Postcards From Dirt

Author: postcardsfromdirt

  • A Letter to my Friend




    http://www.greatoutdoors.com/published/across-montanas-beartooths
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78HnNT689ac

    The Beartooth
    Mountains are one of those places for me, kind of mystical and magical and
    always breathtaking.  Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Highway the most
    beautiful drive in America, and my experience so far is that he is right. 
    My favorite drive starts in Soda Springs Idaho and follows back country roads to
    Jackson Wyoming, north into Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone, exiting
    Yellowstone’s northeast entrance.  I was lucky enough to be able to make
    that trip twice every summer while I was going to school, once on the way to
    Nevada, and once on the way back.  The highway gets up above the treeline
    onto the Beartooth Plateau and flattens out and you are driving on the top of
    the world on rocks that came from the basement of the world.  It crosses
    Chief Joseph’s Trail and you can detour south and follow the Chief Joseph
    Highway through Sunlight Basin and over Dead Indian Pass (another spectacular
    drive) or you can continue on to Red Lodge and the Beartooth Pass (or you can
    do a loop and hit both passes).

    During my last summer
    in Jackson I got a puppy, he was half wolf and of course I named him
    Lobo.  He was my constant companion and he was with me on every one of
    those trips.  I remember stopping in Yellowstone so we could take a break
    and eat sandwiches (yes, I packed him his own sandwich) and thinking that he could be the only wolf in the park (that was before they reintroduced
    them).

    Telling you about all
    of these things I have done and places I have been has been cathartic for
    me.  It reminds me of how lucky I have been.  It makes my heart ache to remember how much I loved
    living in Montana.  It is beautiful, most people would say that western
    Montana is the part to visit, but Billings was perfect.

    Billings is right on
    the edge of the plains and the Beartooths are only 60 miles away.  The
    plains of Eastern Montana were home to the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne,
    Arapaho and Absaroka (Crow)… Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Chief Gall.

    I love the history of
    the area, I took a class called Indians of North America and I had to read a
    biography called “Two Leggings, the Making of a Crow Warrior”. I remember
    walking in the Pryor Mountains thinking that he had been there, that I was
    probably walking on the same path he had taken when traveling through Pryor
    Gap.

    Billings is close to
    the Little Big Horn Monument and I have been there several times. I love the history of the place.  David beat
    Goliath and they got to hang on to their way of life for a little longer. 
    They had to have been terrified, and at the same time fierce and terrifying.





    Thanks for letting me ramble on about these things that I love.


  • Recycling and Acid Trips

    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: Recycling

    Recycling and Acid Trips

    Occasionally I have these moments of incredible perspective
    that make me feel infinitesimally small and amazed at the same time. Last night
    it was one that made me feel smaller than usual. I was thinking about the
    beginning of everything, the big explosion that started it all and the idea
    that those things happen over and over.
    It started with me reading this quote from Carl Sagan that I
    posted on Facebook last year
    “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen
    if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do
    something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment
    in the history of our planet.”
    I am an environmentalist at heart, but I recognize that it
    is really all about the impact it has on humans. People who say we are
    destroying the earth drive me crazy. We may be changing it, but we are not
    destroying it. Our environment has been changing since the moment the particles
    started clinging together to make the rock we live on. To believe we can keep
    the environment static is ridiculous.
    Once the thought “particles started clinging together to
    make the rock we live on” entered my brain, I started thinking about the “Big
    Bang” and the fact that one day, our sun will die. Even if we are fortunate
    enough to find other planets to live on in other solar systems, one day our
    universe will begin collapsing and eventually form the dense particle that
    everything came from. What does that look like? It will be full of elements we
    will never see, huge atoms that could never exist under any conditions we could
    create. Whatever it is, all life, and all evidence that we ever existed will be
    erased and everything will start again. Billions of years will go by before
    life exists again.
    I was trying to go to sleep but instead I wondered “how many
    times has this happened before?” and I wondered what the intelligent life form
    looked like each time, or if they even got to the point where there was an
    intelligent life form each time. The good news is, no matter how terribly we
    screw things up, it will all be erased when the universe is condensed back into
    that particle and it will be a fresh start each time.
    Talk about recycling, that is the ultimate recycling
    program.
    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    I know there are many ideas as to what will happen, I have
    to admit physics drives me crazy. There are so many unknowns, and we are
    unlikely to ever be able to actually observe or measure the things we need to,
    to fill in the gaps. So, the model I choose is the recycling model. It is
    better than an ever expanding universe that is just going to die one day.
    To: Sandra and Jim
    From: Chuck
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Sandra,
    What a great read.  Your
    “notion” is not just better, but also much more likely.  I mean how could
    it really be any other way?
    I’ve been fixated on the smaller
    recycling episodes – continental crust and see attached cartoon.  You have
    bested me by a Universe!
    Chuck

    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    One of the things I fixated on was that everything has to be
    relearned again, everything, from discovering fire to the creation of calculus.
    Every time something new is discovered, invented or accomplished it is a big
    deal. But, what if it has all happened hundreds or millions of times in the
    past? The idea that EVERYTHING is erased just amazes me. I have never been on
    an acid trip, but I think these would be cool things to think about with a
    little acid.
    To: Sandra and Chuck
    From: James
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    I’ve
    been on acid trips dozens of times and thinking about stuff like this leaves
    you permanently damaged.  That’s my excuse (and probably Chuck’ s too). 
    To: Sandra and Chuck
    From: James

    Subject: Re: Recycling

    Well,
    I always think about the galaxy inside the pendant around the cat’s neck in
    “Men in Black”.  How many universes, how many times and is it
    all just a nightmare in something else’s imagination . . .?  Our demise is
    assured.😈


    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Yeah, I sometimes wonder about the “Whoville” possibility.
    It is difficult for me to accept that there is nothing outside the universe.
    Everything but time is finite, so there must be an end to our universe and
    something outside it. And even time being infinite bothers me.
    “Time starts with the Big Bang.”
    Time is time you can’t just arbitrarily say “Time starts
    here”. But, if it didn’t start there, when did it start? because everything has
    a beginning and an end. Physics is supposed to provide answers and I felt like
    there were never enough answers to those questions. This comic strip was in the paper
    when I was in college and its timing was perfect.

    To: Sandra and Chuck
    From:
    James
    Subject: Re: Recycling
    So
    Sandra, do any of your ruminations have an impact on your belief or disbelief
    of a “supreme being “?

    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    No, I have neither a belief nor a disbelief. What I believe
    is that we don’t know. I assume I will learn the truth after I die (or I
    won’t). For someone who likes answers for things, I am surprisingly ok with
    that.
    To: Sandra and Chuck
    From: James
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Well,
    I agree.  Have you heard the song “Let the Mystery Be” by Iris
    DeMent?  You’d like her.  It’s a cool song about that.

    To: Sandra and Jim

    From:
    Chuck
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    At the risk of never again being
    included in Sandra’s very compelling deep thoughts…
    I don’t know the song or artist
    (    “Let the Mystery Be” by Iris DeMent). 
    But I remember Frank Zappa’s song “The Adventures of Greggery Peckory”
     (sometimes spelled peccary).  Gregory Peckory invented the
    calendar.  And since Wikipedia did a good job describing the song’s story
    I take their work and provide you with edited excerpts:

    The calendar, upon release,
    immediately causes chaos, as people suddenly can keep track of time and plan
    ahead, thus making life aggravatingly mechanical, and also allowing people to
    discover how old they were. A group of hunchmen, just a few of the “very
    hip young people” of the world, attack Greggery on the way home from his
    office one night, enraged at the prospect of birthdays and being aware of their
    own aging.
    Greggery makes a phone call to
    find a “philostopher” .
    He is sent to a man named Quentin Robert DeNameland, supposedly “the
    greatest living philostopher known to mankind”, who hosts a group
    assembly. DeNameland’s authenticity as a philostopher is questionable, as he
    merely proclaims that “time is of affliction” – more specifically,
    “the eons are closing” – before soliciting for payment for attendance
    to his assembly.

    So there it is.  Zappa’s
    take.  Sorry for the long diatribe, but I couldn’t help seeing parallels
    in Zappa’s Greggery the peccary and Bloom County’s Otis the penguin, as well as
    DeNameland and “Whoville”.  Zappa concludes “If you ask a philostopher
    he’ll see that you pays.”
    And none of that required
    acid.  Just prompts from Sandra and Jim.
    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Thanks Chuck, I didn’t think of it as deep, just a view from
    space. I get those occasionally, I like them. They make me feel insignificant,
    but that also helps make my problems feel less significant.
    To: Sandra and Chuck
    From: James
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Whoa.
     Your song is better than mine.

    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra 

    Subject: RE: Recycling
    I found both songs on you tube. Jim’s was much easier to listen to and much
    shorter.  Chuck’s was 20 minutes long and… I don’t even know how to
    describe it. 
    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: FW: Recycling
    I have to admit, I have thought about this a lot. Like the
    fact that everything has to be relearned, for example, all of the laws of
    physics have to be rediscovered every time a new universe is formed. But, what
    if it isn’t relearned, what if the laws of physics are different each time the
    explosion occurs? That would be kind of interesting. Too bad no one will ever
    know.
    To: Sandra and Jim
    From: James
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Yeah, like
    after the NEXT Big Bang, NO worlds are randomly able to support life, so
    nothing gets re-learned by nobody.  Or are we in your creator’s Petri dish
    and she keeps applying the same physics to all the little universes (they’re
    too far away for you to see, but they’re in there) in her dish.  And she’s
    standing there wondering the same thing you are.  And so is the guy who
    owns the Petri dish that she is in.       AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
    Chuck is nothing, I am nothing , you are nothing, this conversation
    never really took place except in some real organism’s nightmare and he’s
    nothing either.
    “Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where
    they they all came from
    Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go
    When the whole thing’s done
    But no one knows for certain
    And so it’s all the same to me
    I think I’ll just let the mystery be”
    To: Sandra and Jim
    From: Chuck
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    Huh. 
    To: Jim and Chuck
    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Recycling
    You are always so optimistic.
  • Crazy Train

    Crazy Train

    TO: James and Chuck

    From: Sandra
    Subject: Crazy Train (of thought)

    This morning I was lying in bed, thinking about how irritated I used to get at Jack when he would harass me because I didn’t take my turn on a game fast enough. There is this app called “Words with Friends” and it is basically an electronic version of Scrabble. Jack played with a lot of people and it would take me a day or two to remember to open the app to make a play. He would send an email reminding me that it was my turn and lay this big guilt trip on me because I didn’t play quickly enough and it would piss me off. This morning I felt guilty about being irritated with him and said out loud, “I’m sorry Jack, I should have been more patient with you.” Then I wondered if he was actually out there somewhere listening or if things are actually as he believed, when you die you are simply gone.

    It is a scary thing to contemplate because that means we only exist as long as people who remember us exist. It made me think of the ancestors I have found on Ancestry.com and the fact that the only thing I know about most of them are their names and where they lived.


    I am lucky enough to have known four of my great grandparents (all of my mom’s grandparents). As long as I am alive, my memories of them will be alive, but my kids never knew them, so they will die with me.

    My train of thought eventually made it to this: not only do we continue in the memories of people, we exist physically in them as well. I was made from atoms that came from my mother’s body. Her mother made hers and my great grandmother made hers, etc. So biologically, it is possible that I have
    atoms in me from all of the people I am a descendant of.

    Thinking about that made me think about something I used to talk to my students about, which is that the atoms that I am made of have made other organisms before me. It is possible that I have carbon in me that once was part of a T-Rex. That’s kind of cool.

    To: Sandra and James

    From: Chuck

    Subject: RE: Crazy Train (of thought)

    Soul Train.

    It’s refreshing to read a non-depth psychologist’s thoughts on depth psychology.  It just meshes better with mine – even if everyone is still saying the same things – more or less.  Until you got to the atoms.  That’s past where they go. 
    That was cool.  But I have to say that the odds of us sharing an atom with a trilobite is so much greater than that of a T-Rex.  269 times more likely to be precise.  They both died out during a mass extinction, but the T-Rex was around for only a million years before their extinction event.

    Since we’re remembering these creatures and sharing atoms with them, do they still exist in some plane?

    As we shed old cells and build new ones do we change “en masse” and form a new social zeitgeist from some atomic memory in the cell?

    Was it even my turn and if it was, was I responding in time?

    Can I use was and was next to each other and in the same sentence?

    I hope Jack is enjoying your emails and laughing at the realization that he was wrong about something.

    They call me Chuck?

    To: Sandra and Chuck

    From: James
    Subject: RE: Crazy Train (of thought)

    All I can say is this:

    Having known you all these years and debated politics with you all these years Sandra, despite Chuck’s assessment of the likelihood of such inheritance, I have absolutely NO DOUBT, that you are largely made up of T-Rex atoms . . . .

    To: James and Chuck

    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Crazy Train (of thought)

    You are the only person I can stand to argue politics with.
    I refuse to discuss it with anyone else.

    Maybe this is what reincarnation really is. Just the
    recycling of atoms in other organisms. Digital information can be recorded on almost anything, so maybe something was stored on them from organisms they used to comprise, I could use some of that T Rex mojo right now.

    I was lying there trying to work out the mechanics of
    sharing atoms. When a female child is made, She has all the eggs they’re ever going to have, so my kids were made with atoms that came straight from my mom, essentially. As they grew while I was pregnant, all of their atoms came from
    me. We have cells that we never shed, brain cells, neurons etc, so we always have atoms we got from our mothers in us. Hmmm. This is going to require some alcohol to think through. I’ll get back to you on Monday.

    I don’t know if Jack was right or wrong, I hope, in a way he
    was wrong because the last 10 years of his life really sucked and he deserves something better.

    To: Sandra and Chuck

    From: James

    Subject: RE: Crazy Train (of thought)

    The only reason you can argue politics with me is because you know that I really don’t support the position I’m arguing for.

    To: James and Chuck

    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Crazy Train (of thought)

    Partly, and partly because you don’t fall back on name
    calling. I do miss it though.

    I hate that most conversations these days devolve into political complaining. I was talking to an old friend not too long ago and he told me he was going to South Dakota. I said if you go to Mount Rushmore check out the plaque that has the name of the people who made Mount Rushmore, my grandpa’s name is there. I think it’s cool that my last name is attached to a piece of American history like that. And he agreed then he said something about it only lasting as long as the liberals allow it to because they are erasing our
    history.

    Why does that have to happen?

    To: James and Chuck

    From: Sandra

    Subject: RE: Crazy Train
    (of thought)

    Everything that I am made of was created 15,000,000,000
    years ago (is that enough zeros?). Wow, you would think we would be smarter by now. There is a lot of knowledge in these atoms.

    Wish I had some of Newton’s atoms in me, he is the one I
    admire the most. He made my life miserable with his invention of calculus, but that is why I admire him so much.

    “What, there are no math equations that can describe this? Here, let me make some.” Then he created Calculus. He had to have been an opium user to come up with THAT stuff.

    To: Sandra and Chuck

    From: James

    Subject: RE: Crazy Train
    (of thought)

    I wish I had Tesla atoms. 

    To: James and Chuck

    From: Sandra
    Subject: RE: Crazy Train (of thought)

    Well, your hair always seems electrified.

  • A Letter to My Daughter

    Hi Sweetie,

    I love looking at Google Earth with all the labels and borders turned off. You get a quick view of the geology of North America. It is cool. You can see all the older mountain ranges on the east coast that have been weathered, all the pot holes left behind by glaciers in the upper Midwest and up into Canada, and the spectacular mountain ranges of the west. I love the American West. I don’t associate a state as being where I am from so much as I do the Western U.S. The Rockies are amazing. You can follow them from where they begin, just south of Mexico City, northwest into Canada. 


    Nevada is a geologist’s dream. I remember, when I was still in school and working one summer with the geologists at Echo Bay in Battle Mountain, a few of them were roommates and they invited me over for dinner and we got a little drunk. There was a geologic map of Nevada on the fridge and I looked at it through my drunk eyes and said “look, Nevada is covered with stretch marks!” I thought it was hysterical, but they really are stretch marks. They start at the California line and go east into Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. The Tetons are the easternmost stretchmark associated with the Basin and Range. That type of faulting creates spectacular relief. The Tetons rise over 7000 feet from the valley floor in Jackson Hole with no foothills. The mountains in Nevada are like that too, just not quite as dramatic. The valley we lived in when we were in Round Mountain was beautiful. The valley itself was pretty boring, with nowhere to drain, the big lakes that were there during the last glacial period just dried up, so the soil is very alkaline and vegetation is low and sparse. But the mountains are stunning.


    The mountains in the Basin and Range were formed during a period of crustal extension. One belief is that, as the North American Continent moved over the Yellowstone Hot Spot, and another hot spot that is now under New Mexico, the combined heat from the two, caused the area between them to expand and lift. The crust was stretched so it thinned and split causing a lot of parallel mountain ranges, and a lot of volcanic activity that produced rocks on the continent that are normally created on oceanic crust: basalts and gabbros and other higher temperature igneous rocks. The Columbia River Basalts were formed during this time, as well as Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. Both of which stand out in the image below (if you know where to look).

    I am not sure about the timing, but I think those hot spots are also believed to have caused the uplift that created the Colorado Plateau, which eventually resulted in the Grand Canyon. The Colorado Plateau is very red, and really stands out. 

    But I must admit, even if they aren’t my favorite, the stars of the show are the volcanic ranges along the coast, starting at the tip of the Aleutians (in Alaska) and going all the way south to the southern tip of Chile. I have only seen the US portion and it is stunning.
    I would like to visit the Andes. A mountain range that is high enough to create the driest place on the planet must be spectacular. The picture below is from Patagonia, near Punta Arenas.



    I am really looking forward to going to Alaska and Denali. For most of my life I have thought that I really had no interest in visiting Alaska, then I visited Juneau for an interview and got the bug. I would really like to hear wolves howl at night. I believe that might make me cry.


    Denali


    I love planning vacations to tropical places and I dream about living on an island, but I don’t think I could ever actually leave the West. I spent a couple of winters in Florida and hallucinated that there were mountains under the clouds. It was an event when we drove back through Texas and saw the first mountains on our way back.



    In the picture above, you can see all of the geology of the U.S. There was a time when the mountains in the east were as dramatic as the mountains in the west, but they are many millions of years older and have been weathered. If you zoom in on the east, you can see what is left of all the folds and wrinkles that formed when two continents collided.

    It must have been similar to what the Himalayas are now. In the picture below you can see the arch that is the Himalayas that formed from India slamming into Asia. Look at how green India is below and how brown and dry the Tibetan Plateau is to the north. That happens because the air that comes up from the south must travel up and over the mountains. It gets cold and can’t hold as much moisture, so it rains on the southern slope as it rises and cools off and snows once temperatures reach the freezing point and then when it descends on the northern side it is DRY and instead of adding moisture to the land, it takes it away. That is called a rain shadow and that is why Nevada is so dry. Air from the Pacific Ocean has to travel up and over the Sierra and it loses much of its moisture, then it goes down the other side, warms up and removes moisture from the land.



    Learning about geology has made places that I once thought were boring and ugly, interesting and beautiful. They have a story to tell. If you don’t have Google Earth on your laptop, download it. It is fun to travel around using it. It has a lot of interesting features. You can look at the moon and Mars and the sky too. 

    Life isn’t about going to college or making money or being famous, it is about being the best person you can be and being happy. You need to find what makes you happy. Please stop agonizing about your plans. Your next step doesn’t have to be permanent. It might end up that way because it makes you happy or it might not. Just take it knowing that the step after it can be in a different direction. You need to be able to enjoy the moment you are in, instead of stressing over what is coming next.

    — 

    I love you,
    Mom

  • Thank-you Jack

    “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are [his].”
    ―     Norman Maclean
    I met Jack Ainsworth in January 1989. I was 24 and it was the first day of my first geology class. I was a freshman in college and I chose geology because I had to take a science class and I thought the other sciences (chemistry, biology and physics) would be too difficult.
    I had never thought about geology before. I can’t remember ever wondering where rocks came from or how mountains formed, they were just there. Jack changed that. I had good teachers before, but I never had one who made the subject come to life the way Jack did. I became a better student in all of my classes simply because I was a good student in geology. I was fixated on every lecture and took notes in color. I drew pictures, I wrote down questions to ask later and by the end of the semester I had a book full of Jack’s lectures in my hand writing.
    I developed a crush on my professor and as we spent time together in class, in the lab, on field trips, we became very good friends and one day, he married me. Jack is the most intelligent person I ever met and he was a scientist to the core, but he was also a writer and a philosopher. He was loud and he had a wonderful sense of humor. He loved to hunt and fish and our freezer was always filled with venison. He did most of the maintenance on our cars and he rebuilt the engine in my truck.
    10 years ago, Jack lost the ability to speak. He also lost the ability to walk and the use of his hands was limited, but the inability to speak was devastating. Our daughters were 7 and 9 the last time they heard their dad’s voice, they don’t remember what it sounded like. His brain was fully functional, Jack was in there, but he couldn’t do anything. It was his worst nightmare, it is everyone’s worst nightmare.
    How do you describe an entire life in a paragraph or two? While helping me with Jack’s obituary, my friend Phyllis, who was also one of his students, said something to me that resonated. She said “Jack changed the way I looked at the world.”
    Jack changed the way many people looked at the world.
    I remember the first field trip we took in General Geology, we visited Clark’s Fork Canyon in the Beartooth Mountains. We climbed up to a contact between the Flathead Sandstone and the metamorphic rock beneath it and Jack said “Imagine you were sitting here 540 million years ago, what would you see? You would be looking out at the ocean, this was the western edge of the continent and that was the beach (pointing at the sandstone).” I look at the world differently now, nothing is “just there.” When I drive west from Kingman I look around at all of the jagged volcanic rock and try to imagine the violence that formed it millions of years ago. When I look at the crossbedding in the sandstone cliffs at Zion National Park I think, “you can tell what direction the wind was blowing here 175 million years ago.”
    Jack changed my life. Even if we hadn’t gotten married and we didn’t have our fabulous daughters, my life would have been changed by him. It was during that first geology class that I remembered that I was smart. I realized that I could take the hard classes and I did. I took General Geology because I was afraid to take the other sciences, but in the end, I took all of them, because of Jack. 
    I am a geologist, because of Jack.

    I am a mother because of Jack.


    ~Sandra


    Jack Curtis Ainsworth, 64, died Wednesday, April 12, 2017 in Mesa, Arizona.
    Jack was born July 23, 1952 in Berkeley, California to James and Doris Ainsworth.
    Jack grew up in Walnut Creek, California. He earned a BS and MS in Geology at the University of California at Berkeley. While working on his dissertation for his PhD, Jack was offered, and accepted, a position as a Geology Professor at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana.  He was awarded the 1990 Burlington Northern Faculty Achievement Award from Rocky Mountain College.
    Jack did not measure his life by awards and accolades.  His feet were rooted in the bedrock of Montana.  He was happiest standing in the cold waters of the Yellowstone River or roaming the Pryor Mountains.  He loved to hunt, fish and hike.  He was a humorous storyteller who freely shared his adventures of the wilderness with family, friends and students. He respected nature and embraced life.  
    Jack is survived by his wife Sandra, daughters Jordan and Carsyn, his sisters Susan Parker and Sally Case and his brothers Jim, Bill and Tom Ainsworth.
    Jack is preceded in death by his parents James and Doris Ainsworth.


    Jack loved to cook. Here is his chili recipe (in his words): 
    (feel free to substitute beef and pork for all of the wild game, this just shows you what our freezer looked like)
    Jack’s Atomic Pile Chili
    4 Sage Grouse Breasts
    2 Lb Venison (Hindquarter Or Backstrap)
    2 Lb Elk (Hindquarter Or Backstrap)
    2 Lb Beef Chuck 
    2 Lb Pork Butt
    1/2 Lb Bacon
    6 Tbsp Ground Red Chile (Mild)
    5 Tbsp Ground Red Chile (Hot)
    3 Tbsp Cayenne, ground
    3 Tbsp Paprika
    2 7 Oz Cans Green Chiles, diced
    1 7 Oz Can Jalapeno Peppers
    1 7 Oz Can Chipotle Peppers
    4 Lg Dried Red Peppers, minus stems
    4 Tbsp Ground Cumin
    1 Tbsp Mexican Oregano
    1 Tbsp Basil
    6 Lg Cloves Garlic, finely chopped
    1 Large Red Onion, coarsely chopped
    1 Lg Walla-Walla Sweet Onion, coarsely chopped
    2 Red Bell Peppers, core, seed & slice
    1 18 Oz Can Peeled Tomatoes
    6 12 Oz Btls Good Hearty Beer (e.g. Anchor Steam)
    3 C Home-Made Game Stock (Or Beef Broth)
    1/4 C Real Maple Syrup

    1) Marinate the sage hen breasts for 2-3 days in dry red wine or your favorite oil and vinegar dressing (or any other of your favorite marinades that are on the acid side of neutral). If the birds were bombers, the longer time they spend in the marinade, the better. Other fowl can be used but sage grouse stand up well to this potent chili. Start the charcoal on one side of your grill. When the coals are hot, add 2-3 handfuls of hickory chips that you have had soaking in water for at least two hours. Remove the breasts from the marinade and put on the grill on the opposite side of the coals. Put the top on the grill and hot smoke for about 1/2 hour, turning occasinally as needed. Remove from heat, allow to cool and cut into 1/4-1/2″ cubes.
    2) Prepare the rest of the meat by first cutting it into 1/4-1/2″ cubes (except the bacon). Keep the
    different types of meat separate.
    3) Pour one of the beers into a saucepan and heat to just below boiling. Add the oregano and basil and simmer just below boiling for about 15 minutes. Strain this beer and spice tea, return to pan and simmer dried chiles until tender. Pour chiles and liquid into blender & blend at high speed. Make sure that the solution is no longer carbonated before blending!
    4) Into a large (> 10 qts, larger is better to minimize splashing) stainless steel pot pour the beef broth, one beer and the beer & spice tea. Heat this liquid to just below boiling and add all of the chili powders, the ground chili, the diced green chiles, the Jalapenos and Chipotles, the cumin and the maple syrup. Stir occasionally. 
    5) Cut the bacon into 1/4″ strips at right angles to the length of the slice. Cook over medium-high heat in a large heavy skillet until crisp and the fat is liberated. At this point you may either remove the bacon or leave it in as you brown the first batch of meat. Bacon adds good flavor to the chili but can become stringy when cooked in water; it is up to you. (I always leave it in.) Add venison cubes to skillet and cook until brown. Add browned meat to the radioactive liquor in the large pot. Follow this procedure for each type of meat. Finally, add the smoked grouse to the pot as well.
    6) Follow the same procedure for the onions, garlic and red bell peppers. Add these all to the skillet & bacon and cook until the onions are clear.
    7) Simmer uncovered for 2-4 hours, stirring and tasting frequently. Keep beer close at hand and ice cold to cool off while tasting the chili. Watch the liquids since the pot is uncovered. Add liquids (beer or water) as needed. Cook to the consistency of very thick stew. Thicken with a water and masa-harina (corn flour) mixture if necessary.
    8) Invite your friends over for a truly pore-popping trreat!

    How do you eat this delightfully pungent concoction?
    1) Heat and eat in a bowl with a spoon.
    2) Mix it with blackeyed peas, pinto or lima beans.
    3) Scoop up some with a slotted spoon (to leave some of the sauce behind), grate up some cheese (I like it with Monterey Jack (of course!)), heat the mixture of cheese and chili until the cheese melts and roll it up in a tortilla.
    4) Make nachos with it.
    5) Cook it up in a casserole with pasta and cheese.
    6) Use it in taco salad.
    7) Use your imagination!