A bite of paradise
A gustatory experience often promised by fast food commercials but rarely delivered
It’s impossible for any of my journal entries from the trail to be wholly accurate or complete accounts of our hikes. I do not chronicle every meal, every water break, every twinge of the knee, or every troublesome or inopportune bowel movement (or lack thereof). That would be tedious and boring.
Sometimes I omit things that I would prefer not to wave about like dirty underwear—which I might do, for example, if E and I disagreed about whether to stay in a shelter or in our tent, and if our bickering eventually escalated into a real fight.
And sometimes I simply forget. Generally, that’s a sign that a particular anecdote didn’t merit mentioning anyway—it was too small, too insubstantial, too unmemorable.
But not always. While sorting through my pictures from the latter half of our recent section hike, I came across a couple underexposed photos of E slicing and eating one of the last apples from our CSA, and I was instantly transported back to the climb up Plateau, when we were running low on water and the lunch food I packed simply wasn’t hitting.
I had started eating an apple while hiking through the warm, late afternoon sun beams—poles clutched together in my left hand to free up my right for the apple—and was suddenly overcome by pleasure: sharp, intense, transporting, fleeting. I was teetering just on the edge of thirstiness, so that the sweet drops of apple juice tasted like nectar and ambrosia, milky and sweet and rich and bright.
Even though the fruit had been stored in our fridge for weeks already, the flesh was still firm and crisp, providing a delightful crunch and explosion with every bite that seemed to set off fireworks in my mouth—that gustatory experience often promised by fast food commercials but rarely delivered.
I passed the fruit to E so he could experience this magic and he agreed it was a really fucking good apple.
I ate everything but the hard, dry, brown stem. While I didn’t relish the spiny inner bits quite as much, I took pleasure in eating the whole thing, not willing to let any part of this delightful specimen go to waste.
I only wished I had left a little more of the juicy flesh on the core to help get those last bites down a bit easier.
Merry Christmas to me?
This will be the last Pinch of Dirt of 2023. I will be back in your inboxes in the new year, with more of the same, PLUS some wonderful guest essays that I am so, so excited to share with you all.
I would love to give a giant hug to all of my Pinch of Dirt readers, especially those of you who support the PoD with your dollars as well as your eyeballs. Your paid subscriptions have allowed me to assign some really unique, exciting personal essays and to compensate the writers for their thoughtful work and words.
If you’re not yet a paid subscriber and you’re wondering what nice thing you could do for me this holiday season (especially if you’re a friend or a longtime reader), a paid subscription could be It!
Those “new subscriber” emails really do make my day/week/year and I’m grateful for each and every one.
And now on to the last reading list of the year…
Reading list
Grisly slayings: I had a really tough time reading this article about how easy it is to get away with illegally killing grizzly bears, which are (supposed to be) protected under the Endangered Species Act. At first, it seems like it may be a straightforward case of the Department of Justice pulling punches, but the investigation goes into how population declines of some key food sources for grizzly bears (likely due to a deadly combination of climate change and human-caused environmental distrubances) are forcing grizzlies to pursue “anthropogenic meat”—or, meat with a connection to humans. This increases the likelihood of human-bear contact, which rarely ends well for the bear. It also explains how the changing administrative focus and priorities within the Fish and Wildlife Service has significantly reduced the number and capacity of agents to investigate and prosecute domestic wildlife crimes. By all means crack down on the illegal global wildlife trade but not at the expense of America’s endangered species! Most distressing is the way this issue has been caught up in the culture wars, because resolving that feels impossible. There’s this belief, or myth, or fiction, that there’s some middle-ground between conservative-leaning hunters and left-leaning tree-huggers, but I share nothing with men who say things like “Because we hate bears up there…I thought it was great! Another dead bear!” [Ryan Devereaux and Jimmy Tobias for High Country News/The Intercept]
Owl v. owl: Last month, I edited a piece by Chad Small about how the Endangered Species Act may struggle to protect species amid climate crisis. One of the specific examples was that of the northern spotted owl, a threatened species that is vulnerable to heat shocks (made more likely due to climate change), and is also losing out in head-to-head competitions with barred owls, a native of the Southeastern United States, which are intruding into the northern spotted owl’s breeding territory (again, probably because of climate change). Days later, the Fish and Wildlife Service had put out a draft proposal to kill over 500,000 barred owls over 30 years to protect the northern spotted owl. There are many stressors that have pushed the northern spotted owl to the precipitous brink, where it is teetering on the edge of extinction (and could still disappear even if this plan to kill barred owls goes forward), but why is the solution always MORE human intervention (at the expense of a species who really can’t be blamed for opportunistically moving into the northern spotted owl’s territory when faced with climate change and habitat disturbances?). Thanks, I hate it here. [Chad Small for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Lynda V. Mapes for the Seattle Times]
Kill all the deer: The Trans-Catalina Trail has been on my to-do list for a while, so obviously I had to find out why conservationists have proposed killing all the deer on the island. I was not surprised to learn it’s because they are steadily mowing down native plants and destroying habitat for native animals in the process. Because of their isolation, the damage caused by introduced species on islands is often more severe and more obvious than it is elsewhere. As horrific as the proposal is, I don’t find is as disturbing as the owl-culling, because this is really an animal that was introduced (because humans wanted the island to be a fun hunting retreat), and it never would have showed up under their own power. Also, because it’s an island, a complete cull is possible. This isn’t an indefinite, decades-long program of systematic slaughter of an animal whose range is moving. But this also wouldn’t be necessary if humans hadn’t mucked up and introduced the deer in the first place, just for their own amusement. [Soumya Karlamangla for The New York Times]
Sorry the reading list has been such a bummer, and on a holiday weekend, too. Here is some lighter fare to close us out:
For The New York Times, Allie Conti on magnet fishing—“the poor man’s archaeology”—in the city. “Some magnet fishers go their whole lives without this happening…I’ve never won a lottery in my entire life — even a scratch-off. This is historic. It’s pure frickin’ insanity. One hundred percent.”
And finally, for Hell Gate, Michael Louie on the river hag of Newtown Creek, a woman with a rotating cast of Newtown Creek residents in her 20-gallon aquarium. “I seriously just Google everything…And then if I can’t figure it out through Google, then I usually just ask Reddit.”
Happy holidays, readers. See you in 2024!