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Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM

Hint of Spring, Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, April 25, 2008
Hint of Spring, Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, April 25, 2008

Yellow hint of spring

Spring is in the air by April in the Rio Grande valley. Here's a little wildflower I came across while looking through the pictures from my April 2008 stay at Leasburg Dam State Park.

Night camp

Site 9 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM

Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk

Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.

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