Dim Sum

When I was eleven, I flew across country alone for the first time. Leaving my home outside of Philadelphia, a came to visit my aunt in San Francisco for a week. I loved the freedom and adventure of traveling alone – I suppose I still do.

My aunt opened my eyes and taste buds to worlds I had not imagined. We walked in the Japanese Garden, went out for sushi and joined one of her friends for Dim Sum in Chinatown. The restaurant was fairly dark, and carts of mysterious food came again and again by our table, each dish named in a thick accent. I remember the sticky sesame and red bean buns, which I loved, and the duck’s feet, which was one of the few things I refused to try. Years later, when I lived in Brooklyn, I would detour through Chinatown to pick up a red bean bun at my favorite pastry shop.

In many ways, this trip has been like Dim Sum; I’ve gotten small tastes of dishes from which I could make entire meals. I felt that way when I passed up a trip down to Quivara NWR in Kansas in favor of moving on, and again as I hiked out of the Roaring River drainage in the Rocky Mountains, leaving the rest of the park and adjacent National Forest unexplored. And again in southern Utah choosing between Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce, Zion, Escalante.

And here again at Antelope Island, a four and a half by fifteen mile long island in the Great Salt Lake. On the island, drove out toward the Fielding Garr Ranch pausing to watch a black-tailed jackrabbit bound into the sage.

The full course would have included at least one night camping on the island and a hike up Frary Peak, its highest point, then another walk on Buffalo Point, a promontory out into the Great Salt Lake. I would have settled into the Visitor’s Center to fully explore the exhibits and watch the film instead of just popping in for the bird checklist.

But I settled for a taste as the cart went by, and hiked up Dolly knob. As I walked, grasshoppers sprang from the trail, their flight the rasp of seedpods dried and tossed by the wind. A pronghorn startled at my approach, turned to watch me for a moment then bunched his muscles to bound over the bench left behind by the ancient lake Bonneville. Near the summit, in the shadow of a 2.7 billion year old outcrop, I settled in to write. Before me stretched the Great Salt Lake. A meadowlark’s liquid song and the scour of an airplane broke the silence. It was a sere landscape, grasses and flower stems browned by the summer sun and little rain. On the updraft from the playa below, I could hear the grunts and bellows of heard of bison. Clouds of dust rose from their rolling and pawing the ground.

Not quite satisfied, I eased across the causeway and onto the next offering.