Side projects and the Underland
In the past few years, my interest in cheesemaking and cheese mongering has led me to a variety of laborious side projects. Creating a logo and designing cheese labels are two perfect examples of some of the project paths I’ve gone down. It’s been nice to have some creative freedom with all of this. It is something I find challenging, but sometimes rewarding. At the same time, I don’t want to admit how many hours I spent learning how to hand letter and then vectorize a Lane in the Woods logo. Let’s just say: quite a bit. It didn’t stop there though. This artistic interest somehow continued into an unexpected direction: into studying and making comics.Is this the natural path of a cheesemaker? An interest in cheesemaking will lead to an interest in logo design- that will always lead down a path to comics(and animation?) From the looks of it, it doesn’t always. But it did for me. It’s much more than a marketing of a business, it’s a story I want to tell and it contains some comedy and some heartfelt emotions.
There has been one interest and curiosity that has stuck with me from the beginning. In 2018, as part of designing the creamery, I began researching cheese cellars and cheese aging spaces: the affinage of cheese. I couldn’t, at the time, wrap my head around how it all worked. Cheese, when it sits quietly in a dark, damp and moldy environment, and then if I allow time to pass, somehow flavor will develop? This was magical and mysterious. It’s a crazy law of the natural world. And to this day, my feelings haven’t changed. Cheese alchemy transforms quietly, hidden away from plain sight.
Most cheeses wouldn’t have been created and developed without caves, except where cheese is made at cool high elevation alpine regions(above tree line in the summer months.) 55F and 90% humidity is the stable and unwavering climate when you go deep enough underground, away from the temperature and humidity swings of the outside world. It just so happens, cheese microbes love this temperature too. Then we, the human species, developed a palette for the transformation done by these microbes. These microbes have so much power over what we desire.
Caves were a source of refuge and evolution in the early hominid species. It was an escape from predators or from extreme heat, or more likely extreme cold. The underworld is where people evolved and where cheeses were aged and diversified.
Caves and the underland, have started to really probe into my psyche.
I have started caving this winter at Worley Cave in Tennessee. I can’t really describe how much I have enjoyed exploring this underground world. It touches on something I have been craving since 2018. It’s some part of me I haven’t quite figured out-where this interest actually comes from. In the same way I can’t figure out how the invisible transformation of cheese actually works. Caves strike a chord in me, and it does in everyone apparently. Caves are completely dark and perfectly quiet. There is nowhere on the face of the earth that is comparable. As a fun conversation opener, I have started questioning friends how they feel about caves. I’m surprised to find out that most people don’t want to enter one. Claustrophobia and being stuck underground is a deep rooted fear. Some people have a visceral reaction- like a baby punched them lightly in the stomach. But tied up in this question is also something deeply philosophical. What is this fear? There is no one unbiased on their feelings of the lonely and dark underland.
So my goal for this year, is to explore more caves. I want to travel to Europe this summer to explore the connection of the underworld to the human spirit- and the underworld to the transformation of cheese. I’d love to see some of the original places that cheeses were developed. How do people interact with this natural landscape both above and below ground? I want to tie up my interest all together in one neat bundle. But perhaps, and hopefully, this will lead me to a worthy and poignant adventure.
