Mountain Home, November 2023

M O U N T A I N

HOME Pennsylvania & the New York Finger Lakes

Veterans

in the Wild

Marine Corps Vet Travis McConnell Joins Rose Moore’s Quest to Help Soldiers Heal

By Paula Piatt

A Bagel Hole in Wellsboro’s Heart Playing Tag in Penn’s Woods Looped in the Loops of Finger Lakes Tradition

End E R F the wi as

NOVEMBER 2023

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Volume 18 Issue 11

18 Glory Hill Diaries

Veterans in the Wild

By Maggie Barnes

By Paula Piatt Marine Corps vet Travis McConnell joins Rose Moore's quest to help soldiers heal.

Tailgating tales.

26 Mother Earth

By Gayle Morrow

Thankful for the acorn and the Native Bagel.

28 Doc’s Kitchen

By Richard Soderberg Deerly beloved.

6

34 Back of the Mountain

Big Woods Bear Camp

By Linda Stager

By Tyler Frantz One for all, all for one, sometimes none.

Walking the line.

14 High Fiber Diet

By Karey Solomon Finger Lakes needlewomen are knitting communities together.

Cover Photo and design by Wade Spencer. This page (top) Travis McConnell, courtesy Travis McConnell; (middle) Tyler Frantz

by Tyler Frantz; (bottom) Bev Prentice, by Karey Solomon.

22 3

w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m

WARM WELCOMES US

Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Editor & Publisher Lilace Mellin Guignard Associate Publishers George Bochetto, Esq. Art Director Wade Spencer

Personalized service from people you can trust. At C&N, we cater to each client as if they’re our friends and family. Whether it’s a simple checking account or a complex business loan, we offer expert services tailored to your specific needs. That’s how you treat friends and family, after all.

Managing Editor Gayle Morrow S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e Shelly Moore Circulation Director Michael Banik Accounting Amy Packard Cover Design Wade Spencer Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Tyler Frantz, Paula Piatt, Richard Soderberg, Karey Solomon

Bank with locals like you. cnbankpa.com

C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Maggie Barnes, Tyler Frantz, Paula Piatt, Richard Soderberg, Karey Solomon, Linda Stager

D i s t r i b u t i o n T eam Amy Woodbury, Grapevine Distribution, Linda Roller T h e B ea g l e Nano Cosmo (1996-2014) • Yogi (2004-2018) ABOUT US: Mountain Home is the award-winning regional magazine of PA and NY with more than 100,000 readers. The magazine has been published monthly, since 2005, by Beagle Media, LLC, 39 Water Street, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2023 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

TO ADVERTISE: E-mail info@mountainhomemag.com, or call us at (570) 724-3838.

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4

Holiday

November 17, 18, 19

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NOVEMBER 25TH, 2023 10AM-1PM

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ain S. M t e e Str , PA s n e Ath 0 1881

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Happenings

ENJOY THREE FESTIVE DAYS!

— FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17 — Victorian Christmas Program “The Preservationists” ~ 7pm - 8:30pm Photography Jewelry

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*FUNDED IN PART BY THE BRADFORD COUNTY TOURISM PROMOTION AGENCY*

— SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 — Tour of Homes, Churches and Historic Buildings ~ 9am - 5pm Invitational Artisan's Market ~ 9am - 4pm Pictures with Father Christmas ~ 9am - 4pm Carriage Rides (Sat. Only) 32nd Annual Will Huffman Toy Train Expo (Sat. & Sun.) — SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19 — Invitational Artisan's Market ~ 11am - 4pm “Preservationists with a Passion” ~ 2pm - 4pm For more information, to view our video and ticket purchases,visit: victorianchristmaspa.com OR facebook.com/VictorianChristmasWilliamsport

Rekindle the Old-Fashioned Christmas Spirit Saturday, December 2

Main Street Closed to Traffic • Food & Craft Vendors • Strolling Musicians & Singers Victorian Costumes & Contest • 6 Performances of A Christmas Carol For more information contact the Wellsboro Chamber of Commerce at (570) 724-1926 or wellsboropa.com

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Veterans in the Wild Marine Corps Vet Travis McConnell Joins Rose Moore’s Quest to Help Soldiers Heal

Paddling with purpose: Rose Anna Moore, of This Is My Quest, recruited Travis McConnell to help connect veterans with the outdoors.

6

Paula Piatt

By Paula Piatt

T

ravis McConnell said “no.” Immediately and without hesitation.

When Rose Anna Moore reached out to him for help, he thought she needed something built or some metal fabrication, given his family business background in that department. The last thing the Marine Corps veteran wanted to do was lead a program for people. Horses, maybe. Or dogs. But he wasn’t looking to get involved with people.

“He said ‘no’ and got a piece of paper and wrote down probably ten people’s phone numbers and why I should contact them,” Rose laughs, remembering the day she asked him to help create a program for veterans—people—who were struggling to connect, and reconnect, with their families, their feelings, and their place in society.

Rose, who will be forty-seven in December, is founder and CEO of the Wellsboro-based nonprofit, This Is My Quest. She had owned and operated a sporting goods store, but left the world of retail for this new opportunity.

“My plan of building the nonprofit has been developing since I owned my first store in Mansfield,” she says. “The store in Wellsboro was always going away at some point to run the nonprofit full time, and my time on [the History Channel program] Alone, and covid, just solidified my belief that my choice to close the store was where I needed to be.”

She was already getting women and children in the outdoors, but personal experience told her that veterans needed an outlet, too. Not just to the outdoors, but to rejoin their families and society, to learn how to cope again with the world around them, and to find a purpose. Her father, a Vietnam vet, came home to nothing in the way of programs. Discharged, he was on his own, and so was his family.

“I think he has always had a hard time with life since he served in Vietnam,” says Rose. “The resources weren’t there when he returned, and I think it contributed a lot to him not being my father. I met him later in [my] life. He tries really hard now to be my father, but it’s hard because I don’t know how to have a father, so we struggle with our relationship.”

That’s why Veterans in the Wild, This Is My Quest’s latest initiative, focuses on relationships. For all the great programs that take veterans on once-in-a-lifetime hunts, Rose notes many are just that—once in a lifetime.

“I’ve worked with a lot of amazing organizations. I’m not taking anything away from them, giving people those opportunities to go on hunts or excursions in the outdoors, but I would meet them one time and didn’t see them again because there are so many veterans they had to help. I wanted to do something a little different; I wanted to stay with them,” she says.

She also knows what post-traumatic stress disorder can do. As a participant in the eighth season of Alone, Rose found she was anything but as she traversed the wilds of west-central British Columbia. Dropped off on the remote Chilko Lake, the object of the “game” was to survive alone with nothing but ten pieces of equipment, ingenuity, and her wits long enough to outlast the other participants.

Your wits last only so long when you’re being stalked by a grizzly bear.

See Veterans on page 8

7

(3) Courtesy Travis McConnell

Veterans continued from page 7

“I’ve been in grizzly bear country before, but here one had been watching me for a few hours and it became a dangerous situation.

I was in a very fragile state,” she says as she remembers coping with starvation and the mental and physical challenges it brings. “It was certainly not military related, but I can understand how hard it is to come back to the world after being in another world and trying to heal at the same time. I found that [PTSD] is very prevalent in a lot of people because of life—a car accident, a mugging, or something that happens to them in society. “[PTSD] was something that I didn’t want to say that I had. That was a hard thing for me to adjust to, accept, and accept treatment for,” she continues. “The outdoors was where I needed to go back to, to try to make things better, because the real world here was too overwhelming for me.”

So with This Is My Quest having firmly established its children’s and women’s programs, a veteran component was the next perfect fit. And, knowing his story, Rose knew Travis was the one to lead.

“I knew that the outdoors was really factoring in for Travis,” she says of his recovery. “Having a purpose really helps people to heal. When you can find a purpose, it gives you a better quality of life, especially for people who are driven to help other people, and Travis is one of those people. He’s a very, very kind human being. I thought he would be the perfect person because he could understand the level to which I wanted to take this program.”

Travis didn’t see the “perfect” in the situation.

Animals Yes, People No Born and raised in Tioga County, Travis headed off to the Marines after graduation from Wellsboro Area High School in 2004. He was eyeing a law enforcement career. Stationed at California’s Camp Pendleton after boot camp, he was assigned to the deployable First Marine Division MP Company, and by 2005 was in Fallujah, Iraq.

“Not necessarily a pleasant place,” he remembers.

As a member of a quick reaction force, he responded to any unit that was in trouble, bringing them safely home Controlling the chaos: to a base or ending whatever conflict they were in. (top) Taking veterans “During that deployment, my truck was hit by down Pine Creek—with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) more than one a paddle; Travis fixes time. I suffered some minor injuries and several conlunch on the shore; Travis cussions from the explosions,” he says. He returned to shares the sunrise with a Camp Pendleton in 2006, only to be deployed again buddy. to Iraq later that year. Back in the States by 2007, he was chosen to train K9s and found himself in Cherry Point, North Carolina, as a kennel master and dog trainer. His only deployments were now stateside, and included security for the United Nations General Assembly in New York and support of local law enforcement. His bond with animals began to take shape.

By the time he reached his next assignment—a recruiting station in suburban Philadelphia—health issues were starting to take their toll. He retired after nine and a half years of service, and he and his wife, Noell, returned to Wellsboro.

Tioga County might not have changed much, but Travis had.

Moving back with no real plan, he worked a few “odds and ends” jobs and partnered with his brother and dad in the family’s sheet metal business. But the health issues would not go away.

“I would black out here and there,” he says. After one partic-

8

ularly bad episode, his family convinced him to see a doctor, who diagnosed him with a traumatic brain injury and promptly took away his driver’s license.

The Veteran’s Administration labeled him as “unemployable” and placed him on 100 percent disability.

“My whole way of living was a truck full of tools. Now, I’m not allowed to work anymore; in my mid-thirties, I was retired,” he remembers. “For someone who worked their entire life in very physical jobs, I did not how to handle that. That point in my life, it was a pretty dark time.

I was very depressed, I had a lot of mental problems, and I drank a lot.”

For its part, Travis says the VA was trying to help. “Their solution to a lot of things is medication,” he says. “But when the patient is not the best patient and they drink a lot, that leads to other problems.”

A scary—life-threatening—situation opened his eyes.

“I lost all memory of everything that happened. The story goes that I actually stopped breathing at one point and my brother and wife were trying to keep me alive.” He quit drinking, got his medications sorted out, and set out to find a purpose.

As a kid, he had spent a lot of time outdoors and had tagged along on his dad’s hunting and fishing trips. Maybe the outdoors would help him heal. So, he started volunteering at Second Chance Animal Sanctuaries’ Heading Home shelter.

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“Through that, I met somebody who had horses, and I started going on trail rides, which I found to be more therapeutic than anything.”

Content with the animals, the last thing Travis wanted to do was to get involved with people.

“I struggle with people,” he admits.

See Veterans on page 10

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Veterans continued from page 9

“I feel like I have to pretend to be something I’m not; I have to put a smile on my face even if I’m having a bad day with pain or a bad day mentally. But if I go outside, into the woods, or on a lake or a river, it’s just me or just me and a friend, and I have the ability to feel whatever emotion I need to feel that day or that minute. It’s calm, it’s peaceful, it’s just you and nature.”

Rose knew that’s why she needed Travis. He understood that healing took time; just one fishing trip, while fun for the day, wasn’t going to make a lasting impact. Relationships needed to be built and the passion for the outdoors rekindled in a way that would lead veterans to draw in other veterans. That’s where the true difference was going to be made.

Travis wasn’t so sure.

“I immediately told her no. I can’t do that; I don’t want to do that,” he says. But after discussing it with Noell, realizing it was an opportunity to give back for all those who had helped him, he called Rose. “I said ‘I’ll help you build it with the understanding that when we get it going, we’ll find somebody else to run it.’”

Rose would take that, and turned the program over to the best possible person to create something that would help struggling veterans—a veteran who has struggled himself.

“I wanted to focus on one individual at a time who was suffering from an injury, physical or mental, from their service. I call it ‘Control the Chaos,’ especially for the veterans who are suffering more mentally,” Travis explains. “That’s the best way I can describe what happens in the mind of a veteran dealing with that kind of situation.

Your mind is just chaos. Finding a way to control that, to find a purpose again, or find something that breaks the chaos—controls the chaos—allows you to focus again.”

A second outlet offers a group setting—maybe fishing, camping, hunting, or just sitting around a campfire with a cup of coffee.

“It’s like an outdoor club, where people can get together and share stories, while doing an activity outdoors,” Travis continues.

Trips have included a pheasant hunt at Martz’s Gap View Hunting Preserve in Dalmatia, Pennsylvania, and a kayak trip down Pine Creek with small groups of veterans who will someday lead others through Veterans in the Wild.

Another initiative, Elder Adventures, was born of a conversation with a friend working as a physical therapist in a local nursing home.

There were a lot of veterans there; the therapist was wondering if there was something available for them.

“Here, we’re focusing on our older generation veterans who have been told ‘you can’t go do this anymore’ or ‘you’re never going to be able to do this again because you have this health problem,’ or ‘you’re just too old.’ I don’t like anybody being told that they can’t, especially someone who has done so much and has been so independent in everything their entire life,” says Travis. “We give them an opportunity to go on a fishing trip, or take them out, just somewhere out in nature to relax and enjoy an activity they used to enjoy and have been told that they can’t do anymore.”

Regardless of the program, each opportunity is individualized.

Travis knows that each veteran is dealing with a very specific situation, and the outdoors offers very specific solutions.

“When we are talking to a veteran, we go through a lot of questions. ‘What do you like to do?’ ‘What did you used to like to do?’ Or ‘What do you think you would like to do?’ If they have zero experience, we give them some options,” he says. “One person See Veterans on page 12

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Courtesy Travis McConnell

A very pheasant afternoon: Chad Osgood (left) and Chris Miller enjoyed an outing with Travis McConnel at Martz’s Gap View Hunting Preserve one chilly day last winter.

Veterans continued from page 10

might find fishing absolutely frustrating and it makes their mood worse. Another person might not want to hunt because they don’t want to harvest an animal. There are so many variables, so we leave it completely open.”

All the while, says Travis, it’s about that relationship, and about opening doors for that veteran to find a purpose.

“We don’t take somebody on a hunting trip and that’s it, they never see us again,” he says. “We work with them one-on-one and hope they find a passion in the outdoors, that they’ll want to continue to work with us and maybe be a mentor for the next veteran or in one of Rose’s other programs. Maybe they want to mentor a kid to fish or kayak or whatever. The hope is that we can instill enough passion in somebody for them to want to continue.”

The outdoors may be the focus that draws people in, but it’s just the beginning.

Both Rose and Travis are committed to the veterans themselves, not just their activities.

Rex, a veteran, lives alone in Tioga County. A frequent visitor when Rose owned Moore’s Sport Center in Wellsboro, he’s now battling cancer, facing trips to Brooklyn, New York, for treatment and surgery, diet changes, and a complicated health system. That’s a lot for a sixty-eight-year-old to navigate by himself. True to the This Is My Quest motto, Rex is “Never Alone.”

“We’ll all care for him,” says Rose of not 12

only herself and Travis, who regularly take him to appointments, but the legion of ladies making and freezing meals for him, and those friends who will visit his home to help keep it tidy and offer him some companionship.

“When he starts to feel better and can get into the outdoors again, he’ll be fishing with Travis. We’ll get him back outside when we can, but we’ll stay with him indoors or outdoors, wherever he needs us,” Rose says.

Help Others, Help Yourself In many ways, the logistics of the coordination, the travel, and the trips, have been the easy part. Finding veterans to participate is the struggle. They have the program, they have volunteer support, and they have willing donors. They need to find the veterans they know are out there—the ones who aren’t looking for a program, but instead suffer in silence.

“As it turns out, veterans don’t reach out.

I knew that because I’m that way and still am to a degree. [Veterans] don’t ask for help, they don’t seek help, they don’t look for programs like this,” says Travis. It’s a product, he adds, of their military training. “The mindset is created in the military in general. We’re told to deal with it and get by. Trying to break that stigma and let [veterans] know that it’s okay to talk about it, it’s okay to get help—that’s a difficult thing to break through. We’re reaching out to anyone who can put us in contact

with a veteran with needs and wants, even if it’s just sitting around a campfire and sharing a coffee and talking.”

Still in its first year, both Travis and Rose are determining what works and what doesn’t for Veterans in the Wild. They know it’s a long (and winding) road, one that’s familiar to them. Rose and her dad, now dealing with advanced COPD, are still working on their relationship. Travis, on his own journey, continues to build the program. Is he still waiting for Rose to find someone else to run things? Maybe not.

“Did he tell you that he is now vice president?” laughs Rose about Travis’s new position at This Is My Quest.

He may want to keep that list of ten phone numbers. He’s probably going to need some help.

All the contact information, and an overview of the program, is available at thisismyquest.org. Anyone can reach out to Travis at travismcconnell85@gmail.com or (570) 787-0048.

Paula Piatt lives in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania with her husband and two Labrador retrievers, where they hunt and enjoy the outdoors. An award-winning writer, she is an active member of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association.

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(4) Tyler Frantz

Memories are bruin at this camp: (clockwise from top left) Hunting up breakfast; tracking hard mast; getting lucky; cleaning and storing gear.

Big Woods Bear Camp One for All, All for One, Sometimes None

By Tyler Frantz

I

f there’s anything 97 percent of Pennsylvania bear hunters understand, it’s that the chances of filling their tags are slim. Yet the mere possibility of falling into the roughly three percent of license holders annually who are fortunate to take a prized Keystone State bruin makes the low-ball odds of scoring big entirely worth it.

To put things into perspective, the Lycoming County hunting camp of which I’m a member has pursued black bears throughout the public lands of the northcentral counties surrounding our small-plot cabin during every open season since it was established in 1951.

Multiple generations from southeastern Pennsylvania have traveled to our cherished home away from home in the Big Woods for fall hunting excursions and summer family vacations, using camp as a launch point to 14

soak in all the region has to offer from trout fishing to kayaking to sitting around the campfire beneath the stars. But nothing gets us more excited than the prime bear hunting opportunities offered within an hour’s drive from camp in any direction.

Despite braving early morning wakeups, a wide range of weather conditions, and mountains so steep they’ve blown soles off hunting boots, our dedicated group of twenty-eight hunters has hardly attained sixty bears in seven decades worth of trying.

Still, that’s far better than most, and we’re proud to contribute to the state’s conservation model of wildlife management, one we believe helps this elusive species thrive through regulated hunting seasons that are designed to remove a small percentage annually, keeping populations in balance with available food and habitat.

It’s About Tradition (and Luck) Something our guild has come to know about bear hunting is that it requires grit, persistence, marksmanship, patience, stealth, composure, adaptability, knowledge of the woods, and a whole lot of luck. But, the chance of encountering the ultimate big game species in Penn’s Woods, as well as the camaraderie of sharing camp memories with family and friends, keeps our traditions strong.

Routinely, it means silencing an alarm at 3:30 a.m., with the earliest riser throwing slab bacon and eggs onto the kitchen griddle and brewing two steaming pots of coffee, while a dozen or more camp members crowd around the counter packing cold cuts sandwiches, apples, and candy bars into paper bags for the long day ahead. Most hit the mountain well

before dawn and only quit after sundown, so this fuel is essential.

After a brisk visit to the two-seater outhouse, our lone shower cycles like a turnstile, as hunters take scent-free showers to remove the smells of breakfast, and then hustle outside in the dim porchlight to dress in clothing treated with special detergents designed to guard human odors from a bear’s best defense—its nose.

We then assemble our hunting gear and drive to locations carefully scouted in advance, hike a mile or more from the parked vehicle, and fan into small subgroups to stake out the most likely trails that bears could potentially wander on any given day. Staying quiet and motionless, we wait as long as it takes, hoping for something that may or may not ever materialize.

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Take, for instance, last fall, when we discovered early on that bear signs and the hard mast such as acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts they might be eating were scarce near camp. We realized we’d need to adapt to the conditions and search elsewhere to find bears.

By mid-week of the October inline muzzleloader season, a few elder members had searched high and low for abundant mast at ground level, finally locating a bumper crop of nutrient-rich acorns on a remote tract of Tioga County public land. Making the property even more enticing was its mixed cover of dense laurel, towering hardwoods, and low evergreens situated among intersecting ridgelines. By all measures, it appeared to have the markings of excellent bear habitat.

Waiting until enough young blood arrived to enable hauling a bruin out of the steep ravines should anyone connect on a shot (a physically burdensome yet fulfilling task we’ve all experienced multiple times), our group hit the road and traveled to this new but promising location during the final day of the early bear season.

Having never been there before, we made the mistake of entering the tract from the wrong location. If the noise of trampling through a bed of dry, crunchy leaves wasn’t bad enough, we quickly found ourselves engulfed in a laurel thicket taller than our heads. By the time we finished bushwhacking to the ridge, which thankfully was much more open, we had alerted just about every living creature within earshot of our presence, including some form of unseen wildlife that made quite the racket as it fled for the distant hills.

The silver lining, however, was that, in the process, we found two big heaping piles of bear scat, which not only answered the age-old question, but also validated the hunch that this was indeed bruin territory.

Despite blowing our chances for this hunt, the area was loaded with acorns, game trails were clearly obvious, and we even identified a less obtrusive way to access the property. We hatched a hopeful plan to return during the following month’s firearms bear season.

A Lucky Fall On opening day, a late November sunrise gave way to a forest cloaked in white with flurries dancing freely in the early morning glow. Seven of us had settled into our chosen posts along promising See Camp on page 16

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terrain features, strategically approaching from three different locations to increase our chances of seeing a bear should there happen to be any still fattening up on the remaining morsels of acorns before denning for the winter. Fresh tracks in the snow, as well as evidence of deep digging in the leaf litter observed during the walk in, gave us even more reason to be optimistic. We sat in silence, scanning the woods for glimmers of movement as a new season dawned.

Shortly after 7:30 a.m., the sharp crack of a rifle pierced the stillness of the morning air. “Was that one of our guys?” someone from the group inquired. Indeed, it was, but the full story became clear only later that evening, when the group recounted the tale while gathered around the flickering warmth of the fireplace after a hearty dinner.

Four hunters had walked in together and spread out along a ridge. Just after daybreak, the first hunter in line heard footsteps approaching, but only caught a momentary glimpse of a bear before it was past him. The second hunter also heard it coming and took aim with his rifle, but just as he was ready to fire, the bear disappeared in a low dip in the terrain. The third hunter, hearing the second hunter shout, “A bear is heading your way!”, tried desperately to get into shooting position by clambering atop a blowdown, but still couldn’t line things up before brush along the ridge obstructed the bruin. By this time, the fourth hunter was ready, but he flat out missed. All four hunters saw the bear, yet none could make it happen.

Our entire group hunted from daybreak to dusk. No one saw another bear despite hearing several additional shots in the vicinity.

Not wanting to give up on a good area, we returned the following morning, but our hunt was cut short for a good, and somewhat ironic, reason.

A fellow member who had remained close to camp (where, again, there was very little sign) tripped and fell while walking into his intended hunting location. Dusting himself off from a forward tumble, he figured that this place would be as good as any to sit and rest a bit. Moments later, a bruin appeared from the laurel, and he was blessed to harvest it cleanly with a well-placed shot, proving anything can happen in the bear woods.

Heeding our friend’s call for assistance, we immediately abandoned our hunt to travel a county’s distance and help haul his bear through cold creek water, over rocky ledges, and across a high elevation thicket back to the truck. We know how rare it is to fall into that successful three percent of bear hunters, so it’s always a celebratory occasion when one of our own fills a tag.

Sure, we all hunt with the hopes of taking a bear each year, but odds are more likely we’ll enjoy the beauty of a mountain sunrise, eat well, tell stories, and share a few laughs with friends and family.

Occasionally, our planning pays off exactly as we hoped, while other times, we are humbled by the unpredictability of these incredible animals we love to pursue.

But one truth remains—a bear for one is a hard-earned reward for all of us. That’s what this treasure we call bear camp is all about.

Tyler Frantz is an award-winning outdoors writer from Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. He has taken three Pennsylvania black bears to date and continues to learn from the awesome mountains they roam.

Follow more of his work at naturalpursuitoutdoors.com.

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Gayle Morrow

Glory Hill Diaries

Tailgating Tales

Food and Drink from Strangers? You Bet!

By Maggie Barnes

“C

rab stuffed mushrooms. Want some?”

I had never laid eyes on the woman who stood before me, plastic tray of mushrooms at the ready, and I probably would never see her again. The logical response is, “Away from me you possibly homicidal maniac! Why would I take food from a stranger?”

But I said, “Delighted, thank you!

Would you like a mimosa?”

There is only one setting in which such a conversation is not only possible, but proper and expected. Welcome to NFL tailgating.

On several Sundays and the occasional Monday and Thursday, in Orchard Park, the Buffalo Bills faithful gather by the thousands.

They come from places near and far, lining up hours before kickoff to claim a parking spot they will subsequently customize. Popup tents, camp chairs, and folding tables are the basics. Add coolers and some sort of 18

instrument for cooking. Come winter, the ritual remains intact, but now there are sides to the tents and portable heaters beneath.

Flags are useful as locators, since telling your compatriots “We’ve got a blue tent and a card table, come find us” is akin to a real-life game of “Where’s Waldo?”

As new season ticket holders, we weren’t sure how it all worked. We left our Waverly home at the unholy hour of 4 a.m. and by 7:30 were coming up on Highmark Stadium with no clue where to go. One block back, a group of true believers were lined up on a side street, complete with a truck wrapped in the Bills logo from grill to tailgate. Bob rolled down the window and said to the folks standing on the street, “Hi. We’re new to this and we’re not sure where to…” The young man waved off the rest of the statement and pointed his thumb to the end of the line of cars. “Get in line. We’ve got you.”

This total acceptance by complete

strangers is a fundamental principle of tailgating. You’re a Bills fan? You’re family. We understand you. Those young people closed around us like a tribe, answering our questions and offering their knowledge. (Even if they did tag us as “the old couple in the blue truck.” The brats.)

The set-ups for tailgating can be quite elaborate, including high-powered music systems, robot-like heating gizmos, coolers you could stuff a body in, and fancy grills.

At our first game, we unloaded our gear and Bob looked around. “Holy cow, look at that prep table. That’s cool. Their grill is huge!

You could make thirty burgers on that thing.

There’s lighting under their tent—we should have that. I’m going to have to go shopping.”

He wandered the lot, asking questions and admiring ingenious set-ups.

If you think the tailgating food hasn’t progressed beyond hot dogs and hamburgers, See Tailgating on page 20

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oh, are your tastebuds in for an awakening. Stuffed jalapeños, chili, ham and cheese sliders, bacon wrapped venison, mac and cheese, meatballs, sausage and peppers, cheesesteak, breakfast sandwiches, and shish kabobs are standard offerings. There’s always soda and water, but the crowd flocks to pitchers of Bloody Marys and mimosas on those winter Sundays. (Okay, any Sunday). One of the joys of tailgating is whatever you drank in the parking lot evaporates during three and half hours of screaming yourself hoarse in twenty-four-degree weather during the game.

While tailgating happens across the thirty-two-team span of the NFL, I’ve been told that Bills fans are unusually gracious to the visiting opponent’s followers. I’ve seen it countless times. As the cornhole bags whiz by and the smell of food hangs in the air like a county fair, folks in the other jersey wander between the rows of vehicles. Sometimes they are carrying a token refreshment, but often they are empty-handed. Without fail, someone will call out to them, “You hungry?” Within minutes, they are under a tent, plate in hand, and being soundly teased for their affiliation.

It’s all in good fun. We are bonded by our love of the game and loyalty to our teams. I have come to adore the cheerful gang we have formed at the games. I know little about them outside of football, but I know we probably wouldn’t come across them in any other part of our lives. We’ve got every character you can imagine—the sports wizard who can quote every stat on every player, the traditionalist who got his seat via familial bequeathment and who will always attend regardless of team performance, the overachiever whose tent is perfectly positioned and whose food is more like an upscale garden wedding, e.g. “Watercress with homemade hummus and organic cherry tomatoes?” On the other end of the social spectrum, the language can be a bit…salty. There hasn’t been such lively lingo since George Patton stubbed his toe on his way into Belgium. We just roll with it.

Bob (pictured right on page 18), a retired fire chief, rigged up a contraption in the truck that organizes our tailgate supplies to facilitate unloading and packing up. As a bonus, if the stadium catches on fire, he can run fireground command from the back of our Tundra. The winter games are a challenge, as the wind roars across the lot at Mach 4 and unsecured tents threaten flight. But there is no discernable drop in attendance. In fact, Bills backers take it as a sign of true loyalty that you stayed in the stands long after your feet were just a memory and your nostrils were cemented together. It took us all season to work out our wardrobes (you can see me stylin’ on page 18). Now I know to put the pocket warmers between the two pairs of socks just before we head for the gate.

The cold-weather leggings are essential, even though I look like an overstuffed sausage. The snow pants hide a multitude of sins. Fashion loses out to function every time.

As a Buffalo native, the team has broken my heart for decades.

But we wade into each season with hope anew, sure that “things will be different this year.” Take my word for it, if Buffalo ever wins it all, they will have to shut down Western New York for a week—four days for the party and three for the hangover. Canada will have to talk in soft voices. Because, you know, this could be the year.

Maggie Barnes has won several IRMA and Keystone Press awards. She lives in Waverly, New York

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Karey Solomon

Getting loopy: The Monday evening knitting group at Fiber Arts in the Glen includes (from left) Helen Alford (who won two ribbons at the New York State Fair for the sweater she’s wearing) casts on for socks; Judy Appleton knits a baby hat; and Susann Dugo works on a cardigan.

High Fiber Diet

Finger Lakes Needlewomen Are Knitting Communities Together

By Karey Solomon

O

n September 30, when Bev Prentice closed the doors at Nimble Needles (her shop in Savona for the past fifteen years), she retired from shopkeeping but not from more than eight decades of exploring needle arts. Like many women raised in the first half of the twentieth century, she was encouraged to become an accomplished needlewoman.

She began knitting at the age of four, when her much-older sister asked their mother for knitting instruction. Not to be outdone, Bev sat on her mother’s other side and learned at the same time. Before she finished school, she was giving classes to her teachers and classmates. When she went to college, she located a needlework shop almost as soon as she found her dorm. Lacking a roommate, she spent her evenings knitting, developing a taste for “only good yarn.”

“My to-be husband got eighteen sweaters,” she notes with a twinkle in her eye. She married him—thus thwarting the “Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater.”

Bev’s first needlework shop opened in 22

her living room, then expanded to a storefront in Horseheads, then to several other locations, including Spencerport and Naples, and finally, in 2008, to Savona, closer to her home. She made quilts, crocheted, and also embroidered. She dabbled in other fiber arts.

Knitted more sweaters. One day she sat down to record how many different needle skills she’d tried and came up with ninety-three.

“And taught most of them,” Bev says. She’ll reluctantly admit she’s won awards and accolades for her talents. In her spare time, when she wasn’t knitting, she sang bass with the Sweet Adelines women’s barbershop group—and learned more needlework from the other singers.

These days, her constant companion is Fraulein Klein, a friendly, longhaired dachshund who’s won prizes of her own.

And when Bev finishes packing up her shop, which evolved into an inspirational gallery of beautiful handwork as much as a source of needlework supplies, she has more needlework projects of her own planned, including unraveling the mysteries of a pair

of seventeenth-century mittens she encountered at a yard sale, and finishing a necktie quilt and a crazy quilt. “And after that, we’ll see,” she says.

If Bev’s handwork can be considered a visual diary of a life—hers—created in yarn and thread, Barbara Vassallo of Rabbit Row Yarns and Haberdashery, 38 W. Market Street, Corning, offers area knitters and visitors an opportunity to record their own sense of place using an exclusive yarn that has its own. “Centerway Square” is custom-made for her shop—she created it in collaboration with a Baltimore spinning company named Plied Yarns.

“My brother is Michael Haas, the architect who designed Centerway Square in the late 1980s, and I get to have my shop less than half a block away!” Barbara says. “It’s where everything happens, people eating lunch, festivals… .The blue and brick [colored] strands wound around each other represent the square’s terracotta bricks and the blue sky above at that time of day when See Fiber on page 24

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the sun goes down and it’s so deep, with little wisps of white clouds.”

Barbara knitted herself a sweater with it, and while she’s sold Centerway Square in sock and sweater quantities, hers is the only garment she’s seen. But she has hopes. “Being able to say ‘I made this,’ brings a huge rush of endorphins, right?” she says. “For my younger customers, I certainly see an empowering element to knitting and crocheting.”

Fiber artists and other sewers—newbies and the experienced— can join the like-minded in the Mending Circle on Thursdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m., and #StitchCorningSundays on, what else, Sundays, from 1 to 4 p.m.

Barbara is a supporter of sustainably-sourced needle and craft supplies and products, and is a member of LocalFiber (localfiber. org), Hudson Valley Textile Project (hvtextileproject.org), and the New York Fiber Trail (nyfibertail.com). Contact Rabbit Row at (607) 654-7383 or learn more at rabbit-row-yarns.myshopify.com.

At Wooly Minded, 91 E. Market Street, Corning, tradition continues as proprietor Jean Gray believes that if you “learn something new…it’s going to bolster you up a little.” She offers mostly one-on-one instruction, her preferred method of teaching since the pandemic. Three knitting groups a week create a welcoming community where knitters share their lives as well as techniques around a bright blue table. Jean describes Wooly Minded as having a “broad selection of affordable and practical yarns, but a little more elevated.” She speaks with a British accent, which, she jokes, “makes me sound like I know what I’m talking about.” (Actually, she does.) Ask questions or book a time slot at (607) 973-2885, or visit woolyminded.com.

Fiber Arts in the Glen, at 315 N. Franklin Street, Watkins Glen, had a lot to celebrate with its recent tenth anniversary. The business’s seventeen owner-investors built the shop from bare walls after its previous owner relocated, stocking it with fiber-rich products including yarn from local alpacas, regionally-sourced wool—how about a bison/merino blend?—felted creations, dryer balls, and other regional products.

“We like to focus on local yarn and local gifts,” says Ann Pettit, who co-manages the shop with Joanna Snyder. “I’d say we have a nice variety, from the expected to the unusual.” As the shop has evolved, they’ve built community with classes, knitting/crocheting groups—there’s one on Monday evenings and one on Friday afternoons—and one-day retreats. Fiber Arts in the Glen enjoys the support of seasonal customers, many of whom return annually to restock their fiber stash and reconnect with the year-round patrons, and staff, who are the backbone of the business.

“Between the five of us who work in the shop, there’s a lot of knowledge,” Ann says. Reach them at (607) 535-9710 and at fiberartsintheglen.com.

It takes more than thread and yarn to keep a community knitted together. These groups welcome newcomers to join in sustaining Finger Lakes traditions and friendships.

Karey Solomon is the author of a poetry chapbook,Voices Like the Sound of Water, a book on frugal living (now out of print), and more than thirty-five needlework books. Her work has also appeared in several fiction and nonfiction anthologies.

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Wade Spencer

Mother Earth

Thankful for the Acorn and the Native Bagel

By Gayle Morrow

P

ing! Ding! Thunk! Ouch—*^#$ing acorns! It is a banner year for the fruit of the oak. The yard and driveway are full of them—it’s like walking on marbles. I think the squirrels are taking great pleasure in this large crop, and I know they sit, hidden, in the trees’ uppermost branches, lobbing the acorns down on our heads and vehicles. (“You think that squirrel-proof birdfeeder is funny? Here! Take this!”)

I don’t know what abundant mast portends. Is it a harbinger of anything—hard winter, easy winter, the end times, or just oaks doing what oaks do? We’ll know in April. I try not to second-guess Mother Nature, and I try not to look too far ahead.

Anxiety and all that…

Some people do clever things with acorns—crafts, flour, slingshot ammo—but I haven’t yet found the wherewithal to look at my yard and driveway with any sort of creativity in mind. I do, however, have one acorn that is pretty special. Here’s why.

26

I’ve been visiting the Native Bagel here in Wellsboro since it opened in 1997. Sue Cummings, who just closed the business in July, has been part of it all since all the N.B.’s deliciousness started pouring out of the kitchen and into us.

“That was my life—for twenty-seven years I did that every single day and I loved every minute of it,” she says. She started out as an employee, then became a partner, and eventually purchased the business. The Native Bagel was the kind of place that every small town should have—the place where everybody knows your name, to borrow a phrase. And Sue knew her customers.

“The important thing to me was making people happy,” she says. “But people come in, and you know they’re hurting…”

It was busy this particular day, as it almost always was. Sue was behind the counter, making sandwiches. She always had a big smile for me—she had a big smile for everyone. But she knew I was hurting.

Maybe not why, but that didn’t matter. She asked me how I was doing. I wasn’t doing.

Suddenly I couldn’t stop the tears. Well, didn’t she stop what she was doing, come out from behind the counter, and give me a big hug. A bit later, as I was leaving with my goodies—probably a jumbo bag of bagel chips (weren’t they just the best?) and a latte—she came back out from behind the counter and gave me a talisman. It’s a little, hard-plastic acorn that she said someone had given her—for luck, for love, to make her feel better, whatever reason she had received it, she passed that goodness on to me on one of those days when I so needed all those things.

I know about paying it forward, but I need this particular acorn for myself, just a little longer. The ones under my feet are a blessing to the natural world; this one is a blessing to me. Thanks, Sue.

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Doc’s Kitchen

Deerly Beloved

By Richard Soderberg

T

o me, one of the best parts of living here is the abundance of deer—and the liberal regulations that allow us to harvest them from nature. A guy needs a nice slab of beef once in a while, but I absolutely could not live without venison. Some of the people I talk to report that they don’t like it because it’s “gamey,” whatever that means.

Some say they have recipes that make venison taste “just like beef.” Why would anyone want to do that? Venison is delicious, with a rare and unique flavor worthy of enjoyment on its own merits. I hope these recipes will convince the skeptical of the virtues of wild venison.

Basic Stock and Bone Sauce Some of these recipes require a stock or a sauce. Never throw away a bone! Roasted bones make a darker, richer stock. Stock made from unroasted bones will be lighter.

Combine the roasted bones—I use the pelvis, neck, spine, and knuckles from the long bones—with fresh thyme and parsley, a cup or so each of diced leeks, diced onion,

28

and diced carrot. Simmer for at least 6 hours, keeping everything submerged throughout the process, then strain out solids and reduce liquid to 2 or 3 quarts while skimming off the crud that floats to the surface. Your stock is finished. You will need some of it to make the bone sauce. I can the rest so I can use it all year.

To start the sauce, cut the de-knuckled leg bones into little pieces. I use a Sawzall.

You need about a pound or enough to cover the bottom of your pan.

I make bone sauce in a cast iron wok.

Heat a cup or so of oil until it starts to smoke.

Then add the bones and cook until they are nicely browned. It takes about 20 minutes.

Deglaze (add liquid to the hot pan to get the good bits) twice with your prepared stock.

The third deglazing is with vegetables.

Add a cup or so each of diced onions, leeks, and carrots. Cook in the hot oil until caramelized and the moisture from the vegetables has cooked off. Deglaze.

Add 4 cups of stock and strain into a saucepan. Make sure you scrape up all the goodness from the bottom and sides of the

wok. Simmer while carefully spooning the oil off the surface of the sauce. Continue until you have reduced the sauce to about a cup.

Your finished sauce is an oil-free, dark, rich, thin liquid.

Loin of Venison with Root Vegetable Puree and Blueberry Sauce This is my signature venison dish, reserved for my most deserving guests. I use a 5 to 6-inch piece of venison loin per serving for this dish. Here’s what you need: meat, fresh blueberries, venison bone sauce, turnips and parsnips, additional vegetable of your choice, and white chocolate chips. Cut the venison into pieces longer than they are in diameter so that it stands up like a little tower, and that the silver skin has been removed.

Do the meat last. To prepare the puree, peel, chunk, and boil the turnips and parsnips until tender. Drain, add the white chocolate, and puree until smooth. Cook fresh blueberries down to a liquid. Thicken with cornstarch dissolved in a little of the venison See Deerly on page 30

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Deerly continued from page 28

bone sauce. Sear the meat on all sides in hot butter. Don’t let the internal temperature exceed 120 degrees.

To assemble, place a dollop of the puree on a plate, stand the venison up in the center, top the meat with blueberry sauce, drizzle the roots with venison bone sauce that has been thickened with cornstarch, and garnish with something green.

If you didn’t mess it up, the meat will look like this (photo top left) when you open it up.

Roast Venison and Popovers Most hunters and their cooks think that venison has to be canned or cooked to mush in a crock pot to be edible. Try cooking it like a fine beef roast and you will never use the crock pot again.

I use the sirloin for this dish. Season with salt, black peppercorns or grains of paradise (a pepper-like spice related to ginger), and fresh garlic (photo on page 28).

Wrap in bacon and cook at 350 degrees until internal temperature reads 120 degrees. Remove from oven, tent with foil, and rest.

Serve with popovers.

To make popovers you need a special tin. A muffin tin doesn’t have deep enough cups. Place the popover tin in a 500-degree oven and warm it up while you make the batter. Prepare the popover batter—1½ cups flour, 1½ cups whole milk, 3 eggs, and a pinch of salt will make 6 popovers. Mix the batter with a whisk. Don’t use an electric mixer. When the tin is hot, remove it from the oven, place a pad of butter in each cup, spray with non-stick cooking spray, and fill cups to within a half an inch of the rim of each cup. Cook at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, reduce to 350 degrees and cook another 15 minutes. They will look like this (middle photo) if you did it right.

(Even if they don’t, they will be delicious.)

Deer on a Stick The trick to making shish kabob is to cook the components separately—this is because they require different cooking times. I use the top or bottom round for this dish. You can use any vegetables, but I prefer onions, cute little sweet multi-colored peppers, baby bella mushrooms, and tomatoes. The meat and onions can go together, as can the mushrooms and peppers. The tomatoes must be cooked alone.

Cook the meat/onion skewers first, then the pepper/mushrooms, and finally, the tomatoes. All elements should have a slight char.

Serve over rice.

Chicken-Fried Steak Venison sirloin works well for this dish. Slice into ¾-inch steaks and beat them with a hammer that has teeth. Coat the prepared steaks first in flour, then in egg, and finally in crushed saltines. Fry in oil until golden brown on both sides. Scrape up what’s left in the pan used to fry the meat, add butter and flour to make a roux. When the roux starts to turn brown, add milk to make a simple white gravy.

Serve with mashed potatoes and rough greens for the dinner version. Serve with hash browns and eggs for the breakfast version.

See Deerly on page 32 30

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Deerly continued from page 30

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Store-bought corned beef comes from the brisket of a cow. I make my own from the top or bottom round of a deer. Prepare a brine consisting of a half-gallon of water, ½ cup each of coarse salt and brown sugar, and a tablespoon or so of pickling spice. Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite are needed to keep the meat red while it cures. This can be added in one of two ways. I use Prague Powder #1 or Insta Cure #2. These are mostly salt, but also contain a little sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate. If you use one of these two products, add 1 teaspoon to the brine. Morton’s Tender Quick can also be used, but, in this case, substitute it for all the salt because it contains less sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite than Prague Powder or Insta Cure. Cook the brine gently until the salt and sugar are dissolved and let cool. Add the brine and meat to a one-gallon ziplock bag and refrigerate for a week or so. Once out of the brine, cook it by simmering in a covered pot for 2 hours. Serve with steamed cabbage.

Or, make a Rueben.

Shanks Most people grind the shank meat into burger when they butcher an animal. Actually, if properly prepared, the shank is a very tasty cut. The shank is the ankle, found on each leg of a quadruped (bottom photo page 30).

Start the process by assembling chopped carrot, onion, and garlic. Season the shanks with salt and pepper and dust with flour.

Cook the onions and carrots in a little olive oil in a Dutch oven until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and cook for about one minute more. Remove the cooked vegetables from the Dutch oven and set aside. Add a little more oil and brown the shanks. Remove shanks and set aside.

Brown carrots and parsnips in the Dutch oven, scraping up all the bits of goodness that have accumulated. Set it aside.

Return the shanks and chopped vegetables, but not the sliced carrots and parsnips, to the Dutch oven. Add a cup or so of red wine and bring to a boil. Then add venison stock until the Dutch oven is about half full. Add a bouquet garni composed of thyme, rosemary, sage, and bay leaves.

Cover and cook in the oven at 275 degrees until the meat is tender, but not quite done. It takes about 2½ hours. Check every hour or so and add stock if necessary to maintain depth.

Add the reserved sliced carrots and parsnips, increase temperature to 325 degrees, and cook for one more hour.

Remove shanks and sliced vegetables. Strain the liquid into a small saucepan and discard the solids. Reduce by half, spooning off the junk that rises to the top, add a little butter, and whisk until smooth. Serve with a simple risotto made with vegetable or chicken stock, the sliced vegetables, and the reduced sauce. Bon appétit!

Richard (Doc) Soderberg is professor emeritus of fisheries science at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. Doc forages and eats what he finds near Mansfield. One of his retirement projects was a cookbook featuring recipes he developed over the years, some of which are featured here.

Doc’s Cookbook is available locally at the Tackle Shack in Wellsboro.

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B A C K O F T H E M O U N TA I N

Walking the Line

T

By Linda Stager

he Johnny Cash song “I Walk the Line” was going through my mind when I took a quick photo of this scene one November day. Pheasants are stocked by the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and this bird was on Route 287 south of Tioga, not far from where they are released. There were two males on the road that quickly disappeared when a car came from the other direction. Off they went. But not before I captured this frame of one of them walking a very crooked highway paint line.

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DECLAN DIDN’T CHOOSE TO HAVE AUTISM, but we did choose UPMC. - Sara and Declan M. Allenwood, Pa.

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“The team at UPMC … they are awesome,” Sara says. “… Declan wouldn’t be where he is if it wasn’t for them.” To learn more, visit UPMC.com/ChooseNCPA.

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