I'm so lucky where I live: within an hour's drive, I can be in a big city, or in quirky suburbs, or standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, or gazing up and up and up at the tall tops of majestic Redwood forests. During the same visit in which we plundered the citrus trees on campus for marmalade, a few of my good friends and I packed up an amazing vegan feast--complete with wild rice salad, curried carrots, sweet sauteed mushrooms and kale, roasted acorn squash (and onions and garlic), Blue Chair Fruit jams, a crusty Tartine loaf, and cold-brewed tea--for a picnic under the shady canopy of the Big Basin Redwoods. Then we went hiking to give our over-stuffed bellies a rest and promptly got lost wandering through the damp, dark green forest on a soft carpet of redwood tree needles. It's days and picnics and hikes like this one that provide a wonderful, analog antithesis to the always-on-the-go, always-connected life that I live the rest of the time.
Happy Friday, everyone!