Green Pinecone Season
Hello from Megabus
April 18, 2024, 10:45 AM
High 83ºF/ Low 50ºF, partly cloudy, pressure 1016 mb, waxing gibbous
After a month of chutes and ladders, I’m bumping down the road on a blue-sky day.
48 hours behind the wheel of our car, a total solar eclipse + family reunion.
Four weekends of white water raft guide training, including the rescue of three civilians stranded on a rock due to a rapid increase in river level.
One whole year of being back in the US of A.
There’s just something about the world moving by outside the window that helps. Helps what? I’m not sure, but maybe we all know what I mean.
We took a drive to our sailboat Azimuth before the Texas trip.
Sailing season officially begins next weekend. Our marina is hosting US Coast Guard safety checks, docking instructions, and a ritual burning of….socks! Aside from fun, we don’t have any big plans for the boat. Nowhere to be before hurricane season rolls in. Ahhh.
We set up our new Starlink antenna, an upgrade that allows us to extend boat time into the workweek. We watched episodes of the new Avatar and ate breakfast sandwiches from the local cafe. We knocked a few expected and unexpected items off the to-do list and were happy as clams doing dirty jobs like toilet maintenance and cleaning mold out of the refrigerator (note to self: leave the fridge on or propped open). I drove to the gas station to buy bleach and milk. I made a pot of coffee using the last of the beans. We met a few of our dock neighbors and did some stargazing.
Many moons ago, my co-captain spotted the Forager Chef’s recipe for mugolio and we’ve been on the hunt for green pinecones ever since. We avoided Googling the timing of the pinecones, waiting instead for them to reveal themselves on our regular walkabouts. We pulled into the gravel parking lot of the marina and a big branch covered in cones dipped down in front of our windshield. We spent thirty minutes or so picking the cones. Later I made DIY Pinesol with vinegar and pine needles. A few days later, we put up a few jars of cones and sugar to create mugolio, a sweet syrup.
I love how fermentation and other cooking projects play with ingredients and time.
For more, check out my posts on yogurt, kombucha, and tepache.
When I started writing this post, I wondered if there was a thread to pull between this bus ride and that pinecone gathering. Then I lifted my eyes from the screen to attend my friend Dahlia’s weekly meditation group and saw that the path from Virginia to North Carolina was lined with Loblolly pines, just like the lands around the marina. Our path to Texas had an uncountable number of green pinecones too. I have been planting my feet here on land, aiming for a happy, sustainable pace.
Part of the way through meditation, the bus stopped for a 25-minute rest. The sunshine called me out of my seat to hear the birds and put my bare feet in the grass.
The year is speeding up and my nose is clogged from pollen. Someday soon, I’ll drench my pancakes with syrup made from the potential of forests.
We are prepping to tell stories from our voyage and hope to see some of you there!
Chesapeake Bay Yacht Club - Easton, MD - May 2
Encinal Yacht Club - Oakland, CA - June 13
Be in touch if you want to host us, especially in places we have called home: Grand Rapids, Chapel Hill, Brooklyn, and Richmond.