Event Horizon

With some trepidation I call up the weather for the week ahead, and the news isn't bad. A day well spent, caring for my foot; or body pays us in kind, be good to yourself and things fall into place. Even the Buddha must perform his toilet. Not that I care, but even insignificant things matter, that butterfly in South America, a wind in North Africa. The nature of reality is confusing. Three crows, what do you make of that? Do numbers mean anything? Nearly two days of staying off my feet has helped the toe and I can finally get into my boots again, late afternoon I go for a little walk in the woods. Out beyond the graveyard I suddenly remember the red squirrel acorn midden, find it again, and steal a small plastic bag (never leave home without one) of them. A little fire in the stove and soon I'm leaching a pan of shelled and broken nuts. Put on a pot of grits, and in just a couple of hours am sitting down to a steaming bowl of cheese grits fortified with acorn meal. Just before dark a modest flock of robins and one male cardinal looking very bright indeed. The robins move from bare spot to bare spot, turning over leaves. I'd never actually seen them do this before, but I had seen the evidence and wondered. The cardinal attacks a sumac seed-head. I don't know what the robins find under the leaves, they're omnivores, so anything is fair game. Last day of February, thank god. What a brutal month, a brutal two months, really, the harshest eight weeks of my ten years on this ridge. I've burned more than two cords of wood in two months. 3757 pounds per cord, as an average, means many trips, many armloads; then fed a stick at a time to the stove means lifting it again. But I love this wild life, you know? Little that is ever planned actually happens, but something is happening all the time. I'm at peace in my skin, at this place, at this time; hard to describe, how right it feels, the warmth in the pit of my stomach. Probably just the cheese grits. But maybe that's the point. I have to admit, I don't know. I usually operate in the dark. The natural world is right outside the door. A certain connection.