Blackberry Bonanza

It's blackberry time! My arms are scratched and bleeding. The sweat pours down from my brow. Chaff from the weeds sticks to my thorn-ragged, sweaty arms and itches like a thousand paper cuts.

But there's easily a gallon of big, ripe blackberries in the bucket hanging around my neck. And more to come. They're just turning ripe now and will continue to ripen over the next two weeks.

I have a secret place where fallow fields have been burned off to improve wildlife habitat. Blackberries like that kind of periodic burn-off and come in thicker each year. Couple that with the mild and wet early spring and you have the perfect storm for blackberry blooms.

Gosh, wouldn't it be a good idea to make some homemade ice cream to go with that cobbler I'll be baking?

Secret Wilderness Lake

I've got a secret: There's a lake nestled deep in an Ozark hollow few people know of, spring-fed and spitting distance from a pristine Ozark stream. I spent two days in glorious vernal reflection there this week. Not a human sound around, save an occasional airplane.

Declaration of Evolution

I had the honor of narrating "The Declaration of Evolution" by Timothy Leary a few years ago. It was performed with the C3 Psychoto-electro Arkestra and mixed down with additional digital synthesizers.

When I first read "The Politics of Ecstasy" in 1968 I thought the idea of all species having rights was a little radical. And the notion that we needed to retreat to tribal societies to keep from fucking the Earth up was even more radical. Some of the hippies were adopting this philosophy and although I admired their courage I wasn't ready to give up my creature comforts.

Boy, does it seem different now! After watching "Avatar" and hearing the conservative paranoid fallout about the storyline it makes perfect sense.

Here is a link to the audio file of the reading. I hope I can do some scant justice to Uncle Tim's brilliant and eternal work.

Cecil Nixxon MySpace page

Cabin Fever

It's been snowing for a while. You're cooped-up and getting irritated at the family and the pets. There's nothing on TV but soap operas and 37 different varieties of court TV shows. Maury is about to test some deadbeat for paternity. Jerry's boys are taking their shirts off for a fight. Your first thought: "I'm gonna kill somebody!!!!!"

You have cabin fever, the only known antidote is putting on the boots and getting the hell outdoors.

The Chain of Rocks Bridge is a good place this time of year if you're layered up. The bald eagles are out fishing and the ice floes are awesome.

Xmas Lites

I headed up to town a few nights ago to get some bacon and a couple of beers. I took the long way home to watch the sunset turn to twilight. There was a farmhouse decorated with the new LED lights. They had really outdone themselves. I was fascinated with how intense the lights were; the colors are so razor-sharp and linear. Very trippy and cool for smart humans!

Suddenly I was struck with another light display over the ridge. I couldn't believe what I saw. Whatever they were using, it was radiating from deep blue to a brilliant bright white and washing the whole ridge in this crazy light show.

About that time the full moon broke the ridge and started to rise in the sky. Better than LEDs. Much better.

Global Warming Isn't Real

I've deer hunted in a mid-Missouri location nearly every year since 1980 - almost thirty years. The season always falls within the second and third week of November. My hunting stand is on the same plot of land year after year. So I've built up a lot of climate observation at a specific locale and time of year. Here's what I've seen on opening day of the season over the years:

-from 1980 thru 1986, mornings were cold. There was always hard frost on the winter wheat and on the treebark. Precipitation was rare. I had to dress in thermals, sweats, and an insulated hunting suit. My feet froze even with large boots in an insulated bag. I wore two stocking caps and a hood.

-from the mid 80's thru 1991 it was almost as cold, but occasionally rainy.

-in 1991 the weather moderated. That year I swapped the hunting suit for fatigues and thermals, and laid in the warm 65f sun one day.

-throughout the 90's the mornings were consistently above 30f with a moderate frost on the winter wheat, and none on treebark.

-from 2000 or so to the present, mornings have been consistently above 45f with little to no frost, lots of erratic rainstorms and sunny days in the 70f-80f range. So far this year, opening morning at 6AM was 56f and clear, with a major thunderstorm front following the next day for four days.

I'll be talking with my relatives to get anecdotes from the 30's thru the 70's in that region. But from what I've heard from my departed grandparents, 20" snowfalls late in the fall were not unheard of.

...it's definitely getting warmer around here.

Volunteers of America

I've been watching things change lately... saw a nicely dressed gentleman dumping his household garbage at a service station yesterday. Went on a weekday hike to get away and was plagued with hordes of bored and unemployed once-middle-class folks. I saw a couple trying to figure out how to open a dumpster behind a grocery store (secured, of course, to keep vermin out and lazy countrymen from getting something for free, even if it's garbage).

Almost a year ago, these images were sparse. People were secretive about dumping or scrounging, and a little embarassed. But they've started to get brazen and vocal. I propose they (we) need a voice for now. That voice has been playing inside my head for days - Paul Kantner's "We Can Be Together." You remember the song, right? Can you imagine Middle America singing these lyrics? Many of us imagined it, exactly forty years ago.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America.
In order to survive, we steal,
Cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide and deal.
We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent… and [middle class].

So, what happens when the well-educated and highly disillusioned American middle-class wakes up from the sleep that begets monsters and realizes the true gravity of the situation? Lots of whining. Loss of self-worth. Bouts of self-pity. And then some anger. It's my sense that we're somewhere between the self-pity and anger stage, with anger starting to take hold. And it's about fucking time. Like the song says,

We should be together.
We should be together, my friends.
We can be together,
We will be.

Do it with anger. And do it with love. Choose your sides, target your enemies. Band together and "family-up."

Up against the wall, motherfucker! Scream it now! Feels damned good again, doesn't it?

http://www.archives.gov/research/american-revolution/pictures/index.html

Blowdown in Dark Hollow

Blowdown!
Throughout the Lower Rock Creek area there are 3' caliper and larger trees blown down by what locals considered a tornado. The damage appears to have taken place in the spring. But there is also evidence of another blowdown maybe a year before.

The place is a mess, and every ten feet down the trail actually takes 30 or more feet circling around, crawling through and climbing over an ocean of downed trees. The going uphill is even more challenging.

The trail into Lower Rock Creek canyon area is tolerable but inconvenient. The trail to Trekler Mountain is sheer madness. I counted over a hundred full-sized oak and pine trees fallen neatly across the old roadbed, spread out over two miles.

Google map

fall surprises

Lotsa great mushrooms this fall... boletes, bearded tooth, chicken of the woods. Earth Mother Carla made a big pot of multi-shroom soup with brie and smoked gouda. Yow!

Tim and Carla at the Big Chicken Log:



And just today I thawed out what I thought was bean soup. Lo and Behold! It was the morel/portabella brie soup I made this spring. Hoo Wah!

The Big Chicken:

The Fantastic Glow-In-The-Dark Jack-O'-Lantern Mushroom

Don't try eating these lovelies - you'll get deathly sick. After all, what food that glows in the dark could be good for humans?

This specimen was photographed in late September at the Robertsville State Park in Missouri. Here are a few more shots:

Fall Mushrooms

They're everywhere! That is, if you're willing to get out there deep into the fens and hollows, ridges and glades.

Here's a Clavulina Cristata found September 10 near Pacific, Missouri:

Another Fine Mess

...of morels, that is. Just look at these pictures!

Intelligent Morels

This year it has become apparent to me that morels are an intelligent form of life. The way they adapt their coloration in one generation or less, their habit of sending up early "volunteer" fruiting bodies to sense the environment and signal the colony that it's optimal time to fruit, the odd telepathy-like thoughts I have just before finding a large group of morels - tell me these creatures think. That, and the fact that they evolved less than 80,000 years ago from a single celled yeast to their present form - a phenomenon observed in no other creature. Are they intelligently evolving themselves?

Several days ago I stood on a morel mycelium mat I gauged to be approximately 200 square foot in size. My mind drew a parallel between the electrochemical process that goes on in an animal nervous system and the hugely interconnected chemical communication process going on in one of these mycelium mats. It seemed intuitively obvious that these mushroom "colonies" are conducting the business of communicating with their environment including me. Was this just the ol' hippie new age bias clouding my thinking, or was intelligence in play?

Enter Paul Stamets, the godfather of medicinal mushrooms. In his article, "Fungal Intelligence and Bioremediation" Stamets states it more eloquently and scientifically than I could when he says, "I have come to believe that mycelial mats, found nearly everywhere underfoot in our planet's soil, form a network that is sentient, intelligent and responsive." A large mycelium mat contains more than enough chemical paths and receptors to effect a "brain." And if they are truly telepathic as I believe, they're potentially linked up globally and massively increasing that chemical brain-power.

Old 'shroom hunters seem to be a weird bunch and they often have a far-away look reminiscent of Electric Kool-Aid cybernauts. Or are we simply communing with a higher life form?

Morels 2009

The morels just keep coming! So far I've netted 200... all but one were common morels, blonde and meaty. The odd-one was a verpa bohemica.

LaBarque Creek

There's a new conservation area in town! LaBarque Creek Conservation Area. Over 500 acres of pristine watershed with deep gorges, ferns, mosses, sandstone overhangs, waterfalls and wildlife. It must be one of the most enchanting places in the Spring when the wildflowers and morels start springing forth.

See: mdc.mo.gov

And go check it out for yourself. You might see me lurking around.

Spring of the Summer Sky

I spent time looking into the abyss of the Spring of the Summer Sky yesterday. She (actually they) spoke to me. I am humbled and terrified. I'll visit her again soon, this time with "the set." I'll send out directions and a rendezvous date for anyone wh0's interested.

We gotta revere the eternal coil before the coil casts us off. Here is The Mother presenting her Pre-Children as counselors, and all we gotta to do is line up and accept them? Could it be that easy?

Some folks just visited The Spring of the Summer Sky with Budweiser, stinky kids and grousing matriarchs. To them it was a big blue hole in the ground. We'll go pre-dawn at fall, with reverence and an amplified sense of wonder. Just let me know if you're in. I'll make a fine breakfast afterwards.

Venison Morel Glaze

Grandma did it by feel and couldn't tell me the recipe. I'll try to do the same here - from memory, an improv recipe I love... adjust the ingredients to suit your taste.

1# venison loin
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 scallions, finely chopped
1 small bay leaf
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 tsp kosher or sea salt
2 tbsp red raspberry preserves
1 tsp balsamic vinegar - the richer the better
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4# fresh morels, sliced lengthwise
1 bunch white asparagus spears

Cube 1" thick slices of venison loin into flat medallions. Heat olive oil in sautee pan until almost smoking. Add bay leaf, garlic, rosemary and 1/2 of the salt. Sautee until garlic just starts to turn dark. Add venison medallions and sautee for 2 minutes each side - they should be browned outside and lightly rare on the inside. Salt and pepper the medallions, remove and set aside on a serving plate and cover with foil to keep warm.

Cut the asparagus spears in 1" diagonals and steam until lightly done. Remove to serving bowl and add a dollop of butter and a pinch of salt.

Place the scallions, balsamic vinegar and raspberry preserves in the sautee, and heat until the mixture slightly simmers. Add the morels and cook them for several minutes - don't fry them, just cook them.

Serve the venison medallions with the morels and raspberry glaze drizzled on top, alongside a generous helping of asparagus. A nice crusty sourdough bread and a fruity Missouri red wine compliment the meal. When the wife and kids say, "ewww, mushrooms and deer meat!" give them $10 and send them off to McDonalds. Enjoy this feast alone!

Culinary Ecstasy

Morels again.

Most commonly I egg wash 'em, flour them, and fry them in oil. Tonite I lightly egg washed them, dredged them in plain breadcrumbs, and fried them in pure, unsalted butter, with just a hint of salt and fresh ground black pepper.

Aw my freakin' chakras opened up! Oooooh! I'll never go back to flour and oil.

This weekend I'm gonna repeat the exercise, but this time with leeks, asparagus and medallions of venison loin.

If I die soon after, it will be with a grin the mortician will not be able to remove.

If morels grew year-round, I could easily give up meat.

Goodbye Missouri Morels

Farewell until next year, little spongy friends. After a serious ass-busting, bushwhacking last foray, all I could find was one solitary dried-out M. Esculenta. All of the half-frees, all of the gyromitras, all of the blacks, all gone now. With another rainstorm coming in, there's a possibility for more commons by this weekend. But with a freezer full of breaded shrooms and literally a bucket full in the refrigerator, I believe I've given it my all this year.

Last night, I went to the only location likely to produce. I was clouded by black mosquitoes biting me right through ounces of DEET, getting in my eyes and nose and ears. A wise sage once told me that morels put off a scent that drives mosquitoes away, and when the morels have gone the mosquitoes attack. Maybe so, maybe no. But it is a ripping yarn nonetheless.

If you are pure in heart and respect Mother Gaia's sacred places, the morel will find you, too.

More and More Morels

More and more morels.  37 thursday eve.  Morel huting has consumed my life so I had to lay off a few days to meet my pink-assed employer's demands and my whinin' assed family's insecurities.  If only they knew how easily they could be summarily dismissed in favor of a lowly fungus.  Come to think of it, this magical morel season has caused me to re-think quite a few things.  But I digress...

Anyway, tonight, I egg-wash, flour and flash-freeze five pounds of my best M. Esculentas.  There'll be a fried morel feast at the C3 summer solstice show.  I just egg-wash 'em with 50% egg, 50% water with a generous portion of salt and coarse ground black pepper.  I put 'em on a cookie sheet with waxed paper, egg 'em, flour 'em, put 'em on the sheet, and toss 'em into the deep freeze.  Once frozen they go into a gas-tight bag (I use baking bags and suck the air out of them) and back into the deep freeze.