Some Drainage

Parallel ridges drain like a trellis, there are places you don't want to build; people build there anyway, and their existence must be hell. Cold air funnels down valleys. Fortunes and lives have been lost. Amazed that with all the snow-melt and the rain, that I could drive right up the driveway. B had cut back the fallen arched sassafras so that we could drive under. Poor damned thing. It arched over the driveway, 7/8's of the way up, in the 03 ice-storm, stayed bent, still solid. A slightly imperfect arch, if you had built it, but, as it is in the natural world, it was perfect; as is the nature of most trees in this situation, it sprouted vertical branches, like a little phalanx of trunks. I always meant to hang something from the center. Talk about ephemeral, it would already be gone and it never existed. Of course it took a load of ice this time, hundreds of pounds, maybe thousands (I can't imagine where there would be a chart for this sort of thing, but probably the power companies have some data), and the bowed and bended trunk just couldn't take it. A compound stress fracture resulting in death. We see this, in the woods. Nature is a Mother. Does, though, focus the attention. I know a person who consults in stress failure analysis: that job, or being on the board for the Fenestration Council, are two of the only positions to which I aspire. Actually, forget I mentioned it. There is no pink elephant. It was just a construct, construction paper, something cut out of a book. Knew when I walked down this morning that I could drive in, so I walked back to the house and got empty water jugs. Filtered drinking water for 39 cents a gallon if you use your own jug. Backed up all the juices, backed up coffee, ultra-pasteurized cream, a couple of avocados (I'm a local, seasonal kind of guy, mostly. But I do allow myself the occasional treat. Mid-winter, walking from room to room, looking out the windows at endless snow, eating an avocado from the shell, the hollow filled with lime juice, is one of my great passions) and various other things. Some splintered trim from the dumpster that is perfect kindling. This perfect weather, speaking of her, it, the; D said that the back of winter had been broken. This is true, but things are relative, we still could dive below zero, but, yes, there is more sun, and wounds heal. We might consider this just stage one. Maybe you survive, what do you do with your life? I have friends that are alive and friends that are not, they talk to me all the time. Robert J conditioned me so well, a Bach Cantata week after week. Here, what we have, is a perfect set of fox prints. I don't want to know how she cleans her paws. On the other hand our relationship is such that it wouldn't matter. All I can really see, at this moment in time, is a set of prints, she walked here. Yes, I have problems understanding, processing, mostly nothing makes any sense;l but I have dictionaries and various reference books. I could probably figure out what I meant to say. What I meant. You'd have a leg up. You know what I mean before I say it. Trying to stay simple, keep it clean, no reflection, what you thought was said. We keep coming up against this, an almost barrier. I prickle, I have to admit; the way you turn my crank. Thinking we might be understanding each other. Lost power again, but I'd saved part of this. Water running everywhere, even my little rill, the wet-weather springs flowing into the grader ditch; driveway drainage working exactly as it is supposed to, which it nearly never does. Mackletree Creek flowing slowly across whatever changes the dozers worked in her bed. Big napp over the spillway, Turkey Creek in spate but within its banks. The Scioto is well out of its banks, Boone Coleman's fields are flooded, large debris zones arranging already. The Army Corp must have taken the Ohio down, because at the mouth of the Scioto the smaller river was over-riding. The wind storm dried the frost coming out of the ground. Drained land is dry but pity those with business to transact in low-lying areas. The first terrace below the floodwall is completely recharged with wrack but the mud is a foot thick, awful Ohio River mud, thick in toxins. Still, as the new wrack field dries, I'll be bringing sticks home, anything I can't use I can burn. River as resource. A load a week would probably be firewood for a year. Live in the middle of the forest but only burn river wrack. Got the booklets done, my outdoor hands weren't very nimble, I had trouble with knots, got the wine glasses delivered, got the little rings from the printer, to label the glasses, got the wine, from George's cellar, another trip to Debbie's, help with the final set-up, bulls in a china closet. I just want to get back to the ridge, where everything is easy, merely survive, conflicted in a world where they're actually contained, where what you wear matters. I grant them some grace and pass over. It's my goal, really, feed you a line, and achieve the ridge.