High Water

Even my little Low Gap Creek is running hard, Mackletree Creek near escaped its bound. The lake is still iced over, but at the spillway there is pressure enough to lift the edge for the napp to run free. Turkey Creek is running spate. A lovely thing, this time of year, wherever sandstone pokes out from a hillside, are frozen cascades. Percolating water hits a solid stone layer and seeking release, migrates sideways until it finds daylight, then freezes. Hundreds of these on Route 125, especially on north facing slopes, from large icicles to masses the size of a VW bug. Got to the museum in time to spirit the dioramas out of harm's way. Did a small laundry, socks and underwear, shopped; left drinking water and juice in the truck at the bottom of the hill, hoping to drive it up tomorrow morning while the ground is frozen. Harvested enough wash water yesterday to last for several weeks. Simply must stay at the museum tomorrow until the last of the paintings are wrapped. Road trip on Wednesday to Columbus, might end up going back and installing the show there. Would enjoy that, actually, but don't want to be away from the house in bad weather. The Director there, Mary Gray, is a sweetheart, and I'd love to work with her. It's right downtown, where all the pretty women are, and near The North Market, where the ethnic food-stalls draw me like a moth to flame. There was a duck in my mailbox, I assume either Shane or Bear left it there, and I make a small pate with it and its organs. Thank god I finally remembered to get saltines. I eat a lot of saltine crackers, with cheese, sardines, black-bean salsa, avocado, peanut and other butters, but I have a plan for this pate. Our light-bulb salesman, Andy, who keeps us supplied with excellent hot sauce, brought D and I, on Saturday, a wonderful Jalapeno Jelly. The plan is to open my last Ridge Zinfandel, sit at the island in my bathrobe, and pig out. The pate is fantastic. I skinned the duck, saved the heart and liver, then baked it with just salt and pepper and a little glaze of orange juice and butter. Cooked a shallot, minced fine, in butter; cooked the liver and heart, in butter, a small can of shiitake mushrooms, cooked in butter; deboned the bird and added that. Glenn had brought a lot of different single-malts when he was shooting the movie, and I saved most of the bottles because they're really nice, and there's always a drop or two, left in the corner, so I added the collected corner drops. There isn't a lot of this, less than a pound, I think, and I won't share it with anyone. It's so good it makes me remember things that didn't happen. With a dab of the jelly, every other cracker, I'm in an altered state. This is one of the best things I've ever eaten. I packed it into a tomato soup can, I'd saved the lid, so I put it on top, then a rock, to compress it slightly. Cut out the bottom of the can and pushed it through, then I can slice it to fit a cracker. A very good Brie and the jelly, some olives. Died and gone to heaven. I limit myself to one of the four tubes of crackers. It seems wrong to enjoy a meal this much. With all the suffering in the world. But I've earned that, really, in the trenches. My footprint is small, I use less water than anyone I know, I harvest heat from a woodlot I manage with a eye to the future, I don't hold this as any standard, it's just the way I want to live. I need to know where my dinner comes from. The mailbox. Cheese grits and duck pate. It's not that I would die, if I didn't have such careful readers, but I wouldn't be as comfortable. As I am, as I find myself, watching winter unfold.