Back in the 80s when I was married, I used to go hiking and camping quite a bit. I didn’t do much outdoor stuff when I was growing up or in college, but after I met my ex, I made up for that; she was a big fan of Mother Nature. After she had gone her way, I kept on journeying into the woods looking for solace. And sometimes I found it.

There are lots of wonderful moments waiting for the intrepid soul who gets past the Disneyland zone and out into the true woods (on just about every hiking trail here in the northeast, the first mile from a parking area is littered with cans and other debris — that’s as far as most people get). You can find dramatic scenes like waterfalls and mountain vistas, but once you calm down a bit, you can start to appreciate the little things like birds singing, tiny flowers and sunlight in the trees. That’s when it gets really good, when you get into the contemplative mode.

Unfortunately, the wonder of it all doesn’t last. At some point, physical exertion becomes the main event. Sometimes it starts raining, sometimes the mosquitoes find you, and sometimes your eyes suddenly focus on the movement of a snake (I’ve encountered a few rattlers, and I will say one thing — they weren’t nearly as dastardly as their reputation goes. They usually warn you in plenty of time to avoid them, and then wait to see what you intend to do. If you give them some respect, they seem entirely willing to live and let live). In the summer, you need to watch for deer ticks and think about heat exhaustion. If it’s winter, you have to start heading back to the car at around 2 so as to avoid darkness and hypothermia. And now there are bears to worry about, given the rapid growth of the black bear population and their loss of fear of humans. On one mid-day hike not too long ago, I saw three bears — one at an uncomfortably close range.

So, I don’t get out in the woods all that much these days. Not that I’ll never go back again, but the child-like magic of it all is gone (or maybe never really was). Nature, along with human nature, can be beautiful, but it doesn’t take long to see that it can also be very cruel. I will yet do some communing with Nature, including human nature, but I’ll never again let my spirit trust it wholeheartedly. I guess that my ex taught me in more ways than one just how bittersweet the world can be, how we can never fully trust the seductive beauty that life presents us from time to time. I suppose that we all learn that lesson in one way or another: some of us through illness, some through career failure, crime, war, and other forms of tragedy. The deep woods are a good place to ponder all of that — so long as you have your survival gear with you.

I saw a good bumper sticker the other day. It said “My Child Was Inmate of the Month”. Of course, it was for a bail bond office.

Thanksgiving isn’t a big thing for me. First of all, I’m a vegetarian — well, not a pure “vegan” vegetarian. I do own some leather shoes and belts, but I’m far enough up the vegetarian ladder not to eat turkey. And I don’t have much family left, only an aging mother and an unmarried brother. So, I hardly know what it’s like to be at a big table surrounded by family. (Although, I did spend a few Thanksgivings in the past around a big family table, courtesy of friends or former significant others. It wasn’t quite as cozy and comfortable as those Normal Rockwell prints would lead you to believe).

However, about 5 years ago, I had a memorable Thanksgiving afternoon with my truncated family. My mother had started a medium size turkey in the oven that morning, and my brother and I went out to a bar for a couple of beers. We got back around 1 pm and checked the progress in the kitchen. Mom thought something was wrong. We looked, and indeed something was wrong. The oven wasn’t working. The turkey hadn’t cooked at all. My uncle was coming over in an hour, but it sure didn’t look like turkey was going to be on the menu. My brother and I stood there in the kitchen a bit dazed, wondering what to do. Mom soon retreated from the scene. She was then in her mid-70s, and wasn’t really into crisis management anymore. It was finally time for her kids to step up to the plate. After a few minutes, my mind had pushed back the mellow haze from the beers. We looked around the kitchen and considered our options. The last and best hope centered around a small microwave oven used mostly for heating things. Could we cook a mid-sized turkey in it and get a table ready before the sun sank low in the west?

We found an instruction book for the microwave, and looked up turkeys. Didn’t find a thing. The device obviously wasn’t designed for cooking turkeys. But the instructions did cover chicken. You could wrap up a chicken in saran wrap, and after an hour or so, it would supposedly be edible. We looked at the turkey, sitting there limp and pale in a big pan. It wouldn’t fit too well on the rotating table, but with some saran wrap, we might just make it. Did we have saran wrap? Yes!! So wrap we did, and then fit the bird onto the platform. Would it clear the walls once the thing started turning? Looked tight, but might just make it. OK, so how long to cook the thing, and at what setting? We still had the turkey wrapper, so we knew its weight. But the instruction book didn’t anticipate cooking anything that heavy, so there weren’t any guidelines. What to do? We used the engineering method and extrapolated. We did some rudimentary math, and came up with a power and time scenario (level 7 for 2 and 1/2 hours, I think it was). There wasn’t time to discuss it, we just hit the buttons and let her nuke.

What would we have later that afternoon once the cooking cycle was done, assuming that the cycle did in fact get done? Would it be edible? Would it cook all the way through? Would there be food poisoning? We called my uncle and told him to come over a bit later on, hoping that there would be something to eat other than cold cuts or peanut butter sandwiches. I sat there watching the birdie spin round and round inside the little box for a half hour or so, then decided to go out for a walk. The waiting is the hardest part. Upon my return, the thing was still spinning in the nuke chamber. Nothing had blown up or was smoking, surprisingly enough. In fact, around the 2 hour point, the kitchen started to smell something like roasting turkey. My brother and I started to believe that this was really going to happen after all. We got mom back into the kitchen to help warm up the side dishes while we set the table. My uncle got there and we explained the situation to him. He was an engineering school graduate too, and he grasped the situation that we were in and what we were trying to do.

As the sun was sinking low that afternoon, we had a moist, steaming turkey on the table, waiting for carving (gravy was a mix of canned stuff with cooking juices). I stuck to my lentil soup and yams, but the three carnivores around me attacked their prey as though nothing unusual had happened. Just another Thanksgiving bird. The family ritual had been fulfilled once more. The next day, I made sure that everyone was hale and hearty, to satisfy myself that our big idea didn’t give anyone food poisoning. It later struck me that we had a miniature version of the Apollo 13 incident. We had a major systems failure that threatened the mission, but some people with engineering backgrounds got an adrenaline rush and found a creative way to use an alternate system to save the day.