Fight 4 Taste

  A great cup of coffee, raging fire, sound of light rain drops on the forest. And a four day old earache, relentlessly slapping me, trying to pull me out of this moment. I hate pain. It works hard in so many different ways to take center stage of my life. This morning I am engaged in an all out battle with it.  The rain holds off for about 3 hours but then inevitably yields to a forecast too bad to be wrong. It is a great sound, rain on the canopy and the crackle of the fire. We had to retreat from the warmth of the fire because of the rain. Now it only provides sound and visual effects. I knew this was coming. Don’t act surprised. The song the rain sings opens up days passed in my life. Rainy days usually. My childhood, my sisters. It would be a crime to deny myself this sensory experience. The sounds of the rain is quadraphonic (surround sound for you millennials). It is a testament to our creators power. The world can grow on one drop of rain at a time, and the same drop c...

  The coffee watch is on. Those eternal moments in which the combination of propane stove and coffee, percolator make so much noise. It is almost industrial. But then that grand entrance with that first appearance of clear water into the glass perk top shows up, accentuated by the sound of perking coffee that in my recollection does not sound like anything else on earth except maybe the sound of a distant steam locomotive pulling a hill. I turn down the burner so low, the flame is on the edge of not even being there. This is the careful process of massage, the art of creating amazing coffee in a traditional percolator. If I had it my way, I would still make coffee this way every single day as if it was 1977. This busy world challenges ideas like that with “essential tasks” that we have been re-programmed into thinking that they are indeed essential. The forecast for this weekend is riddled with rain, showers and storms. Thankfully, I am watching this coffee perk, the birds are sing...

 I woke up Monday to learn that my friend Jim McLean died of COVID-19. Jim was a friend from the early 80s when I used to camp at lone Oak campgrounds in East Canaan Connecticut. I was close friends with his sister and he was close friends with my cousin Gary. His poor family is now having to carry on without him. Damn these people who have politicized a vaccine!  It’s been a hard week.  On Wednesday, we had to put our Bogey down. I just can’t believe he is gone. I hate this. He was so much more than a pet to our family. I need downtime now. Before the frenzied race to winter begins in the fall.  Tuesday. I really did not sleep last night. Tormented by the thoughts of Jim’s beautiful family having to move on without him. There appears to be an obstruction in my ability to write on this trip. It came so easily when we were at Killington. I dare say that some of the paragraphs written were some of the best stuff I have done. I will be patient though as I think it will ...

 I like to hike. I also love my coffee. While I can get away with choking down instant coffee on the trail, there is nothing like freshly brewed coffee to make that experience so much more robust. In 2018 when the Crawford family was hiking the Appalachian Trail, Ben Crawford the dad, mentioned people that he saw using an Aeropress coffee maker and made the statement I feel like I’m missing out on something. Ben's words intrigued me and I had no choice but to buy one on Amazon. If you don’t know what an AeroPress is,  the best way to describe it is like a wide syringe that holds coffee grounds and water and after a rest time allows you to push the water out into your cup using the syringe plunger. I then took the aero press with me on a family canoe trip and impressed myself and others with this amazing coffee.  Three years have passed. Many pieces of hiking gear that I bought three years ago have not been used in quite some time. When it comes to cooking, this can be ver...