Nighttime Noises

I needed to get up anyway, to stoke the fire, but what woke me was something scuffling through the leaves outside, most likely a deer, but it sounds like a smaller mammal, a coon or a opossum. I don't want to get up, it's three in the morning, and cold enough for either the witch or the brass monkey, but there is the fire to think about, so I don my new bathrobe, grab a flashlight and go out to see what's what. It's a mother coon and a yearling kit and when they look back at me, in my beam of light, their eyes are rubies. I leave them to their devices, get an armload of wood, go back inside. Cold enough that my nose-hairs freeze almost immediately and I wish I'd worn a hat. My fingers don't work and I can't roll a cigaret until I get a decent fire going. The wages of winter. Four in the morning, I wonder why I live this way, not like it was a conscious decision to suffer, more like a hand fate dealt. Mostly it's logistics, carry water when you can, keep the home fires burning, a simple enough equation; the rub is the weather, what can't be predicted. A litany of things. There are times I think I live this way so that no one else needs to, supporting one end of the Bell Curve, nothing but a statistic. Then the sun comes up and I feel I am the luckiest man alive. The world, in all its frozen beauty. I believe in something, but I don't know what it is: the way slanted light hits a frozen leaf, bird song in the gathering dawn. The world's a mess, but stars shine, nothing matters, really, but the way you feel. Finally got back to sleep for a couple of hours, then up and out, down the driveway, zip into town, lay in supplies, back up the driveway before it thaws. Emily said "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." I cut enough wood by hand to last a couple of days, Monday I'll spend the day at it but today I need the solace of a long meandering walk in the woods. I carry a light pack with a block of foam to sit or kneel on, a magnifying glass, a couple of acorn muffins and a tin cup to sample the various wet-weather springs. I follow several little rills to their source, one of them, at the head of a nameless (to me) hollow, looks like a bullet hole in a stock tank, squirting water. So cold it hurts my teeth. Excellent taste, sweet and slightly flinty. Sitting there on my foam, eating a muffin, sipping spring water, nothing but natural sound, next time, I'm taking Basho along. I'm out most of the afternoon, twice tangled so badly in green-briar that I had to cut my way out. Carhartt bibs and jacket turn the thorns, so I'm not physically damaged, well a few scratches but nothing serious, and they don't rip. I lose a lot of clothes to thorns, so I'm sensitive to rippage. Bibs all have a tool pocket, I'm sure it has another name, my clippers fit perfectly, no chance of losing them, and you do not walk in these woods without clippers. You could die in a briar thicket, I think, or have to cut off your arm with a pocket-knife. I drag home a couple of oak branches, dead and dry from last year's ice-storm, and finally blown free by last week's wind-storm. Break off everything I can and haul them by the butt, one under each arm, I get tangled a few times, but I've learned how to do this, I've done it forever, and I haul branches pretty well. And I make a mean bean soup, this last one tops the scale, I don't remember that much about making it, bean soup is mostly pro forma, but this one is different. Then I get it, it was thin, and I wanted a thicker soup, so I mashed a can of pork-and-beans, generic, and added them; it's the sweetness, I never would have added something sweet, never would have thought of it, because I don't do sweet. I just don't, I don't know why. Never developed the habit. I get most of my sugar from juice, to which I am addicted. The trip to town today was mostly about juice. I spent twice my normal food budget, but my pantry looks good. Concentrated juice in the freezer, I melt snow for water, and a few tins of tomato juice, for when I feel a need for that. I seem to steer increasing away from the acidic. A drift where tomatoes are used less often. I'd rather dip French Fries in a very garlic (ally) mayonnaise, than catsup. If that makes me Un-American, so be it. I had a friend once who only ate potato chips dipped in French mustard. The ways of the world are intricate.