Follow That Sign to Shake-up an Adventure

While I’m not much for adventures that involve crowds, loud noise, or frenetic activity, I enjoy out of the ordinary explorations. We unexpectedly hit the magic button on our latest road trip and found ourselves looking through several families’ no longer needed treasures and eating Indian tacos. Even better, a Shoshone grandmother prepared our food under blue Wyoming skies. While we ate, we enjoyed visiting with her husband, a tribal artist whose work hangs in offices and homes around the world. 

The key to our unplanned side trip was a garage sale sign stuck along the ditch of a road through a reservation. Once we spied the invite, we said, “Let’s see what they’ve got.” The irony in that comment is that both of us are over sixty and have plenty our own loot we could sell and not miss. Despite knowing we have dust collectors decorating our home, we can’t help but inspect what other people have spent a lifetime acquiring. Heck, who knows when you’ll find a petrified dinosaur tooth or a Made in Occupied Germany teacup?

While we didn’t find dinosaur dental work or rare porcelain, we did find aged buffalo horns, an antique hunting knife, a heavy chef’s skillet, local literature, and homemade Indian tacos made by a professional.

Over decades, I’ve learned garage sales are perfect places to sample local foods. In Northwest Kansas, I’ve bought German bierocks, hertzen, spitzbuben, and Bohemian kolaches. You know when you see the “homemade” sign, you’re in for a treat. There’s something about a woman serving her family recipes that makes her put her best work into what ends up as food for gods.

The lesson learned on this journey was that women everywhere share this  tradition. The silver-haired elder shaping a dough ball before frying it in hot oil was every bit as proud of her traditional food as women in Ellis, Rooks, Rush, Russell, and Trego Counties who tempt taste buds with mouthwatering fare. As she swiftly formed  an oval, the cook explained she could never make her recipe in batches that served less than 80 people. With that kind of practice, it’s no wonder forming those discs looked so easy.

I like making fry bread myself, but this woman’s was better than mine. As I listened to the bread sizzle on the camp stove, I told her how I mixed my simple ingredients. In a flash, she identified two ways to improve my recipe. Ironically, one of those was the addition of butter flavored Crisco to the flour mixture until it crumbled like pie dough before adding liquid. She also let me know my use of milk  darkened and hardened my product. After seeing her golden results, she’s right.

We ate under mid-August rays, savoring chili, lettuce, tomato, and cheese –topped fry bread and discussing Indian art, native colleges, and garage sale bargains. By the end of our meal, we knew one another’s names as well as our preferences for serving this traditional staple. 

Following our instincts and turning into that garage sale was the best part of our expedition. We may not have found an ancient fossil, but every time I make fry bread I’ll smile and recall this chance encounter where I learned to cook from an expert.

Living Life between the White Lines

Some of us rise long before dawn breaks the horizon and hit narrow two lane highways in night’s deepest black. For these folks, life between the white lines balances boredom caused by limited visibility  with edge of the seat, adrenaline-rushing thrills.

Early each morning I turn east on Highway 9 and immediately shrink to a blip on the universe’s radar. If satellites actually watch cars passing down remote roads, I ‘d hardly be visible in my silver Toyota that blends in with a worn asphalt ribbon  connecting one shrinking farm town to another. I’d show up as two tiny eastward moving light rays.

To help me see better, I hit my high beams and begin a journey bordered by KDOT applied parallel stripes. Even on bright, my headlights don’t extend much outside those margins, so I take aim and stay within their confines.

It’s easy to succumb to the monotony of a daily journey over a known road, but on shoulderless highways like 9, it’s wise to keep to the path. Too many accidents begin with a veer over that asphalt lip, followed by a corrective jerk of the steering wheel that actually sends the car out of control. Not wanting to become a statistic, I let those edges work like the guide on a sewing machine to keep me on the straight and narrow. 

While the headlights focus mostly on the road between those strips and the calf scour yellow broken or continuous center lines, spilled light reveals tawny bluestem or waving brome outside those borders. My eyes continually scan that little Serengeti for bits of reflected green. This little tell may be my only warning before a car/deer collision.

I’ve been driving this route long enough to recognize distinctive headlights. A small car with only one headlight shining  like a bright-eyed Cyclops meets me every morning about ten miles out of town. Though I wouldn’t know the driver if I met him or her, I recognize that vehicle’s familiar wink when I see it coming over a hill.

Ditch grasses stand as silent witnesses to passersby and kamikaze creatures that fling themselves into grills and under wheels. One morning, four raccoons had met their end in a thirty-six mile stretch. Sometimes, all that remains is an unrecognizable speed bump.

It isn’t just hitting a critter that gets a driver’s adrenaline rushing. Those near misses raise heartbeats as well. It took a few controlled breaths to still my own pump after a coyote raced in front of me the other morning. Lucky for him, he lived to eat another rabbit. If I were faster, he’d have been carrion.

 

Lowering speeds to 55 or 60 isn’t always enough to avoid wildlife between those white lines. One morning I dodged a buck sprinting across the highway only to run into a herd of deer up the road. I saw them soon enough to slow, but not soon enough to halt. One less doe will produce a fawn next spring.

In a world confined by dark edges, life between the white lines is more than a little exciting. Despite the narrow boundaries, adventure and thrills await.