Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

It was while I was tamping fresh adobe off the soles of my boots today that I first started wondering if “what I eat” isn’t the full dietary issue. Maybe “how I prepare it” figures in, too.

I have to admit, that in these days of fending off partially-hydrogenated poisons, avoiding genetically-modified horror food and limiting my intake of high fructose diabetes potion, I give very little thought to Good Old-Fashioned Non-Transfat.

The regular kind of fat. The kind you find in organic, local, Funky Butte Ranch cheese, milk and ice cream. There is, my friends, no such thing as skim goat milk. In fact, I chose (off Craigslist) the goat breed known for the fattiest milk (Nubians) just in order to be able to feed one of my principle life addictions: ice cream.

I just don’t worry about it. If it’s raised here, I eat it, I exercise, and I call it good. But were the Mimbrenos who preceded me in this valley deep-frying their corn, beans and squash?

My thoughts were going in this direction because I noticed that for the entire second half of my hike today, with my increasingly heavy son strapped to my back, I was fantasizing about the fish tacos I was going to make when I got home. I was thinking more about the tacos than the scenery. I got famished midway in, instead of the usual three quarters of the way in, because today’s trek was unusually hard work.

Everything in my valley is wet. El Nino has provided us thirsty desert dwellers with a fairly constant and blessed deluge of rain, hail and snow of late. Dumped them on us, in fact. It’s the same weather pattern, incidentally, that’s leaving Portlanders blinking in the rare February sun.

Here, the arroyos have turned to clay. And yet despite the mushy creek-side bog that my usual route had become, causing my every ankle-seep step to end in a sucking fwop that my son found hysterical, I covered some distance today, because I recognized that this would be my final wilderness charge-up before I’m on battery power in Babylon for a week, takin’ care of business -– speaking events, meetings, airport terminals, and carbon offsets.

I know, I know, a week away isn’t much –- some people only get in one solid wilderness hike in a good year. But the back canyons of my valley are my Exploratorium and my playground.

(Sorry – back fifteen minutes later: a falcon in said Exploratorium and playground flew too near the chickens and I felt it was time for an urgent conversation with it surrounding this particular poultry buffet being permanently closed.)

So El Nino or no El Nino, I’m in no mood to issue rain delays on my hikes. Yes, it’s wet. Enough to get both my and my son’s overalls soaked when he, showing both his usual exuberance and customary experimentation, sprinted in for a mid-hike flash flood swim the moment I set him down to pull out my water bottle and his sippy cup. Not just into the first, ankle-deep channel, but the second, waist-deep one. Maybe his impulse was the manifestation of the return to the sea all we mammals primevally seek. Maybe the lost Atlantis is not on a map, but in our genetic memory.

In any event, hypothermia wasn’t an issue. Indeed, it’s warmer than February has been for, oh, about the last 12,000 years. Old-timer rancher neighbors tell me that my just-started-to-run creek (what biologists call “ephemeral”) used to flow nearly year ‘round. Plus, my sweetheart had knitted our little one’s wool socks, diaper cover, sweater, mittens, and hat, so the moment he was on my back again, the natural fibers became an insulated wet suit and he didn’t so much as shiver. Try that with space age, expensive, allegedly-waterproof, petroleum-based synthetic junk. (Gore-Tex and its cousins just represent the wrong way to think of the planet. It’s like GMO agriculture –- spray a chemical on fake material to make it waterproof? Why not start with real stuff that’s already waterproof?) Plus he got just scared enough from the experience, if not to stop smiling for even a second, at least to learn to check with me before running into wild waterways.

But beautiful as the winter has been, a hike in pure clay and quicksand leaves a guy ready for a solid meal. And it’s on Comfort Food that my mind dwelled when the hike, reluctantly for all involved, ended in a puddle of wet clothes on the porch.

Now, as a long time Alaskan, I’m going to give myself carbon mile immunity for the shipping of this jarred-the-day-it-was-caught wild sockeye, which my fishing buddy up North sent to me in exchange for a burlap sack of mailed-the-day-it-was-picked New Mexico green chile peppers. For one thing, I try to eat locally most of the time, and my plan is to raise tilapia in the soon-to-be-constructed Funky Butte Ranch greenhouse. For another thing, there has always been inter-cultural trade between these parts and the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, which is just over three thousand miles as the rufus hummingbird flies (that amazing creature eats in both ecosystems as well). Just ask the archaeologists at Chaco canyon. And that culture did it before truckers. And for yet another thing, wild salmon is one of the planet’s healthiest foods.

That is, if you don’t soak it in egg yolk, minced garlic and bread crumbs, ball it up, douse it in organic, expeller-pressed, high-heat safflower oil and fry it until it is the consistency of a KFC nugget.

I notice I buy a fair amount of organic, expeller-pressed, high-heat safflower oil these days. To the point that I know at what time of year it goes on sale at the local co-op (December and March). And what I wondered about, as I banged the soles of my boots together with my mind on my belly and my belly on my mind, is whether I’m doing myself more good by eating the salmon’s Omega 3s than I am harm by frying it (and then braising it with homemade wasabi mayonnaise, before wrapping it in a local tortilla laced with sliced red cabbage).

There is a school of nutritionists that believes the higher the temperature at which you prepare a dish, the less healthy is the resulting food, going from raw→steamed→ sautéd→fried→my dad’s BBQing technique.

And these nutritionists aren’t just talking about nutrient absorption. They’re talking about potential carcinogens resulting from high-heat food blasting.

In fairness, others, equally tenured, massage their statistics to maintain that our bodies have chemically adapted to actually absorb more nutrients from cooked food. But there’s cooked, and then there’s “sizzled until the solar-powered smoke alarm goes off.” So, organic or not, wild or not, Omega 3s or not, I’m starting to give more thought to what it is I’m putting in my belly as a result of my mode of food preparation.

Let’s not get carried away here. I’m not talking about reducing my ice cream intake. That, to paraphrase Dick Cheney, is non-negotiable. You choose your addictions well, when you live remote. And mine come down to love, salmon and ice cream, in that order. I got the carbon miles out of the first one, when I met my sweetheart. Granted, my meal probably would be healthier if I steamed the salmon and draped it over some kind of bulgur (but less healthy if I just ate, say, a Big Mac — for me and for the Planet). But ice cream – just don’t go there. On that substance I am the addict who does not want to admit he has a problem, let alone solve it.

Still, when heat is involved, it’s not just salmon. I also tend to crisp my Ranch-grown kale with garlic and pine nuts over a bed of quinoa. And in the name of full disclosure, I should admit that pretty much every morning my family finds me spending my first work break frying just-laid Funky Butte Ranch duck eggs in organic butter with grated potatoes and parmesan.

And this is no new phenomenon: within a week of acquiring chickens from a neighbor who (I now recognize) was herself overwhelmed with cholesterol-laden Omerga 3s, I was in danger of dying from all the healthy living. I mean, how many frittatas and omelettes can a fellow eat?

The singer Jewel says that worry is wasteful, and she, too, has eaten a lot of Alaskan salmon. Presumably some of it fried. So I guess I really should continue this Dispatch in fifty years to see how I’m feeling. Because now I’m also thinking about those studies I’m always reading which say that slightly underfed mice live longer than well-fed ones. But are they feeding them delicious organic food, or horrible GMO pellets? It’s true that when you see those predictable “oldest woman in South Carolina”-type interviews, very rarely are they accompanied by photos of an obese senior citizen. You tend to hear the elder talking of “moderation” and “enjoying life.”

My most immediate impediment to the first of those pieces of longevity advice was that within minutes of entering the Ranch house, the whole place began filling with the scent of freshly-fried Alaska salmon. I hated to see it go to waste.

But John Lennon, if not as accomplished a lyricist as Jewel, was wise in pointing out that there are no problems, only solutions. I’ll just keep trying to move down that cooking-temperature ladder, rung by rung. I won’t likely get to the birdseed or even goat hay stage (though the latter sure works for the goats – they literally moan alfalfa praises — or at least something more than mere approval — with each clump they pull off and devour in the circular goat chewing motion after the milking each evening), but I would like to one day give a Centenarian interview. When I do, I’m planning on offering all kinds of fake information. I’m gonna say that since toddler-hood, I’ve smoked a cigar daily, eaten only elderly, industrialized, neuron-feed beef, and drank bourbon in my oatmeal.

“Excess in all areas,” I’ll tell Willard Scott’s grandson. “That’s my secret.”

I’m sick of those “eat less” studies. They’re messing with my mid-hike gluttony.

Tonight, though, nothing was going to mess with my wasabi mayonnaise fish tacos. And even though we’re getting warmer Februaries than we have since the last glaciers retreated, I lit a cozy fire while the food crisped, and the family and I settled in for story time, which, as it so often does, morphed into jam-and-dance time, before Alaskan comfort food and bed.

By the time the fire was to embers, leaving me smelling somewhere between a chimney and a sushi bar, I was facing post-frying regret (PFR), which, mark my words, the American Psychological Association will soon classify as a genuine eating disorder. Sigh. We modern humans are the only creatures that worry about our best tasting food potentially killing us. My dogs will devour pure fat — the gristlier the better. My ancestors, too.

In even questionably-prepared salmon’s defense, I like to remember that it was the majestic wild sockeye that first caused me to embark on the Hypocrisy Reduction Project that led to the writing of Farewell, My Subaru and brought me to the Funky Butte Ranch. For three or four years, I caught my year’s worth of healthy, wild, literally zero carbon-mile Alaskan sockeye every summer. This is a memory dear to me beyond taste and nutrition: being out on the water with friends, porpoise leaping, seals treating my fishing net like a sushi bar — it was impossible not to thank God and the salmon itself each time I pulled a fish from the net and slit its gills: “thank you so much, fish,” I’d say following a short prayer to the Creator. “I will use every part of you.”

Lotta good that did the fish: it was just trying to get upstream to mate and die in its stream of birth. But the least I could do was appreciate it.

Yes, I was feeling pretty indigenous each time I plopped my rickety skiff (a glorified rowboat with a 4 HP engine) in the fjord just outside my cabin’s front door, caught my fish, and gloated about it over homemade sushi. This, as I say, lasted for several years. Then one calm summer day I noticed that the oil from my aged two-stroke engine was leaking into the pristine waters from which I was extracting said delicious local salmon. Hence, the need for Hypocrisy-reduction was splashed literally in front of my eyes. And I’ve tried to gradually let the message sink in and carry over to all aspects of my life, from clothes to produce, with varying levels of success. Everything comes from somewhere on this small planet, and it’s all connected.

So tonight, before I drift into gentle dreams of porpoises and flowing desert arroyos to the sound of more blessed rain outside, I’ve come to an admittedly rationalized conclusion, based on The Power of Visualization, The Secret Message In Water, and several other tomes of new age claptrap I find useful when not in the mood to mock it. It goes like this: I like to think we build up actual physical resistance based on spiritual intent and thus the good in the fish does more good than the bad in the molten oil does bad. Furthermore, in generally eating very healthy, I feel as though I prep every day for such culinary contradictions — with what you might call microbe-loading. For instance, I eat a bowl of fresh Funky Butte Ranch goat yogurt every day. It’s like getting my belly in shape for any high-heat frying assault with which it might occasionally have to deal on a wet winter evening.

And so I think my system is going to be ready both for a another family hike and another tacos-n-ice cream party pretty much the moment I get home from this spate of travel.

Already I’m nostalgic for my backcountry. To be hiking when I can hear the song of running water is a blessing difficult to describe without sounding like a preacher in the pulpit.

Any water is good here (even when it destroys my driveway). So what if it’s a bit (OK, unprecedented-ly) warmer in early February than it has been since saber-toothed tigers were the principle threat to goats? I have running water flowing through the Funky Butte Ranch. This means a lot to me, when it comes to “visualization.” I see it as an extension of my own corporeal lubrication.

On a related note, I only now remember something that went down as I was hurrying home from my hike today, salivating (more water!) over salmon. It reveals as much about my educational philosophy as anything: my wet son, back in the carrier after his creek swim, recognized and initiated the Mayim song –- the Hebrew ecstatic dance in honor of and named after water, at the sight, next to us, of a flowing, nearly turquoise stream in a cliff bed that’s been dry for all but perhaps two weeks of his nineteen months on this Planet.

In other words, the little fellow showed he’s aware that water in the desert is precious, and to be stayed close to, if not dove into, whenever possible. This, folks, is 75% of surviving in our ecosystem. And if he can physically survive on Planet Earth, I’m not too worried about his functioning amongst so-called “developed” humanity.

In fact, I think his early awareness of essential survival strategies bodes well for his being more self-reliant and self-aware than most. And I pray this kind of education will also leave him well-equipped to continually learn even more as he journeys this planet, hopefully always with the joy and wonder he shows now. When I look into his thoughtful eyes (it’s almost like he’s an actual person, and I should add, soon to be a goat milker), I wonder if these thought processes aren’t the real keys to our health and longevity, with the specifics of what we put into our bellies, while not irrelevant, being merely the fuel.

Maybe that’s a false dichotomy. In all likelihood, if the universe behaves in this matter as it seems to on most levels from the microscopic to the galactic, it’s probably a delicate interplay of all inputs, the way my sweet dreams tonight are coming on (practically while I’m still awake) thanks to family, food, fire, sore hiking muscles, literature, music (inside on the stereo and outside on the roof and yuccas) and dancing. I can say one thing definitively: I have no complaints. Except that I have to go online to print my boarding passes.

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