I got back to the yellow house last night and needed a detox. Sitting in cubicle land and staring into a computer all day certainly takes its toll on me. So when I got home I quickly changed and headed out for a walk. As I walked I began to feel so thankful for the land that I currently live on. Even know Rockland is a very small city (actually fellow New Jersians would certainly not qualify it as a city at all), there is still a hum and a hustle bustle that goes along with city life.

Now alone in the woods behind family camp field I could feel the quietness sinking in. Cold weather moved in with the heavy winds over the past day. Last week it was summer, in the 80′s, now back to winter. I was glad I dressed approprietly: long johns under my thin wool pants, a warm wool sweater beneath my wool hunting jacket, light gloves , and winter wool hat. Thats one of the things I love about Maine, especially spring and fall. The weather keeps me aware of my environment, it is constantly changing. “Its maine, if ya don’t like tha weatha, just wait fifteen minutes”, a local general store cashier said to me this afternoon in his thick down east accent.

I revisted one of my favorite places on the property. An old campsite located somewhere between the current Family Camp fire circle and the pond. The area is flat, I’m sure it has made a lovely tent site in the past.  How I long to hear stories of happenings here from campers many years ago! The site over looks the water from atop a small ridge and allows a perfect view of the sun setting through the pines and behind the pond. A brilliant orange filled the western sky. I sat and watched and let the thoughts and stresses of the day wash off of me. Nature has a way of washing me in this way.

When darkness was full, I decided to light a small fire, mostly looking for an excuse to stay. I gathered some small sticks and made a tiny fire, just enough to give me some company and warm my fingers which were getting cold. The smell of the campfire brought my back in time to memories of past camping trips. I smiled and laughed and sung the memories into a improvised song.

The sun had been down for atleast an hour when I decided to start the walk back. I took extreme care in putting out the fire and making sure it was FULLY out by running my fingers through it thoroughly several times over. Then I set off on my next mission: Follow the trail back to Family Camp Field.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy. The trail meandors often, is rarely ever used, and blends in well with the young trees that make up large chunks of this part of the forest. Before I left the site I gave one last mention of thanks in my heart for this area and took a bearing on my situation. It was late, I was alone, and the temperature was hovering just below freezing. Thinking ahead, I devised a plan in case I did loose the trail. The moon was opposite the pond of me, I need to keep the moon at my back, casting my shadow forward in front of me. Also I need to head uphill. So continue to climb in elevation. I KNEW if I followed these two rules, I would easily get to a familiar place.  Within 100 I lost the trail, but made it to the field just fine.

Thanks for reading. I hope to post as often as I can.

The first few rays of light were barely over the horizon when I entered Family Camp field and found my first tracks. They were hard to see when I looked right at them, so I had to keep my eyes soft and occasionally use my fingers to verify I was still on track. At this point I walked slowly and fluidly, attempting not to startle or alert any surrounding wildlife. With the light levels so low, I knew it was only noise discipline I needed to worry about, with my silhouette masked by the dark fir trees.  Still dark, I took a seat outside the fox den and began to wait.

As I sat, the stress of my week began to detox from my mind. Events that stressed me out during the week were allowed to be looked at in a new light. There is something about sitting quietly in nature that does this for me. After being cooped up in an office all week I began to feel thankful to be outside. That the day was still so young and there was 3 inches of fresh powdered snow to track in was a bonus. I began to think about my family home in Jersey and my community here in Maine. I am so thankful to have the support and foundation that these people bring to my life. I offered thanks next to the earth, amazed at how so much life can be supported on this big ball of dirt and rock. And finally I let my awareness flow to the wild animals of the forest, who tweak my curiosity daily through their tracks, their songs, and their dens sites, motivating me to get my butt outta bed at 5 am hoping merely to catch a glimpse of one of these wild creatures.

The creaking sounds made by the wind moving through the frozen and frosted ever green boughs brought me back to reality and I realized Grandfather sun had fully risen. Still no fox, oh well, there was exploring to do! I got up and headed down towards the pond waterfront and passed an old shelter campers had made during a nature program a few summers back.

A classic small tepee design of the north east, where large slabs of birch bark is used as shingles. This shelter has seen better days, but I thought it looked cool frosted with snow.

After hearing a flock of chickadees in the distance, I tried my luck at calling them in with a “chh chh chh”. Sometimes they’ll come right into the tree I’m siting under, looking to fight off the imaginary other flock attempting to enter their territory. No luck today though. I continued to walk and was constantly reminded how much I love being in the Maine woods with snow draped over the firs and pines. The quietness is almost eerie and the electric glow makes it mysterious.

I walked passed many tracks left by various rodents, mostly red squirrel, who love these softwood forests. One chattered at my presence as I walked on by, following a fresh trail left a few hours earlier by the red fox. The trail was long and straight, characteristic of this species, and headed past the pond and into a forest made up primarily of medium aged white pines. I noticed more and more turkey tracks as I walked until I stumbled upon what will now be know as “Turkey Highway”. Take a look for yourself!

With so many wild turkey tracks around I should have put together that this may have been a roosting site, but I didn’t. Not until turkeys started flying out of trees one by one.  I think I was just as startled as the first one to fly off, but after that it became fun to watch. Four flew out of that forest in total and I bet there were even more who saw/heard me coming and preemptively bailed.

Well, so many stories to tell and adventures to share. I’ll have to leave out the one about the cat tracks that I had mistaken for skunk (sure glad it wasn’t the other way around)  leading one way into an abandoned trailer and scared me half to death when I poked my head in and it came running out past me. Or the part about the bird party that was happening across the street at the bird feeders. Blue Jays, Crows, Chickadees, Nuthatches, Cedar Waxwings, Hairy Woodpeckers, Piliated Woodpeckers, and a random seagull all gathered to grab a free meal at this time of year when food is hardest to find. Oh, and how could I forget, the Robins! At least a dozen of them, the first robins I’ve seen since fall.  Here’s a final shot of the continued turkey highway passing on the waterfront road, within 15 yards of Route 105/220, cool, huh?

There are mostly all turkey, with a set of fox tracks earlier in the night crossing the road in the same place.I couldn't figure out why this was the preferred crossing area.

Working at an office is much different from the “woods office” that I’ve been accustomed the past few years. I’m learning the power of environment and how the environment that we choose to put ourselves in shapes who we are in many, often subtle, ways. Noticing this, I’ve been coming back to camp after being in the office all day and doing a “detox” walk, where I walk around the forests and fields at night.

When I get back from my walks I take a few minutes to journal my experiences. I’ve found journaling helpful in keeping my experiences real. The best example of this I can think of is keeping a dream journal. Have you ever woke up from a intense dream and within several minutes can’t remember what it was about? We’ll, I journal my experiences in the woods for a similar reason. Here’s one of my recent journal entries.

One of my favorite parts about living in New England is the distinctness of each season. It is winter now and even though it has been a mild one, the spirit of winter has settled deep over Medomak Camp. For me, winter is a time of reflection, envisioning, and contemplation. Spring lay far below, coiled up like a cobra ready to strike. And fall is a distant memory, almost like a nearly forgotten dream. I spend a lot of my time sitting, dreaming about the upcoming seasons. What projects to undertake once the snows melt and where to devote my energy in this exciting new year.

Then I step outside, and my thoughts are engulfed in the cold silence on this clear Maine night in the family camp field. The nights are always colder without the blanket of clouds to insulate the earth. The moon is young and the stars are brilliant. I attempt to ponder the awesomeness of the night sky, but soon my mind surrenders in amazement. It wanders to thoughts of the sun. I jump between curiousity and amazement as I begin the calculations. How many Jupiters can fit inside the moon? How many Earths can fit inside Jupiter? I try to remember 7th grade science class, but the numbers become irrelevant. The hugeness is too big to fit in my head. Each of those tiny sparkly dots in the sky is similar to a sun, I think to myself. WOW.

My wandering continues across the field and into the woods. Crunch, crunch, crunch with every step. The temperatures have fluctuated above and below freezing the past 2 days, and now the melting snow from this afternoon has solidifyed into a very crunchy and crumbly sub straight. I take a few steps, then stop and listen for sounds, hoping that the animals are having the same difficulty keeping quiet as I am.

I contemplate what the deer are doing on this cold night. Perhaps they are bedding down beneath the insulating branches of a hemlock tree. I reach my bare hand down into the cold, icy snow to feel the deer tracks beneath my feet. I can feel their two toe imprints solidified in ice on the track floor. I know they like this area, behind the lone cabin next to the entrance to the swim trail. I’ve followed their tracks from the waterfront to the cabin many times. The fox use the same trail everyday. The turkeys use it also, but less frequently.

My hand moves from track to track. I wish I knew more about the deer in this area. I begin to fantasize about spending a week in the woods, following the deer from a distance they fell safe. How many days would it take for them to let me get close to them? I picture myself foraging fir tips, cattail roots, and other wild plants from a distance and stuffing my clothes with beech leaves for most of my bedding insulation. I want to watch their daily routines and how they move accross the landscape. I want to see their reactions to the bird alarms in the distance and where they hide when they hear the coyotes coming.

Recently I’ve been having many daydreams similar to this one. I guess thats part of winter for me and a release from being cooped up inside all day. Anyone else out there feeling the cabin fever beginning to set in? These are the hardest times of the year. Get outside! Breathe in the cold air, observe the night sky, follow a trail of animal tracks. Let your curiosity run rampant. And then come back and share your story with a friend or a loved one. Try it and see what happens.

I’ll be posting again soon. I was tracking the Medomak fox this weekend and found its den site. Pictures are on the way! Thanks for reading.

I enjoyed Flatbread quite a bit before I made the move to Portland and I still do.  Brick oven pizza with some pretty quality toppings, cooked hot and fast.  The atmosphere at the Portland Flatbread is also pretty unique and cozy.  It gets my vote for the best place in Portland to go out and eat a pie (or share one if you aren’t as gluttonous as me).  Not as good as Micucci’s.

Even though it is good I haven’t really heard to many people talk about Flatbread.  The pizza I hear the most about in Portland is Otto’s.  I have tried a couple of their slices and was pretty happy.  I really liked their crust and they offer interesting combinations that you won’t find in most pizza places.  It is a really good crispy crust pizza.  Still not as good as Micucci’s.

Micucci’s pizza is about as plain as you can get.  Crust, a simple sauce, cheese, and a bit of dried herbs sprinkled on but I have never met a pizza that surprised me as much as this one.  The dough is like a pillow, ridiculously soft and chewy.  The sauce is surprisingly sweet which can be a little weird but it’s just enough to get your attention and it’s perfect on this pizza.  They sell it separately as well.  Crushed tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and cane sugar.  That’s it.  They don’t skimp on the cheese and the whole things is a little too gooey to pick up and eat.

This is not the kind of pizza I usually go for and they don’t offer any variety.  The whole setup is a little weird.  The pizza can be found in the back room of Micucci’s Grocery.  There is a shelf which blocks the kitchen from the *dining area*.  If you are lucky that shelf has a slab of pizza on it.  If there aren’t any there is usually a paper plate with a time scribbled on it estimating how long you have to wait for the next batch.

*Two tables and seat-less bar against the wall.

After you eat, head to the grocery store register and let them know what you owe them for.  This place would be extremely sketchy if their pizza wasn’t amazing.

So…next time you are in Portland around lunch time and wanting some pizza head to this place…

…and look left.  That is actually the building across the parking lot from Micucci’s but it looked cool so I took a picture.

For anyone interested I did try to recreate the pizza with mixed results.  I ended up with a pizza I enjoyed but not one I would ever crave.

The dough was pretty close with only a couple minor things I would tweak next time.  I couldn’t get the sauce right though.  If/when I try again I will just make it from scratch and hopefully get the cleaner flavor I was missing.

Dough:

•  4 1/2 c Bread Flour
• 16 oz Water
• 1 Package Active Dry Yeast
• 2 tsp Salt
• 1/2 c Olive Oil

Throw it in a bowl.  Let it double in size then punch it down and let it double again.  For me this involved putting it in an oven with a bowl of steaming water on the rack below it.

While you are waiting you can work on your puzzle, hang out with friends, or do whatever else people do when they aren't puzzling.

The Sauce That I Don’t Recommend Replicating Since It Wasn’t Anything Special and You Might As Well Use Whatever You Like:

• 28 oz Crushed Tomatoes
• 3 Large Garlic Cloves (minced)
• 2 Tb Olive Oil
• 3 Big Pinches of Salt
• 3 Big Pinches of Sugar

Sauteed the garlic with the olive oil then just tossed it all together before throwing it on the pizza. (obviously not all of it since that’s quite a bit of sauce)

So simple yet so wrong...

I used a 9×13 sheet to bake the pizza on and the dough ended up being a bit much for that space so I removed about 1/4 of it.  After the sauce I layered on 1/4 lb of mozzarella and a 1/4 lb of provolone then sprinkled with a bit if oregano.  Baked it at 425 degrees.

The pizza came out looking pretty good and having a pretty similar feel to Micucci’s.  I was pretty happy with the dough but would definitely cut back to at least 2 oz of olive oil next time. The sauce needed some work but shouldn’t be too hard to improve.  The cheese wasn’t as salty or flavorful as Micucci’s and so I think I would either salt the top next time or just use better cheese.

So, Micucci’s is still king and for better or worse I will have to travel over there again when I get the itch.

Often I see things that remind me of Emma.

I can’t put in words how happy I am that we’re coming back! We took last year ‘off’ to try to save a little money and rented a condo in Vermont. BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER. lol. We we there about 20 minutes, trying to unpack, get the lay of the land, and Nick starts with “I’m bored”. And I wanted to say ‘Go up to the barn and find someone to play with” And I couldn’t!! We joked with them the whole rest of the week ‘just go to the barn’. And boy did I miss having a dinner bell ring and just coming to the table.

On the way home started talking about saving for family camp in 2012!!

The quietness of winter has stolen over the camp. I think it even frightened the boys from Jersey the first time I showed them the family camp field under a fully lit moon. I love it, the feeling of brisk cold air in the lungs and the sound of silence. To me it produces a very subtle hum that I can feel more than I can hear. This hum seems to illuminate any other occasional sounds made in the winter night, from quacking ducks to the barred owl’s classic ”who cooks for you”. This is in stark contrast to the constant drum of car engines, flashing of street lights, and thousands of stressed out, apex species that my brother and his friend left behind at the train station in Newark.

I had to show them the waterfront at night. The moon and a few stars were the only light our eyes could see, no glow of electricity. I was explaining how the lake is seemingly preserved in its natural beauty because of a law that requires any new building to be a minimal distance set back from the shore of the pond. “And besides”, I continued, “there’s barely anyone out here on the lake this time of year.” At that moment, as if it was scripted, we heard a noise unfamiliar to all of us. It was a loud, low bellow. We all froze. It was one of those deep sounds that sound unearthly. I racked the memory storage portion of my brain to find matches. It sounded like a whale. I laughed to myself. Keep racking…

Then it happened again this time with a crunching or cracking sound as well and we all realized it was the ice forming. The temperature was dropping and the lake was speaking to us. My two visitors were astounded and it set the tone for the next few days.

We wandered the woods, played camouflage games, made up stories, stalked red squirrels, built fires, slid belly first on the frozen lake, sat and listened to the ravens, followed fox tracks for acres, sang songs, and watched one of the local Bald Eagles swoop to and from its nest. We played in the woods, like children do. Like children have been doing for thousands of years, we played. When the trip has concluded I sensed fulfillment in them, they seemed to smiled deeper. A richness money cannot buy had seeped deep inside of them. The Maine wood is good medicine.

When we entered New Jersey after 8 hours of driving the familiar feeling of their past lives in the Garden state began to reenter into their minds. I felt the wave of heaviness fall over them as they sighed and thought about college assignments, jobs, ect. I told them “most people in our world live their entire lives without experiencing what you have during the past few days. Be thankful for it. Remember the way you felt in those woods. Journal about it as soon as you get home because New Jersey is going to steal it from you quickly and make it all feel like some vague dream.” Thats just the way it works.

I attached some photos. Thanks for viewing.

Otter Slide!

         

A local red fox uses the frozen lake to hunt by quietly running along the shore and listening for sounds made by rodents.

Bones beneath Eagle Nest Pine

Washington Pond partially frozen

B&W of Family Camp Cabins

Greg letting the goodness of Maine seep in.

It was my first week at the family camp and I had been discouraged the first day with the way my lessons were going with the children. I had been teaching children outdoor skills for 2 years at this point and during those 2 years I had learned many lessons and really begun to crave the fulfillment of being an outdoors instructor. I’d grown to love the feeling of being with a group of kids and barely having a lesson plan. We go off into the woods and 75% of the day is improvisation. I end up surfing a razor’s edge. One side being the boring, exhausted public school teacher approach: with a rigid curriculum and a “have to do this at this time and that at that time and fit all this into one class session” attitude. The other side is the person who has no control over his group of children. They are running all around with no discipline, no boundaries. Children may injure themselves this way, get into trouble, and learn very little.

The way that I’ve been taught to run children programs from my mentors at the Maine Primitive Skills School is to be guided by intuition during the program to read the energy of the group and point them in the correct direction to maximize their learning. This is done by putting them into situations that are challenging, yet fun. Done correctly, this style of mentoring coupled with wilderness skills leads to adult human being who are self-actualized, passionate about their life, and able to maximize their own unique gifts. Is there anything more a parent can hope for their child?

So, getting back to the story. My first week at the camp so far was not going as I had hoped. No one was having fun. I wasn’t having fun, the kids weren’t having fun. I saw myself forcing lessons about ecology and biology onto them and got frustrated when they would rather kick a soccer ball around. When I brought them into the woods they complained of mosquitoes biting them. And on our way back to the field we ended up running into poison ivy patch after poison ivy patch, then we got stuck in a raspberry thicket. Things weren’t going well. By the time we made it to the nature cabin, my group of 4 children looked as though they had spent the last 4 days lost in the woods without food or water. Such was their body language, facial expressions, and their attitudes.

But then it all started to change. It started by letting go of any hope to continue with what I had planned to teach that day. When we got into the cabin I was immediately bombarded with questions about the stuff I had strew out around the cabin during staff training the week before. Inside the nature cabin was a nature museum! And what 11 year old boy can resist asking questions about a turtle shell laying about on the desk!

I made a nature museum inside the cabin knowing full well that children would ask me questions about it. I knew excitement would gather in them as they realized that the white thing on the table was really the skull of a wild animal! “What kind of animal?”, was the question asked to me. “Well, what kind of teeth does it have, do you think this animal eats meat?” was my response. And as I had hoped, the whole group transformed into detectives, searching and dissecting clues of the skull. I surfed the wave of answering each question with a question, pushing their curiosity deeper and deeper.
After about 15 minutes or so of questioning and allowing them to discover the different parts of the museum, their curiosity started to slow. The attention span of most children is not long. The shift was subtle, but I knew I had to do something fast, or they would be back in the field kicking at a soccer ball. This is where teaching is so much fun for me. I notice the group needed a change and for a short time I had no idea what was going to come next! The tension was building inside of me as I was racking my brain for activities while telling them a story about the deer skull on the table. Just barely holding their attention, I glanced over at the empty jars on the table. Got it! The group needs a change in environment, we need to go back outside. I asked the kids if they wanted to go exploring for stuff to add to the nature museum and handed each of them an empty jar. Then we spent the next hour crawling on our hands and knees through the fields and the woods looking for “cool stuff”. We were all rummaging through the grasses, breaking open logs, lifting up rocks. The children became engaged and we had a blast! We found salamanders, butterflies, shiny rocks, beautiful flowers. We even found a fox den! When the lunch bell rang each of the children went running to their parents and sibling excited to show them what they had found. There was no doubt in my mind that the children learned about biology and ecology that day just by being immersed with nature and having fun!

So as I look back on 2011, I do so with a smile at experiences like this one and look forward to more in 2012.

Cheese is essentially a series of chemical processes applied to milk.  The first step involves “culturing” the milk, or adding bacteria so you can develop acid (lactic acid is a by-product of the bacteria eating the milk sugars) and therefore flavor.  The next step is “curd formation”, which is what I’ll be talking about here.  And then there’s “forming the wheel”, followed by “aging”.  Oh yeah, then there’s “eating.”

Curd formation involves a chemical process called flocculation.  Never heard of it?  Neither has spell-check.   Also it is fun to say out loud.  Go ahead and do it…See?  I told you.  Anyhow, flocculation is the process where colloids (in this case butterfat) come out of suspension (in this case suspended in water) and form a floc (in this case a cheese curd).  Here’s what’s happening:  Milk is basically butterfat and protein suspended in water.  When you add rennet, it causes a reaction where the fats gel together and trap the moisture.  The milk becomes the consistency of Jello.  The progression from adding the rennet to achieving the jello-like consistency is flocculation.

So why is this important?  The amount of liquid trapped in the jello-like curd is a major factor in the final moisture content of the final cheese.  Think Parmigiano-Reggiano vs. Brie.  The longer you let the curd form, the more moisture is trapped in the curd.  Okay, sounds straightforward enough.  Here’s the problem…you can make the same cheese one day and the time it takes to achieve a specific curd consistency can be different on the next day.  And there is a scientific reason for that, but I don’t understand it…I just understand the timing varies and that variation matters a whole lot.  So following a recipe that says “let the curd form for 30 minutes” won’t give you a consistent product from batch to batch and that is super annoying.

BUT, there is a trick amongst cheese makers to achieve flocculation consistency and it is also fun to do.  It is called the “spinning bowl” method.

It is very simple.  Once you add the rennet, you start a stop watch, then float a light weight bowl on the surface of the milk and start to spin it.  Since the milk is still in liquid form, the bowl will spin.  At some point, the bowl will stop spinning because the curd has started to form and become Jello-like.  Once that happens, you note the time on your stop watch and multiply that time using a factor specific to that type of cheese.  Hard cheeses like Swiss have a low floc multiplier…like 2.5.  A soft and moist cheese has a high floc multiplier like 6 or 6.5.  So for instance if you were making a brie…let’s say the time it took for the bowl to stop  spinning was 9 minutes and 30 seconds.  Using a flocculation multiplier of 6, you would have a total flocculation time of 57 minutes.  If you made brie the next day and it took 13 minutes  for the bowl to stop spinning, using the same multiplier would give you a total flocculation time of 1 hour and 18 minutes.  However, the final moisture content will be roughly the same.  Whereas if you had simply used a recipe that told you to wait 50 minutes, you would have a very different cheese.  Voila!  Food science.  It’s confusing, but when you spend an entire day making a cheese and then spend the next six months carefully aging that cheese, aiming for consistency is worth it.  For me it is the difference between having people say, “that’s delicious” vs. them politely spitting out the cheese when I’m not looking.  And a positive reaction is really why I make this stuff anyway.  Truth be told, I don’t really love cheese.  I love making it, but eating it?  Did I mention I’m lactose intolerant?  Seriously, I am.

Okay, the whole point of this post is below.  I made two quick videos of the spinning bowl method so you could see what it looks like

floc1

floc2

desired flocculation is achieved, bowl is removed and you can see the Jello-like consistency

Chances are you will end up with a drawing like this and a kid with high expectations.

I was never terribly good at decorating but working at Medomak has given me the opportunity to practice and develop in that area and I think I have come a long way from one of my first birthday cakes for Emma…

… to some of the cakes I got to make this past summer…

…but clearly there is still some room for improvement.

So it is kind of nice when the chance comes along to work on something interesting.

So, with the help of a friend I set about trying to recreate the drawing in cake form.  The original idea was to create the creatures using a hot sugar mixture that seemed to dry pretty well.

Unfortunately this turtle and a few pieces of plant life were the only things that dried the way I wanted them to.  I didn’t really have time to figure out exactly what went wrong and try it again so we decided to just make the cakes and use a more familiar decorating method.

We used five 8″ cakes.  Four stacked to create the base and one cut in half and stacked for the ship.  We frosted with a white chocolate buttercream dyed light blue for the base.  Then we decorated using a shortening based frosting dyed a bunch of different colors.  I tried to keep the artwork as close to the original as I could.

We covered the ship in a chocolate buttercream then put on some sails made from paper and straws.

Then for the final touch we put some of the candles in the port holes to mimic cannons.

The whole process was pretty rewarding and it was great watching the kids reaction to the cake.  If only I had this much time during the summer to work on fun projects like this…

We’ve upped our cheese-making game at family camp this winter.  Mold-ripened cheeses are the most finicky to make as they require high humidity and low temperatures, but we seem to have figured out the basics.  This little beauty ripened for almost three months and although it was starting to dry on the edges, the flavor was really good (like tangy butter) and the interior (the paste) was soft, supple and creamy.  This isn’t going to be an easy one to do at camp because of the aging conditions it requires, but George and I just might be able to figure out a way to add this one to our Monday night cheese tasting.