Pumpkin Soup

Do you like pumpkin soup?
  Yes, no, may be so. As a child I did travelled a lot with my father, weekends and school breaks were happy and full of adventure, beautiful memories. He taught me how to understand  the dynamics of our development as human beings by looking at a specific natural environment.  If you want to learn about a certain culture, he told me,look and listen to the folkloric traditions.
 After my husband's premature death from cancer, I decided to raise my daughter (she was 14 months old when her dad moved to the rainbow) as my Dad raised me, free,curious about our universe, to be an independent thinker , and most important to love and respect all life. Now, in order to do that ,I had exchanged the pencil skirt with a pair of jeans and my heels with a pair of snickers, and  almost every weekend we are leaving New York City behind and,we travel to learn what we cannot learn from books alone.
   One late october weekend ,while in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania  my old Chrysler New Yorker refused to start and we had to spend the night there. My daughter was about three years old at the time and Jim Thorpe was decorated to her delight, as a true Halloween Town. Since then it did became a tradition for us to be at this time of year in Jim Thorpe.The magic is overwhelming , pumpkin is king, from ice-cream to soup and beyond.
  That particular night, a lady dressed as a witch (what else?)served us the most delicious pumpkin soup,in a small pitoresque cafe.The pumpkin soup as she told me, was an old family recipe that originated from the Lenape ancestors that inhabited the upper Delaware region.  The Lenape clans were a matriarchal society, and had three designations "turtle","wolf" and"turkey". Her maternal great great mother was a"wolf" descendant. She credited her for the pumpkin soup goodness.Two years ago, we found out that the gentle witch moved with her Lenape ancestors. She was the last of her kind, and the velvety pumpkin soup recipe never written down. May be this year, we'll meet somebody who might know the secret, miracles happen all the time, after all it's Halloween time in Jim Thorpe.