Ruckus

I can mark it in my date-book that if I clean out the fridge and compost a few meager left-overs, they will come. Sounded like a ill-trained SWAT team, grunting and squealing as they lost footing on the ice under snow, but it's just two coons, fighting for possession of some short-rib bones. They're pretty funny, bandit faces smeared with stove ash. A mom and last year's cub, they hiss at me but never lose sight of the carrot. The thermometer is encased in ice but I think it reads 5 degrees, thereabout; very still, and so quiet the squeak of my slippers on virgin snow is like a banshee in the night. Harsh, but beautiful, playing the flashlight off prismatic branches that completely surround me. The house is almost warm and way too dry, tomorrow, later today, I'll bring in some frozen wood to release its moisture inside. Last thing yesterday, before coming in for good, I swept snow from the white oak rounds I intend to split, a rick of hickory and another of osage orange that need to come inside to lose surface ice. The house is a mess. Terminal winter mess: wood chips, bits of leaf, sawdust, boot tracks from the freeze/thaw cycles, cobwebs in unattended corners. Sounds worse than it is, I keep the desire paths clear, the stations where I stop, the stool at the island, my writing chair, the sofa with the various blankets I might use. The solace of books cannot be over-stated: mid-winter, when you get really cold and think you might die, read Shackleton. Talk about not having a thermostat. I'm hardly done yet, I can still eat my shoes. I haven't even burned the furniture. Comes right down to it, I'm not very good at this. I scrape by, I eat well enough, I don't freeze to death, but I'm scatter-brained and irresponsible. It's why I live alone, one idiot is enough. If I had someone to egg me on I'd probably live in a tree tip pit and burn cow chips. I don't know why I live the way I do, something about a direct confrontation with the natural world. Thoreau said something about slogging miles through deep snow for an appointment with a particular tree, it's like that. I can't not. Mare est in turba. It's 5 o'clock in the morning, I need to get a couple of hours of sleep. Got back up around 8, put on work clothes, caught the fire, went outside and worked on wood, came back in and fixed a giant breakfast, bacon, grits, mushroom and cheese omelet, toast, more coffee, put water on to heat and went back out. Finish splitting enough oak for a goodly rick inside, in addition to filling the various boxes with the various sized pieces. This time of year firewood is an endless cycle. Back inside I do dishes, considering dinner. Need to boil the sauce tomorrow, it's 8 years old now, the longest I've ever kept one alive. I'll add a few things I've been saving, some marinades, the end of a bottle of wine, a beer, run it all through the blender with an onion and some garlic, maybe some tamarind paste. So I decide to dry rub part of a pork loin that I'll dampen with balsamic vinegar and molasses first, to hold the rub in place, cook it in a hot oven, probably blacken it a bit. Picked up a very good rice at Kroger, very nutty, and that would go well, as will coleslaw. I'll have to eat it for several days, but that shouldn't be a reach. Still very beautiful outside, the combination of sticky snow glued onto iced branches, and very little wind, has kept everything covered. Mid-afternoon I change boots, put on the insulated Red Wings, which are very waterproof, and the very red, new, heavy sweat-shirt Stephanie sent, 'University of Iowa --- Industrial Hygiene' because it has a tight collar and hood and I'm bound to dump a ton of snow on myself, walking in woods such as these. The quality of light is amazing. Fairly heavy overcast, but in a single layer and fractured, so there are occasional shafts of intense sunlight. It's like stage lighting, coming up slowly as the clouds clear the sun. Dramatic. The birds are out in force, including a robin that really looks out of place and both red-headed and pileated woodpeckers. I find a stump, get out my foam pad, and sit a spell; roll a smoke, watch the movie. New Wave, it's all about light and a few birds. Meaning might be irrelevant. It's beautiful, that might be the point, a rhapsody on the form of branches under load. The rice is wonderful, the coleslaw, with a horseradish dressing, is great, but the chunk-o-loin is world-class. I butterflied it, leaving just a hinge, smeared the two sides with pesto, then glued them back together with molasses, brushed the whole thing with molasses/balsamic (50/50) then rubbed it with whatever was in the 'rub' jar (dried herbs, chili powders, garlic salt, dried onion flakes) and slipped it into an 500 degree oven. I had to tent it with foil, half way through, so I didn't end up with charcoal, and cooked it almost forty minutes, opening the door of the oven several times, to dump heat. I let it rest, to finish cooking, and while it did, decanted the sauce into a quart and pint jars and sealed them with rendered lard. Sauce Confit. It's a conceit but I love it. This sauce has become so complex that it could never be duplicated, approximated certainly, but never duplicated. When someone asks me what's in it, I have to laugh, my memory is fairly good out to about 8 hours, everything else is sporadic and subject to revision. History is a myth. Now, of course, we'd wire Pliny, so we could hear his last words, and we'd watch him melt into the magma on our I-phones. I know where my affinities lie. Lay. The matters of perspective. Maybe nothing means anything, maybe anything means nothing, I'm way over my head; what I try to do is walk that ridge, between knowing and not knowing, strike a balance. Usually I'm either too hot or too cold, but sometimes I feel ok, and that's enough. I never expected a ride.