Dinner at the fort

Fort Ross, California, June 2, 2012—

I ATE WAY TOO MUCH today, but had a good reason: a twenty-odd mile walk with 130 other people rambling around the north Sonoma coast, ending at seven o'clock at this remnant of the Russia America outpost from two hundred years ago.

(They were here to collect sea otter pelts, with the help of some native Americans from their Alaska colony. Thirty years later, the otter hunted to near extinction, they sold the outpost to John Sutter and sailed home.)

We set out at six, walked a couple of hours through redwoods, then stopped for breakfast at Plantation, where we were served scrambled eggs and bacon, beans and rice, salsa and tortillas, and lots of fresh fruit and coffee.

At two o'clock we broke for lunch: roast beef and cheese sandwiches, juices, again plenty of fruit — apples, bananas, apricots, peaches.

Then, finally, at seven-thirty or so, we walked into the fort. There volunteers were cooking up rice, beans and chicken in huge iron pots over an open fire. There was an array of what I think of as Oklahoma funeral salads: potato salads, macaroni salads, olive-and-sweet pepper salads. The rolls had been donated by Franco American, and took me back sixty-five years when they were a family favorite in my childhood; and the butter was churned on the spot from cream donated by neighboring milk-cows. Plenty of coffee; plenty of fresh fruit; delicious Russian cookies.

Cold water and plenty of it