Jason and jenn

So Steve’s comment/reprimand on my Thomas Jefferson Loves Bacon post reminded me that I’m a bit tongue in cheek sometimes… here’s the comment:

“Hate to burst your bubble, but have you seen factory hog farms? Chicken ranches? Cattle feed lots? Turkey plants? Every stock has a dirty little secret. I only hope you can find some local, hormone free, non factory grown bacon.”

If there is one thing we don’t like about life in Pinedale, it’s the lack of availability of locally produced meats and a short growing season. The grocery store in Pinedale is a funny place. There are cattle ranches everywhere around here, but there is no locally produced beef available. We ask about it, but wonder if we are the only ones. In the produce aisle, there is wrinkly and exotic produce that would never grow in this environment and is even completely out of season in sunny California. It also tastes horrible. No wonder kids hate vegetables. The one thing we get in our grocery is Wyomatoes, a great little local Tomato grower with greenhouse space to make it happen in the cold Wyoming climate. We can drive to the Jackson Whole Grocer to find some Montana cows for sale… but there should be a better way. I guess folks hunt around here in order to get truly local and organic meat. Next year I plan to as well.

Another little store in town that specializes in meat has hormone and antibiotic free beef from Iowa, and when we asked them about the farm, they assured us that even though the cows hadn’t been shot full of antibiotics, the meat was safe to eat. Really, they thought we were worried that the beef hadn’t been fed it’s own kin and thus needed to be shot full of antibiotics. We also learned that if the cows get sick, this farm has a second production facility where they take the sick cows and pump them full of antibiotics and feed-lot them. So we didn’t buy. We can go without. We’re not so much worried about how the poor cows are treated. We just want quality, health, and ethically produced meat.

We also have to be careful, in this time where “organic” and “green” are popular buzzwords. Organic, free range eggs may not actually be. If a giant barn (where chickens are packed in literally on top of each other) has a small opening and access to a small lot of grass, the farm will tout their chicken and eggs as “cage free and/or free range”, even if they never find their way to that door and lot. So we need to be very discriminating in what we buy, and not just with eggs and bacon. Our Idaho Potatoes at the local grocer are shipped through Portland to get to Wyoming.

Local Harvest is one of our favorite sites for finding locally produced stuff. Check it out.  The link will take you to the “Pork” page (since we were talking bacon afterall), but take a look around. Find a local CSA or farmers market and support your local farmers. In this day and age of globalization and a shrinking planet, we need to start thinking a bit more locally and less selfishly. It is a simple fact that Strawberries should not be available year-round! Feel good for shopping in the organic aisle at the grocery? Organic from Mexico is still not very friendly on the planet.  Unless you’re in Mexico.

Also, if you’d like to read more about this kind of thing in a very accessible and non-hippie fashion, check out Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal Vegetable Miracle. The website is also a handy reference!

We aren’t so much perfect in this pursuit of local, organic, fresh, and ethical. I recently wanted fish tacos and bought some Orange Roughie from New Zealand. I didn’t feel a bit guilty as they were very tasty. But I don’t plan to do that more than once or twice a year. I wonder what trout tacos would taste like?

It’s early on a Saturday and now I’m hungry. Eat well. Be well.

Lately I’ve been thinking about trying to avoid beef all together unless it is certified organic, hormone free, and not feed-lot fed. Local would be even better.  Pinedale used to do that kinda thing. Now we’ve all been sold out to big corporate farms that give ranchers little choice about what to do with their cattle.

So I’ve taken to eating Bacon. Not in massive quantities mind you…  It stores well, usually is at least produced in the United States, and well, it tastes mighty good. You can even order it off Amazon.com

Then I stumbled across this quote from none other than Thomas Jefferson where he talks about both living simply and eating bacon in the same sentance!

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.” - Thomas Jefferson

Smart guy, that Jefferson. Maybe if I eat enough bacon I can be smart too.

We are students of snow. We are learning to cross country/telemark ski. We are learning the technique differences between powder and sun-crust. We are learning to be okay with falling a thousand times. And lately we’ve been learning how to evaluate snow conditions to determine the risk of travel in avalanche terrain. We’ve learned about faceted snow, weak layers, wind-slab, depth-hoar, wumping snow, slide angles, snow pits, shovel tests, rhutschblocks, terrain traps, beacon searches, and how we factor into making all this white stuff slide. And just in time. After two weeks of high pressure and no snow, it is snowing outside and we feel a lot more confident about venturing into the backcountry to ski. Now if only we could get better at the actual skiing part.

From January 2009

This is what the town looks like. Coming in from the South on 191, you hit a closed cajun restaurant, then some log buildings on the right, a small-town car lot. Then There’s the grocery store/hardware store. A gas station, a bank, another bank, one more bank. The courthouse is tucked to the left and doesn’t face the main street (actually we don’t even have a named “main” street). There’s the Rock Rabbit, where jenn works, a couple bars on the left, the cowboy shop, the post office, the outdoor shop. A service station. The brew pub and a couple run-down hotels where the clientele vehicles all read Halliburton. Another gas station with our one franchise eatery inside. The good old Wrangler cafe and an auto-parts store. Several big box hotels that again have nothing in the parking lot but F250s with drilling equipment in their beds. And then you’re back in the sage scrub desert. That was Pinedale. All 2000 of us.

But now, 7 months into living here, we see more. We see the aquatic center where I work, the bike path that leads up the hill to the CCC ponds and Fremont lake. We see the great local library which hosts writers events, book signing, and art galleries. There’s the three parks in town, lots of green space around otherwise cluttered lots. There are the two health-food stores in town. Both seem to be doing well! There’s the local butcher shop/deli and the BLM and Forest Service and Fish and Game offices. There’s the residences with non-profit offices lurking inside, trying to save us from ourselves.

At the Rock Rabbit on a given night, you might here some local talent, and boy it’s great. There’s local town council member John Fogerty (nope, not that one) playing “The Day John Henry Died” and “Feeling Good Again”. Terry Hill soulfully sings with a constant smile and welds in the oil fields for his day job.  Local girl Sarah Domek looks and strums like Victoria Williams and croons Old Crow songs. Jared Rogerson plays his local hit “Boomtown” and sings songs about the mountains between shifts doing burcellocis research on local cattle.

The Pinedale Fine Arts Coucil brings in the goods too. We saw Chinese Acrobats that rivalled our Vegas Cirque show. We saw a local production of the Sound of Music which was amazing in staging, acting ability, and vocal talent. More recently, we saw a Flamenco dance show with live music all composed by the guitar player and filled with stunning Choreography.

There are 3 murals in town, some mosaics done by school kids, and on a random street there’s a house rented to roughnecks right next to the one with Tibetan prayer flags hanging outside. There’s the snowmobile cruising down B street while the cross-country skiiers head 2 miles up toward the lake to go for a tour and spot eagles and moose.

Is Pinedale what I imagined? Is it a mountainous eden? Nope. We can’t afford to live here long term unless the housing market plummets dramatically. Many locals seem unaware of the long term consequences of their short-term profiteering off the oil fields.  There are no codes to speak of and no code enforcement even if there were. “Cowboy up son, and deal with it”, is the local ethos, which seems about right considerring this IS Wyoming, the so called “equality” state. Which maybe means that everyone should equally stay out of everybody elses business. Pinedale is struggling with this now, as boom-town changes are not quite what the old-timer residents are used to, and yet they want to still have as much freedom from laws and codes and zoning and possible while remaining true to their frontier spirit.

Pinedale is a town in flux, a sort of microcosym of the country as a whole. We are blessed to be here, where unemployment is virtually nil and where, most importantly, the Wind River mountains loom over us, unchanged, stalwart, and magnificent in the evening light.

neither of us are the type to make new years resolutions but we are always planning, thinking, learning, and growing. since we moved here i have seen folks participating in a water aerobics class at the rec center where jason works and have thought i should give it a try. but i really can’t swim nor did i have a swimsuit adequate enough to “workout” in…. so i bought one. yup, i bought a bathing suit in the dead of winter. something about it all strikes me as silly- probably just as silly as i will feel the first few times in class. it is no resolution but i am hoping to start attending this class and hoping that it will allow me to feel more comfortable in the water. i will keep you posted- as long as my head stays above the water.

Went ice climbing in the Tetons this week. It was amazing and frustrating.

Let’s start with frustrating: The first half the day, it was sunny 37 degrees so the snow was sticky and my skis wanted to grab all that snow and hold on to it. Even a quick application of glide wax didn’t help much for some reason. Next, my craft gloves aren’t waterproof, which i discovered in ice climbing is a necessity. As i type this, i still can’t feel the tips of two fingers on my left hand. They got a bit cold. I also got too warm. At the top of the climb, i suddenly felt like i was going to throw up and once on the ground had the wonderful feeling of nausea, overheating core, and icy cold fingers all at the same time. On the way out, the temps dropped a little and it was snowing heavy, wet snow. My skis were still icing up and balling up under my feet.

Okay, so what was good?: It was sunny and 37 degrees in January!! I went ice climbing for the first time and really enjoyed it. More than I thought I would, even with the hot/cold issues. I can’t wait to do some more. It’s a good thing to have in the bag-o-tricks. Also, Death Canyon in the Tetons was beautiful and the loose snow pinwheels rolling down the steep slopes was cool. We got the gamut of conditions, from sunny and warm to colder and a snow-storm. I had great companions and a great workout skiing in 3.5 miles with a 30 pound pack. It was especially a good workout with an extra few pounds of ice on my skis, and having to stomp them every 50 feet to clear the snow from the bottoms. Kick and glide? What glide? I just kick. Also, now i have an excuse to buy new gloves…

This is from a local webcam this morning. I don’t even understand this.

COLD!

2009 is here and jenn and I are faced with the prospect of living in one place for an entire calendar year. Life is good. We have money and job security and a healthy and loving marriage. We have friends, family, and a world of possibilities outside our door. We have a roof over our heads, fresh home-made bread, and a lot of joy. It seems so silly to be anything less than joyful and thankful, yet we tend toward melancholy too often.

Around us we see marriages crumbling, people miserable in their work, really poor decision making, and endless greed. We get angry at people who let their trucks idle for 45 minutes while they eat lunch. We get frustrated by co-workers who have no joy and decide we shouldn’t have any either. I even caught myself getting bummed about the ski conditions lately.

And yet… and yet…

I have bread. A daily supply with no thought of want. I am humbled by that. I have nothing to resolve to do for the coming year. The “plan” has been in the works since October.  New Years day we toasted to another year of adventure, another year of being good to eachother, and to our daily bread. That seems like more than enough.

From Christmas 2008