Microbes In The Mustard

Obviously there are a few microbes I’d rather have nothing to do with, but a lot of them, the way I figure it are good for my immune system. I have my Uncle Mike to thank for this perspective.

Mike was a Texan. It wasn’t so much he lived in Texas, but Texas lived in him. From Corpus Christi, situated on the Gulf Coast with the white sands of Padre Island just down the road, given the chance he would have lived his every hour in swim shorts. Shirt and shoes were reserved for formal occasions like going to the grocery store. And he had a tan. He never moved very fast, spoke with a Texas drawl and generally was easy going. And he was just the kind of guy to carry a jackknife in his pocket and his was an old one likely handed down to him with a well worn many times sharpened blade.

Winters, often my family would visit his in Texas and summers his family would visit mine in New Hampshire. It was one summer morning, blistering hot - for me, but probably a walk in the park for the Texas contingent - we all were lounging around in the shade at our campsite by Lake Wentworth. Mike, in swim shorts sat on one side of the picnic table. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the knife and proceeded to trim his toenails with it. None of us thought anything of it. We were living in the great outdoors and our families knew, if anything how to be casual. So he fooled around with his toenails and when satisfied with the job, folded the knife and put it back in his pocket.

Lunch time rolled around an hour or so later, and my mother and aunt “cooked big, honey.” Every meal was a major production with four adults and five kids to feed. And the kids of course were always ravenous eating machines. So they laid out the usual self-serve spread of everything you could imagine to put in a sandwich. We all loitered around the table assembling great towering Dagwoods with various salads and pickles on the sides.

Mike was midstream into the process and decided he wanted some mustard on his sandwich. Out came the jackknife, he methodically opened it and then dipped the blade into the waiting jar of Grey Poupon. I watched him feeling an uncertain queasiness, mostly because I wanted some mustard too. But he was so matter of fact with it, so nonchalant I thought, “oh… what the heck.” As he moved on he licked the knife clean, relatively speaking, folded it and put it in his pocket. I was next, but by that point thinking the whole thing was pretty funny, I decided to keep my mouth shut. I grabbed a table knife and helped myself to some mustard. Far as I remember my sandwich didn’t taste at all like toenails, I didn’t get sick and neither did anyone else. Admittedly, it might have been a whole different ball game had he gone for the mayo.

Gordon Bunker

Image courtesy, U.S.D.A.

Sitting

Before making the final ascent to the summit of Santa Fe Baldy I call it quits. The blisters on my heels aren’t getting any better and climbing the steep pitch would be a big mistake. So, after some discussion the rest of the group goes on their way and I hike to the other side of the saddle and find myself a sunny place protected from the wind. After sitting myself down I take off my boots to let my feet dry and apply medical tape to the tender spots. I will also have my lunch. And that the group is climbing to the summit, having lunch and climbing down, I will sit without distraction for the better part of two hours. Doing this turns out to be quite an experience.

At first I am fidgety, checking my feet, getting my boots facing into the sun and hanging my socks to dry on a nearby shrub, but not in a place where they’ll blow away. I watch my friends become smaller and smaller specks as they climb the summit. Then I have my lunch. I do all of this in my usual efficient manner. When these tasks are complete, when the small specks of friends dissipate and disappear into the slope, there is nothing to do. But sit.

I’ve sat some zazen, a long time ago and it was, well, it was Zen so there’s not a whole lot I can say other than it was good. How’s that for a description? But this day in the mountains I look around. I study things and notice things; nothing I’ve not seen before as I’ve hiked these mountains many times. But I notice details. I’ve been told God is in the details. The speed with which the clouds sweep by, the distribution of small pieces of milky quartz on the ground, the quivering of tiny leaves of low alpine plants; all get and hold my attention. When the group makes it back we trade stories - theirs of climbing the summit and mine of sitting below it, and a few of us remark on how out of the ordinary it is to sit for a couple hours in the mountains. Or sit for a couple hours anywhere for that matter.

Lately I’ve been hiking the network of trails near Santa Fe, around Mount Atalaya and Picacho Peak, not so much to reach the summits but for good aerobic workouts. So I make a point of climbing steadily for at least an hour. If I’m near a summit I’ll press on, otherwise I’ll stop and sit, and sit for at least fifteen minutes and be quiet and look and listen. And like the afternoon near Baldy I notice ordinary things missed when in motion. The shape of the crown of a particular tree, light coming in low across a slope and streaks of shadow. It goes on and on and is all quite remarkable.

Gordon Bunker

Burnout At Lowe's

Whenever possible I park my car in the far and lonely ends of parking lots avoiding I hope, dents and dings from other parkers swinging the doors of their cars open and into mine. And so a few days ago I was sitting in my car in a remote corner of the lot at Lowe’s talking on the phone with R. Interesting things happen in these hinterlands.

Mid-conversation I noticed a gathering of a few young men and one young woman around a jazzed up Hyundai Genesis coupe. A couple of the men were wearing red Lowe’s employee vests. The car was lowered, had bright chrome oversized wheels and a carbon fiber hood. Up went the hood. They all loomed around admiring the engine, the hood was perforated with a multitude of scoops and louvres the better to feed cool air to the raging beast within and exhaust the waste heat from all those horses.

With the hood still up one fellow got in the car and started the engine and revved it up and up. No load is the worst load and the engine was screaming. This is why it’s usually not a great idea to buy a used car with lots of modifications from a youthful seller. Respecting the machine is not high on the to-do list. With the onlookers sufficiently impressed, the hood went down and the driver slowly rolled the car out of the space it was parked in pointing it in the direction of open pavement. He then put one foot on the brake and the other on the gas and floored it.

Control modules for the ABS must have experienced instant migranes and I completely lost track of what R and I were talking about. The rear tires started to spin and spin faster and faster and clouds of acrid blue-grey smoke billowed in the air. The onlookers hooted and waved their arms in approval and the car made its way slowly with wheels spinning and when they finally gained traction, it took off across the lot like a rocket. When the smoke cleared, two long thick stripes of rubber, black and crumbly, equaling about five thousand miles of normal tire wear remained on the pavement.

Gee-whiz! Thirty five years ago the cars were different - big heavy lumps of American iron - but I remember doing the same thing, and what ridiculous fun it was. And still is.

Gordon Bunker

Killing A Fish

Ethereal as Winslow Homer’s watercolor flowing onto paper, the canoe drifts on Ragged Mountain Pond, and I cast a fly for trout. Christopher is in another canoe a hundred yards away, he is also fishing. It is early morning and quiet; except for our movements, casting, it is still. The pond is surrounded by dense stands of pine and hemlock. On the far end, a marsh thicket of grass and sedge grows where from higher up the mountain a stream feeds the pond.

My line lays out on the water, the fly at the end of the leader nearly invisible. I cast and drift and wait, slowly I bring the line in and cast again. A brook trout rises and takes the fly and suddenly the line and rod jump, become a direct line to the life force of the fish. To catch it is a matter of maintaining tension on the line, not too much that it would break and not too little that the fish could get the hook from its mouth. It’s a contest the fisherman often does not win.

But this time I net and land the fish, it is about ten inches from nose to tail. I am not fishing to catch and release, rather I am fishing to catch and eat. Nonetheless I wet my hands before holding the fish and once I have a good grasp on it I use a small pair of needle nose pliers to remove the fly from its mouth. The trout is full of life, its colors rich and electric, it struggles for freedom. Its mouth gapes open in the air, out of the water it will asphyxiate.

And so in a few seconds I must choose life or death for this amazing living thing. All of life circles around; asphyxiation would be cruel and so I make my decision and break its neck. Immediately the life is gone, the colors fade. To be intimately connected to the killing is to have the greatest appreciation in the eating. A creature’s life is sacrificed and I eat. Whenever I eat meat I think of the taking and the giving of life. In this is a great gift.

I catch another trout and Christopher catches two as well. We paddle back to shore and head for the cabin. We clean the trout and fry them in butter and eat them for breakfast and they are delicious.

Gordon Bunker

Watercolor of brook trout by John Nichols, 1918.