washington
Making the most of heat
I wanted to say a little something about making the most of the heat you generate in your wood stove, complete with a crappy cell-phone photo to illustrate.
I store all of my cooking iron on top of the wood stove. Every time the wood stove gets hot all of my iron: a flat-iron, a massive dutch oven (the much beloved Aunt Itsy’s Skillet), and three smaller iron skillets 8”, 6”, and 4” in size respectively. The last is a single-egger. All that cast iron –itself not entirely easy to heat through and through– re-releases all the heat it absorbs as the stove & cabin air cools down. Kept well-oiled and lovingly-used the deep and healthy cure of each piece is renewed every time it’s heated without the loss of substance attendant on most types of dutch oven cooking. This extends the life of each piece in a damp climate and keeps each more or less sterile and ready for use at any time, especially the sealed dutch oven.
You’ll see all that iron being put to use in different ways in this picture. I’ve got a big-ass and damned cheery fire blazing in the wood stove below, so here you see my flat-iron being used to keep the bottom of a pot of rice from scorching, the dutch oven doing what it does second-best (sit there & look pretty), and the trio of omelet pans supporting a saute pan full of dinner in conditions so stable and sustaining it’d make a chef look twice at his/her expensive food warmer.
You’ll also see a big-ass stock pot with a steamy lid here. There’s three gallons of water in the act of being brought to a quiescent boil. The little bit of steam that escapes the snug lid keeps things vaguely humid in a sinus-friendly (but not mold-pleasing) way. All of the clean, hot water that doesn’t get used for washing up after dinner will sit there cheerily re-releasing warmth into the cabin all night; even after the fire has gone out.
There’s plenty of thermal mass in a giant iron wood stove already, but finding ways to enhance that mass allows me to heat the same space for longer with less fuel.
PS: Dinner was delicious.
Interior shots of the Hobbit Hole
I’ve been holding off taking pictures of the interior of the place because there were a few details I wanted to take care of first; to make the place more of a home with an aesthetic than a shack in the woods nobody loves or cares for anymore.
Big photo dump. I apologize in advance for your bandwidth if on mobile:
Ten years gone; a return to Nespelem
I went back to the Nespelem Cemetery Monday, this time without a camera. The last time I came through was ten years ago, after a visit to the Okanogan Family Faire (aka ‘barter faire’) in Tonasket. Having grown up knowing the story of Chief Joseph and having just read Lucullus McWhorter’s ‘Yellow Wolf’ I felt compelled to visit and pay my respects in the act of pursuing my avocation of cemetery/memorial photographer.
When I arrived at Joseph’s grave back then I was regretful. Other visitors had thought to bring an offering, some of which were so appropriate and intentioned their inclusion bespoke the wisdom of the giver. A ranger from the Naches Ranger District had left a collar badge from their uniform. Others had left polished stones, coins, braids of sweet grass, toy horses, and small red cloth bundles. On Yellow Wolf’s grave –the resting place of a supernaturally powerful warrior– someone had left an open pen knife, the stainless blade alive with potential even among green and tarnished coins. I had nothing to offer, and ultimately continued on my way leaving only words in the wind. When I got back to Seattle my wife and I separated for good.
I carried my failure with me. Having visited their resting places did not absolve me of my admiration of these men. I marked the debt in my mental ledger.
My brother, stepfather, and I undertook a trip to the Grand Coulee Dam as a sort of homage to Woody Guthrie, to culminate in the last viewing of the laser light show of the season. Grand Coulee Dam is just 14 miles from the Nespelem Cemetery where Joseph and so pitifully few of his heroic original band lie in repose. I’d get to get some bugs on my car, hang with my boys, grub on fine small-town vittles, and satisfy my debt if I could talk my companions into it. Rather than risk this addition to our itinerary being seen as one of my habitual photographic wanderings through country graveyards I fairly insisted on it, and was rewarded with enthusiastic support.
The cemetery hadn’t gotten up and wandered off in the ten years since my footprints marked this land. North side of Nespelem on high ground. In so small a town at times streets could be mistaken for driveways. You have to know where you are going and be at least marginally brave.
Joseph’s memorial stone is unmistakable if only from the well-worn path of visitors leading respectfully around the corner of a row of unmarked graves and on to the collection of offerings at its foot. The people had continued to leave bright stones, coins, horse figurines, and trinkets for him but this time I saw where one had placed a hand mirror face-down over where his head presumably lies. Another had left two long horsehair braids; someone else a silver concho bracelet.
I felt a little pressure to walk with my companions. The conversations I needed to have were short, however. Tearing the filter off of a strong tobacco cigarette I wedged it between a gleaming river stone and the weathered white marble of his marker, with words in the wind marking the fulfillment and renewal of a debt of respect. For Yellow Wolf too, so the smell of fresh tobacco would blow in the wind with him.
Among the photos from my last visit certain friends and relatives of those whose memorials were included left questions or comments on those photos; some not insignificantly resentful. Going so regularly in places full of private pain…so full of the dichotomy of spirit and mortality…one learns not only to walk carefully but to transform oneself into a recognizable agent of respect: to walk in a state of unintentioned mindfulness. It is not the bones you risk offending but the broken hearts of living human beings and the spirits, whose persistence around and among us you have by being a ledger-keeper and tobacco-offerer long ago accepted. When you speak aloud the names mutely inscribed before you you do not do so lightly. You do so with gratitude, with admiration, with commiseration, with respect. If you are a photographer you have come to take, so to satisfy your conscience you transform the taking into an act of reverence.
I hated that, despite the priestly care I take to travel lightly and kindly in such places, I was unable to assuage the pain of these friends and relatives: pain I had inadvertently caused. At the time I was far away from that hillside in Nespelem so all I had to offer them was words in the wind: cold comfort indeed delivered digitally and without context. This too I marked in my mental ledger as a debt: either to be repaid if possible or to further spur my conscience to right action going forward.
It was with this in mind that I went to say the names of Elroy James Shavehead, a natural athlete with a big smile and heart; Thomas L. Waters, known to loved ones as “Babycakes”, from a far-flung and long-loving family; the coyote doctor Pow-U-Ton-Ow-Wit, and to signify my respect and peaceful intentions with a tobacco offering nestled among the other remembrances left for them. If past is prologue someone somewhere on down the line will search the internet for mention of these men and find this post. If as before that person is a loved one I hope they will understand that when informed of it I accepted and carried my obligation to these men and their families as if they were my own kin. I returned to make it clear to any and all that my mind was clean: that my coming and going were that of the silent mourner whose passing is known but to God.
Amenities and shortcuts
The only current built-in amenity at the cabin is a Magic Chef RV stove/oven (with the oven inoperable). Some online investigation has shown me that this specific model of stove/oven often has problems with oven lighting but I haven’t been able to devote the time and resources I need to sussing out the solution. Come winter I’ll wish I had an oven for all manner of warming foods, but come winter I’ll be able to use the wood stove & Aunt Itsy’s skillet (really a dutch oven) in combination to handle a lot of these tasks. Getting the oven operational isn’t near the top of my list. I’ve even considered the wisdom of switching to a cooktop only situation to claw back some shelf space in the kitchen.
I bought a radiant propane shop heater to provide spot heat on the coldest mornings and was the proud recipient of a rechargeable handheld DeWalt shop vacuum for my birthday this year so we’re able to add significant points to the comfort and cleanliness gauges.
The radiant heater has been useful in drying out the floors after my initial bout of hot soap scrubbing, and will be an especially welcome addition for newcomers who might not be used to the chill of a Northwest morning.
The little shop vac allowed me to vacuum surfaces that had never been vacuumed before: floors yes but also walls, joints, concealed surfaces, and all those little nooks & crannies full of two decades-worth of dead spiders and the hair of long-departed tenants. Dust mites, surreptitious mouse turds, sand, and cobwebs all sucked up and neatly containerized. It might be psychosomatic but the house just felt cleaner after a week of daily vacuuming projects.
One major additional benefit of the rechargeable shop vac (and the reason I never let it run all the way down if I can avoid it) is its perfect utility as a collector of ginormous spiders of the sort that wander in from the forest if I leave the place open to the breeze. Having dealt with forest spiders in Virginia during grad school my general rule of thumb is if the spread of its legs is bigger than a quarter it has to go. Too many mornings with spider bites…to many times awakened to feel some bold arachnid scurrying across my face. There’s a chance being sucked out of your web and hurled at high velocity down a tunnel into a hard plastic container will kill the spider but absent this solution there’s a 100% chance the spider dies via a rolled up New York Times magazine or something. The use of vacuum technology as a way to avoid having to get close to them and/or killing them makes me feel a little better…a little less eek-y.
But how do you recharge the battery? you might ask. Every day I come into town to conduct my affairs, usually involving a stop at a favorite coffee shop for an hour or two to get my connected work done (e.g., emails sent, online shopping done, research projects, professional tasks). On arrival while I’m plugging in my laptop I also plug in the cable of whichever recharger(s) I brought with me that day. Sometimes it’s the vacuum. Sometimes it’s the drill. Sometimes it’s the 18650 battery charger that reliably powers so many of my household items (e.g., high-intensity LED flashlights, holiday light strings, a wireless clip fan &c). All but the 18650 batteries charge in less than an hour and two hours of charging those, even if it doesn’t show me the green ‘charged’ lamp before I leave, is going to be sufficient to get me through the night at least.
Merle’s Barber Shop
Why does Merle (or at least the man in the window) look as if captured in the act of calling someone a bastard?
In a dry country
Wenatchee keeps it real
There is a lot of great old-school signage here in Wenatchee but this has to be my favorite.
New York Times analysis of estuarine development at the mouth of the Elwha
In the early days before the removal of the Glines Canyon and Elwha Dams that returned the Elwha River to its free-flowing state, most talk was focused on the return of salmon to a once-prodigious Native fishery. Some raised valid concerns about the post-removal turbidity as decades of sedimentary buildup behind the dams washed down to the sea: making the river water too cloudy for hatchery fish to survive in outbound migration much less the return spawning trip from the sea.
Eventually — in a decade or more, Dr. Warrick said — all of the sediment that had accumulated behind the dams will be gone. Then, the researchers predict, the river will revert to its pre-dam pattern, moving about 300,000 cubic yards of sediment downstream each year to the beaches.
Though the geology of California differs from that of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Warrick said, this project demonstrates that dam removal may remedy beach erosion in both regions.
The idea is popular among some environmental lawyers and legal scholars who have long argued that beaches have “sand rights” — a right to sand that would naturally flow to them if people and their infrastructure had not gotten in the way. Advocates of sand rights say anyone who interferes with the flow of sediment to and along the shoreline should be required to mitigate the effects.
Once the water levels had gone down behind these dams the amount of sedimentary infill in these impoundment lakes was fully revealed. The entire contour of the valleys where the lakes had been had slowly filled up with sand, silt, and gravel. Deprived of their source of natural replenishment beaches and wetlands downstream had become anemic, requiring bolstering with rip-rap or other artificial means (as the law of unintended consequences rears its head). Reconnected with a century of undelivered sediment, the beaches at the mouth of the Elwha and nearby along the Strait of Juan de Fuca are rebounding at a reassuring rate as the turbidity of the Elwha’s waters continues to improve.
Read the full New York Times article from July 15, 2015 here.
A Biscuit In The Sun 