Running Water

It may be foolish to think you control anything. Running water, for example. The Army Corp, an organization rife with engineers, bats maybe .500%. Two guys with a shovel shouldn't expect much. Still, it feels good to have done what we could. A little stiff in the shoulders, but that's alright. The ridge is yellow, and glowing. The afternoon light is so intense that I sit on the floor, beneath the dictionary table, with my back to the west, reading a convoluted essay about meaning. It's warm again, which is supposed to spawn thunder-showers tomorrow; if it does, I'll be half-way down the driveway, in a slicker, with a shovel, watching what the water does. It's all drainage. Pick a creek and watch the way it channels its bed. Imagine you might influence that. I think not. What the creek knoweth is beyond your pale. As I said, it's an issue of fines, and those small damns where sticks and leaves conspire to divert water where you don't want it to go. You might slip and stumble on the rocks at the shore. The ocean's door. Down the Ohio. Blow the man down. Lovely dawn, light rain has cleaned the dust from leaves and the remaining color is vibrant. I walk down to the culvert catchment and everything is fine. Kind of antsy all day, a little anxious. The question of town. I could easily (I think) live in an apartment, but it would be the move from hell. On the other hand, a good chance to get shed of shit. Need to look at one of Mark Hunter's one-bedroom units, see if there's enough wall surface for bookcases. Check Odd-Lots for bookcases. In the meantime, I need to get a couple of loads of fill, up here, so I can drive all the way to the house, clear a path to the woodshed, take stock. Most likely be here another winter. I've got a fair amount of wood, and if I buy a truck-load, I should be fine, as far as firewood goes. The state the driveway is in, if I can get the four-wheel drive fixed on my truck, I could drive in more often, mid-winter. Get a cell phone and satellite service, upgrade my dinosaur Dell. I can afford another winter. Re-insulate the other half of the floor (one brutal day's work) and I'm good to go. Need to replace a connection in the stovepipe, a male to male connector that is completely wrong. The designer should be shot. There should never be this particular connection. Creosote will always flow around the edges. I shout at a brick wall for while, but I can't bring it down. Power out, I save most of this page. Giant weather event that seems to stretch from Canada to Louisiana. Head out early this morning, to miss any possible rain and I need to get some art work packed for D to take out on Wednesday. A long day at the museum, packing, patching, then unfolding boxes. God damn, what a boring job. Hear, on the local radio station, which I Iisten to for the last ten minutes of the drive in every morning, that Mackletree is open, the new bridge finished ahead of time, that I can come home that way. Mid-afternoon the sky opens up, rain in torrents, and the wind blows a gale, a full gale. Raining leaves too, great swirls of them. Finally, headed home, I go down Mackletree, and only have to stop a few times, to drag branches off the road. At the bottom of the driveway, I think I should probably walk up, but B's tracks look solid, and I decide to give it a go. Bad mistake. I get to that top catchment, where B had tossed cubic yards of loose material from the grader ditch out on the roadbed. I stuck like a golf-ball on a wet green, went to back up and the truck just drifted, ended up lodged against the bank, in the ditch, mired to the axles. A leaf-dam had diverted water into the loose fill and it was pudding. I walk up and get B and we try a few things, but we can't do it, we need help, we need a vehicle below my truck, and B can't pass me at the narrows. Call his brother Ronnie, he and Bear will be there tomorrow morning at 8. We'll have this sorted out by 8:30. Creek bank intelligence. Moving things from one place to another. We'll need a plank, a pry bar, and a tow chain, we've done this a thousand times before. It's a dance you do in the country. D called, about logistics, and I'm on top of this, more or less, told him my truck was mired, but it wasn't a problem, probably.