The chile pasilla is my favorite, a deep, dark purple the color of intense grief or memory. It is wrinkled and weathered, a mirror of the aged face of the woman who hands me my change and my chile and says, per Oaxacan custom, “Que te vaya bien,”

The chile pasilla rests atop a bouquet of squash blossoms, whose airy, floral looks—delicate orange and green lilies–betray the hearty vegetable flavor they take on when sautéed in oil.

I’ve always thought squash flowers were embarrassingly sexual vegetables. They start out innocently enough, small bodies fanning demurely into star-shaped flowers, but the second they hit the heat of the pan they give way entirely, losing form and caving to the oil, until they are limp and languid. Their pistons remain crunchy, but the rest of the flower goes soft.

The still virginal squash flowers cover up a layer of moss green and bumpy avocados, gently prodded between fingertips for ripeness. The avocados jostle guayabas, small Mexican guavas with a flavor like a yellow exclamation mark.

The guayabas rest gently beside the cecina enchilada, thinly sliced pork that has been rubbed with chile. All—cecina, guayabas, avocados, squash flowers, chile pasilla– are sided by a wall of tortillas. The tortillas are warm and keeling over a bit, emitting moist fumes with a faint starchy smell.

This is my dinner. Chile pasilla soaked until it is soft once more (memory and grief released) and ground into an earthy, smoky, salsa. Squash flowers tossed into the pan to lust and wither. Avocados cut cleanly in halves and sliced into crescents. Cecina fried, letting off waves of rich, red, animal smells, the spiced enchilada rub creeping up into one’s nose. Guayabas blended to make thick, acidic margaritas, the type that make your eyes squint and your tongue ache a bit before the sweetness and alcohol kick in.

This process—the journey round the market, the jostle of vegetables in the bag, the feel of warm tortilla flesh pressed into one’s hand, the slicing through soft avocado, the colors and smells blurring in the pan, the smoke of the pasilla cutting through the nose-watering spice of the pork, is the evocation of place.

It is Oaxaca conjured through a handful of ingredients, an hour in front of the stove, a half-hour of chewing and laughing and exclaiming.

If I cannot be Mexican (for as much as I love the heavy r’s and spiked sentences of Spanish, the land here, the people, I still have a streak of undeniable Americannness that prevents full assimilation) I can literally get the country in my blood.

And perhaps the piquant jalapenos soaked in white vinegar and the cups of crunchy hominy with mayonnaise fuel not only my ability to walk and breathe and think, but also the tingle I get down my spine passing a church whose religion I’ve never practiced, the nostalgia I feel walking past the bright fading walls of a city I did not grow up in, the surge of longing that grips me when I go running on the dusty soil of a foreign country.

Salman Rushdie writes in Midnight’s Children of the way in which a character cooks her lust, her hatred, her bitterness, her passion into the dishes she prepares for her family. I still remember that novel when I am hovering over a simmering pan of softened vegetables, sprinkling them with cumin, fanning them onto tortillas.

Not simply eating, but cooking is an intimate and sometimes perilous (the love affairs that emerge from a steamy kitchen and all those heady flavors, the tossing and turning of North American stomachs confronted with distant spices) affair with a particular place and its people.

Which brings me to the point—even if you have never hovered with longing before the spice racks in the grocery store, or rhapsodized about the possibilities of a chayote, you might be surprised by the sense of connectedness you get from spending a little time with local ingredients in a local (hostel or hotel included) kitchen.

Think of the vegetables and breads and spices as an extension of the landscapes and the personalities you encounter and hope to develop relationships with. What better way to feel and come to know a place than to eat it?

This includes eating it from a distance—I remember finding Chinese Five Spice in an American grocery store and nearly gnawing away at the cap to get to the delirious smells of star anise and allspice. I made myself a stir-fry of heavily anise-infused vegetables and could almost make out the cluttered noises of rickshaws and bicycles passing in the dry air of Beijing.

All of this means that, in that sometimes maddening and occasionally gratifying quest to feel connected to a specific place on Earth, sometimes the best thing to do is poise oneself over a pan of local flavors, inhale, indulge, and let the food guide you.

Photo by hypertypos

Debt. It’s the American way. It’s just something that we accept – right?

For many years, I did just that. I accepted that I was going to be in debt and I would try my best each month to pay off those credit cards, school and car loans, and at the same time pay for food, gas, and other essentials an adult needs to live a simple lifestyle.

Seven years ago, I was enjoying a successful career in the music business. As life would have it, things changed and I was faced with a fact that my music job was going away and the prospect of finding another job was very slim.

So I made a decision to change my career. I would go back to school and become a teacher.

I began working as a teaching assistant in Los Angeles Unified Schools. Reality set in when my income dropped dramatically – I was now making $9.75 per hour.

I had no health insurance. I had to pay for tuition and books. I had no savings. I couldn’t pay my rent. I began dipping into my retirement account and I used my credit cards.

Photo by asplosh

Fast forward three years. I’m out of school. I get a great job in Northern Virginia as a teacher. I’m finally making a decent salary but again reality sets in. My retirement account was emptied by my move across the country.

I soon found that at the end of each month, I was using my credit card for basic living expenses – like food and gas to get to work. Before I knew it, I had $30,000 in credit card debt and $30,000 in school loan debt.

I was only paying the interest on my credit cards (about $500 each month). There was no way my credit cards were going to ever be paid off unless I won the lottery or someone died and left me a mess of cash.

The stress of this sent me into a depression that I didn’t understand at the time. It was as if I was being strangled each day and I didn’t know how to get or where to turn.

I went to see a lawyer. He was very kind and said, “You’re right. You do not have enough money to live with these credit card payments.” He advised bankruptcy. This wasn’t something I wanted to do. Only losers declare bankruptcy, right?

Loser or not, I decided to go down that road. Now, two years later, I feel it was the right decision. The pressure I felt each month was gone. I no longer had credit card payments, and my school and car loans were manageable. The feeling of being a loser began to disappear.

Of course, there’s a bit of a lifestyle change when a person files bankruptcy. There is no “using my credit card”. My credit union, God bless them, gave me a credit card with a $2,000 limit.

For the most part if I cannot pay cash for something, I go without. I cannot travel much, and although I’ve never had an extremely extravagant life style, I am very careful to stay on budget. As a teacher I get a small raise each year, and my hopes of being able to save some money were actually beginning to blossom. All is good, yes…?

Photo by sittered

This summer there was a terrible flood and I lost just about all of my worldly possessions. They don’t tell you, but renter’s insurance only pays out about half of the value of the items to be replaced.

The other half came out of my pocket. Soon, my $2,000 credit card was up to the limit. I took this in stride, paying as much as possible each month, thinking that all would be ok.

It hasn’t been. Things needed replacing, and other life things happen, and I haven’t paid off my $2,000 credit card. Again, I kept telling myself all would be fine; I would just have to be careful each month until my credit is paid off.

And the topper. Last Friday I went down to my car to go to work and discovered that all the tires and wheels of my car were stolen. My car was literally sitting on the ground.

When I saw my car I just thought, “You’re kidding me…this seriously isn’t happening.” I now have to come up with $500. Winter is coming, all of my warm clothes were destroyed in the flood, and I’m not sure what I will do. I cannot charge these expenses. What will I do?

Things like this happen to people each day. I cannot be bitter or feel sorry for myself. I’m not sure what I can do…just have faith that I’ll be OK.

I went to school on Friday, finding comfort in my 6th graders’ smiles. That’s what I focus on. My students and work. Maybe that’s the real American Way. I focus on the good in my world, my work, my friends, and bottom line, it isn’t as bad as it seems. Life always moves on.

Primal House member Quinner, another day at the office. Photo courtesy of Tal Fletcher.

1. The Coin Toss — 1993

Dan Osman. Flag.

Six months after graduating from high school, Tal Fletcher sat at the bar in the Beer Garden in Squaw Valley, California, drinking Milwaukee’s Best. The bar was below street level, windowless and dimly lit.

The in-house band, The Beer Gardeners, cranked through covers of the Stones, Credence, Dylan, sometimes hitting just the right combination of pitch and volume so that the old-school ski posters buzzed on the walls.

Nearly everyone there had come off a shift working somewhere on the mountain. They still had on work clothes, work boots, ski boots, Gore-tex jackets duct-taped together. The drinking and lounging was mostly relaxed, with stories of the day’s accidents, mishaps, or particularly good runs recounted over mugs of beer.

Tal was there on a coin toss. After graduating from Redwood High School in Marin County, California, in 1993, he flipped a quarter. Heads, he’d go to college, either at U.C. Davis or U.C. Santa Barbara. Tails, he’d move up to Tahoe and try to get on the ski patrol at Squaw Valley. But even as the coin spun through the air, he thought if it landed heads he’d have to go two out of three.

He didn’t have to: it landed tails.

Miles D skyaking

Tal went to a job fair in Tahoe and learned that his training and experience weren’t enough for one of the highly coveted spots on the patrol. Through his climbing experience, however, as well as his E.M.T. certification, Tal got a job at Bungee Squaw Valley, complete with a ski pass. He moved to Squaw that summer.

The bartender at the Beer Garden, Jimbo, casually pulled draughts—many into personalized mugs—then slid them down the bar. As always, he was sporting his mad scientist glasses, Ray Ban Wayfarers, only with clear, coke-bottle lenses. On anyone else they would’ve looked ridiculous, but on Jimbo they seemed to fit, reflecting, it seemed, his intense vision of the world.

Jimbo ran an outfit called Primal Instinct, which specialized in secret bungee jumps, oftentimes hitting local bridges late at night wearing all black gear and face paint.

Tal kept drinking and snacking on free peanuts, adding to the mountains of shells that would cover the floor of the Beer Garden by night’s end. He noted that for some of the more dedicated ski bums, the peanuts were dinner.

He watched the mugs sliding by. You had to show commitment, good attendance to get your own mug. But for regulars who didn’t have one yet, or for friends and special guests, there was also “the floater.” Tal had been putting in a fair amount or hours in the Beer Garden since moving to Squaw.

“Hey!” Tal had to shout to get the bartenders’ attention. “Can I get the floater?”

Tal glanced at the floater once more, then watched the other bartender lean over to Jimbo and say something. Then Jimbo turned and looked through his thick lenses.

“I don’t know that guy,” Jimbo’s voice rose over the music.

Shit. Tal felt the blood drain out of his face. But then he thought: that’s o.k. I have to earn it.

2. 1993-1997 – The Primal House

Gambler and MC

Over the next three years, Tal would end up spending many nights couch-surfing at Jimbo’s house, the Primal House. Eventually he’d move in, becoming one of the more than 50 people that for at least a few months paid rent there. At any given time, the three-bedroom A-frame housed Jimbo and several roommates, plus Boing, Jimbo’s big German Shepard, and usually two or three other dogs.

The two-car garage was full of every toy imaginable—bungee jumping and climbing equipment, backcountry gear, skis, snowboards, helmets, boots, skateboards, surfboards, mountain bikes, kayaks, motocross bikes, a raft, parachutes, hockey equipment, fishing gear, golf clubs—anything and everything except a car.

The gear spilled over into the house, from bedrooms to the couch in the living room, where there was a climbing wall. After moving on from the first Primal House, the crew set everything back up in another A-frame a few blocks away. In addition to the climbing wall, this one had a trampoline in the living room. The trick was to jump from the loft, bounce off the trampoline, then grab one of the holds, and stick it.

As occurs sometimes in just the right conditions and timing, the Primal House drew together a circle of people that became close friends, brothers. Owing largely to their trust in one another, the Primal crew would collectively push their skills in various skiing, mountaineering, as well as B.A.S.E. and bungee jumping exploits, pioneering new techniques and writing history as they went.

Primal House-mate Shane McConkey utilizing base-jumping skills to ski lines most people only dream about.

M.C

Out of all the housemates, the one who came from farthest away was Mihai Calin Constantinescu, or M.C., as everyone called him. M.C. had come to New York with his mother in late 1979. The two arrived penniless, having fled Communist Romania.

Although he remembered little about his childhood there, M.C. later wrote in his autobiography: “You could never forget the way the Russian Soldiers marched up and down the streets with their high leg kicks, or how there were lines all over the city for food or products.”

M.C.’s father had died in the 1977 earthquake. Only five at the time, M.C. wasn’t told about his father’s death until his mother took him to visit the cemetery a year later. “I believe that on that day,” M.C. would write, “my mother vowed to find a way to leave communist Romania and raise her only son in the free world.”

M.C.’s mother found work in New York as a cab driver, taking her young son with her on rides. Twenty years later, M.C. began his own company, Fast Taxi, hiring many of the Primal housemates as drivers. The first cab was 1973 Cadillac with a monstrous sound system.

Similar to the crowd-gathering effect Jimbo had at the Beer Garden, Tahoe-area locals would wait hours simply to ride in M.C.’s taxi. M.C. drove fast, and when he didn’t have customers, drove even faster, setting his personal record: 180 miles from Truckee to San Francisco in an hour and 50 minutes.

He was on his way to contest a speeding ticket.

Gambler on plane

Gambler

Frank Gambalie, or Gambler, set up his room in what was the Primal house’s sauna. In the mid 90s, he took up skydiving lessons with Jimbo. Their training was not so much for skydiving itself, but for building the requisite skill-set for B.A.S.E jumping, or using a parachute to jump off fixed objects.

At the time BASE jumping was still in its infancy, something undertaken only by a small group of veteran skydivers with years of training. Jimbo and Gambler made their first BASE jump off after having only skydived 12 times.

Over the next several years, Gambler took on a series of high-profile BASE jumps without getting caught. (Except in special situations, B.A.S.E. jumping is almost always illegal.) He had a working knowledge of alarm systems and locks, and dressed up as a technician in order to infiltrate buildings.

Eventually he was approached by Red Bull, which had just come to the U.S. Gambler became one of the first athletes to be sponsored by the energy drink company, paid to travel around the world and BASE jump.

Gambler’s influence over others in the house was profound. A short time after learning to BASE jump with Jimbo, Gambler began mentoring two other housemates, Miles Daisher or Miles D., and Shane McConkey. Both Miles D. and McConkey went on to become Red Bull Athletes, and Miles D. would later open his own BASE jumping school: Miles D’s BASE camp, in Twin Falls, ID.

Miles D prep

Quinner

While Jimbo, Gambler, Miles D., and Shane McConkey pursued BASE jumping, another high-energy house member, Kevin Quinn, or Quinner, began charging a different vision.

Seeking new adventures, he turned to Heli-skiing (using a helicopter to access remote terrain). In 1998, Quinn found a lodge in Cordova, Alaska that wasn’t being used during ski-season. Seizing the opportunity, he set out to create the ultimate heli-skiing experience, one that captured the spirit of Alaska not only through skiing, but every wilderness option from sea-kayaking, surfing, and ice-climbing, to wildlife viewing and fly / open sea fishing. This would become Points North.

Among Points North’s first guests were Jimbo, Tal Fletcher and M.C. “Life there was accelerated, like living in a Metallica song,” Tal said. Over the next several years, he and Jimbo would become guides there, and Miles D. was appointed “the Director of Fun.”

Senior

For more than a year, one of the downstairs bedrooms in the first Primal House was the sleeping quarters / office of roommate Mike Richardson, or Senior. Senior created a magazine, Boards in Motion with the mission (as stated in the inaugural issue Jan/Feb 97) to “always hold true to what we believe in. . .the rider’s potential to ride the boards as an extension of the body. . . the writer’s potential to share the transcendent, curious, raw, and personal characteristics of people and travel; and above all, the cycle of water in nature and the rage of boards in motion.”

Senior’s letter in the second issue, (Nov. 97) described a day skiing with his friends in the backcountry of Mt. Rose.

His letter ended by saying:

Some of the people I saw today, I probably won’t see until early April, when the migration north to Alaska begins. Others, I may never see again. It sounds morbid, but you never really know. The one thing I do know is that my memories of that day will last forever, as will theirs. . .
. . . I urge all of you to pursue your dreams. Drop everything and go for it. . . Touch as many lives as possible in a positive way. Very seldom do we actually get to say goodbye and yes, tomorrow is too late.

Boards in Motion never got as far as the Senior and Primal crew hoped—only 5 issues were published—but achieved something that none of the corporate ski magazines ever did. It spoke not only for the Primal House, but for people everywhere who lived their dreams.

Dano

Although he never paid rent at the Primal House, climber Dan Osman, or Dano, was a frequent couch-surfer there. Dano starred in several rock climbing videos, his long black hair swinging behind him as he flew up cliffs, free-soloing (climbing without ropes or safety gear), at maximum speed.

Dan Osman free soloing at high sped.

Like Gambler, Dano also saw something profound in the act of jumping off mountains, and began experimenting with controlled free-falls. Instead of using bungee cords or a parachute, he would deliberately fall hundreds of feet on a regular climbing rope.

For a decade, the Primal House was home to a crew for whom “home” was a loose term. Most, if not all of them, were more at home jumping off a new cliff or skiing a first descent than anywhere else. If anything, the house served as a place to renew one’s energy.

The code of the house—something that went unspoken, but instead, was directly charged and recharged through each day’s adventures—was that one must stay true to his vision. Inevitably, this led the Primal House brethren to new places, larger but continually intersecting circles. It was all part of the progression.

Stay tuned for part 2 of The Primal Crew, which will run next week.

Community Connection

Check out Tal Fletcher’s profile on Matador.