Narrows of the Harpeth

I took off early on Monday and drove 15 miles west of town to Cheatham county, where there's sort of a patchwork, shabby state park called Harpeth River State Park. I shouldn't say shabby, really, but it is made up of little unconnected pieces and parts of land along the Harpeth River. Well, they're connected if you're in a canoe, which I was not, but otherwise, you have to drive to each little one. I decided to go to the Narrows of the Harpeth part. The Harpeth river is a winding, hairpin-ny river and at one point it doubles back and gets to within 200 feet of itself. Sometime back in the olden days, some guy (Montgomery Bell, whose name is on everything here in town) had his slaves chip a tunnel through the 200 feet, thus diverting a good portion of the river, so that the water would turn a wheel to make I dunno, moonshine or flour or something. Wool. Who knows; the signage was all faded. ANYWAY. All the mill stuff is gone and all you get now is a waterfall shooting out of a cliff face. I've canoed down this part of the Harpeth before and sometimes the water is so low you can walk through the tunnel...but not at this time of the year. They actively discourage it, though and to be honest, if you try it it does feel like you might die at any minute. And the slave part gave me the willies. It's like that part in Tom Sawyer where the go in the cave and oh, someone's there with a torch. Injun Joe? I can't remember; it's all fuzzy. But that's what it feels like. Spooky.

After visiting that part, I doubled back and hiked up the ridge above the Narrows. You get a nice view of the surrounding farmland and whatsthatcalled? Floodplain. My knee did okay hiking up. When you get to the top, there's a verrry narrow part you can walk on, like five feet wide. One mis-step and you would fall a long way and die. I didn't do that. There were children up there and they were running around like crazy, which sort of boggled my mind because really, there was nothing to prevent them from tumbling down the cliff. It was insanely windy up there.

Then I got in the car and drove to another little piece of the park, Newsom's Mill. It sits on the edge of the Harpeth next to a now-broken dam. There was signage that said Nashvillians used to take the train from Union Station downtown out to the dam on summer days and have a swim and a picnic. Which was the LAST time a Nashvillian didn't drive his SUV somewhere, I'm just saying. They also found a skeleton in the original dam when they were replacing it with the concrete one which is now the busted one. The whole thing felt very Blair Witchy or maybe like a place you would have gone to a secret rave back in the early 90s and I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there.

A Walk in the Woods

Part of my New Year's Resolution is to go camping five times this year and that always entails hiking as well. I've been a little worried about that as I've had a very minor knee sprain that just doesn't seem to want to completely heal. It doesn't hurt, really, but it's not quite fully extending either. Don't leave any dumb comments about telling me to go to the doctor - I'm not doing it. But! I have been doing a little bit of testing to see if I'll really be able to hike the Honey Creek Loop at Big South Fork in May.

On Saturday, I went to Radnor Lake, just south of Nashville. Radnor Lake used to be a "State Natural Area," which I guess is the state's way of saying "nice try, but you're no State Park, honey!" but now I guess it's finally a state park, if a puny one. It's pretty (see pic, which I stole off the web), but I have had issues with it in the past. For starters, it's right smack in the middle of a bunch of upscale residential areas and a few years ago, the people who run it - which I think is an uneasy mix of government and some hippie vegetarian volunteer types - began charging you admission if you drove to Radnor Lake, but it was free if you walked or biked....which of course meant that only the rich white folks who live around it ever went, because YOU CAN'T GET THERE unless you drive! It's a long way away! So Radnor Lake was sort of like a really big Gramercy Park, a private place for the rich. I boycotted and since then they've rescinded that policy. I'm SURE it was because of my boycott, about which I told no one and in fact never really knew I was doing.

There are a few trails there, none of them particularly challenging, but this little test was really about distance, to see how long I could go before I started thinking about my knee rather than the scenery. There were deer and turtles and Canadian geese and regular old ducks and some screechy kinds of bird-type things. I also saw my friend Teri M., who once got her finger broken in a bar fight. She sued and lost, mainly because one of her star witnesses was our friend Chris K., who wasn't a very reliable witness since the defense called about thirteen other people, all of whom saw Chris K snorting up cocaine like a Hoover earlier in the evening of said bar fight. Also, he once called the police and made them come to his house because he was, uh, convinced that there were robbers hiding in tied-up garbage bags in his vestibule, just waiting to burst out of them and kill him for his drugs. Yes, that's what he told the police who then said "uh, well, let's talk about these drugs...." and that was, as they say, that. So Teri M lost her case, but she really shouldn't have; she just called the wrong witness.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the hike. I did pretty well; I got three or so miles in, mostly level around the edge of the lake. It was a nice day, so the 30,000 other people who decided to go to Radnor Lake were sort of getting on my nerves; one trio of women who kept vying with me for the lead on the trail were talking for a LONG time about a mashed potato bar they were planning for one of their daughter's upcoming wedding and I just thought that sounded both nuts and passé at the same time. But at the same time I sort of wanted to get invited to see how creative they were going to get with it. I mean, if you're going to have a mashed potato bar at a wedding, just make the damned cake out of mashed potatoes, I say. Or the dress! Yes, that would have been good, the dress. It sounds like Project Runway challenge. "And I made the hat out of gravy!"

There were also a lot of children and parents, all of whom were ignoring the bajillion signs that said STAY ON TRAILS - FRAGILE ENVIRONMENT so I did secretly laugh when one little kid who ignored the sign fell down when he tripped over a tree root OFF TRAIL and his parents lost their minds about how they really should put up railings. I mean if there were a bunch of railings everywhere, it wouldn't be a natural area, it'd be the second story of a mall....is what I wanted to say. Sometimes I really am surprised how tunnel-visiony parents can be. It's really not about you ALL THE TIME. It's about ME. Plus, Radnor Lake is all about the Zen and the loons and the geese and the deer and the solitude and the introspection (or so all their marketing materials would have you believe) so I was irritated that there were screaming kids making me all tense and their parents yelling MADISON! GET BACK HERE! It made me kind of hostile; I was glad to get back in my nice quiet car at the end of it.

And then the next day I did two and a half miles at the Shelby Bottoms Greenways. I think if I keep up the weekend practice, I'll be good for May. I have to introduce elevation next week.

The Best Free Meal of My Life

I am super poor right now and whenever I am super poor, making interesting dinners becomes a challenge. But! Today while I was thinking about it, I decided to make myself make something fantastic for dinner, especially since Sister Meg's out of town and therefore I don't have to take her whims (cf. South Beach Diet) under consideration. So I did a complete pantry inventory, a complete freezer inventory and also I went down to the basement to see if there was any wine left from Mom and Dad's seven-month holiday visit. Success on all fronts!

I found a duck breast, the last one from a very generous Christmas gift of six duck breasts given to me by my friend Lauren. Some Yukon gold potatoes. Some Brussels sprouts. Some wisely frozen lemon zest from when I had a plethora of Meyers. A jar of pickled cherries made by my friend Ellen. A chicken bouillon cube here, a pat of butter there, et voila!. A five-star dinner. Seared duck breast with a cherry red wine reduction, roasted Yukon golds and Brussels sprouts with lemon zest.

I made it all up, no recipes. Sister Meg used to have a friend who would come over for dinner occasionally and at the end of dinner, she'd holler out a price, the amount she would be willing to pay for said dinner. "17.95!" "22.95!" Whatever. This dinner would have emptied her imaginary wallet.



Credits:

China: Villeroy & Boch Audun Ferme

Skillet: Martha Stewart Tri-Ply from K-Mart (retired)

Roasting pan: Lodge apple green enamel casserole

Flatware (not shown): "Fiddlehead," Pottery Barn (retired)

Linens: Brawny Paper Towels

Wine: Jessie's Grove Old Vine ZInfandel

Floor show during dinner: Ugly Betty

New Year's Resolution! Plus: The Chuck Box!

My New Year's Resolution for this year - and I never make them really; I think they're kind of dumb - is to go camping at least five times over the course of the year. The first big one is going to be to Big South Fork in late April or early May. I might slip in a weekend trip before that to a state park - Montgomery Bell is only forty minutes away - but Big South Fork will be the biggie, four days or so.

And I'll be able to debut the much-talked about and planned Chuck Box! Dad got ahold of my plans while he was here for three weeks at Christmas and he knocked it out. There's some debate over how to paint it - I'm arguing heavily for woodburning DG'S TOTALLY AWESOME CHUCK BOX on the top - but it all worked out perfectly. Seems fancy since it pretty much holds paper towels and ziplocs.

Anyway, Happy New Year everybody. Except for those few bitchy people I don't like. You TOTALLY know who you are.

Natasha, R.I.P.

So my friend Chicago Meg, who is now ex-Chicago Meg because she moved here a few months ago, lost her dog Natasha yesterday to a sudden illness of some mysterious sort, combined with an un-helpful emergency pet ER lady. Natasha was a very sweet dog, half Springer Spaniel, half Retriever. I think I have that right. I don't have many pictures of her, but here's one, from when we all spent some time in Gulf Shores, Alabama late last winter. She discovered a dolphin on the beach and was determined to smell it. I'm glad she got to have a month on the beach late in life; as a water-ish dog, she quite loved it. I am holding my own elderly dogs a tiny bit closer tonight.

Animal Farm

Well, Mom and Dad are here. With their English Setter, Sadie. Keep in mind that we already have FIVE pets - the two dogs, Bernie & Madeline and the three cats, Eleanor, Buster and Fanny. AND I'm dog-sitting for my boss' dog, Georgia. So let's review: four people + seven animals. People, that's not a household...it's an episode of Fear Factor.

This is Georgia, the dog who is on loan for a week. She is a teacup poodle and I certainly don't have any trouble figuring out why. That is a nickel sitting next to her so you can get a sense of scale. TINY. She is an unbelievably low-maintenance dog and I LOVE HER but maybe I love her because I know she is going away on Sunday, back to her parents' house. I'll be sad.

This is Buster the cat (AKA Fat Ass or Big Boy) and Madeline the dog. Madeline has several aliases: Madge, Modge Podge, Miss Louise and Miss Bunny. Madeline is sixteen, so this is usually how you see her. She is half standard poodle, half chow but we never ever see the evil chow personality, just the poodle one. Sister Meg thinks Madeline is maybe, um, retarded because she's almost preternaturally calm at all times. Like I'm talking Sunny von Bulow calm. For example, she is scared to death of Buster, so she clearly has no idea that he's napping right next to her. If she woke up right now, she'd die of a heart attack on the spot. But she is also kind of our perfect dog, the one who makes almost no mistakes and when she does, she comes and gets us and apologizes before we even know what it is she did. Sixteen is old so we are preparing for the inevitable but that will be a rough week, I can tell you right now.

This is Burns. AKA Bernie, Mr Burns, Bernice or Bernina, depending on the wine consumption. Mine, not his. He is also sixteen and he shows no signs of giving up the ghost anytime soon. He is a mystery dog; even the vet said "I don't know what that thing is" and then he also said he could live ten more years. I almost punched the vet in the face when he said that. Burns is a handful. I say that but mean something much less nice, like when people say "bless your heart" what it really means is you are one big fat hot mess. For Christmas, I am giving Burns a bag and a map to the river.

This is Eleanor the fancy cat, AKA Miss Ellie, Miss Lavish or Senorita Bigface, and Sadie, Mom and Dad's English Setter. You can get a good idea of just how smart Sadie is from this picture where you can easily see that she is pointing a sleeping cat. Good job, Copernicus! The cats have her befuddled. She stares at them for hours and then when they slightly move, she runs away like there's a dogcatcher headed her way.

I do not have a recent photo of Fanny, but she is the oldest member of the family, at seventeen years old. A grey tabby cat. Alternate names: Fan, Phalange, Fanette and Miss Petunia. She is pretty much the alpha animal in the house; even crazy Burns refuses to engage her. She sleeps 23.9 hours a day. I'll add a pic as soon as I can.

Not Enough Liquor in the World

Oh, Christmas at the Strongs. It's like visiting crazy people at the asylum. And also? It's like going to the world's most unsuccessful AA meeting. This year - for the first time in three years - the younguns and the oldens will be celebrating together. Mom and Dad are driving across America, from California to Tennessee as we speak. It's like some nutty reverse-Grapes-of-Wrath re-enactment, with the Joads in a pickup truck full of wine, smuggling it back into moonshine country. Five cases, I hear! Woooooo! MY PARENTS WILL BE HERE FOR A MONTH (see my upcoming blog myparentsaremakingmewant to drinklikecrazy.blogspot.com), so I think it's safe to say that if you need me, I'll be at the liquor store. Sister Meg has the tree all gussied up. She collects a particular kind of ornament, so that's all that's allowed on the fake-white-pre-lit tree. I used to be a big fan of a real tree, though I will say this white thing really does show off her ornament investment. The cats have been hanging out beneath it in a supercute cat way; I'll add a pic when I can get one.

There are some of you who have inquired about this year's wrapping concept. It took me a while to figure it out - past years have been pink and brown, or light blue and tan, or whatever. This year is black and white and kelly green. Not Christmas green - kelly green. Preppie green. Mixed with various black and white combinations. The secret is: look in the regular gift wrap aisle, not the Christmas one. I'll upload a picture as soon as I charge my camera. So, like April.