Petrified Forest – Part 6 (A Long Walk)
lavender shortbread
I’ve been meaning to write a bit about how I eat while I travel. I love food, and surviving on a diet of ramen on the road is absolutely unacceptable to me. I stay in hostels fairly often, so a kitchen is generally available to me!
Anyway, I haven’t had time to finish my comic about road food, but here is one of my favourite recipes(I sometimes just bring the dry ingredients on the road so I can make a little treat for friends I’m staying with, or to make new friends at a hostel…). It’s really simple and portable(the food processor is not 100% necessary – just mix well), and sometimes it’s just nice to make some biscuits when you’re tired and miss home.
Bodie, CA
Bodie is an abandoned gold-mining town that once held 10,000 people, but it is also a historic state park, maintained in a state of arrested decay. It is reached by a thirteen mile road, off Highway 270 near the California and Nevada border, three of the miles little more than a dirt path.
I walked the town alone, easily able to avoid the small groupings of photographers in search of abandoned house porn(without suffering the risk of actually trespassing anywhere), if I walked off the main road. I stood in the graveyard, up a small hill, set apart from the town and entirely empty and quiet. I stood reading the gravestones of immigrants and children, all seeking the American Dream in a remote and barren town. I stood outside the graveyard, where the Chinese graveyard might have been, but no one knows where that actually is, because the labour of the Chinese workmen did not earn them a place within the boundaries of a small town’s graveyard.
I looked at tin shingled walls, tracing the embossed patterns of little round dots with my fingers, and I wondered what it would feel like to hold myself in a state of arrested decay, like this place. To leave the tools scattered around the wood shop, to embrace the creaky walls and the rusty machinery, and to always remember this particular mess and measure of feeling, and to merely acknowledge and accept it, instead of demolishing it, paving it over, or fixing it.
If there is a place that will always remind me that happiness and melancholy can nonchalantly exist in the same heart, it is this strange ghost town in the mountains, curated but not manicured, abandoned but not unoccupied
Nasi Lemak, and some other Malaysian foods
I feel weirdly self conscious about writing about my home country, because I’ve been gone for so long, even if I still visit every two-three years or so. Still, during my last visit a couple months ago, I did a batch of drawings of my most favourite foods.
Kétou Nasi Lemak
When I was a kid, growing up in Malaysia, I ate where to buy disulfiram (antabuse) nasi lemak in the most finicky way possible. I’d eat most of the rice, eat the peanuts and ikan bilis individually and save the cold cucumbers for last. I’d avoid everything spicy. I learned to love sambal and chicken curry in the Philippines, where my family and I were expats for six years, at a resort hotel restaurant that had a Malaysian chef that would make laksa for my dad, even though it wasn’t on the menu.
I still eat nasi lemak in a very finicky way, making sure each spoonful has the right balance of rice and sambal and curry. The ikan bilis and peanuts get eaten separately, still. The cucumbers are for when the spicy gets too spicy.
I’ve tried to cook the rice many times, and it hasn’t turned out right – the coconut milk affects the moisture and it sometimes ends up too dry or far too wet. I finally got it right with the recipe from the Lucky Peach cookbook(Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes
Continue reading “Nasi Lemak, and some other Malaysian foods”
Petrified Forest – Part 5 (Tour Buses)
I really did meet some remarkable people during my stay at the Petrified Forest. I met most of the other people when I was doing my demonstration at the Rainbow Forest Museum, and I was very nice and polite to everyone. But, y’know, be nice to everyone…you never know when you might be talking to a cartoonist.
Desert Solitaire
Petrified Forest National Park – Part 4 (Getting Lost)
Even before I arrived at the Petrified Forest, I was pretty excited about the idea of getting to barrel out into the desert at night, and wander until I got lost enough to want to find my way back(or had gotten through ½ of my water). My friend Nathan came out to visit me for a couple days, and was a perfect “wandering out into the desert” companion, especially when he had to physically shove me up a cliff.
The Triassic critters pictured are a phytosaur, a metoposaurus and a chindesaurus. Out of the three, only the chindesaurus is a dinosaur, a fact that I was reminded of many times during my stay.
I’m pretty happy with the assortment of “getting lost” gear I’ve acquired over time. Here’s what some of them are:
- My trusty Nalgene
bottle is more or less an extension of me, or at least my pants, since it’s clipped to me at all times.
- My adorable Black Diamond Moji Lantern
has been my companion for many, many miles, and has come in useful on many occasions, whether helping me get lost, lighting my hammock, or making sure I don’t trip over people after a hostel’s light’s out. Aside from being granularly adjustable, which is really helpful, it’s also really, really cute.
- The Leatherman Skeletool is my everyday knife, and basically goes everywhere with me(assuming I didn’t have to fly to get where I am). I haven’t really figured out if I’m adding the dogtag knife(it’s the Spyderco Dog Tag Folding Knife) to my usual gear, but it was a crew gift from a project I enjoyed working on, and it’s a really cool little knife.
- Simple Squares
‘ granola bars are basically the only sort of granola bar I find palatable. Hell, they’re even delicious, in that squishy “holy shit, this doesn’t taste like cardboard” way.
Petrified Forest National Park – Part 3 (Rocks)
I’ve spent the past few days catching up on my other work, and goofing around in this beautiful park, but I’ve finally gotten a chance to sit down and…paint more rocks. 🙂
The geologic formations of the Painted Desert are primarily made up of the Chinle Formation, which you can read up about on the NPS website.
Petrified Forest National Park – Part 2 (Phytosaurs and Toads)
I had a very science filled day at the Petrified Forest. It was pretty excellent, getting to poke at toads and listen to a lot of stories about fossils which are Not Dinosaurs.
I thought I’d be painting more rocks and beautiful landscapes here, which I’m sure I will(it’s been rainy; I haven’t gotten out much), but the thing I’ve been loving most about this place is meeting all these remarkable people that make the park run, who are so unabashedly enthusiastic about their jobs.
You can learn more about the Petrified Forest’s fossils on the NPS website, as well as about the various animals here.
Petrified Forest National Park – Part 1
