Cold, Snow

Fingertips are cracking, that painful winter experience, has me typing with the wrong fingers. Very cold morning and I can't get the house warm, so I finally suit up and go out to collect sticks. Dry snow that brushes right off, starts as very small wafers that you can barely see, but grows more substantial as the day wears. Lingers longer than forecast and starts accumulating. I take my truck down to the bottom of the hill, lovely walk back up, two Pileated Woodpeckers, and fox tracks in the snow, my sweetie, back for her apples. I'd put out some of the horrid Thai food from the hospital party, but I don't want to offend her. If the snow stops B will drop the large, dead, chestnut oak tomorrow, a cord of wood in the branches, a cord of wood in the trunk, take days to haul out, excellent winter work. Mid-afternoon I make a venison, macaroni, onion, tomato dish that I can eat for several meals, carbo loading for the fifty trips into and out of the woods. I love these days of hauling wood, being in the forest, stopping to notice things. The natural world is such a wonder. B is working on some new trails and I'm anxious to walk them with him. One of the trips out today, I went into an area I'd never been in before, a small glade, young poplar and a few small oaks, and there were a couple of the standing dead dogwood from the severe kill-off ten years ago, still rock hard, and branchless, straight as arrows, I used my technique of standing on the root-ball (dead and rotten) and snapping the small trees off at the ground line. I had two of them, maybe 15 feet long, tapering from four inches to kindling. I shouldered one on each side, butt facing home, headed back; I'm maybe a quarter-mile away from the house, and I'm slogging through the snow, against the wind, with two sticks on my shoulders, and I find that I'm humming the Goldberg Variations. I only do Bach when I'm centered, it's only fair. I leaned my sticks against a tree, dusted off a stump, sat down and rolled a cigaret. It's these moments I choose to remember. I'm never more so alive than in those moments when I'm barely surviving. It's not really even close, I know how to dress, I understand survival, the worst I could be is uncomfortable, and I'm used to that. Fuck a bunch of weather. I pull out the long-underwear and the fingerless gloves. I can deal with this, as long as I don't fall. Glenn has been coaching me. I work on my balance, so that I won't. Then sit on a stump and hum Bach. Not that there is a reason, but that my life has brought me to this place. I'm comfortable enough, layered against the elements, I could probably sleep here, wrapped in the space blanket I keep in my pack, against whatever nature could throw; I could never hit a major league curve, but I could always foul them away, wait for a fast ball down the middle. I'm hell on fast balls down the middle. You probably don't want to argue with me unless you really know what you're talking about. I'm a site-specific guy, I choose my venues carefully, I've done my homework, don't fuck with me unless you have something to say. Any apology is probably sarcastic, any ad hominem arguments you'd make would be specious, I know what I mean, when ego expands beyond its bounds it's bullshit. Take a walk in the woods, listen to natural sounds, there's a difference, mostly we sing off-key.