The Vagabond Kitchen: New Homes and Peach Bread Toast

6-9-15

Tent-side, Lake-side, Garden

The mist on the lake rose in spectral tendrils. A dazzle of sparkling sunlight stretched like a glittering crown across a pale brow. Exhaustion tugged at me from one direction and excitement from another. This was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. My partner, Orson and I packed our belongings into a storage unit and trailer, loaded the ancient brown dog, Gus, into the car and proceeded south from our home in Marquette, Michigan. A four hour drive later we pulled into our new/temporary home on the shores of Crooked Lake.

While Orson constructed our new home—a 12×15 canvas wall tent—I drove our fluffy white housecat, Simon, down to Macon, Georgia, where my sister-friend Alice will pamper him for the next two months.
I start my seventh year teaching at Northern Michigan University August, 24th and until then Orson, Gus, and I are vagabonds. When we travel, our small, purple, storm-tested Mountain Hardware tent will function as home. We’ll source our food locally wherever we can—each meal a taste-memory of where we’ve been cooked up from our Vagabond Kitchen.

Rachel Mills cooking in the home-tent kitchen.

***

A mourning dove cooed us to sleep, and gulls and robins called us awake. The air was chilly, mist and sunlight vying for supremacy. Orson built up the fire in our little black woodstove as I cut into a loaf of peach bread seamed with cinnamon. I sliced a juicy, orange-fleshed peach in half, the fruit a vivid reminder of the journey I’d just returned from.

Driving through the south I absorbed a little of each place I touched upon, took a bit of it with me. And me with it. Savannah: salty hanging moss caress beneath the sultry darkness of ancient trees. Macon: stretched south in Atlanta’s shadow, columned mansions and stark class divides drawn down dotted street lines. North on I-75 through mountains glowing blue as the sun rose. Hollows between hills so deep anything could be happening down there. North, through Ohio’s flat fields and steel-studded, industrial cities. Through Detroit, counting down mile roads like minutes till doomsday. House skeletons gaped at me as I passed.
I drove north, exiting at the sign for Wolverine, turning the car east like a magnet to the lake-side tent where my brown dog and anxious love—a family incomplete—awaited my return.

Cozy home-tent living room.

The tent glowed, magical and alluring in the twisting mist. My new home, a reunion, and the sound of rain against canvas. We munched boiled peanuts on the pull-out sofa-bed. We were exhausted, but reminisced deep into the night. Soft canvas breathed around us, exhaling with each puff of wind.
My body still hummed with road song, but finally we are stationary—for a few days, anyway.
The cat is safe in Georgia with Aunt Alice, learning to love his southern-side until we journey south in August to retrieve him.

The tent has a floor, warm woodstove, camp oven, gas stove, sofa-bed, kitchen shelves, and writing desk where I will record our adventures.
Orson is fishing while I write this, fly-rod zinging through the evening air. The garden sits to my left, fresh turned soil and newly sewn seeds, a gambler’s bet on the future.

Coleman Camp Oven and Four Dog Wall Tent Stove (Three Dog Model)

Georgia peach, chive flower, and volunteer arugula salad.

by Rachel Mills

Rachel Mills is a professor of English at Northern Michigan University where she received her BS in English, MA in Creative Writing, and MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her current writing focus revolves around looking at food from a universal perspective-- the history, culture, and traditions surrounding both her family's food traditions, and those of other cultures.

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