa * This recipe lends itself to much fiddling. Add sausage, add other veggies, get creative Directions Mix all ingredients in bowl except salsa.

Warm a large, greased cast iron pan at 350F. When cast iron is hot (approx 20 mins), pour ingredients in.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until browning on top. Spoon salsa on top. Turn off heat and let stand in oven for five more min utes.

ing and elongating. This parenting is like a progression of dance moves, where children start out literally in your body and move increasingly further away. It’s beautiful and terrifying. As usual, I’m being called to get with the warp-speed program of impermanence.

Nostalgia lives in me like a dormant virus, while the kids seem to be saying, “Don’t look back.”

I get the dishes done, creating a teetering tower of bowls, plates, and cups in the dish drainer, which will incite Dan to explain in his beyond-calm voice, “If you start by putting the clean dishes away, then you have room for–” Rose and her friends are suddenly in new outfits; it’s like a nudist convention for how many clothes have been tossed aside in the past hour. I begin clearing off the table when Col announces, “I want to make dinner tonight. I want to create a new recipe.”

“OK. What do you want to make?”

“Something with eggs and cheese and carrots and raisins.”

“How many eggs? How many carrots?”

“Four eggs. Two carrots.”

“Get a piece of paper, write it out,” I suggest. We approximate amounts. We nix the raisins. He gets out the grater and starts grating exactly two carrots.

“We need spices,” he tells me. He adds kale upon my suggestion, beats eggs, grates cheese, dumps milk, sprinkles in rosemary. Rose’s friends get picked up and she tractors around the living room, lifting bundles of clothes into her arms.

We pour the batter in a heated cast iron pan and I clear the table while dinner bakes. It comes out of the oven and everyone gathers to admire its puffiness, its kale- and carrot-confettied beauty, its ready-to-eatness. We flood Col with gratitude and he beams while we devour it. He calls it “mungo.” My twelve year old made dinner.

I feel the sting of grateful tears building. I can do this. I can be the mother my children need in this moment and the next. We devour every last crumb. 6

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14 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

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Dunes Day

By Zach Hively

F

inally, we were in sight of Great Sand Dunes National Park.

I was about to find out how a dog responds to one of the natural wonders of the world, if only we could first survive the aliens and the wind.

Ever since Wally got his diagnosis for a rare form of lymphoma at the age of five, we set out to do all the things that we ever wanted to do together. Someday things, things that — with a one-year median survival rate after chemotherapy — suddenly became right now things.

Now, at a nearby campsite, we stared across the San Luis Valley at the mountain’s striptease, that fleshy flash of smooth sand at its feet.

Close enough to crunch its sailing grit in our teeth.

The wind had already staked its claim. So Wally and I staked ours in the center console of the pickup truck. A crowded table for two.

No chance to keep a fire or cookstove lit with the breeze starching stiff the various American flags at the park. So the dog ate cold hot dogs and I noshed PB&J and half a bag of chips, with a whole bunch of aliens waving at us.

As if the sand dunes weren’t surreal enough on their own, we were spending the night at the UFO watchtower. A metal viewing platform stretched above and around the little half-sphere visitor’s center. An igloo in the desert. A tinkertown garden sprouted in the platform’s shadow, bearing trinkets that guests have left for the aliens. Reportedly, hundreds of UFOs have been sighted here since the turn of the century. And around the watchtower, cutout metal aliens point the way to campsites and exits.

The wind ultimately petered out enough for us to sleep in a tent.

But Wally stayed anxious. Perhaps the wind had agitated him.

Perhaps the tingle of the morning’s adventure had him charged with static. Perhaps he picked up on the intergalactic saucer submerged in the sand beneath us.

But we passed the night without event — as far as I’m aware, anyway. Sometimes, the aliens don’t want you to remember.

We rolled into the park about dawn, before the sun warmed the sand and before the rangers charged admission. We weren’t the first visitors on the dunes that morning, but the wind, that attentive butler of the wilds, had freshened up the slopes for us. We crossed the late-running Medano Creek, all of two inches deep in the sand, and we trod up a well-groomed ascent.

I was hyperaware, as we humans can be at the most significant moments of our lives. I had storyboarded an idea of this adventure for months. But I failed to anticipate the ground cascading away from each footfall. The warming air. The distant shouts of racing kids. The way trees marched down this vertebrae of the Rocky

Mountains right to where the earth turned to sand. And my dog, trudging along the ridges with me, wholly and absolutely unengaged with our environs.

I didn’t get it. His neurons ought to be firing like Yosemite Sam in the newness of this foreign terrain. But he seemed, in a word, bored.

Yet we were here. We were at the sand dunes. Finally. Together.

And together, we were going to scale the first ridge before the sand turned into an EZ Bake Oven.

It is a testament to our bond, a bond created by love and affection, that Wally summited the dune with me. I can’t say that I cried at the top, because then you’d think I was a softie. But I did squeeze my furry bud, and take the requisite selfies, and perch atop the delicately-sharp ridge of sand at this peak of adventure.

Then we descended our monumental achievement in all of twelve minutes. Wally bounded down entire swells in single leaps that he learned from the jackrabbits. He took a cursory lick from the creek at the base of the dunes. I peeled off my socks to splash and play with him — and instead of splashing or playing, he insisted on making the far shore.

Here’s where he sated his thirst. He gulped down odors and scents like a dog let out of the kennel for the first time in his life. That’s when it clicked for me — sand dunes, if they even have a smell, certainly have no variety of smells. This adventure, the acme of my boy-and-dog desire, had dragged Wally into a wasteland.

He guzzled down airborne particles from shrubs and footprints and an exotic buffet of rocks. I’ve seen Wally appear happier, but seldom more relieved. My myopic drive to visit the sand dunes simply because the park allows dogs drove me to mush my dog uphill into a sensory deprivation chamber. With a hell of a view, mind you. But nothing at all to interest an intrepid dog.

By the time Wally tuckered out his sniffer, it was all of noon with a three hour drive home. Our grand adventure had lost its air pressure. We still had some fun, but this was no excursion for the ages.

My emergency contacts knew not to expect my back-in-civilization call until the next day. We could just go home and not tell anybody.

Or… we could meander home like a couple of tramps.

An item on my own someday list was to take one of those road trips where you stop at all the points of interest, and check out any restaurant offering the “World’s Best Burger” and generally spend enough time in places to say you’ve actually been there. There’s not much between Great Sand Dunes and Durango that people go out of their way to see. Which was perfect — that’s just what we wanted to see. And sniff.

We kicked up dust veering into Elephant Rocks to munch a picnic lunch, our first meal outside the truck all trip long. We walked nearly the whole length of the town of Del Norte, there and back again, in search of a cup of coffee. This, it seemed, did not exist in Del Norte after three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Then we found it — after giving up and driving out of town. Out on the edge (as much as a small town has edges), there was the Mystic Biscuit and its Golden Lotus. I’m a cup-of-drip kind of guy — but this, this was a turmeric-and-cinnamon-in-frothed-milk kind of day. And this Golden Lotus was a more spiritual and out-of-this-world experience than the aliens deigned to offer me. As far as I’m aware, anyway.

We trekked up the road to the Wolf Creek scenic overlook, where I inhaled expanses of spruce-beetle devastation and Wally chased a chipmunk under a rock. We paused in Pagosa to cruise the river trail, and one of us got to sniff a bunch of new acquaintances. We stopped for some chicken wings at a dog-friendly brewpub patio, where Wally decided this was a sit-on-the-table kind of day, and the waitress decided he deserved it.

Durango, our home, welcomed our straggly selves well after dark.

We clocked ten hours on that three-hour trip, and the dunes seemed like a week behind us. We sure didn’t have the adventure we set out for — yet this dog convinced me to have one far more sensory and unexpected than I could ever have planned. 6 Zach Hively writes Fool’s Gold: The Column and other creative nonfiction. You can find him online at zachhively.com.

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Sculptors of the Hunt Story and Photos by Rick Scibelli, Jr.

"Finally he arrives at your door and you carefully usher him inside to the honored place you have reserved especially for him.

And one night at 3:00 a.m. you get up and wander down the hall.

You are still half asleep and for the moment you might have forgotten he is there.

Then suddenly he appears from the darkness, just as he appeared when you first saw him and you stop and are suddenly back there with him once more.

And you smile and know deep down you have made the right choice. With your own Personal Taxidermist, the Original Jonas Brothers of Colorado."

– From Your Trophy's Journey Home at jonastaxidermy.com. Jonas Brothers has been a leader in taxidermy in Denver (and worldwide) for more than 100 years. There are few taxidermists in Colorado who have not been influenced in some way by the iconic studio.

A

rmed with cameras and a voice recorder in a rented Chrysler minivan with Texas plates (my vehicle, in the shop, on life support), I was on the hunt for a taxidermist off a dirt road between Durango and Pagosa Springs. Not in the market for taxidermy, I just wanted to talk about taxidermy. The austere dusty sign on the side of the residential house that sat above the rural dirt road said ‘Mountainaire Taxidermy.’ I could see the studio way in the back. It looked shuttered. My assumption was that there was not a taxidermist in town willing to chat up a journalist armed with cameras, but I mustered the courage to knock on the door, side-saddled with some firm stereotypes — I was fully prepared for somebody with a sawedoff shotgun to come out and tell me to get the hell off his property.

But Mike Francavilla came out to the deck armed with nothing but a welcome. Gray ponytail and long beard. Plaid shirt. Camo baseball cap. And a lanky gait leftover from a time when he was obviously much taller. “What can I do for ya buddy?” It was like he was happy to see this stranger in the minivan. I told him I wanted to talk to a taxidermist. I wanted to learn about the craft. The what and the why.

I wanted to understand the motivation with no agenda despite being perplexed by any hunter’s motivation to hang a dead animal’s head in their den. “When would you like to do that?” Mike said. I said, “Anytime you can.” He said, “How about next Wednesday?” And I said, “Perfect.”

Taxidermy is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance. It is more popular than ever. There are those who get it and those who don’t, and there is no bridging that gap. The quip above from the Jonas Brothers website may best describe the motivation behind mounting the hunt. It’s a memory. A trophy. A welcomed and needed reminder 18 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

of a cherished experience. And an heirloom to be passed through the generations.

Taxidermy is not the process of stuffing an animal (although it used to be in the early 20th century). In fact, be forewarned, don’t ever say ‘stuffed’ to a taxidermist. “I hate that,” said John Gardner of Wildlife Expressions in Durango. The complete works are called mounts. The mounts are made from the hide of the animal. The hide is tanned (a process that essentially turns the skin to preserved leather) and is then shaped around a form produced by several companies in every conceivable shape and size, except, it often seems, the shape and size that the taxidermist needs or wants. This is where a good portion of the artistry comes in: Reshaping the form to make it fit a specific animal’s size and nuances. The form is made from solid polyurethane foam making it easy to alter by cutting and shaving.

Clay and fiberglass are also applied by hand to enhance the animal’s muscle tone and overall authenticity. So are liquid tears to make the lids look more lifelike and deodorizers to keep your indoors from smelling like the outdoors. You can buy anything from an elephant form to a trout form. A big elk. Or a small elk. Half for a wall mount. Or whole, for an entire diorama (like those you saw the last time your were in the natural history museum). Dioramas (for private customers) are currently the hottest thing in the taxidermy market. The eyes, which may seem like a mystery, are glass and a crucial element to the overall success of the mount. There are seemingly unlimited choices by several eye artists in this category, including multiple versions of baboon eyes, two prominent options for elk eyes, as well as two distinct versions of jack rabbit eyes. Fish mounts are a specialty. A handful of taxidermists still mount using the real skin of the fish, including Mike Francavilla at Mountainaire Taxidermy. But many fish are just replicated using a 3D caste that is later painted with painstaking detail by the taxidermist. A taxidermist’s main goal is to replicate the animal in the wild. It has to look real, “or you’re spinning your wheels,” Francavilla said. To do this requires the hand sewing skills of a seasoned seamstress, as well as the carving skills of a sculptor to modify the form to fit the piece they are working on. A specialized glue, which can be temperamental, and needs to be carefully tended to over several days secures the hide to the form. There are two general styles of mounts: American, which is the good old head and hide on the wall, or a version thereof and European (think Game Of Thrones), which is simply the skull and rack (if applicable) mounted to a plaque.

The following pages contain interviews with a few of the region’s busier taxidermists. Award winners and lovers of the craft, all of them.

Mike Francavilla Mountainaire Taxidermy

I

worked for the highway department in Denver. I got on the department in 1973, and then within ten years I had two back surgeries so they had to retire me, but offered to retrain me in something else. So I picked taxidermy. I wanted to be a TV camera man, but they said there were too many of those already. I said, “How about a baseball umpire?” And they said no, so I said, “What about taxidermy?” It was a ten-week program in Phoenix at the Mountain Valley School of Taxidermy. I guess I had a knack for it, because they offered me the advanced course and after that, they offered me the opportunity to teach the incoming class. So I got thirty weeks of training instead of the regular ten. I did a wolverine in school and we took him to a show in Atlanta where I entered him in the professional category. There were 200 guys that entered mounts, and I won third place. And I was still in school! After that contest in Atlanta, I didn’t pursue any more contests. Those ribbons don’t mean anything to me. I let my work speak for itself. I try to get everyone like it is going to a show. I want everything to be perfect for these people. I have been doing it for thirty-four years now, and I pretty much know what my animals should look like by now. If it has fur or fins, I will mount it. The only thing I don’t do is birds. As for fish, I do real skin mounts. Now that is a dying art.

However, they say it's an art but I don’t see it quite that way. I know what I need to do to my animals to make them work — to make it right. Some people say there is a lot of artistry in that, but I can’t draw nothing. But as far as my animals go, I know what I have to do to them.

They have to look life-like. If they don’t look life-like, you are

20 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

spinning your wheels. It’s about the clay work. You have to add muscles to the face. Sculpt it. They say it's an artist’s thing...I guess might have a little of that in me.

After thirty-five years, I still have a love for it. If I didn’t, I couldn’t turn the work out. It’s about the animal. It is the animal.

It’s paying homage. The customer, we talk for fifteen minutes about the hunt, do the paperwork, and then they are gone. I don’t see them for a year until they come back and pick up their mount. What was your name again?

It’s more about the animal.

It takes me twelve to fourteen hours to put a head together. But all people look at is the rack. They don’t look at the mount. That is all they are interested in. There is a lot of bad. The work is all in the mount. The horns are nice. But the work isn’t in the horns, it is in getting the face to look like it is supposed to. That is where it counts.

You have to use your clay. Shape the muscles. Shape the head. Shape the nose. You have to make it fit where it is supposed to.

I still enjoy it. I don’t know if you have been in Walmart down in town here, but they have an elk and two deer and a life-sized bear of mine in the sporting goods department. If you want to get a picture of that bear, he is a beautiful bear. I would love to have a trophy room.

But I say don’t shoot the damn thing if you’re not going to use it.

There are people who just kill whatever they can. I don’t know what it is. I really don’t. You know? That is how I see it. I don’t want to kill nothing that I am not using. I see so much dead. Everything I get is dead. I love to see them walking. I really enjoy seeing them alive.

John Gardner

Craig Candelaria

Wildlife Expressions, Durango

I

used to mess around with taxidermy when I was a kid, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I came from a hunting family so I always wanted to mount my own animals.

I didn’t know I would go into taxidermy. It kind of happened by evolution you might say. After college, I was guiding some hunters and I had a hunter who was a taxidermist, and he said, “Hey, go to work for me and I will teach you everything I know.” He was in Texas. I learned a lot of good things from him. He was a great businessman and a great storyteller and a great listener of stories from hunters, and I learned very early that this was very important.

So when I came back to Durango, Pat O’Niell, who used to own the Critters Meat Market in Durango for years and years, I went down to talk to him and asked him if I could hang a couple of mounts. l wanted to try to get going. He said, “I have a better idea, why don’t you come work for me and help me during hunting season, and you can take in all the mounts you can get.” I wish I kept

better records. I think the first year, I got twelve mounts to do. The next year, I did three times that amount. And the next three times more. The year after that, Pat said, “Here, here is the meat market.”

I bought it. I had it about four years and sold it. I couldn’t do both.

That is when taxidermy came into a full time job.

I have a lot of customers who come in with a lot of questions.

Should I do this? Shouldn’t I do this? And I say to them, “Honor the animal, but in the same token do it for your kids and your grandkids, because someday they are going to inherit that. Do it for them.”

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I guess when you put so much love and passion into it, it’s an artform. It’s not like I am sitting behind a canvas, but I am trying to bring something back to life and make it look as realistic as possible. And to put a smile on my customer’s face when they come in to pick it up. That is the best of all. When they walk out of here proud of what I did for them. 6

Cole's Processing and Taxidermy, Pagosa Springs

P

retty much for me, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I had some friends moving to Denver. I am from Pagosa Springs, fourth generation, but I went with them. I went into Jonas Brothers Taxidermy studio because I knew how to skin because we had our own cattle ranch, and I learned about processing with my grandfather.

So I knew how to do that. I started off at the very bottom. I was the grunt. I worked my way up. I would stay late and learn from the taxidermists. I was done at 3 p.m. and they worked until 6 p.m., so I would stick around and learn stuff. Then, I would go to their houses on the weekend and learn more. I stayed for ten years. I like to work with my hands and was always artistic...drawing and painting.

Taxidermy has definitely come a long way. The true artists are the guys who sculpt the forms. We clay our own eyes. Give them their own look. You have to know your muscles and bones and where the

joints bend. I do my own habitat too for the dioramas.

It’s not work. I love doing this. I have a three-year backlog. It is an excellent trade to learn. It is fun. It is crafty. It can even be a hobby.

Taxidermy goes back to the Egyptians. They preserved their animals. They were ceremonial. People say that people who mount their animal are just trophy hunters. But a lot of the stuff I do is not the biggest. There are just people proud of providing for their family and the hunting story, and want to have it to remember it. And there are some beautiful stuff. People like to have the wild right there in their house.

But I honor the animal. I think if they are killing them, then everything should be used. Deer and elk are beautiful animals, and I want to make sure my work represents them.

Of Pigs and Dragons

By Samantha Tisdel Wright

T

he village of Baoshan in northwestern Yunnan province had the cleanest outhouse I’d seen in all of China – not a single maggot, not a speck of filth. Moreover, Baoshan must have had a higher ratio of pigs to people than any other village in the Middle Kingdom.

The two phenomena were directly related, as I learned when I made my way to the communal open-air outhouse the morning after we arrived. I had to herd a whole family of fat, breakfasting pigs out of my stall before I could get down to business.

We had arrived hot, dusty, and homeless the afternoon before – a vagabonding Frenchman and I after a two-day, 35-kilometer trek through the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, then down, down, down into the Jinsha River Valley, through small villages inhabited by the Naxi minority who people those parts of China. We had no map, so we asked directions from goat herders and troops of tiny, laughing women bent under bundles of firewood.

Baoshan clung like a barnacle to a spit of gray rock jutting out from the valley slope. Local folklore maintained this rock formation was a dragon slain by the gods. The village was then constructed upon the petrified monster’s head and neck.

Laden with backpacks, we approached the village gate, where a congregation of pigs, sparkly-eyed children, and pipe-smoking octogenarians basked in the afternoon sunshine, eyeing us curiously.

24 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

Since the only Naxi I knew was “Oh-la-la-lay, dao a-kun daopay,” which means, “Hello, I can see chicken feet up your ass,” (I had learned this during a raucous New Year’s Eve celebration a couple weeks before) I tried Chinese instead.

Much to our surprise, a young, spare man in loose trousers with a shaggy haircut stepped forward from this assemblage and said in clear, careful English, “Hello, I’m Mr. Mo. Can I help you?”

The Frenchie and I both sighed with relief. We had not dared hope to find an English speaker in such a remote place.

“Do you know of a place where we can stay tonight?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Mo, “but I’m very busy. So please follow me.” He led us through the arched stone gate and inside a courtyard cluttered with chunks of rock, piles of logs, and foraging chickens. Pumpkins were scattered across the tiled roof of the main house.

“This is my house,” Mr. Mo smiled modestly. “You can stay here. But I’m very busy. Preparing. New building.” This last word he pronounced like “beauty” as he motioned to the cluttered mess around us.

“When tourists come here, sometimes I guide. Because I speak English.” He paused between each phrase, as if collecting the needed words in his mouth and carefully, gently shaping them before letting them out. “But now, very busy. Prepare. For celebration. For new

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beauty,” he repeated.

We traipsed through the clutter, nodding hello to an elderly man squatting on one of the logs, beaming a gentle, toothless grin (“My father,” said Mr. Mo), and a lively-eyed old woman wearing a traditional Naxi head-wrap and jade hoop earrings, who was scooping a pan of water from a stone well in the courtyard. (“My mother,” Mr. Mo explained).

At last we arrived at a small, dusty room at the far end of the family complex. It was sparsely furnished, with removable wooden slats instead of windowpanes, and a view over neighbors’ rooftops and courtyards. From the rafters hung shanks of dried pork as big as punching bags, and the walls were papered with pages torn from an old high school English workbook. Chickens wandered in and out, pecking among the floorboards for lost sunflower seeds – the ubiquitous Chinese snack. Pigs snorted underneath us.

I tried to negotiate a price for our stay, but Mr. Mo just shrugged. “Tomorrow, we prepare for new beauty,” he said. “Then next day, house-raising. Celebration. Need many friends. To help.”

We told Mr. Mo we would be happy to help out in any way we could. He smiled his acceptance.

After a snack of baba (Naxi fried bread), la-zi (chili sauce), and homegrown peanuts in the shell, Mr. Mo took us on a tour of the village. As it was built on a knob of rock, the “streets” were not much more than footholds and passageways hewn out of the cliff, with houses crowded in all around. One had to take care not to plant one’s foot in a pile of pig droppings or a snoozing sow.

Mr. Mo pointed out the sights – this household on the left had white banners on its courtyard doors, “for funeral,” he explained.

That household on the right had red banners on its doors, “for wedding. Celebration,” he said.

We climbed upon the village wall and surveyed our surroundings. High above were the forested flanks of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, which gradually gave way to arid gray sun-baked ledges lined with cactus and sagebrush, then lush irrigated terraces where the villagers farmed rice, chilies, and vegetables, and finally, the milky-mint ribbon of the Jinsha River slicing through the valley floor far below.

It dawned on us that every log and rock for Mr. Mo’s new house must have been dragged or carried several kilometers down the same steep, narrow trail which we had traveled. No wonder he was very busy, and no wonder he was so excited for the house-raising, to finally take place in only two days’ time.

That evening, we crowded with Mr. Mo and his family around a small, low table in the courtyard where the new house would soon

26 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

stand, and ate dinner in the twilight: boiled potatoes, tofu, bean noodles that slipped off the chopsticks, steamed bread, and peanuts. A younger brother stood by to replenish bowls of rice, cups of moonshine.

The following afternoon, we returned from a rambling reconnaissance of the surrounding villages and countryside to find that the timber strewn about the courtyard had been transformed into framework puzzle-pieces neatly stacked on the ground, waiting to be raised the next morning.

Relatives and friends of the family worked into the night over sawhorses and chisels, putting the finishing touches on the preparations. Mr. Mo himself disappeared to make the rounds of the village, mustering all the human power he could for the following day’s exertions. We joined Mr. Mo’s mother and aunties in the kitchen, where as unskilled laborers, we were assigned a large bowl of peanuts to shell for the celebration feast.

The day of the house-raising arrived. Pigs snorted in their pens, chisels pounded away in the courtyard, a rooster throatily asserted himself, and the soft, excited rise and fall of Naxi-hua (Naxi speech) filled the air.

Mr. Mo hurried into our room with strings of firecrackers, stacks of red banners, and a huge tray of cigarettes, “for celebration!”

The next several hours revealed what must be a lost art in most of the “developed” world – the construction of a house frame with not a single nail; every piece of wood cut perfectly to slot into the next. The men – there were 15 or 20 of them – heaved and hoed and grunted and groaned and cursed the heavy, awkward beams from the ground to a standing position, assisted only by wooden props and ropes made out of vines.

The women trouped back and forth with stacks of mud bricks for the foundation. Slowly, each piece of the framework was raised and secured, and by midday the hard work was done. The firecrackers sounded, the red banners were plastered on the erected beams, and cigarettes were smoked all around.

The party shifted to Mr. Mo’s sister’s house down the road, where a feast had been prepared, using every conceivable part of the pig. Men, women, and children crammed into the modest, sunny courtyard – smoking, eating, drinking, belching, playing cards, gossiping, laughing, eating more pig. All the while, I tried not to think of that spanking clean outhouse down the hill. 6 Independent journalist Samantha Tisdel Wright writes stories with altitude from the heart of the San Juan Mountains in Silverton, CO. Read more of her work at samanthatisdelwright.pressfolios.com.

Inedible

By Amy Irvine

T

he summer before Ruby turned two I dialed poison control three times. The first call was for geranium leaves. That kid toddled right up to the plant that bloomed in the big bay window. Then she bent over and — just like a horse — bit off three leaves. I stood ten feet away, doing dishes. Before I could turn off the faucet, she swallowed them whole.

The second call was for iron, the kind that enriches blood. We were headed to Utah for a long weekend, and while I loaded the cooler and tent into the car, she unpacked a bag by the front bumper.

In less than two minutes she fished out the bottle, unscrewed its childproof cap, and downed half the pills. I freaked out — iron supplements are the leading cause of poisoning in young children — but when I called the hotline, they told me not to worry. She’d consumed only enough to clog her pipes for a spell.

The third call happened after the monsoons. I was leading the goats out to pasture with Ruby on my heels. Only her mad tumbleweed of hair was visible above the grasses — which, with all the rain, had gone from pale straw stubs to tall stalks of deep green. The moisture had also sprung loose the mushrooms. When I turned back toward my daughter, she was holding a bouquet of them in her hand.

Another one was halfway in her mouth. “No!” I yelled, lunging for her as the stem disappeared between her lips like a snake slithering into a bush. A gulp, then a grin. As if she’d beaten me at some game.

I grabbed her hand so I could get a better look at the remaining mushrooms. Small and brown. I called a friend who knew fungi.

“That’s possibly worrisome,” she said.

So I called poison control, again.

“Ah, Ms. Irvine, yes. How can we help you today?”

I described the mushroom. The man on the line agreed that it might be a specimen of concern.

“We’re going to summon your local 911 crew and patch them into this call,” the man said.

While we waited for the volunteer who drove the ambulance to step out of Sunday morning church, I volleyed nervous glances at Ruby while asking the poison guy if they might turn me over to child services, seeing as I allowed my kid to eat often from a smorgasbord of inedibles.

“No ma’am,” he assured me. “It’s the parents who don’t call us that we worry about.”

I felt a little better until the EMT who had been in church got on the line.

“Better that we don’t waste any time driving all the way out to that property,” she said. “Norwood’s remote as it is. Have her drive to Art’s house. I’ll put a helicopter on standby, just in case.”

By then, Ruby was doubled over. She clawed at her stomach and wailed. I caught her up under my arm like a football and dashed to the car. By the time I strapped her into the car seat, her eyes rolled back in their sockets.

“Ruby, honey, look at me!” I bellowed, peeling out of the driveway and gunning it to Art’s. Everyone knew where he lived — it was hard to miss a property that paraded so many political signs among a garden of naked mannequins and sun-beat stuffed animals. En route, I passed my neighbor by veering into the weeds on the wrong side of the road because his hay baler took up both lanes.

At Art’s house, a riot of red and white rescue vehicles met us with their lights flashing, including the ambulance driven by the church lady. Art, who was our beloved county commissioner then, as well as the master of ceremonies for Telluride’s Mushroom Festival, was standing out front in what looked like groovy pajamas. He had mushroom books in hand, ready to identify. The medics pulled Ruby out to look her over while I dashed toward Art with the mushroom bouquet, already a bit wilted.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” he said, as he thumbed through the book. “This could be bad, really bad.”

Everything that kid had ever eaten au naturel and in situ rushed through my mind. A year ago, she sat in a wild strawberry patch in the mountains above our town, plucking the wild fruit that lathered the hillside. Once she had her fill, her hands and face ruddy with the red sweet juice, she helped me harvest a basket of golden chanterelles from the same slope. That fall, her dad dressed, skinned, and hung

in the shed a buck he had shot with his bow. Ruby climbed on a chair so her mouth was level with a piece of flesh that dangled off the animal’s rib cage. How feral she looked when she craned her neck out, and when with bared teeth she tore the raw meat off the bone and wolfed it down.

This year, in spring, we snipped tender stalks of asparagus along the ditches. And just a week ago, we had reeled in baskets of crawdads from Miramonte Reservoir. We shook the boughs of pinion pines and collected their sweet nuts before the squirrels stole away with them, and we plucked ghost-blue berries from the junipers to add to the elk marinade. Every year, every season, every memory we’ve made in Southwest Colorado is marked by the food we grow, raise, hunt, or gather on our high-desert mesa. So in that moment, I prayed that a single mushroom wouldn’t prove to be so bad that we’d be scared off our outback menu. For it has sustained us in a healthy, delectable, and affordable way that is unavailable to so much of the nation and world.

Art looked up and raised the mushroom like a small scepter.

Then, he exhaled with so much relief that his long gray beard shivered.

“This one is related to a very deadly mushroom that does in fact grow here. But it’s only mildly toxic, so she’ll feel pretty lousy for a day or two. If it had been the more poisonous cousin, she wouldn’t have survived the trip to the hospital.”

Ruby, who is now thirteen and vegetarian, eats more mushrooms than ever. She makes tea from dandelions, gathers acorns to roast.

One night, we sit down to a feast among friends — the long table barely holds generous platters of steak and venison, heirloom potatoes, braised greens, apple pie, and freshly-baked artisan breads made from ancient heritage grains. For more than a moment, the gathering is still and silent, taking in the miracle of being fed well and almost exclusively by species that thrive in the ecosystem in which we are steeped — the living, breathing place we call home.

Ruby, who devours dystopian stories because they present a barren, ravaged world that she cannot otherwise imagine, clasps her hands with both reverence and delight.

“Yup,” she says, eyes shining with gratitude and hunger. “During the zombie apocalypse, our community here will do just fine.” 6 Amy Irvine is the author of the award-winning “Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land.” She lives and writes in Southwest Colorado.

"S

omeone end this nonsense! When I grow up, I want to be an artist that gets paid money. In this photo, Auntie TT was taking photos of me making funny faces. I look really good in this photo. I was wearing a red and white apron from Grandpa-Cilla (Grandma.)* We were making nutella cupcakes. This photo is special because it was daddy’s birthday and we wanted to surprise him. One of my favorite things is to eat some of the batter after making it. These cupcakes were pretty messy. You have to be careful not to add too much of things. Oh my gosh, I love snacks and I love Nutella. I almost ate the whole fridge!" – Scarlett – Photo and interview by Bonni Pacheco * Scarlett and her sister have always referred to their Grandma as Grandpa-Cilla

Bonni Pacheco is a photographer, writer, and Durango native. Her work can be seen at bonnipacheco.com.

28 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

By Joy Martin

O

On the southern island of Davao in the Philippines, two armed guards and a hulky guide led me through the jungle to Malikongkong, a remote village on top of a hill. I spent three days there, the guest of honor, sleeping on the dirt floor of the village pastor's home, sipping corn coffee with honey and creating little houses from sticks and pink tabebuia flowers with native kids who found my blue eyes and fair skin so wild.

Back in the city of Cebu, my host took me to get my hair cut. She got a kick out of watching the giddy hairstylist lop six inches off my fine, straight, blonde locks, leaving an awkward slice halfway down my mane. The hairstylist "fixed" it by adding layers, "like Britney Spears," she said proudly.

One evening, we went out for dinner at the night market. Between the laughter and constant, affable teasing, my host family got suspiciously enthusiastic about ordering dessert.

"Close your eyes," urged one of my new friends with bright lipstick framing white teeth.

So I did. Childlike snickering mixed with plastic chairs scraping across concrete as they inched closer with their precious treat.

Someone turned my fingers to wrap around a small cup, an egg, I guessed. Eyes closed, the smell of stagnant juice hit me first, my nose involuntarily scrunching. The chuckling hushed for a moment, broken only by encouragement to, "go on, drink it!"

I put the egg to my lips, tilting it till liquid flowed over my tongue.

Dishwater was my first thought. Eyes closed still, their chortles broke into side-splitting laughter. "Eat it!" yelled an over-excited spectator.

So I did. My front teeth sank into soft flesh. Definitely egg, but less rubbery. I swallowed the barely-chewed mystery substance. My eyes popped open, matching the gaze of a dead baby duck, one beady, lifeless eyeball tucked under a half-cooked, sticky-feathered wing.

It was balut, they explained through tearful guffaws, a developing bird embryo that's considered a delicacy amongst Filipinos. I smiled at my hosts, who were beyond pleased with themselves. They really got me, the foreigner with the Britney Spears haircut. Little did I know their good joke had eroded a bit of my innocent, amicable rapport with meat.

Barely a year later, I was sitting on a velour couch under fluorescent light bulbs in the home of a Togolese family. I'd spent the first part of the evening pounding fufu, a mealy mash made from the cassava plant. The fufu was meant for soup specially prepared for us, the guests of honor.

It was a typical night: Me smiling naively, following the little French I knew, while my friend, Emily, who was fluent in French, charmed the socks off our hosts. I sipped beer as it was passed 30 edible Southwest Color ado winter 2018

around and politely dipped fufu in the broth, trying to avoid whatever was taking up the majority of my bowl.

The oblong body was dark and shriveled. It rocked heavily anytime the liquid was disturbed. I knew I'd have to confront this object eventually — couldn't be snobbish and not eat everything offered to me. This was West Africa, after all, where a local makes about four dollars on a good day. So I made a brave tap to roll the thing over. Four poky feet and the de-whiskered snout of a dead rat flipped belly-up.

I didn't react — just spun the lump right back face down and grabbed a clump of fufu. I did my best to swallow the tough protein, buffering it with bigger bites of fufu and longer, deeper swigs of beer.

Turns out rat tastes quite similar to other lean proteins, like chicken or turkey. Grass cutter, they called it, heralded as a healthier alternative to red meat.

No longer was I seeing meat as a meal, and thus launched my sixyear odyssey as a quasi vegetarian — quasi, meaning I chose salads over steaks, black beans over burgers, but I never, ever turned down bacon. Because bacon is delicious.

Raised in Mississippi on a silver spoon dripping with butter, I knew better than to make my vegetarianism a deal. I'd been hardwired to respectfully accept whatever food was served by my hosts.

Only when it was in my own power would I try to stick to my loose principles.

It was easy to be a vegetarian in the States. It was near impossible in Western China. Six years after the rat episode, en route to the Himalaya, our taxi driver spoke no English, so we assumed the stop at the roadside restaurant in the middle of nowhere was planned.

The place was nice, and probably busy during tourist season. But it was December, so today it was just two skinny Americans and a hard-working taxi driver hungry for lunch.

Somehow, after six months traveling around Asia, my vegetarian ambitions held strong. I was fascinated by the challenge but quick to adapt when it seemed too troublesome. In more developed areas, it was straightforward to point to a low-res menu photo of simmering vegetables or French fries and make it happen. But this roadside restaurant menu had no pictures. An adventure presented itself, and I bit.

In between travels, I'd studied Mandarin Chinese at the University of Montana. My Taiwanese teacher would send my writing to his colleagues abroad. Filled with pride, he said my Mandarin characters were true art. My speaking, however, was appalling.

"Wo bu ro," I said as tonally-accurate as I could to the waitress. In my mind, I'd said, "I don't eat meat." Who knows what she heard.

When she's not drooling over bacon, Joy Martin is probably working up an appetite somewhere in the San Juan Mountains. Find more Joy at joydotdot.com .

lta County DeFRESH N COLORADO M

PHOTOS: JIM BRETT, LEHMANIMAGES.COM

The Guest of Honor

Unimpressed, she blinked and shuffled out of the dining room, returning with the chef, who smiled and ushered me back to the kitchen. He gestured to victuals stacked on metal shelves surrounding the stove and prep area. A dozen staff watched, curious, as the chef and I made lighthearted of our struggle to communicate.

I saw this as my chance to explain not what I couldn't eat, but rather what I could. So I did what we do best when language fails us: point. With a big smile and most ardent nod, I pointed at every vegetable in the kitchen: greens, carrots, peppers, potatoes, anything with a root or stalk.

Everybody clapped as the chef thumbs-upped complete understanding. It was a success. I was escorted back to the dining room to wait. Meanwhile, the driver and my companion ate their hassle-free dishes ordered forever ago.

I was only a little self-conscious that my order was such a deal, but felt good trying to stick to my moderate convictions. Ten minutes later, a bowl appeared. Rice. A promising, predictable start. The waitress brought another bowl. Boiled lettuce and onions — classic.

Then another waitress delivered a plate of boiled potatoes, followed by a pot of boiled carrots. Then boiled peppers. And on it went. The staff proceeded to present a boiled edition of every provision I'd pointed at in the kitchen. I was mortified but faked a great performance to eat it all.

My companion made me suffer alone, spicing up the experience with his smug mirth. Even the driver joined in the mockery. By the time we left, I was stuffed with soggy veggies and, once more, acquired a bunch of new friends I'd never see again.

It's not like I stopped being a vegetarian after that experience. I still tried, but never again like China. It's way more fun to just be the guest of honor, open to whatever animated, impulsive fare drips off the silver spoon, hoping for bacon. 6

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