Wines I'm Making: Shoot Thinning and First Sulfur Spraying (April 27, 2013)

Over the weekend (April 27) I thinned the shoots on the grape vines. The longest shoots are already about 18 inches long. I left two shoots to each node except on the strongest vines, where I have always left twice that many with no apparent ill consequences. On the one or two weaker vines, I leave one in the hopes that that will encourage a strong cane as a foundation for next year's growth. The vines generally look healthy and strong, though. I did the first sulfur spraying as well. So far everything looks good. This year, 2013, will be our tenth vintage.

Beekeeping: New Swarm Installed (April 21, 2013)

Yesterday I was offered a swarm of bees in Vallejo, about an hour's drive away, but it was worth the trip. My bees died over last winter. I was looking for a swarm. New bees are now about $100 for a hive start, which seems a lot of money, as I bought my first package of bees for only $35--but that was back in 2001 or so--long before so many bee colonies began failing. I had to climb up on a garage roof and help the owner, a beekeeper himself (thanks, David) lop branches off a plum tree to get to the cluster of bees. I got them in a box prepared for the purpose and then drove home with them on the seat beside me. In the late afternoon, I deposited the swarm in an empty hive. The bees were rather agitated for a while and a couple of groups spent the night in little clusters outside the hive, but, by this morning, they seemed to have taken to their new home and I'm hopeful they'll thrive. It takes about 21 days to raise a new bee. By the first week of May I should know if the queen is laying and worker bee numbers are growing.

Music I'm Listening To: The San Francisco Symphony with Soloist Augustin Hadelich (April 21, 2013)

On Friday night (April 19) I had the pleasure of attending a San Francisco Symphony performance. Conductor laureate Herbert Blomstedt led the orchestra in Beethoven's Violin Concerto and the Nielsen Symphony No. 5. German violinist Augustin Hadelich was soloist in the Beethoven concerto.

I suspect Mr. Hadelich made quite a few new fans on Friday night. His articulation was remarkable. The performance had a wonderful clarity. I heard notes in the concerto that I wasn't even aware were there--perhaps because many violinists slur them most of the time. I don't know, but the overall impression was one of breathtaking precision--which is not to say that the playing lacked lyrical qualities where lyrical qualities were required. Hadelich had a way of slightly cheating the duration of certain notes at the end of phrases that created an interesting tension.

Mr. Hadelich, according to the program notes, plays the 1723 Ex-Kiesewetter Stradivarius, on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society. I'm not aware of having heard this instrument before, but it had a kind of middle-of-the-road clarity that seemed well suited to Mr. Hadelich's controlled, no-nonsense style. I think this is a fairly late Strad. Stradivarius's extant violins range from 1666 (the Ex-Beck) to 1737 (the Lord Norton and the Comte d'Amaille). Some of the earlier ones seem to have rather stronger characteristics. The 1716 Booth, played now by Arabella Steinbacher, for example, has a certain gritty throatiness in the low register but sounds sweet at the high end. The 1715 Ex-Marsick that James Ehnes plays is rather sweet sounding throughout the range. Joshua Bell's 1713 Gibson Strad is especially lush sounding, which seems appropriate given Bell's fondness for rather romantic works.

Overall, very impressive. This was among the best performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto I've ever heard. The audience seems to have agreed with me. The members of the Symphony onstage seemed mesmerized listening to the cadenzas in the solo part and the hall burst into spontaneous applause at the end of the first movement. Much has been said recently about whether or not to applaud in the middle of multi-movement classical pieces. Generally, I like to hear the whole before applauding, but the audience was thrilled and I have every sympathy for the expression of appreciation in this case. Conductor Blomstedt, however, clearly disapproved, gesturing to the audience to stop with fingers waved behind his back (and apparently annoyed again at the end of the first movement of the Nielsen--although in that case, I suspect the applause was simply the result of confusion about whether the music had ended).

At the close of the Beethoven, Mr. Hadelich received a long standing ovation, to which he responded with an encore. I was pleased that he announced beforehand what he was going to play (Paganini's Caprice No. 24). I have no doubt I would have recognized it as a Paganini caprice, but I would have had to do some research to figure out which one it was. It's funny how very familiar pieces of music can be difficult to put a name to.

After intermission the ensemble played the Nielsen symphony--a rather expansive piece that seems always to be spilling out of a vessel too small for it. In some sections, it gave the impression of a solid wall of sound that was difficult to process. Elsewhere, the music became suddenly more melodic. There are some interesting textures here, but it was a lot to absorb all at once. I've certainly heard this before. I may even have a recording of it, but it's been a long time. While I've always found Nielsen interesting, and I certainly have a number of recordings of his music, they aren't recordings of music I turn to repeatedly. It's been many years since I've heard much Nielsen at all. I remember buying several Nielsen LPs in college at what was then my favorite haunt--Mole's Records, in Columbus, Ohio. Perhaps it's time to listen to some of them with more mature ears.

Had a tasty dinner afterwards at Absinthe. The yam and goat cheese ravioli were delicious. The emphasis was more on the yams than on the goat cheese. The slight sweetness of the yams went very well with a Fonsainte Grenache rosé I had from Corbieres. I enjoyed my appetizer (tuna tartare) with a Pouilly Fuissé.

Photographs of conductor Herbert Blomstedt and violinist Augustin Hadelich courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony.

Wines I'm Making: The Vines Have Awakened (April 10, 2013)

Warm weather the past few days has coaxed leaves out of the sleeping grape vines. As usual, the Sangiovese vines are ahead of the Cabernet vines. The Sangiovese sprouts are a couple of inches long, the largest leaves as big across. The Cabernet Franc vines are showing a little green. Buds on the Cabernet Sauvignon vines look just about ready to burst. A new year of winemaking begins. 2013 will be our tenth vintage.

Found Art: Battered Air Conditioner (April 10, 2013)

It's not often that you see an old-fashioned air conditioner pushed into a window around here. It's not hot enough at night. I remember these mostly from New York, long ago. This one, in a San Anselmo store window, has been battered about rather thoroughly, but the crushed vanes created a rather interesting pattern, I thought. Found art.

For more found art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Plants I'm Growing: Phlomis, Rose "Flutterby" (April 5, 2013)

A lot of flowers coming into bloom in the garden now. The first Phlomis blossom opened on April 3 (pictured). The first flowers on the big climbing rose called "Flutterby" at the front of the house opened yesterday, April 4. Lithodora diffusa, a ground cover with a pretty star-shaped flower started blooming today. Most of the Ceanothus varieties in the garden are in full bloom. The sound around them is amazing; Ceanothus attracts a startling range of insects. Pacific Iris are in bloom, and leaves are just appearing on the smoke tree in front of the house. Both our pink crabapple tree and our "Pink Lady" apple tree are in bloom. The large salvia "Point Sal Spreader" is in bloom as well. The wisteria behind the house looks like it will start blooming soon, which always attracts many large bumblebees. A pretty time of the year.

Rain: Another 0.75 inches--But We Still Need More (April 5, 2013)

In the past couple of days we've had another 0.85 inches of rain. That brings our total for the 2012-2013 rain year to 24.55 inches. By this time of year we've had nearly 33 inches of rain in an average year, so we are more than 8 inches behind normal. We still need more rain, but this recent rain has been significant.

Wines I'm Making: Hard Cider Success (March 31, 2013)

Success. Yesterday I opened the first bottle of the hard cider I've just finished making--my first attempt. It was a great pleasure to hear the whoosh! as I lifted the bottle cap and to see a rush of bubbles rise to the surface of the liquid, indicating that the in-bottle, secondary fermentation had gone as planned. I was a bit skeptical two weeks ago when I dosed the cider with a little sugar and sealed it up to wait for a silent fermentation to work its magic. I had feared something overlooked, some mistake would result in a cider as flat as when I put it in the bottles.

I giggled. I was reminded of my first real chemistry experiment. We precipitated a bright yellow lead compound out of colorless liquids. Magic, indeed. I felt the same giddy pleasure looking at my cider that I felt then, in high school chemistry class, when the classroom experiment worked just the way the teacher said it would.

I suspect this batch will disappear quickly and that I'll want to do it all over again. In the fall, I hope to use real pressed apples rather than store-bought apple juice (albeit of a very good quality; after all, we're only a stone's throw from the apple orchards of Sebastopol).  

The cider has a good apple aroma. Delicate apple flavors on the palate. Quite dry with a light carbonation that adds interest. Overall, subtle and delicious. Exactly two months start to finish. The first related post is here. For more, use the search box to search for "cider."    

Rain: We Need More (March 31, 2012)

A hint of rain a few days ago and off-and-on showers last night have together added 0.30 inches to our precipitation total for the 2012-2013 rain year. The total at my Santa Rosa location is now 23.30 inches--still well below normal. We need more rain.

[Update: We got a little more rain, on April 1--an additional 0.40 inches, bringing the total as of April 2 to 23.70 inches. That's still low, but as improvement. More rain is in the forecast for the rest of this week.]

Food I'm Eating: Sparkling Olives, Anyone? (March 30, 2013)

About a week ago I bottled up the first of two batches of olives I've been making. These are a small variety from a tree that grows in our garden. The second batch is still in the brine stage. They are larger olives from a neighbor's tree that take longer to lose their bitterness. I was looking at the bottled olives yesterday and noticed that the metal lids of the mason jars I used looked somewhat puffy. Suspicious, I opened one and found a fairly vigorous fermentation going on.

Carbonated olives? A bit strange, but the bubbles dissipated overnight (I left the jars open). The olives do have a slight prickle, however. Not unpleasant and the flavor otherwise is great, but I wonder what happened? I did NOT refrigerate the jars after closing them. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps the brine they are packed in was too weak? I decided to add a teaspoon of wine vinegar and a teaspoon of salt to each of the jars and I put them in the refrigerator this time. I hope the fermentation stops. I need an olive guru to tell me what's going on....

In the meantime, I keep eating them.

Plants I'm Growing: Spring in the Garden (March 22, 2013)

A lot going on in the garden now. Daffodils are blooming. Candytuft is now in full bloom, along with creeping phlox. The dwarf peach and nectarine trees are in full bloom as well. Rosemary of all sorts is awash with blue, as are most of the Ceanothus varieties we have. Yesterday the "Snow Fountain" weeping cherry started to bloom and Michelia yunnanensis (pictured), a magnolia relative native to East Asia (and one of my favorite plants in the whole garden) started to bloom on March 20. The first of its cinnamon-sheathed buds opened on March 29 last year (2012), so this is a bit early. It bloomed on March 29 also in 2011. It bloomed on Aril 1 in 2009, but on March 22 in 2010.

Rain--Showers This Week (March 22, 2013)

Showers earlier this week gave us some much-needed precipitation. Rain on Tuesday and Wednesday (March 19 and 20) added 0.55 inches to our total for the 2012-2013 rainy season. We have now had 23.00 inches at my location, although some locations have had a little more. That's considerably below normal for this date in Santa Rosa, which is over 31 inches. Average annual precipitation in Santa Rosa has been a little over 36 inches.

Food I'm Eating: Olives 2013--First Batch Finished (March 22, 2013)

I bottled our first batch of 2013 olives the day before yesterday. These are made from our own tree--smaller than those from our neighbor's tree. The larger olives are still a little bitter, so I changed the brine they're in and will give them another week or so. I brined these smaller ones on February 10, so they took about five weeks to make, which seems typical for the smaller variety. I bottled up about six pints. The lemons, wine vinegar, garlic, and herbs I added this year give them quite a nice flavor.

Found Art: Brown Paper and Sunlight (March 18, 2013)

Early morning sunlight transformed this unfolded paper bag into a study in line and shadow. I like the contrast between the sharp creases and the soft, puffy folds. Found art.

For more found art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Wines I'm Making: Hard Cider Bottled (March 16, 2013)

Bottled the hard cider yesterday--my first attempt at making the stuff. I dosed my three gallons of fully fermented liquid with 78 grams of dextrose to fuel a secondary fermentation in the bottles--which will give the cider a little sparkle. I hope I've calculated the sugar correctly; the proper amount is supposed to be 3/4 of a cup of sugar to five gallons of cider. I converted that to grams and reduced the amount appropriately for three gallons. Too much sugar will mean too much fermentation, which will mean too much carbon dioxide production and possibly more pressure than the crown caps can hold. I hope the bottles don't burst. I've been told that I should leave them at room temperature for about two weeks to do their thing (until March 30). Then I'm supposed to throw a couple bottles into the 'fridge and give 'em a try when they're nice and cold--that's the delivered theory anyway. Fingers crossed.

Wines I'm Making: Vines Pruned (March 14, 2013)

In the past couple of days I've finally finished pruning the grape vines and making some progress toward getting the nets put away. They will have to be squared away before I can weed under the two rows of plants. I hope the grapes do well this year. 2013 will be our 10th vintage.

Music I'm Listening To: The San Francisco Symphony at the Green Music Center (March 7, 2013)

I attended the March 7, 2013 performance of the San Francisco Symphony at the Green Music Center. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted Drift and Providence, by Samuel Carl Adams, the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 (Yuja Wang, soloist), and the Brahms Symphony No. 1.  Conductor Thomas led a precise and satisfying interpretation of the Brahms symphony with an especially lush second movement. The woodwinds in particular were memorable, especially the oboe in the first movement, the clarinet in the second, and the flute in later movements. The oboe sounded especially poignant following the sudden unexpected death of the Symphony's principal oboist, William Bennet, February 28, following his collapse from a brain hemorrhage on February 23 during a performance. The basses, trombones, and percussion were remarkably resonant. This new hall seems to emphasize the low end of things. I wonder if conductors have to learn a new hall and adjust their performances to it? I imagine they do. The tympani at the end of the piece were played with special verve, I thought.

Yuja Wang's performance of the Beethoven Concerto was met with a standing ovation. With the exception of a momentary stumble in the first movement (my imagination?) it was impeccable, marked by crisp articulation and fleet fingering. She wore a citron yellow gown off one shoulder with a draped bodice and a long, full skirt with a daring slit--very pretty and rather more conventional than the "bathing suit" she chose the last time I saw her perform.

To me, however, the highlight of the evening was the opening piece, Drift and Providence. I didn't realize until today (reading the program notes) that Samuel Adams is the son of composer John Adams. It runs in the family, apparently, as does art generally: His mother is photographer Deborah O'Grady. I also see from the liner notes that the piece is in five movements, each of which is labeled with references to the West, and San Francisco in particular. Listening to the piece for the first time without knowing that, I'd have been hard-pressed to say where one movement began and another ended. The music clearly had sections, but the overall effect was of a broad, multifaceted, shifting layer of sound with no clearly defined breaks. Talking with the composer after the concert, he called it "kaleidoscopic." It gave me the impression of a progression from a mellow, sleepy state to a new state of consciousness more agitated and aware than the first, followed by a kind of compressed recapitulation of that progression and then a raucous summing up. The early parts of the piece suggested metal wind chimes, a gamelan orchestra, wind, and waves--but all as if heard with the ears of someone heavily drugged--this followed by a shift (the "drift" of the title, no doubt) in the direction of something brighter. The dreamy, shimmering quality of much of Drift and Providence is enhanced by the use of a computerized feed of processed sound, manipulated by the composer during the performance. It's a piece I'd like to hear again.

We attended a gathering for the artists after the concert. Yuja Wang decided not to appear. Michael Tilson Thomas looked bored and distracted and eager to leave--not that I blame him. Samuel Adams was a delight to talk with. It turns out he lives in Brooklyn, where I spent my earliest years. He even knew the street I lived on, St. John's Place--our stickball field.

Photos courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony. Photo of Deutsche Grammophon artist Yuja Wang © Felix Broede. Photo of composer Samuel Carl Adams by Deborah O'Grady.

Rain: Storm Brought More Rain This Week (March 8, 2013)

Storms earlier in the week brought strong winds and a little more rain. We got 0.55 inches at my location. That brings our total for the 2012-2013 rain year to 23.45 inches. Average for this date in March is a little over 29 inches, so we are about 5.5 inches below normal now, having been nearly 10 inches ahead near the start of the season.

Plants I'm Growing: In the Garden (March 5, 2013)

Activity is beginning to pick up in the garden, although it's started pouring with rain today, which will likely ruin the flowers on the fruit trees. In the past few days, the Flavor Queen pluot and the Santa Rosa plum have come into bloom. The golden current (Ribes aureum) is in full bloom (photo below). The manzanitas are blooming, and the dwarf peach and nectarine behind the house are coming into bloom as well (photo above).

Food I'm Eating: Olives 2013 (March 5, 2013)

The olives are coming along nicely. They've been in brine for going on a month now. I started them on February 10. Two years ago when I made olives I simply brined them. This year, following a recipe my neighbor used, I left them in brine for the first three weeks, but a few days ago I drained them and put them in containers with new brine, substituting a quarter cup of red wine vinegar for some of the water and added lemons, bay leaves, and a mix of herbs, including rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and savory--in a typical herbs de Provence sort of blend. The rosemary is from the garden. The smaller olives (I used two varieties, one from our own tree, one from a neighbor's tree) are nearly ready. In fact, I may transfer them back to plain brine sooner rather than later so they don't take on too much of the vinegar character. The larger ones are still somewhat bitter and will require another week or so. The brining seems to take about five to six weeks. So far, they look (and taste) very promising. To see the original post on this blog about this year's olives or about making olives in past years, search on "olives" in the search box.

Beekeeping: Harvesting Honey (March 5, 2013)

The past few days have been occupied with harvesting honey from my beehive. Sadly, we lost the bees again this year. With no bees to tend the comb, I decided I'd have to remove all the honey from the hive to avoid its being ruined or robbed by other bees or wasps. It took four days--mostly because I was extracting honey in the midst of doing other work, but it was still a big job. I harvested enough honey for a couple of years at least (55 pounds). Local friends and family will be getting presents, but I may try making mead.

The hive does not appear to be diseased. It's not clear what happened. I had seen activity as recently as about three weeks before I realized something was wrong. On one of the few recent warm days we've had, no bees were entering or leaving the hive and it was clear that the colony was lost. I'm hoping to find a swarm of bees as soon as possible, to get the hive going again. 

Wines I'm Drinking: 2010 Windsor Oaks Vineyards Russian River Valley Rosé of Pinot Noir

I opened a bottle of the 2010 Windsor Oaks Vineyards Russian River Valley Rosé of Pinot Noir tonight and was pleasantly surprised--not that I had any reason to expect this wine wouldn't be good. I was surprised simply because I like rosé and I'm always happy to find interesting ones, and many are dull. Brief tasting notes follow.

A very pretty wine--as a rosé should be. A beautiful brandy-tinged pink. Very attractive in the glass. Scents of strawberries and watermelon with a hint of caramel in the background. On the palate, very much as suggested by the nose--a sweet, fruity impression at first, suggestive of watermelon and strawberries, but also with a slightly caramelized or brandied flavor as well. Hints of cherries and almonds on a fairly extended finish. Good balancing acidity. The label calls this wine "refreshing, but NOT SWEET" (emphasis theirs), but this seems quite sweet to me. Although the label says the winemaker has modeled the wine after the very dry rosés of Europe, I would call this an off-dry rosé, not a rosé that's been fermented completely dry. Despite that, I enjoyed it. It has character--although my taste in rosé is for significantly drier wines. Retail price about $16.

(I have no financial connection with any producer or retailer of wine.)

Wines I'm Making: Hard Cider--Second Racking (February 25, 2013)

Yesterday, I racked the hard cider I'm making--the second racking ("racking" refers to taking the liquid off the lees and transferring it to a new container, part of the process of using gravity to clear it of sediment). I siphoned the liquid off the rather fluffy deposit at the bottom of the container and into a new, clean container. The first time I racked the cider I had to top up the vessel with nearly a pint of new liquid. I used fresh apple juice, which added sugar back that subsequently began to ferment again. That activity had mostly stopped.

This time, I filled the gap at the top of the container with finished local cider (only a small amount was required). I suspect I will have to rack my cider once more to get it completely clear, but it's mostly there. As the days have been a little warmer recently, I'll be watching for signs of ongoing fermentation, but I think it's mostly finished. After the final racking, I will bottle the cider and dose it with a touch of sugar to induce a final fermentation in the bottle, which should give it a little effervescence. I've never tried in-bottle fermentation before and never closed bottles with crown caps, but I will rely on the good guidance of the people at our local wine, beer, mead, cider, and cheese-making supply store, The Beverage People. Having just harvested about 60 pounds of honey from our (sadly dead) beehive, I may try making mead next.

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms--Pluot "Dapple Dandy" (February 23, 2013)

The first blossoms on the pluot called "Dapple Dandy" opened a couple days ago, on February 23. With no rain in the forecast, I'm hoping the tree will set some fruit this year. In recent years it has had almost none--but it  has mostly rained during flowering. The beehive has died, unfortunately, so the usual pollinators won't be around, but I'm hoping for the best. This post is, in fact, late because for the past few days I've been struggling to get the honey harvested from the hive; without the bees to attend it, it can't be left to sit (details of the honey harvest to follow).

Also, the first of the Tulipa bakeri tulips in the garden opened today (February 25). These have gradually dwindled in number and the number of blossoms on each plant has lessened as well. Probably time to plant new ones, or to fertilize the ones in the ground.

Plants I'm Growing: First Bloom--Pink Flowering Plum (February 15, 2013)

I belatedly note here that the pink flowering plum behind the house (Prunus blireiana) started blooming this year on February 15, which is within the range of its first blooming in the past. The tree bloomed on February 15 also in 2009, on February 4 in 2011, and on February 2 in 2012. I don't have a record for 2010, but it looks like the tree blooms early in February one year, the middle of the year the next. I expect it will bloom around February 3 in 2014. We'll see. The flowers are few again this year, as the sparrows and finches in the garden have eaten most of the buds. 

Wines I'm Making: Cider Racked (February 19, 2013)

My first attempt at making hard cider is coming along nicely. The fermentation had mostly stooped (after 20 days), so I racked the cider off its lees today. There was quite a lot of sediment in the bottom of the container, so I had to top it up after the racking. I used apple juice, fully expecting the new sugar to revive the fermentation a little, but so far there has been no reaction. It may just take time. We'll see what's going on tomorrow. In the photo, taken while siphoning the cider into a clean container, you can see the deep layer of sediment.

Plants I'm Growing: First blooms--Yellow Daffodils (February 18, 2013)

The first of the large yellow daffodils in the garden opened today.    This is somewhat late. In the past these have first opened as early as February 2 (2009) and no later than February 13 (2012) with dates of February 5 and February 2 in 2010 and 2011.

Found Art: Two Arrows (February 12, 2013)

Roadway arrows fascinate me. I don't know why. These two must have seemed confident and assertive when new. Now they are old and worn away, one overlaid with the other, this second one a newer, younger arrow that itself has faded. Looked like art to me.

For more found art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Art I'm Looking at: The Collages of Yuko Kimura

At this year's San Francisco Fine Print Fair (January 18-20, 2013) I came across the work of a young Japanese woman, Yuko Kimura, that impressed me greatly. It would be fair to say that, for me, seeing her work was the highlight of the show.

Ms. Kimura, born in Oakland but raised in Tokyo, now lives and works in Cleveland. She was at the venue, having come with the Verne Gallery, a Cleveland gallery specializing in Japanese prints and paintings that represents her.

She showed recent and older work from a number of different series. Despite this being a print fair, all of her work is collage, although she often overprints collage elements with ink, using various techniques, including etching, aquatint, and lithography. I was particularly taken by her "Journey through Mushikui" series. Mushikui means "worm hole" in Japanese. These small works are collages using sheets from old Japanese books riddled with worm holes. Pictured above is Journey through Mushikui Red No. 3, with the book pages overprinted in a rusty orange-red. I liked these collages for their juxtaposition of simple, straight-edged, geometrical forms (mostly the areas of printed color or negative space created by the printed areas) with the decidedly sinuous, contrastingly non-geometric text and line illustrations on the book pages, joined by the organic, random meanderings of the worm holes. A lot of the other work she showed is done using scraps of indigo-dyed cloth or paper or with areas printed in the color of indigo, evocative of worn, patched traditional Japanese rural garb. Ms. Kimura has a wonderful sense of composition and of color. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next.

Books I'm Reading: The Journals of Lewis and Clark

It must have been in 2004, on a trip to Oregon, that I bought my little edition of The Journals of Lewis and Clark. The Lewis and Clark group--the Corps of Discovery, as it was known--left St. Louis for the Pacific Ocean in 1804, and the book I purchased (on the road, at a gas station kiosk, if I remember correctly) is the Signet Classics 200th Anniversary Edition.

It had been sitting on my shelf since that trip. Last week, having finished Winston Churchill's six-volume history of WWII (more than 3,600 pages, not including many hundreds more in the form of appendices) I was looking for something shorter and for something different--and the journals are quite different from Churchill's detailing of the great military conflict of the 20th century, not least because the Journals involve very little killing--except of deer, elk, buffalo, beavers, and dogs, the animals that satisfied the hunger of the 30 or so men that made the long trip across the Western United States. Beaver tail, apparently, is rich in fat and tasty. Some men enjoy the taste of dog, it seems, while others find it vile. A number of weak horses were consumed along the way as well. Berries and roots were an occasional (and not very popular) respite from the meat. The group ate less fish than you might expect from the fact of their journey having mostly followed great river courses.

The expedition left in May 1804 and arrived back in St. Louis more than two years later, in September 1806. One woman was in the group, the famous Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman married to one Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian (in today's terms) trader, from Quebec. Although she is often described as a guide, the journals make clear (and editor John Bakeless points out in a number of places) that she acted mainly as an interpreter for the group, not as a guide; most of the journey was through territory she'd never seen before. She was of critical importance, however, in negotiations for the horses required for the crossing of the Rocky Mountains. Between St. Louis and the mountains and from the lands west of the mountains to the Pacific, most of the trip was made by boat--canoes and pirogues (although sandbars, beaver dams, and rocky rapids often required the men to carry the boats and their supplies), but horses were essential to cross the mountain range.

While the journal entries in this shortened version don't go into a lot of detail, they paint an overall picture of what it was like to travel for months on end, dependent on the land for food and always at risk of a misunderstanding with local Indians that might result in bloodshed. Remarkably, the party was involved in only one such incident in the two years of travel. Encounters with different tribes illuminate the character of each of them, and they appear to have been very different, ranging from the rather quiet and cooperative Mandans interested in trade with white men and the Pacific Coastal tribes that already in 1804 were long used to dealing with white men to one or two tribes with a propensity to larceny and to the proud and belligerent Sioux. In reading about President Jackson's dealings with native Americans I know that white men were in the habit of calling the president The Great Father and of trying to impress upon tribes the need to stay on good terms with the government of the United States, and, for reasons I don't quite understand, many tribes seem to have accepted that extremely condescending attitude. By the time of Jackson's presidency (1829-1837), I suppose it was apparent that the white man was a powerful force and such an attitude makes at least a modicum of sense. I was surprised, however, to read in the journals that already on the Lewis and Clark expedition interactions were often couched in such terms.

The vast distances covered, the open plains, the great herds of elk and buffalo, the rivers that were the highway Lewis and Clark followed across land now occupied by ten states are all impressively drawn.

A good read. Recommended. The Journals themselves, that is. I found this particular edition rather frustrating, however. It's very small, which makes the few map reproductions of little use. I would have liked larger, modern maps in addition to reproductions of the ones created by the explorers themselves, and a great deal more annotation, particularly notes relating places referred to in the Journals to their modern names (often Lewis and Clark use names they make up as they go along or names traders used or they use local tribal names), and a lack of an index seems a fairly major fault. If I had known, I would have looked for a fully annotated edition, which surely exists. This heavily abridged form (382 pages), however, has the advantage of relative brevity, and allows the reader to get a very good taste of the expedition without wading through the full text of the writings of its two leaders.