On Rituals

Syrup, coffee, bread, sausage; wrestling; sloppy joes.

1. The birds are chirping again. House sparrows, mostly, but also chickadees. Have been seeing robins with regularity, blue jays, too; watched a titmouse from my window. We still have a foot of snow on the ground, but the weather’s getting warmer, the forecast calls for rain. Spring will be here before we know it.

2. We only tapped two red maples this year. Too much snow on the ground to make getting to the good trees convenient. I’ve collected about a gallon of sap from one bucket; the other fell out of the tree during the last blizzard. Too lazy to put it back in place, I’ve been watching the sap weep from the exposed hole, down the trunk, staining the snow. Will get about a few ounces of syrup this year: better than nothing.

3. Been experimenting with a double (triple?) fermented coffee. Uncle Steady and I took green beans, steeped them in a mixture of sourdough discard (John Gonter prefers division), rinsed them, mellowed them, half in a cranberry brine, the other half in cherry, dried them, left them to settle. After a month, Steady roasted them and initiated a cupping ceremony while we were up skiing last month. We breathed, smelled, tasted, drank. The extra processing gives a subtle tang, a slight funk — a different tasting experience. I’ve been drinking it for the last few weeks: I wonder how my palate will react when the science experiment ends.

4. Gary Snyder:

   [Get] control of your own time; master the twenty-four hours. Do it well, without self-pity. It is as hard to get the children herded into the car pool and down the road to the bus as it is to chant sutras in the Buddha-hall on a cold morning. One move is not better than the other, each can be quite boring, and they both have the virtuous quality of repetition. Repetition and ritual and their good results come in many forms. Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing the dishes, checking the dipstick — don’t let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may “practice” which will put us on a “path” — it is our path.¹

5. Had to pause: two red-tailed hawks making lazy circles outside my window. Barry Lopez describes how conversations with “traditional people” can be “beautifully distracted.” “The older men… always take a seat right by the window… Conversation can be desultory because it’s always interrupted for what’s going on out there.”²

6. Rolling jiu jitsu earlier this week, the instructor told me that you either get good at wrestling or learn how to triangle.

7. This is true of many things.

8. And while there is value in improving upon your weaknesses, there’s something to be said about playing the game that suits your strengths.

9. Still — been working on my wrestling.

10. Been working on a sourdough sandwich bread, too. A dough enriched with butter and honey, leavened with starter, it’s chewy and crumbly, rich, delicious as a sandwich, alone with butter, or dunked into stew. We made it for Kiddo but somehow she’s told us she doesn’t like it — prefers the regular sourdough we make; Mrs. CWD and I have finished two loaves of the “new bread” already this week.

11. Might finally be getting around to making more sausage next week. Aspirations for a garlic and sage, a breakfast, maybe a kielbasa. Might sneak some heart, some liver into the blend — might make sticks to satiate the kids’ endless desire to eat only snacks. I’ve heard it said that for children, all nutrients are macronutrients — I can only hope that adage is true. Because for all I’ve written about kid food and radical eating, my own children have developed an operational defiance when it comes to new foods. As easy it is to get them to eat their vegetables as it is to chant sutras on a cold morning, as it is to wrestle with a black belt.

12. For my own part, I’ve fallen into a rhythm. The repetition and the ritual have yielded the routine: the path circles, but grows ever wider; the days continue, but grow ever longer. Two weeks until the vernal equinox. I look out my window as I write, though, and watch the snow drift down.

13. Snyder, again:

    We find some ease and comfort in our house, by the hearth, on the paths nearby. We find there too the tedium of chores and the staleness of repetitive trivial affairs. But the rule of impermanence means nothing is repeated for long. The ephemerality of all our acts puts us in a kind of wilderness-in-time.

14. Leaving to pick up the kids, I watch as a doe crosses the road in front of me, snow clinging to her coat. I only move on when another car stops impatiently behind me. It rains that night; the next morning, her tracks have been washed out and iced over.

15. We embrace the ephemerality, drink in the tedium and rapture in equal measure. We defrost ground bison, chop an onion and garlic, sauté it all in a Dutch oven and make sloppy joes. We eat them on the “new bread;” the Monkey stuffs ground bison into his mouth; Kiddo and the Warthog dig into noodles with butter.

16. “The truly experienced person, the refined person, delights in the ordinary.” (Snyder, one last time.)

Easing into regular routine here, too, at home. A regularity to schedule, to weather, to the weekends. We can move along with the inertia now, not try to fight it. If you want to make those sloppy joes, to fall along with us, here’s how you might do it.

In a heavy-bottomed pot (Dutch oven), brown deeply several pounds of ground meat (we used a mix of bison and beef), augmenting with butter if you need additional fat. Remove the meat to a bowl, leaving some bits and rendered fat, and add in one or two diced onions, some smashed and diced garlic. Let these sauté until aromatic, stir in two or so tablespoons of tomato paste, some hot sauce, gochujang sauce if you’re feely up to it. Deglaze with beer or sake, add back in the meat.

Finish with tomato sauce (or fermented passata if you happen to have some in your freezer), adding slowly until you achieve the desired consistency. Cover and let simmer for twenty minutes to an hour — and then serve on buns or freshly baked sandwich bread.³

There you go folks, sloppy joes. Whatever routine you have planned for the weekend, I hope you do it well and without self-pity. Don’t forget to set your clocks (or do).

We’ll see you back here next week.

1. This, and following Gary Snyder quotes, are from “On the Path, Off the Trail” in The Practice of the Wild.

2. “Pattern” from Syntax of the River, a conversation between Barry Lopez and Julia Martin,

3. An old Pinemere trick: press down firmly onto the inner side of your bread, forming a pocket, allowing you to stuff more slop into your joe.