by Bill Heavey
I threw the tenderloin onto the fire and closed the lid. Venison is a bitch to cook correctly. Being so lean makes it the most unforgiving of meats. A minute too long on the grill and it comes out gray and dry instead of red and juicy. I like it just past carnivore-red. Not so rare that it’s cold inside, but not much past that, either. I’m anything but a laid-back cook. I hover, poke, and prod. I worry. I don’t trust clocks. I use my fingers. After the meat began to feel more solid, I flipped it. Three minutes later, after squeezing it everywhere, I decided it was done. I had tried, as usual, to err on the rare side, since you can always throw it back on. By the time I’d let it rest and cut into it, I saw that I’d come closer to the cliff than I thought. It was on the rare side of medium-rare, but I’d just missed overcooking it. Cooking well afforded me a slightly more positive experience than killing well. But a large part of my brain insists on viewing success as having merely escaped failure.
We sat down to a table loaded with food and dug in. Hue mentioned that lion’s mane was one of his favorites. Paula then offered up her opinion that lion’s mane was overrated as a mushroom and that she preferred oyster mushrooms, particularly with venison. I thought the lion’s mane fantastic, the taste closer to lobster than any other flavor I could think of. That a mushroom could do that was a kind of revelation. And Michelle and I exchanged knowing looks as Paula, helping herself to the mushroom sauté for the third time, took the remaining pieces of the lion for herself.
At a certain moment, Michelle leaned over and whispered, “Look around you.” I did.
“Yeah?” I said.
“You did this,” she said. “Think of where you were two years ago. You knew Paula and Gordon, but now they’re like family.” This was true. In fact, I’d insisted they come for Christmas dinner at my mom’s in Bethesda. “You found and became friends with Hue. You found me through Hue. You got this deer. You grew the tomatoes and basil and garlic we’re eating. You knocked wild rice in Wisconsin and brought it home. You and I picked the serviceberries. We found the mushrooms we’re eating.” I looked around the table. The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but it was true. I’d had a direct hand in more than half of what we were all eating. I looked around the room. We were an unlikely group, but these, I realized, were my closest friends.
Paula, always the soul of discretion, said, “What are you two talking about over there?” She was trying to be her belligerent self, only by this time she was too well fed. As if she were happy in spite of her best efforts.
“Who wants to know?” I shot back. Hue held up his empty wineglass, signaling that all the bottles on the table were dead. I gathered them up and repaired to the kitchen to open more. Michelle’s words kept hitting deeper. I had found the love of my life while learning to forage. I’d eaten things I’d never dreamed of, from my lawn salad and caribou eyeball to the heart of a deer to frogs to herring I’d caught and smoked myself. I’d been to the arctic and the Pacific and the Atchafalaya Basin. I don’t know how long I stood there turning it all over. I do know what broke my reverie. It was Paula, leaning over to tap Michelle on the arm.
“I ever tell you about teaching this goofball to make a pie? Jesus Christ, honey, whatever you do, don’t ever let that man near a stove.”
Acknowledgments
This book would never have been written without the cooperation and support of many people. Everyone mentioned in these pages helped. So did many who aren’t mentioned. I apologize in advance to anyone I’ve left out.
Special thanks are due to Chris Parris-Lamb, my agent. If you are a print journalist for any length of time, you develop an rat-like tolerance to all stimulants, except an absolute deadline of the kind not often found in the world of book publishing. Chris went above and beyond what any agent owes an author and held me to the deadlines I couldn’t impose on myself. For which I am ever grateful.
Special thanks also to Michelle Gienow, who unstintingly gave her encouragement, support, and advice. Paula Smith knew Michelle was smarter than I was instantly. It took me longer to realize this.
Jack Unruh, who did the illustrations on the jacket, is actually an incredibly sweet man and stalwart friend. He just can’t bring himself to make me look pretty. Jack, we need to talk about this. Thanks to Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic for not pulling the plug when others would have. To Sid Evans, who helped me conceive and organize much of the book. To Jamison Stoltz and Deb Seager. To Paula Smith, Gordon Leisch, Dickie Tehaan, Ray and Joe Fletcher, Danny Ward. To Charlie Castaldi, Gioconda Belli, Heather Josyln. Rich “Hue” Huston. Greg Hannan. Samuel Thayer. Steve Adams. Mike and Alice Bienvenu. Jody, Tracy and Bryce Meche. Toni DeBoisier. Casey Bedouin. T. Eward Nickens. Kirk and Camilla Lombard, who put up with my snoring in their spare room for a week. Factual errors in Chapter Seven attributed to Kirk are, without exception, mine. Dr. Milton Love, thank you for your marvelous books. (And please note that Kirk is worried you’ll blame him for my errors.) Jordan Grosser. Feral Kevin. The Gwich’in Tribal Council and the residents of Arctic Village, Alaska. Especially Charlie and Marion Swaney. Alice Smoke, Maggie Roberts, Jonathan John and Roy Henry. To Scott Wallace. To my editors at Field & Stream, including Anthony Licata, Joan McKenna, Mike Toth, Nate Matthews, David E. Petzal, and Slaton White.
To Emma and Olivia Heavey. And to my mom, Elizabeth R. Heavey, who gave me The Joy of Cooking in the hope that I would learn to cook. No one can say you didn’t try.