Bear Witness

Had a great crop this year, and it’s not done.  We just started harvesting.  Wow.  The vegetables are big.  So I decided to showcase the vegetables next to objects you’d recognize….my pen, a bottle of T-3s, my truck.  

The one next to the bottle made me think about the difference between something that comes out of the ground and something that comes out of a bottle.  I like ’em both, but I think if I had more fresh garden vegetables that soon I wouldn’t need anything else. 

The garden was a work of art this year.  I am so proud of the labor that went into it, into weeding, into caring for it.  The carrots are big and sweet, the potatoes rich.  And the greens they grow so high…

I learned a lot from growing the garden.  The patience.  The time involved on your hands and knees rooting out the chickweed.  Sweating in the Yukon sun.  These are mini-accomplishments, like trophies.  And it’s a nice thing to do in the Yukon on these long summer days inside a quick and dirty summer–10 weeks, maybe.  We had so much sun this summer.  If you were thinking about leaving the Yukon after the last three summers, this summer wooed you back.

I’m gonna fix a sheep stew tomorrow–fresh Dall Sheep that was walking around last week (I did not shoot it, but I did help cut it up)–and fresh vegetables.  A lot of work went into that stew and I’ll remember the two guys who trekked across the mountains in gale-force winds and rain to get this sheep to my kitchen.  And I’ll remember the hours I spent in the garden waiting for the vegetables to get big enough to leave the garden and enter my kitchen.  

And I’ll say to myself—hey, this cures whatever ails me–this summer stew.