Brine Ratios, Parking Lot, Twenty Minutes

November first. Climbing was fine. The parking lot afterward was better.

Simone had her fermentation crock in her bag. I don't know why I was surprised, she mentioned it two weeks ago, something about bringing it to her sister's, and the community center is apparently on the way. She set it on the ground while she was lacing her shoes and I asked one question about the cloth tied around the rim and we were there for twenty minutes. The crock is stoneware, a little worn, and she's been doing lacto-fermentation on and off for about a year. She said 'on and off' the way someone says it when they mean 'with some failed batches in the middle' and I recognized the posture.

At some point we moved from standing to sitting on the curb, which I think is the true indicator that neither of us was actually ready to go home. I'd propped my camera on the bag at some point, I'm not always sure when I decide to do that, but the crock was sitting there in the light and it was one of those moments.

Curb sit. The crock started it.

The late-afternoon angle in November is different from October. Lower. The shadows from the crock were already long by four-thirty.

She didn't offer to teach me, which I noticed and appreciated. She just talked about the ratio of salt to water the way you talk about something you've gotten wrong enough times to now trust. I have no plans to start fermenting anything. The cord is still the only thing in this apartment I'm actively in the middle of making. But I walked home thinking about it, which is probably its own kind of information.