Here is

the name of the place on any deep-tinted pastel morning where the sea mist is telling its stories and the birds theirs, where the wild boys go home with their dead pigs and battered machines and dogs and tales of the night, when the off-shore wind picks up and the little birds wake up and the dung beetles fly.  When the calves go looking for their mothers before the day is bright, where the clouds float up out of the forest and the pillar of smoke that marks the volcano's open heart is lit by the sun rising out of the ocean.

Far-flung fellow travelers

So I went to Salt Lake City for a couple days for a meeting of WSARE - Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education - and it was exhausting but worth it because these were my Peeps - wonky serious conservation minded hard-core Aggies still with dirt under their fingernails a little bit though they tried to clean up for the meeting.  Some were kinda conservative, some were kinda radical left,  but all good hearted, generous-minded people working on some really important stuff and modestly, humbly, skeptically trying to make agriculture and therefore civilization more sustainable. Ranchers, farmers, NGOS, land grant university educators from every western state. Here's the quote from the  WSARE home page today:

The future of humanity in these uncertain times depends on the thoughtful, caring, and committed people who choose to live and work on family farms. - John Ikerd

Nice.  I've never heard of John Ikerd before, but he's got a website johnikerd.com and he looks to be a wise elder of the Missouri branch of my new-found tribe.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

So in love with this woman, whose writing in this book makes me cry with happiness every time.

https://youtu.be/Lz1vgfZ3etE

Holy Shit!

"Ebell insists studies showing climate change poses a serious risk to human civilization are bunk. Though he now accepts global temperatures are increasing, he claims that the warming will be beneficial for most Americans — providing milder winters and longer growing seasons.
“The fact is that in modern society we have the technology to deal with environmental challenges, and that’s why people live in Phoenix,” Ebell said. “Because warm is good, as long as we have air conditioning.” 

Star-Advertiser/AP

Myron Ebell is/was the head of Trump's transition team at the EPA and looks like a ghoul. Serious. I'm sorry, I know the liberal elite, because we lost, are supposed to shut up and take the alternative facts now, but I can't.  Warm is good. Because we have air-conditioning.  Holy shit.

This is a whole new ballgame, my good people. We must have strategies! We must find pressure points! Even my 81-year old mom who, by common agreement, is the most angelic person you will ever meet, is up in arms, and quoting Women's March signs. "Re-Sister," she said, "I liked that one. It says so much, doesn't it?"

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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