Mountain Cookies

The drive to Salina Saturday. Fourteen hours each way. Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas. The same headstone. Specialist Derek Allen Owens. Nineteen ninety-five to twenty-sixteen. Beloved son and brother. I said the same words I always say. I am still here, brother. Still trying. I told him about Maggie. I told him about Mom. I told him about Patrick. I told him about Marcus. I told him I had won an award for a book I had written that was, in part, about him, although his name was not in it. I told him I missed him. I told him he would be twenty-nine and a half. I told him the math gets stranger every year. I sat at the headstone for an hour. The Kansas wind came through. The grass was green. Linda met me at the cemetery at noon and we stood together for ten minutes and walked to her car and went to lunch. We talked about Maggie. We talked about her grandkids — she has six now — and her grandkids that will be Derek's siblings' kids and not Derek's. The grandkids she does not have. We did not say it that way. We did not need to.

I drove home Sunday in one shot. Fourteen hours through. I left Salina at six in the morning and pulled in at eight that night and was in bed by nine and slept ten hours. Patrick was on the porch waiting for me when I pulled in. He had been waiting since five. Mom had told him to come inside. He had refused. He was wearing his coat and a blanket and he had a cup of coffee in his hands that had gone cold an hour before. He said, You made it. I said, I made it. He said, How is Linda. I said, She is okay, Dad. He said, How is the boy. He meant Derek. He said it that way the way he always does. I said, Same as he was, Dad. Patrick nodded. He said, Come on in. We went in. Mom had soup on. I ate. I went to bed. The drive is part of the cost of living. The cost is the cost. I will pay it again next year.

The week before the drive was a calving cleanup week. Two more cows dropped, both Tuesday, both healthy. The total is now thirty-three calves on the ground for the season. The calves are out in the spring pasture with their mothers. The grass is doing what spring grass does. The cattle are happy. The horses are eating themselves silly on the new green. The shop is muddy from spring runoff but the mud is on the way out and the corral is starting to firm up.

I shod three horses Tuesday and Wednesday before the drive — wanted the work cleared to be free for the weekend. The clients were patient. The horses were sound. The waiting list is at twenty for May, which is more than I have ever had. I am turning down work. I am sending it to the other farriers. The work is the work and there is too much of it and I am not going to kill myself doing more of it. Patrick taught me this in 1998, although the lesson was about hay. The lesson is the same.

Cooked Sunday — the day I got back — a pot of chili. The kind of food that takes care of itself. The chili I had been thinking about for a thousand miles. Elk from the freezer. The dried chiles from the basement. The tomatoes I had canned in August. Beans soaked overnight Friday. The chili cooked while I drove from Cheyenne to Lusk to Casper to Sheridan to Hardin to Billings to home, the Dutch oven on low in Mom's kitchen, Mom watching it. By the time I pulled in the chili was the chili. We ate at nine. Patrick had two bowls. He said, You drove twenty-eight hours and made chili. I said, I did. He said, Thank you. I said, For what. He said, For coming back. We did not say more. The chili was the chili. The drive was the drive. The fire helps. The chili helps. The coming back helps most of all.

The chili was gone by Monday and Mom had already moved on to the next thing, the way she does — I came downstairs and there was a full sheet of these on the counter, still warm, wrapped in a dish towel the way she wraps things. She did not say anything about the drive or about Salina or about Derek. She just handed me one and poured a cup of coffee. That is the way mountain cookies work in this house. They are not about anything. They are just what you make when someone needs something solid under them.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or lightly grease them.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with both sugars until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes by hand or 2 minutes with a mixer.
Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla extract until fully combined.
Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add to the butter mixture and stir until just combined — do not overmix.
Fold in the rest. Stir in the rolled oats, nuts, chocolate chips, and coconut until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Portion and flatten. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Lightly press each mound down with the back of a spoon.
Bake. Bake 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and golden. The centers will look slightly underdone — that’s right. They firm up as they cool.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Mountain Cookies — The Kind Mom Makes When You Come Back