Making Sense

Drive in to the museum and Mackletree is smoldering. I'm useless at work, tired and spent, clean up from the Friday concert, piddle around, head home an hour early. Put some butter beans on to cook, with smoked jowl, trying to chase the stink from the house. The Music Guy calls, for the fire news, recommends a drop of perfume on my upper lip, which is good advice, especially as I'm holding a sample of Dzing, my favorite scent. Much better than the acrid smell of fire. All the Forest Service bulldozers, four or five of them anyway, are at work on burning snags. A little afternoon rain and the leafage is exploding. Hungry, no reserves, boil potatoes to go with the butter beans, fry several days worth of pork loin chops, rubbed with chilies, served with morels simply fried in butter. Manage to save a few mushrooms for a breakfast omelet (with fried mush, maple syrup), then get a scone, at Market Street, to eat mid-morning. Lost weight this weekend, couldn't eat at all on Sunday. The green, in just a couple of days, has started seriously obscuring the vistas. The enclosure of summer: for six months I can't see further than fifty feet. Birds all flocked over here, to escape the burn, doves, crows, the pileated, a brown thrush, a cardinal. A regular Birds Of North America pagent, actually a bit noisy, with the various loud bugs and the droning bulldozers in the distance. I kept no notes during the fire, just wrote when I could. The power comes in from the other direction, so, except for the one outage, just a few hours, I had electricity. The odd thing is that I never lost phone service, and the phone comes up Mackletree. I studied that today. First these fires don't crown, and move fast enough that they can't down a power pole, second, the road curves around quite a bit and the phone line crosses often, to cut the distance, it's usually flying over the roadway on a long tangent. Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, keeps the brush away from the bottoms of the poles and that allows the grass to grow, and the grass was green. Just amazed that in the frenetic activity the connection wasn't lost. D called several times, Monday everyone called, everyone who knew my number, because I don't write until later and there was concern. I've always considered that last couple of miles of Mackletree, after it dips into the State Forest, one of the most beautiful stretches of road anywhere (and I've seen a lot of road) but it is ugly now; secession being what it is, especially after a burn, will be interesting to watch. I know it will be green in days, all those plants, restricted by the canopy, will explode, grass, blackberry, sumac, whatever invasive species I might introduce, pot among the bull-rushes, I'm an old guy, but I still have seed. Acting my age, I wonder what that means. Should I not carry everything I eat and drink, up the driveway, in my backpack, for three months of the year? What's the alternative? Pretty sure no one is going to carry it for me, I do understand I'm in this alone, the one thing I understand is that I'm alone. We all are. I don't mean that in any special way, just that, when it comes down to it, you're alone. You make the best of a situation. It's the way we're conditioned. The survival thing is always a high priority, when you live alone. You don't want to burden anyone.