Country Life

I woke up this morning to find a thin, cold fog reaching in at my slightly-open window, and a freezing little breeze nibbling at my toes. It’s October. The leaves, while still gorgeous, are past their peak, and are now falling in successively thicker clouds of swirling color whenever the wind gusts. Last Tuesday we were greeted by the shocking sight of snow capping Hunger Mountain. And day by day, the chill in the air increases in its rush towards winter, interrupted only briefly by short sunny days that fill our house with natural warmth and remind us of last summer’s beauty.

What a world away from the California non-winters I am still used to! :) Yet there is so very much about this cold land that I have come to love. Not the least being the awesome skiing (starts in 55 days, 8 ½ hours)…..

This morning, as I admired the pink-streaked sky and the brilliant ball of sun inching above the far range, my mind wandered deliciously back to a morning in California last August.

It was cool and quiet in the Valley. We awoke early, our eager ears picking up the sounds we knew so well: magpies calling to each other in the mulberry trees, and the unmistakable, friendly noise of sprinklers in the orchard. With an hour before our first meeting of the day, we decided to take a bit of a risk: drive out behind our old home, through the wonderfully familiar almond orchard with all the trees we named as kids, back to our favorite cornfield.

We used to walk there nearly every day for many years. We’d meander through the orchards, munching on stray almonds left behind by the harvesters, until we came to the dusty farm road that runs the length of a huge field of corn. It was always peaceful out there. We were always barefoot (keeping a weather eye out for malevolent goat-head bushes), the dogs would run along with us, and there was plenty of white sandy soil in which to cool our toes.

{fresh almonds = perfection}

On this morning it was all the same. The same as it was 13 years ago when we left that little spot of hot and dusty paradise. Memories came rushing back in a torrent as Mums and I parked our zippy Jetta beside the tall corn and stepped out into a world we knew so well. The corn had the same look to it. The almond trees still stood, solidly, a carpet of nuts on the ground below from a busy shaker’s work. I took off my shoes and felt the cool earth under my feet, heard the wind rustle softly through the corn stalks, smelled the crisp sharpness of smoke from someone’s burnpile.

We stood there for several minutes, just letting the familiar sights and sounds and smells envelope us. It was amazing. It was perfection.

Now, looking back on it, sorting through my copious pictures and re-living it through all the memories, I can almost feel the warm sun again and catch the whiff of faraway garlic from the farm down the road. And just when I realize I miss it, the sun achieves its goal of topping Hunger Mountain and I feel the sudden delicious burst of warmth; the thin clouds of fog fizzle under the sun’s influence, leaving a clear picture of breathtaking reds and yellows and oranges where a simple green forest used to be, and I realize that I actually am smelling garlic. Hmm. Should have put my garlic-work jacket some other place. Ha.

That has been Ibby’s and my occupation this last week: opening, sorting, bagging, digging, and planting 60,000 cloves of garlic by hand. It has been a saga! :) Long, and satisfying, and grueling, and enjoyable.

And every single day, without fail, by the end of the afternoon there is only one thing I really, really want. There’s just something about smelling the strong, pungent aroma of fresh garlic all day long with hardly a break, handling the smooth, hard cloves and listening to the papery sound of the protective layers as we peel them away…

I just want fettucine alfredo.