Jojo Cook

Spending time outdoors really helps you to understand more of the little goings on in your area. In the two hours I spent out at the beach, I noticed so many little things -- it helps that I was on my knees the whole time looking for sea glass. I had the chance to be still in many moments, just taking in all the moving parts around me; birds in the surf, kelp tumbling in the waves, fog banks and clouds moving and changing, people passing through, even down to the little plants just sprouting up from the dunes. All of these things combined created an awesome little experience for me to hold on to and helped to paint a more detailed picture of the place I live.

I really think it does. I'd known a thing or two about food freshness before looking into it -- specifically the trick about seeing if an egg floats in a cup of water or not to tell if it's gone bad yet -- but other stuff in the past I've just taken a look at whatever number date I see first and gone off of that. I also noticed on my own that getting the milk cartons with a sooner sell by date was cheaper, but even past that date the milk still tasted fine with half or more still in it. Knowing that these dates are more flexible than they seem gives me the peace of mind to play it more by ear when it comes to keeping foods around for longer than printed. As long as it doesn't look or smell off, I don't think it'll kill me.

It's been a while since I've actually done a deep pore over of the updated Seafood Watch site since they dropped the app; many of the current advisories are concerning fish that are at vulnerable population levels, overfished, or come through methods that are ecologically destructive or lead to disproportionate impacts on other animals (things like giant sea bass, smelt, and most species of shark are on the red list for California). I don't often eat fish, but the fish I do is almost always bought from local sources or are clearly labelled/certified sustainable.

I remember the first time (and the only time, really) I had ever killed a deer. It was towards the end of archery season, and we were just about to call it quits when we finally came up a doe just a couple feet down the hill from the road we'd walked in on (I had an either sex youth tag). I had always been taught about the cycles of give and take in nature, about gratitude for sacrifice, etc. but it never really felt as raw as it did until I was looking right in that animal's eyes through my sight. I had this sense that she knew what I was going to do, but she didn't really care, because that's just how things are. You're born, you take what you can, then you give it all back eventually. I was just there to cash in. She wasn't the healthiest deer, so we ended up taking almost all of her meat and turning it into honey-teriyaki marinated jerky. I was so proud to pack it in all my lunches and give away bags upon bags of it to friends and neighbors.

Normally I scroll on my phone while I eat lunch during my breaks at the aquarium, but today I started off my mindfulness by checking what I needed to check before pulling out my food, and then setting it to do not disturb until I was done. While I was eating, I was more aware of the subtle things happening around me, whether it was conversations being held between others in the break room or the sight of people passing by the windows or farther away on the sidewalk. It was pretty nice feeling so widely aware and not just zoned in on one specific thing.