This bonus post was written by my friend Greg Mohr, in celebration of January being National Hot Tea Month!

 

I was fortunate enough to meet Tim many years ago in Orlando, Florida.  My wife and I were there tending to some gondola-related business and we had Tim as our gondolier one night.  Since then I’ve stayed in touch with him and I was happy to see this new “Daily Food Holiday” blog pop up.  What a great idea. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t find it interesting – after all, we’ve all gotta eat!  I read the first few entries and noticed that January is “National Hot Tea Month”, and felt inspired to write something.

 

 

We all have our pet sayings which are designed to grab attention, and often seem exaggerative, but this one is true:

Tea helped me survive two Alaska winters.

Sure, it kept me warm, but it also helped me maintain my sanity.

 

From 1988 through ’90, I served as a radio-missionary at radio station KICY AM&FM in Nome, Alaska.

 

 

Nome has many distinguishing traits:

  • It’s small – when I lived there we had a population of 5,000 in summer, and 3,500 in winter, there aren’t very many people there (did you catch those numbers? About 1,500 people would get the heck out before winter came to town).
  • It’s remote – You know that old saying “All roads lead to Rome”?  We had our own version, which was “No roads lead to Nome”. There really is no highway connection to the place from the outside world.
  • It’s dark in winter – we would lose a few minutes of daylight each day, until we were down to about two and a half hours of it at the height of winter.
  • It’s friggin’ cold! – temperatures reach sixty-below each winter as a matter of course, and can even get into the negative seventies at times.

 

 

All of those factors (plus a few more I’m sure I forgot to include), can shake the sense out of someone!

A senior-citizen friend of mine, who is a bit of a mentor to me, has pointed out the benefits of “rituals”.  They keep us grounded; in a world where you never know what might happen to you next, or where you have no control over the grand scheme of things, doing something small and controlled can bring solace. In short, in the world of action, small rituals are our “comfort food”.

So how does tea fit into all of this?

When I moved into an apartment above the radio station in Nome one summer, I inherited a kettle and a small teapot. Hot tea in the summer had no appeal to me, but as the days grew colder, I began to brew tea more and more. Whenever someone I knew was leaving town, I’d ask them to come back with a tin of tea for me.  My collection grew until I had a cabinet full of tins from all over the world.

 

 

I became a sort of connoisseur of tea; not really an expert so much as a fan.  I had a tea for every mood and purpose.  An old Eskimo woman who lived next door even taught me how to brew it like the Alaska natives do – using rosemary that grows wild on the tundra.

As I lived upstairs from the studio, I would often bring the teapot with me to work.  Being on the air in a radio station, I found that a quick sip of hot tea would help clear my throat before speaking into the microphone.
The caffeine was helpful, and the warmth from within certainly helped combat the cold, but it was the brewing, steeping, pouring and drinking ritual that helped me get through those arctic winters.

The simple act of taking a sip of freshly brewed tea can be a virtual escape:

You hold the cup in both hands, raise it to your mouth, breathe in the hot, humid essence, close your eyes, and sip.

You could be in a bad place, enduring challenges and hardships, but for that moment, you’ve escaped to a better place.

 

 

As I have studied tea, it’s come as no surprise to me that many countries and cultures don’t just drink tea, they have their own tea rituals.

It is said that tea is the second-most consumed beverage in the world, beat out only by water.  Some might think that tea is a “sissy drink”, fit for old ladies and little girls – truth is that it often has more caffeine than coffee.  I prefer to brew mine with loose tea in a mesh tea-ball, but when I travel, I always bring a few tea bags – most places that charge for coffee, will give you hot water for free. Then there are instances where all you can get is hot water.  One further benefit of tea is that you can use a tea bag more than once providing you don’t want your second cup very strong.

 

 

When I left Alaska, I brought my collection of teas with me, but I left the teapot in the apartment for the next person who lived there.
I’m sure it helped them get through a few winters too.

 

Greg Mohr lives with his beautiful wife and two daughters in Orange County, California. He is a “gondola fanatic”, and owns Gondola Adventures, Inc. (www.gondola.com), with three gondola operations in California, Nevada, and Texas.  Greg leads “gondola expeditions”, builds and restores gondolas, and has hosted the Gondola Blog since August of 2007 (see www.gondolagreg.com).

 

 

**Photo credits for this post belong to Cassandra Mohr.