In 1970, I made a deal with Dan—I’d go West, but I got to choose where we landed. We bought our first vehicle and we headed out of Chicago on I80. Reaching Colorado, we camped out for a couple months in a log cabin on the Poudre River above Fort Collins while we explored our options. I had just applied to the Colorado State University library when I heard that a director job was open at the public library in Laramie, Wyoming, an hour north. Hmmmm. I was barely out of library school. Would they even consider me?
They would! Interviewed by the friendly library board, I soon was hired as the new Director of the Albany County Public Library and its five branches. An Easterner in hippy wire-rim glasses, looking much younger than my 28 years, I was, at first, a curiosity in this very Western town. But this board was looking for fresh, and I was their first M.L.S. The two-story, square brick Carnegie building was located downtown next to the police station and just blocks from our home.
I soon fell in love with Laramie—a high plain, 7,200 feet above sea level, surrounded by mountains. I often could observe several kinds of weather standing in one place. I loved my job at the library where even the older staff welcomed me. Dan hired on at the post office (retiring thirty years later). We bought a storybook house on Fifth Street for $12,000. In no time, we were exploring the easily accessible and stunningly beautiful Snowy Range to the west.
Dan was in heaven, almost literally, ascending peak after 14,000-foot peak. Remaining behind in forests and meadows, I began foraging and identifying plants and trees. Stalking the Wild Asparagus, a hit guide to foraging by Euell Gibbons, kept me on the hunt. I never found asparagus, but I did gather chokecherries, service berries, blackberries, and raspberries. After a couple years, we bought a bigger house. Large pots appeared in my hippie kitchen. My life of canning took off in a cloud of steam as I boiled up jams and jellies and syrups. In fall I canned pickles and chutneys. Even here, in my little senior apartment, I’ve stirred up a nice jar of jam from a bag of frozen strawberries.
How I Make Jam
Of course, at first I bought Sure-Jell and followed the directions on the box. This, I’ve found, is a fine and dependable way to make jam. I began with serviceberry jam, even syrup, the berries were so profuse. I’d never heard of serviceberries, which resembled huckleberries but were easier to pick. Harvesting the tall bushes, I worried I’d meet a bear as greedy as I was. (Despite thousands of miles trekking alone in eastern, western, and southern woods, I never saw a bear, but I always worried I would.)
From serviceberries I went on to jam or can almost anything I could preserve with sugar: cherries, peaches, apricots, Italian plums. In my seventies, for pectin, I’d skip the pricy box and just throw in (and remove later) some apple or orange peels, do equal parts prepared fruit to sugar, a couple tablespoons of lemon juice and maybe a bit of water, and boil everything until it coated a spoon. Sometimes it took a while. I then poured it into jars I’d partially filled with water and sterilized in the microwave. When in doubt, I Google. Even here, in my small apartment, I’ve turned a bag of frozen strawberries in a tasty jam. (Tomatoes are another story.) NOTE: I made the pictured card for Dan for his 75th birthday.