Reflections on Writing, and, a Fingerlakes Experience

One of my mothers (you garner multitudes of mothers when you grow up homeschooled among wonderful people) said to me yesterday that she still checks my blog for updates. I felt honored by this but also slumped, as I haven't been posting in ages. It's not that my life isn't word-worthy; I do have a lot going on. But I remember back to my "younger years", back in college, my first jobs, my graduate school, and how I would unabashedly post any little story. Reading back on these, I had a delightful shameless exuberance in writing and processing my experiences, without stopping to worry that no one would read (your mothers will always read), finding my experiences so noteworthy that they had to be written about. Being so much in love with life that I couldn't help but share it. If you're not David Sedaris who unfailingly entertains when he writes, it takes a certain amount of innocence to write stories of your life all the time, because mine for certain will not unfailingly entertain.

What my mother said yesterday really got me thinking. Even if I don't write a post three times a week like I did in college, even if I write infrequently, I still want to capture word birds when I'm inspired, and write. When I write, sitting there tailoring words to capture an experience, my life feels richer, even if just for the tautological mental reason to justify writing about it. 

"You should be a writer" people would tell me, after laughing about a story about the dining hall, or after following an entire bicycle trip through a rugged land. Instead I am an agricultural science research technician and an organist. But I write. Which makes me a writer. More and more, my job at Cornell has begun to encompass writing: grants, editing other's papers, putting together reports for farmers, recently submitting a scientific journal article. Maybe I'm good at it, even if writing about soil organic carbon won't be entertaining for most of you. 

So here's a little post of something from a few weeks ago. It's about the joys of living in a specific place, a place with a character unto itself. In Seattle I lived the character of soft rain showers and bicycle lanes, in Colombia it was the unstoppable heat and the unstoppable good nature of the people, in New Orleans it was the jazz and the spicy food and the young ambition. These places where you're in them, they're full of little signals and distinct markers that tell how they are most decidedly themselves. 

I live now in the Fingerlakes. A place of glacier carved landscapes, vineyards, wineries. A love of local food and farming. Small towns rich with creative young ventures involving food and wine, camaraderie among all these people who work the land and the wineries. I cannot imagine anything more infused with the Fingerlakes Experience than being courted by a local foods chef here. 

I got to step into a different world recently. This chef, Chef Kevin, had worked with a local wine-maker and bed and breakfast owner to put on a fingerlakes wine pairing dinner. Candle light, fancy dress, each course paired with a wine to match flavor to flavor. Dinner tickets were magnificently expensive and I could not imagine spending that much money on one single meal. It was also on the other side of the hulking hump of land between Cayuga and Seneca lakes, and no buses went there, so this meant a hilly crawl of 22 miles. I told him I wanted to support his efforts, but I was having trouble justifying the money. And then he explained why, exactly, he wanted me to be there. Not to support him, either monetarily or emotionally. But instead because he wanted me to see this beloved world of his that I’ve never experienced: exquisitely crafted food, paired thoughtfully with local wines. High concept; basically, food as art and presentation. Like going to hear a symphony is much more expensive than listening to it on a CD, but a rich intentional experience. (In which Sandra gleefully experiences a surprise benefit of dating this chef: in the end, they wouldn't let me pay for a ticket anyway.) 

And so, I squirreled out of work early, wadded a dress into my bicycle pannier, and then crawled those hills between the lakes, reflecting on how completely I would earn this gorgeous meal. The ride was a spread of tall clouds in resplendent shades of grey, the climb from one lake to reach the pinnacle between them, to fly down towards the other. I arrived early, to find Chef Kevin quietly swearing at a succession of buckwheat crepes folding over on themselves, sun pouring into the kitchen of the bed and breakfast. The “edible flowers” he had on his menu for a course (atop a Szechuan-sweet potato bisque with falafels) he had been planning on harvesting from my grandparent’s backyard (oh, the hilarious folds of life!) but sadly they had just been mowed with the grass, so no wild viola available. So when I arrived off the bike, he enquired if the purple flowers in the yard of the bed and breakfast would suite. They were in fact Purple Deadnettle (no joy there) but I did bring him little white clusters of Garlic Mustard florets.

So then when he introduced that course I got to speak up from my place in the dining room and joke about eating invasive plants as conservation control measure.

I was entering a world of schmoozing; small talk, all these people (all couples) coming for this feast, introducing themselves, open and friendly. None of the couples knew any of the others, and I knew no one; but by the end it was like a big old house party, all of us along one big long table. I wondered what type of people come to a splendid wine dinner. One couple owned a local brewery, another was from New Jersey on a romantic Fingerlakes weekend, another were also bed and breakfast owners and enjoyers of wine. I chatted with everyone, and found myself perhaps to be charming even, joking about forgetting names (“but the next time when I ask you, you have to give me a different name”), and conspiratorially, with happy pride, leaned in and said I was dating the chef. I felt so pleased to see all these people with their eyes rolled back in their heads, really enjoying his food.  About the duck (free-range local) and buckwheat crepe course: “This is delicious and pairs so well with this chardonnay,” commented Mr. Brewery Owner. “I mean, well, it would pair well with pond water”, I replied.   

After the dinner, there happened to be a late-night hyper jazz pianist dance show (how’s that for descriptors!) at a rural bar, sweet mint cocktails, stars visible outside the lights of Ithaca, rows upon rows of grape vineyards on the drive there, bearded men in plaid who work the local farms. Most of the wine-dinner party progressed there, and I found myself in a set of couples going in, on the arm of Kevin. I met a dozen people I’ll never recognize again, and felt like an outsider in this star-gazed, weed-infused dancing crowd. I was poignantly aware that I was not there under my own transportation, reliant instead upon Mr. Winemaker who had driven us. I was doing my best to reflect on how it seems to be the highest achievement to craft all your systems to have everything under your control, but really, it may be even higher achievement to be flexible and at peace when you can’t have everything under your own control. Like not being able to leave when you’re tired. 

Since Kevin had cheffed at the bed and breakfast, it was part of the deal that we would stay there the night, since home was far and the party was late. But the bed and breakfast had an over-booking; there was no room at the inn. Instead, a creative adjustment was made. So, I got to add to my list of strange places slept: in the tasting room of Mr. Winemaker. On an air mattress. With a box of grape vines waiting to be planted, stacks of wine books, bottles and boxes of wine. A very fingerlakes experience indeed. 

 

Everyone was rather apologetic about that situation, but I thought it hilarious, and somehow perfectly fitting for my fingerlakes adventure (already comprising a wildly hilly bike ride, high-concept local food, a dance show, and getting to know the standards of the area: the wine makers and business owners and brewers). “For there was no room in the inn,” I joked to Mr. Winemaker as I walked under the stars to the tasting room, "maybe you’ll find baby Jesus tomorrow."

 

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