Outside

Late in the evening the world puts on a spectacle and I happen to be there to see it.  As the day darkens, the wind that has been howling all day dies down and three hawks circle in the updraft above the mountain ridge, calling to each other as the mynahs swoop towards their night roosts in the bamboo patch, coming in fast and low in squadrons so as to evade the hawks.  A bat flutters against the deepening blue: I haven’t seen a bat for years, and feel, like the Chinese, that it is a good omen.  Sunset tints the clouds orange-gold -  unfurled across the sky with the awful majesty of nebulae. One hawk sinks through the air, its wings flashing grey and white, and the mynahs go silent in the bamboo for a moment as beautiful menace passes over them. A single ice-blue star shimmers between the clouds and the dark ridge. The puppies play at my feet.  It is a gift to be in the presence of so many lives

Don't say I didn't give you a recipe

Most blogs have recipes, and I've been incredibly remiss on this point.  It's a rainy afternoon so let's fix that.  Just in time for the holidays, too!

A Typically Australian Dish:

Camel Stew

3 medium sized camels

500 bushels potatoes

200 bushels carrots

1 ton salt

1 ton pepper

3000 springs parsley

2 small rabbits

Cut camels into bite size pieces. This should take about two months.  Cut vegetables into cubes (another two months) Place meat in pan and cover with 1000 gallons of brown gravy.  Simmer for 4 weeks.  Shovel in pepper and salt to taste.  When the meat is tender, add vegetables.  Simmer slowly for 4 weeks.  Garnish with parsley.  Will serve 3800 people.  If more are expected, add two rabbits.

From Trail Boss's Cowboy Cookbook - The Society for Ranch Management

Another bit

Speaking of the ranchers, farmers and fisherman profiled in her book:

All are conservationists because their livelihoods and communities will live or die with these ecosystems, but also because they love these land-and river- and seascapes where nature's elemental forces remain vivid in their beauty and danger; where lives of self-creation, self-reliance and liberty remain possible; where the idea of home and homeland remain strong.  All bear a sense of moral responsibility to both the future and the past, a determination to pass on to their children and grandchildren a heritage often generations deep: the family memories imprinted on this land, the season rhythms and traditions built around the bounty they reap.  Many acknowledge something sacred here -- larger than human understanding or will, a gift to be tended and revered.


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