Category: Happiness

Fingers Stained Red

Sweet. Fancy. Moses. “Hot Cheetos and Takis”. I know I’m a little late to the game on this, but if, like me until this morning, you haven’t clapped your ears on what is the hypest summer jam since this one then you. must. watch. All your questions (are these kids real? yes. did they write this song, really? yes. as part of an after school program. What’s a taki?) and more answered here. I’m on point like an elbow, Hands red like elmo, My mama said ‘have you had enough?’, I look and I said ‘no ma’am’. Happy Friday, indeed.

Mixes

It just so happened that a late model pickup truck needed to get from the fresh and salt-blown Maine coast down to Virginia for the gilded fall. It just so happened that the last lobstery gusts of New England summer were blowing us south too, so we volunteered to drive it down. We leave in a bit, and since the truck only has a CD player, we’re sitting on this rock, where The Checkley no longer stands, making mix CDs to take us into fall like it was ten years past when we didn’t know the preciousness of adventure, but we certainly understood well the value of a good mix.

 

fabulous Checkley image from here.

Say Cheese

I simply can’t get enough of the divine and positively louche cheese spread on Saxelby Cheese over at the Selby. She arrived at the Essex Street Market around the same time I started frequenting it, and in one of those weird secret girl-crushes, I think trail blazing cheesemonger extraordinairess Anne Saxelby is one of those ladies that, you know, we’d really hit it off if we ever met in person, you know, just like Zooey Deschanel or Michelle Obama, but with cheese, you know? Here, in typical Selby fashion, her illustration of the ideal cheese cave, why parmigiano is like Elvis, and instructions on how to make something that sounds absolutely incredible, her “bourbon soaked grape leaf cheese wrap”:

Amen.

“A bad day of hiking beats a good day of work”. Amen.

From the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park (4 miles up, picnic lunch with Maine-made blueberry soda at the summit for a treat, 4 miles back to a swim in the very cold ocean, not too shabby).

A Bushel and a Peck

Sweetheart and I camped right along the extreme tidal flats up where Maine becomes Canada and the water rises and falls 25 feet with every hi-lo tide. We were in Cobscook Bay, “cobscook” being the Passamaquoddy tribal word for “boiling tides”. Part of the allure of our state park campsite was that at low tide “adventurous campers” (said the park literature) were permitted to go out into the expansive mud flats and get very dirty in the search for heretofore unknown to me softshell clams. Clams so fat and juicy and salty-sweet they can’t even close their shells all the way. We arrived just at low tide and ventured out to secure our dinners, while all the while the incredible fast and furious waters chased us back to land. We pulled a bounty, put them in fresh water to let them filter out their grit while we prepared the fire and tended to our sore fingers. When the coals were jewels, we banked and stoked and roasted the clams over the new open flames. Their salty juices hissed and spit, we melted butter in an enamel coffee cup by setting it at the edge of the fire, and spooned from the jar of cocktail sauce we picked up in Lubec (it was the easternmost cocktail sauce of the United States). Washed all down with dark brown beer it was a joyous supper indeed. And for dessert? The berries we had picked along the hiking trail that morning. It may seem simple to say, but it’s a certain city epiphany: how honest and good it feels to catch, pick, or harvest the food you eat yourself. To provide. When the fruits of your labors are actual fruits, foraged in the open, free in every sense.

Swim. Every. Day.

Swim. Every. Day. That is the motto of any good road tripper (well, one of many mottoes: “always say ‘yes'”, “nothing to undo”, “another round”). Swimming every day is easy to do if, say, you’re cruising up the coast, heading to the Hollywood Roosevelt pool, or are in familiar home territories where you know all the good places to take a dip. If you find yourself out of your element, though, and don’t know where to dive in, you can rely on this: SwimmingHoles.Org

Essentially, it’s a state-by-state, locals-populated-crowdsource-confirmed map and guide of swimming holes, jumping rocks, and hot springs across the US and Canada. Simple. Brilliant. Each swimming site comes with a detailed dossier with all the pertinent information: directions, coordinates, photos, googlemaps, whether it’s an officially sanctioned spot (or not), and whether or not you need to wear a suit.

For example, here’s the skinny on the swimming hole Miss Lucy is diving into in the picture above:

Otter Falls

In amongst rare Catskills virgin forest of Hemlock, Otter Falls cascades down about 30 feet to a large deep bowl that measures about 20-30 feet in diameter with a depth of about 6-8 feet at its center. Go about 6.6 miles down rte 47 to a telephone pole with mile post #167 1/2 on it. The trail is short. It may take a few passes to find but eventually, the cascade and pool is very very easy to find.

Sanction: Unofficial
Phone: Unknown
Bathing Suits: Customary

Essentially evidence that the internet is a force for good, we use it every time we’re on the road, and hope you will too (and yes, there’s an app). Swim. Every. Day.

Thanks to Miss McKay for her excellent holga shots of swimming locations we found using swimmingholes.org., first picture, up top, Cougar Springs, Oregon and these two are of the Navarro River, near Mendocino California (that’s Molly Motown below and me jumping off the rock!).

Go West and Greet The Future

O! The Spontaneous! The Joyous! The Raucous Beauty! Go West and greet a future of wildflowers, rainbow waters, and adventure. Infinite thanks for Mama for being the kind of lady who knows it’s right to spontaneously throw your arms wide when you crest a hill and see that, and for making sure I became that kind of lady too. Here, some selected beauty from our trip:

What we did…

We couldn’t help but wonder at the places we found ourselves, the swimming holes and animals, the music and marvel, and how fast we remembered that each others’ presence in our lives isn’t a luxury but an absolute necessity. The best part? It all starts again in three days. Stay tuned, campers, Summer is at full flush and wanderlust is being realized.
Just. Say. Yes.

Infinite thanks to Chaaaales (at right, below) for building his small corner of paradise and allowing us to call that our destination.

Also thanks to Miss McKay and Mlle Elizabo for a few of these shots. Thanks also to Bill for turning off the blinkety noises and beeps on my camera for stealth shooting.

I bet you wished you…

Early this week, the starry pull of New York and the stronger gravity of possibility and serendipity allowed for the four of us— two far flung wanderers and two of us still tethered to the C train— to be all together in the same place at the same time. We ate well and stayed up late after making music, drinking wine, laughing and talking and filling in the gaps around the bullet point plans of our futures until we had to force ourselves to go to sleep (and—in the wisdom of our years— decided against our 24 year old selves’ standard midnight whiskeys). The next day, the plan was for the wanderers to continue wandering, to leave in the morning for adventure unknown. Their departure happened to coincide with alternate side parking, so as they left my block, scarves flying, horns tooting farewell, I went to do the mundane city things: drop off my laundry and move my car from one side of the street to the other. When I came back to the block to see, if in the intervening minutes, a parking spot had appeared, they were back, something forgotten, something lost in the shuffle, a phone in the wrong pocket. So, instead of trying to find parking, I just ran in, kissed sweetheart goodbye, and followed them into the wilderness. On our way out of town, we passed this billboard on the BQE, crookedy typeface graffiti: I bet you wished you… Open ended, something there wistful, maybe unfulfilled… but not for me, not right then.

So, we’re off, drafting on the winds of the power of yes.

 

picture from first mate, navigator, red-shoe wearer, and ultimate wing woman Ann Marie, via Instagram.