The Vagabond Kitchen: Last Year’s Seeds

6-10-15

Rachel Mills and Keith Hammond prepare a tent-side dinner.

We ate our first outside meal by the lake last night.

Keith, the kind of dear friend who helps you say, “Yes” to the next adventure, brought lemony tabbouleh and we roasted gourmet hotdogs as the sun dipped its round face below the tree line.
I picked arugula for a salad in the garden next to our tent. Deep-rooted volunteer plants dotted the vacant soil, from last year’s seeds. Their perseverance as a species is admirable, and I cannot find it in myself to pull them like weeds. My soft-heartedness leaves the garden rows dotted with untidy tufts of arugula, but too much symmetry in a garden leaves little room for imagination.

72 seedlings started in Marquette, nurtured by my father in Curtis for two weeks, then driven across the bridge and planted in the home-tent garden.

Fresh-turned earth holds promises of radishes, mustard greens, lettuce, fava beans, and snap peas planted today. Gardening, making a plot of earth produce food, gives me a sense of purpose. In the past months, while we readied our house and lives for a big move I watched others readying their gardens for spring planting. It made me feel like the proverbial ant preparing for winter, but without the ability to plant seeds for harvest. A primal anxiety took hold of me—the ancient fear of not having enough food put by. Digging in the soil today steadied and satisfied that deep need within me.

Mayflies rest on the home-tent tarp before dancing.

I harvested arugula, humming wordless contentment beneath my breath, mayflies dancing like lattice-winged fairies in the air above the garden. My sharp Opinel knife sliced through green stems, releasing peppery aromas. I washed the greens outside the tent, pondering the last time I’d used the salad spinner. It was a month ago in our little rental on Willow St., the idea of this evening still a future day-dream. The time between that moment and a month past seemed both a lifetime, and a minute ago. Orson and Keith’s voices murmured behind me, laughter punctuated. It took a lot of work, stress, and planning to create this moment, spinning arugula dry by the lake-side.

When garlic and olive oil lined the wooden salad bowl in a creamy paste, I tossed in the greens, shredding leaves with emerald-stained fingertips. I anointed the arugula with golden half-moons of sliced peach, white wedges of fresh mozzarella and purple chive flower petals. The arugula came from the garden, peaches from Georgia, and chive flowers from right outside the tent door—culinary reminders of my recent undertakings.

Georgia peach and home-tent arugula salad.

“It’s beautiful,” Orson exclaimed as the three of us stood for a moment, grinning and peering into the bowl.
A dash of balsamic and crushed black pepper and the meal was ready.

Winter was long for all three of us. A sense of calm settled over the lake-shore garden clearing as we pulled camp chairs around the little metal folding table. Even the mosquitoes, stunned by the moment’s ebullience, ceased biting.
Dinner tasted delicious, and the boys’ food disappeared quickly. My meal lingered. Through cold days of school stress and uncertainty about the future, I sustained myself imagining moments like this.

We finished the salad, scraping the bowl with crusts of rustic baguette. Deep satisfied hums and crickets singing were the only sounds. Dishes cleared, we took a post-dinner stroll to the bridge that makes our little island accessible to the mainland. The channel beneath is deep enough for small boats, which pass back and forth between bodies of water, rods flashing.

We walked slowly, pointing out little wonders to one another, pausing to marvel. The gravel road bisects a bog where red-wing blackbird trills resounded in motionless evening air. Green cattail stalks gave way to a water color still-life: purple, white, and yellow flags, petals falling open to the June sky, blanketed the swamp in pastels.

Rachel Mills and Gus marveling at hundreds of yellow, white, and purple flags.

We ascended the bridge and I sensed a stirring within. Familiar but distant feelings of excitement and joy I thought lost in the murkiness of past struggles surfaced like fish rising on the lake’s glassy surface. “There you are,” a voice seemed to whisper.

My home is a 12×15 canvas wall tent, and I felt lighter than I had in months. Gus, old hips creaking, seeming to sense my exultation, made a break for the shoreline and, despite his age, by the time I reached him had devoured a large section of decaying fish.

There is the joy and there is the reality. They’re all a part of this moment and the memories made when, down the road, we reminisce about the summer we lived in a tent.

6-10-15

Home-tent, post-storm morning view.

It’s been raining steadily on and off since the tent was erected, but last night we survived our first large storm. I went outside to pee at about 4 a.m. and the atmosphere was of a held breath before a cough. Just as I began drifting back to sleep, I heard the patter of rain. What must have only been minutes later the sky erupted in a rolling rumble of thunder that went on and on, followed by strobe lightening that lasted well into the morning.

We listened to the rain pour down and marveled at how a tarp and stretch of canvas could keep us so warm and dry. Gus, exhausted from the stress of moving, finally slept the sleep of a relaxed dog, his snoring competition with the thunder.

The clouds broke with the morning sun and we exited the tent late in the morning to a world burnished new by hard rain, electric lightning pulses, and bass thunder shudders.

“I’m going to make you breakfast,” Orson announced. He turned and marched toward the old camper that housed the fridge where we stored our perishables and returned with a package of bacon.
Without argument I sat outside in the sunshine, facing the lake, a new book open in front of me. For years I’d imagined moments such as this, thinking they were beyond what life had in store for me. Many choices, monstrously difficult and joyfully easy, lay between my past incarnation and this moment by the lake. But here I was.

Sometimes nothing’s better than bacon and eggs.

Bacony aromas began wafting from the open tent flap and my stomach growled. Orson emerged, a triumphant smile on his face and the most exquisite open-faced breakfast sandwich in his hand. Balanced on a crusty slice of baguette were an achingly ripe slice of local tomato, creamy green avocado wedge, and salty bacon slice sprinkled with crushed black pepper. I took a bite and moaned, the feel of sunshine on my shoulders, my love across from me, and dog at my feet all a part of the flavors in that moment.

Would it all feel this good, if the past hadn’t been so hard? I asked myself.

A stray lake breeze whispered, It doesn’t matter.

by Rachel Mills

Rachel Mills is a professor of English at Northern Michigan University where she received her BS in English, MA in Creative Writing, and MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her current writing focus revolves around looking at food from a universal perspective-- the history, culture, and traditions surrounding both her family's food traditions, and those of other cultures.

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