Melon Days

A couple of weekends ago, I had the pleasure of participating in "Melon Days".  It's a festival that's quite a big deal 'round these parts.  There are a few melon lords in the area- the Dunhams, the Veteres, and the Thayns.  The leader of the Dunham melon empire also happens to be the son of the woman who owns the building where our organization's thrift store is housed.  Her other son is the pastor of the Bible church where I attend, his daughter used to run our youth programs, and his son owns the house that I'm currently living in. Are you getting a sense of how things work in small towns?

These farmers grow variety melons (which I'm so sorry that you folks in Indiana can't experience) in addition to the typical cantelope, honeydew, watermelon, etc.  My favorite variety is probably Canary.  It's crisp and lightly sweet yet flavorful.  The Crenshaw variety, however, is referred to around here as "the Cadillac of melons".  It's pretty good too.

The Cadillac

So, Green River's version of a harvest festival is Melon Days.  It basically consists of a bunch of vendors in the city park, plus some special events like a seed spitting, watermelon carving, and watermelon eating contests.  Oh, and free melon.  So much melon.  In case you've never experienced this, I'll warn you that too much melon can lead to some... eh... unpleasant GI effects.

Hope's watermelon, on the far right, is clearly the best, which is why it won first place.  Also, this is a random child.  I don't know him.

The parade was pretty impressive, partly because it was led by a helicopter and partly because of the famous "largest watermelon" (But really?  How vague is that?  Largest of what??) that resides in Green River.  It's really just a slice of watermelon, it's made of wood, and it comes out on special occasions.

What could you wear to melon days but homemade watermelon shirts?

Epicenter, an arts&culture/economic development non-profit, hosted some artists who made this float for the parade.  The theme of the parade this year was "whatever floats your melon".  Phil, one of the artists, bicycled this melon boat through the whole parade, which I considered pretty impressive.

I must say, however, that I was a little less than impressed with the selection of greasy fair food, so if anyone wants to volunteer to come out and set up an elephant ear/tenderloin/milk shake stand to show them how it's done, I would totally support that.

This is my supervisor, Justin.  And this was a tornado dog, which consists of fried potatoes wrapped around a hot dog.  'Nough said.

The non-profit I work with, PACT, and the other non-profit in town, Epicenter, had an arts booth for kids where I was also selling melon popsicles.  Right before I left Indiana I kept joking that if my VISTA position wasn't great I would just open up a popsicle stand.  Ha.  Funny how life works.  My other new business plans since coming here include a bowling alley, a drive-in theater (both of which used to exist), and a gourmet hot dog stand.  Or all three?  There are a lot of abandoned buildings around here that need rescuing.  

You're never too old for a face painting.

The kids were making felt bracelets, which are pretty cool.  I decided to add goat heads to mine, and I'm now also going to open up an etsy site for "natural" studded bracelets.  It's going to take off, I'm sure of it.  (goat heads are these spiky seed things that come off of some plant here.  If you look closely at the third from the top, I think you'll see the upside down goat head.)

The week leading up to Melon Days I made 200 popsicles.  Here's another thing about Green River... "two day shipping" on Amazon really means "two week shipping".  Which led to me calling stores and driving around the state trying to find popsicle molds the weekend before.  For some reason, stores don't consider September to be popsicle-making season.  I did have one man tell me that in a week he would have his Christmas popsicle molds out... I can think of several things wrong with that.

I'm including the popsicle recipes below if you're interested.  The Coconut Crenshaw was heavily endorsed by Hope, and my favorite was probably the Watermelon Strawberry Mint.

Unfortunately because of poor stand placement we didn't sell as many popsicles as we would have liked.  But we made back our money and most people who tried them really liked them.  At one point, Hope (an introvert) and I decided to walk around the park peddling popsicles to sell more.  You can probably imagine how that went, but make sure you're picturing two tired girls walking around the park and weakly yelling "homemade popsicles" and avoiding eye contact.  Whatever I decide to do with my life, I can assure you that it will not involve peddling anything.  

From left to right, Honeylope Orange Cream, Watermelon Strawberry Mint, Coconut Crenshaw, and Honeydew Lime Avocado.

Kid tested and approved.  

Each of these recipes are for about 8 popsicles. My 8-popsicle molds held 2 cups of liquid, so you might need to adjust the recipe slightly depending on much yours hold.  Or you could use ice cube trays.

For all of these, just throw everything in a blender and pour into molds.  They're quite simple and quick when you're not making a million.  I wrapped mine in waxed paper and sealed with washi tape, which worked well.    

Watermelon Strawberry Mint
1.5 cups watermelon 
(seedless would make your life a lot easier.  Otherwise, blend and strain the seeds out)
0.5 cup roasted strawberries 
(roast until juices are running and the fruit is softened and browned)
2 T sugar
0.25 cup mint leaves
2 tsp lemon juice


Honeylope Orange Cream
(this one had mixed reviews... you have to really like cantelope and vanilla)
1.5 cups cantaloupe or honeyloupe
0.5 cups sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
(or full fat vanilla yogurt)
2 T orange juice concentrate 


Honeydew Lime Avocado
1.5 cups honeydew melon
0.25 cup lime juice
0.5 medium avocado
2 T sugar
Water if necessary to thin


Coconut Crenshaw 
1.0 cup crenshaw melon (or any melon, really)
0.5 cup crushed canned pineapple
0.5 cups coconut milk
1/2 tsp coconut flavor 
(adding coconut shavings might be good if you like a little texture in your pops)


Happy Melon Days!

Trudging

My friend Ana and I arrived in Green River around 10:00 pm on the 23rd of August and were invited to go on a hike at 7:00 am the next day.  That's a good idea, right?  So of course we did it.  The hike was on Mt. Peale, a 12700 ft. peak in the La Sal mountains about an hour and a half away from Green River.  It was a little longer drive than I thought, which led to an adventure involving my car and gas, but that's another story for another time.  

Being from Indiana, I have little experience hiking mountains.  Between that and the elevation, there were many times I thought Mt. Peale would do me in.  I'll state right now that I'm not an endurance person.  My body seems to be built for speed and agility, but slow and steady (or trudging, as I referred to it on the hike) is pretty much my least favorite thing.  In the story of the tortoise and the hare, I'm totally the hare.  My general strategy was to go as far as I could as quickly as possible, and then stop, gasping for air, because I was terrible at pacing myself.  I made it up, and back down, but I didn't make it pleasant for myself.  On the plus side, I'm sure I gave Ana a lot of laughs.

Another hike was planned which took place last weekend.  Mt. Elbert... a 14400 ft peak, almost 2000 feet higher than Mt. Peale and the second highest peak in the continental US behind only Mt. Whitney in California.  I probably should have been more scared for this than I was, but lately I seem to adopt the general attitude of "we'll just see what happens".

These are some of the people I spend my time with now.  Total goons.

We camped by the trailhead and rose at 4:30 after a night of sleep that was possibly the worst of my life... bone chilling coldness, the overwhelming quiet of a silent night punctuated by snores from the boys tent, and being squished to a 1.5 ft wide space by Hope.  The joys of camping.  The beginning of the hike wasn't bad at all, and the rising sun with the changing fall colors of the Colorado forest made it so beautifully worth it. 

Then, the trees faded away, replaced by an intimidating, steep rocky trail through scrub grasses and plants brave enough to survive the altitude.  As we journeyed up this path, there were a very limited number of things on my mind:

Put one foot in front of the other.  Breathe in, breathe out.  One foot in front of the other.  Get to the rock up there. Slow and steady. Water.  Breathe in, breathe out.

By the time we were halfway up the peak, I had blisters on my heel, sole, and toes, and my hip flexors were aching terribly.  My lungs and thighs burned.  I kept looking down and thinking, I don't know how, but my feet are still moving.  Though my steps were generally baby-sized, they didn't stop.  At one point, a man that looked part Native American and all full of sage wisdom passed by me on his way down.  He smiled and said good morning, but I must have seemed miserable because then he just looked at me with a smile in his eyes and said "I know."  

I had learned to trudge, but even more surprisingly, I enjoyed it in a way.  Maybe this is the kind of thing long distance runners experience (I wouldn't know), but there was something kind of cleansing about putting myself through that hike.  It's not really about reaching the top, though of course that's nice (some inspirational Miley Cyrus lyrics are running through my head, but I don't really like her or her music so I'll refrain).  It's something about the lesson of continuing, one foot in front of the other, when your head thinks there's no way you can. It's also about learning what you can handle and pacing yourself accordingly, which is I think one of the hardest life lessons of all.

Sometimes our little group got spaced out, and there was a time I ended up walking with a nice woman named Denise, who was about 45, hiking alone, and had climbed 14000 ft peaks approximately 65 times in her life.  Pretty amazing.  We encountered a man on the way up who thought it sounded like a good plan to spend his morning jogging. JOGGING. up Mt. Elbert. Denise just shook her head and said "He must be from Leadville."  Apparently people from Leadville are nuts.  I wonder if he could feel the daggers everyone was staring into his back as he passed by, because there were plenty of them.  Here you are, just pleased that you're still moving, and he suddenly makes you feel like you're super lame for struggling up this mountain.  You're pretty much a 90 year old woman waddling up in her PJ's, by comparison.

It's a little how life can feel sometimes, or at least it is for me.  I'm generally a "results" person, not a "process" person, and that can make it easy to compare myself to others.  So even if something is a personal achievement it always seems like it pales in comparison to the amazing things that other people are doing (I'm sure no one else has this problem).  It's an ongoing struggle, but I think the past year or so has helped me begin to see things a little differently.  To focus a little more on the journey and less on the peak.  To realize that in each season of my life, I am able to give something unique to the people and opportunities that have been placed before me- something that I couldn't give at any other time.  To remember that the successes or good opinions of others are not what I'm striving for.  And, in the end, to feel comfortable with my own pace.   

Yes, I did actually make it.

Beginnings

This begins a new chapter in life.  A chapter in a small place with small town people, lots of sunshine, melons, run down old buildings, and big skies that are clear blue by day and littered with stars at night.  Sometimes, if I'm standing by a tree and a house that actually has a yard (don't get me started on the futility and and wastefulness of maintaining a yard in the desert), it feels like another small town in the Midwest.  But then I see the buttes rising across a wide expanse of dirt and scrubby bushes and I remember otherwise.    

Honestly, despite the desert landscape and other differences, it's amazing how quickly this new place has felt like home. Maybe that doesn't always happen so easily, but I think I've been lucky.  I was talking to someone recently and we compared our experiences moving away, them to a bigger city and me to my 1000-member town.  Ironically, while their life has become more isolated, I have entered into a family of volunteers and community members that nearly ensures I will never feel lonely. It's what I hoped I'd find here, but I'm glad it's turned out to be real.        

I was also determined to have a good attitude about moving halfway across the country, and I suppose the power of positivity should not be underestimated.  I think it allowed me to come to this place with an open heart and open mind, ready to make the most of the experience.  The realist in me says that I'm sure that things will not always be so rosy, but for now, I love this town with all of its quirky people and places.  A friend recently said, "the best movie endings are the kind that surprise you, but you couldn't imagine ending any other way."  And that's kind of how I feel about ending up in Green River for my VISTA year.  

I hope to use this blog to relay bits and pieces of my life and work here.  I'm excited to share these things with you, and I hope, if you're interested, you get an accurate picture of life (or at least one of them) in Green River, Utah.

Note: I might also occasionally post about totally random things, possibly food related.