Every Fall
Kayaking in December in New England.
Last week I wrote that I don’t want my blogs here to be my just reposting my Substack. Unfortunately to stay viable int he Googleverse I have to post something here at least once a week. The stuff posted here, might be similar but it won’t be the same as the weekly Substack or it might be completely different. Who knows. The only thing I can guarantee is that it won’t be political.
Fall is here. Thankfully. For a number of reasons I am not a fan of summer. Not the least of which is the heat and humidity. The arrival of fall is something that I look forward to sometime around the end of April. Fall means cooler weather, shortening days, woodsmoke in the air and a fire in the hearth. All good things.
This year, a bunch of us will be paddling on a different part of the river. We will start off at the head of the Blackstone in Worcester, Massachusetts and paddle down to link up with the main body closer to where the trip normally will start. Most years, the trip has been a leisurely, social, paddle downriver. I anticipate that the rest of the trip will be just that, but those of us on the first part will have to paddle with some intent to make sure that the rendezvous is achieved.
This somewhat ambitious plan has led to some changes in how we normally do things. For the first part of the trip meals will be individually done, with the consensus being that dehydrated camping meals are the best thing. It’s better than MRE’s and I’ve had to eat those for weeks at a time.
This is a switch of another sort for me. Usually I cook one of the dinners for the group. I like to show off and make things that one doesn’t normally associate with camping. In the past that’s included Leg of Lamb, duck, or even Tortelli en Brodo. I like to make and dehydrate, Borscht. In short I am a bit of a camp cooking show off. It usually works, sometimes my hubris is rewarded with spectacular failures. Pro-tip, always have extra dehydrated Borscht and hard liquor to satisfy the hungry masses. They’ll forgive a lot if their bellies are full and they’re well lubricated to boot.
I was discussing this with my good friend, former roommate, and frequent co-conspirator Fred. Fred often serves to reel me in. We all need that one friend who calls bullshit on us and he does that for me. Like a couple of years ago after floating down river, clinging to the sides of the canoes for a couple of hours (don’t ask, that’s a whole separate blog or podcast of it’s own). We had pulled out after the great canoe cling of ’22, ours was the last boat. He told me quite pointedly that everyone was all set and I should put on dry clothes. I was going hypothermic and hadn’t stopped long enough to figure it out. He pointed out the obvious.
This year, in anticipation of the trip I was asking his advice about dehydrated camping meals. He works for a big name camping/outdoors retailer and knows his stuff. While asking his advice, I mentioned that it was going to be a little weird not having to cook for everyone. He pointed out, dryly, “Yeah, you might actually enjoy it.” Or words to that effect. Yeah, I might at that.