Fight 4 Taste

  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...

  Coolidge state park. I just realized that we have not camped here in 13 years! That is crazy! We have come up here for the day many times. Several of these memories stand out. The last time we camped here was memorial day weekend of 2010. We had not booked anything in advance and had a difficult time finding some thing but after dark on Saturday of memorial day weekend, we hooked the Cherokee up to the pop-up and drove up. Noah was four and Liam was seven. On the way here I can still recall getting emergency calls from truck drivers as we were driving past Echo Lake, because I was still working for GMH back in those days, but not for much longer. Because as a family, we were always late, and we would always arrive after dark. I used to do this thing where I would set the camper up, unfolding the pop-up in pitch darkness, and I was excellent at it. Well, one reason might’ve been that I was being sort of sarcastic about how we always arrived after dark and showing off a little bit ...