Various animals eat birds. Many animals kill them indiscriminately - as we all would, if we just had the time - but some eat the ones that they like best. They eat the birds that taste good. While tasty birds get devoured, foul ones (sorry) get to hang out and make more bad-tasting birds. So the bird population is continually being depleted of tasty birds. And the repulsive ones keep coming back. Now this process has been going on for centuries, ...no!....hundreds of millennia!! Think about it....the birds on the earth today are perhaps the worst tasting, flying objects ever to exist!!! And what can we do about it??? Nothing. Except we can come to the harsh, sobering conclusion that WE TOO must taste pretty bad in the whole range of animal-foods on earth. And I ask you, isn't that comforting?
Libby loaded the potato on the mechanical arm and squinted through the crosshairs of the night vision scope. It was not just any potato, it was an Idaho Russet: the ideal shape and throw-weight for the latest version of the Libby Veggiepult. She squeezed the trigger gently, making sure not to jostle the delicate, sprung arm. A click and then a snap. The resulting projectile soared with alarming speed and accuracy.
Libby jotted down some measurements with a mechanical pencil in a lavender notebook that smelled of stale coffee. Crumbs from various baked goods were nested in the spiral binding, indicating the long hours of meticulous entries and calculations. "Russet #8 - unshaven" was printed in permanent marker on the cover.
Even the fish felt nervous.
Pine needles dance on the floor of the canyon in the orange glow of my little campfire tickling the dry Colorado air of mid-summer. Nearby cool streams carve the rock while trout swim single-file to the freer waters of the sprawling lakes below. It is very human to experience this wonderment: too many things going on at once in a great play, but all out of reach and somehow vague in this too distant, wide open land of rock, sun, sky and scrub. Even the trees sing in thier dry, scratchy voices. Each tree, much older than any human, actually much older than any creature, oversees the plateau, wise and old and patient. With gnarled limbs and scarred bodies, these remaining living stories define the wilderness. A place to reflect...
Two miles high, the deepest blue sky winked and drew me near
Alarmingly quiet, mountain silence a diet for my urban ear;
Rocky and jagged, the rocks stood ragged and somehow wiser than me
In all directions, thousands of questions about how all this could be;
Vast and distant, I saw at this instant how the land was folded here
And so onward I went, hunched and bent and set aside my fear.
"Why should I climb all the way up, just to get down again."
(Orion 3000)
"A punch doesn't occur, it happens"
(Yago McFiend)
I cannot avoid thinking about my cheese. It should arrive any day now and I long to carve it. As a veteran cheese sculptor, I know the perils inherent with carving Vermont Sharp Cheddar (#41) what with its tendency to crumble upon a missed stroke of the blade and its extremely high oxidation rate. To be clear, #41 is not a novice's medium. However, #41 possesses a richness of color and a pure, raw, powerful presence you just don't find in a simpler variety. And no gouda or provalone could ever match the uniform luster of a small-gauge cheddar. My vision is to "rescue" a golden eagle clutching a sockeye salmon, currently entombed in this cheesen block. I will free this form and let her beauty shine in dairy wonderment. It will be futile to ponder how this celebrated bird - captured here in rich ripened curd - could never take wing. I cannot avoid thinking about my cheese.