Winter Walk

A garble of crow sounds from beyond the outhouse draws me into the woods. You can't get lost around here, but you can misplace yourself. Read Charles Frazier's new book "Nightwoods" today, and it was a treat; then the mid-afternoon walk, to clear the cobwebs. Early dinner of an steamed artichoke and a large hunk of good bread, both dipped in olive oil. Walked over to the graveyard, then over to the next ridge and down to where the church used to be. Nothing there now but a flat spot. There's a rock that may have been a cornerstone, which is a good place to sit if you carry a butt pad in your pack. When I get back home, just at sunset, there are orange striations in a sandwich with clouds in the west, and a looming yellow moon in the east. I carry my Selma Alabama chair outside and position myself so that I can see them both by just turning my head. It's a lovely sight. But even in my bathrobe, with Linda's hat pulled down over my ears, I get cold, go inside and build a fire. Junk mail isn't a great fire-starter, but if you move a chair over to the stove, and tend the blaze carefully, you can get rid of a lot of crap. I salvaged another oak table from the trash at the furniture store next door, excellent firewood. So, between junk mail and salvaged office furniture, I'm doing nicely, thank you. Elementary school chairs are great firewood, and at auction they often go for 50 cents each, which is a cheap heating bill, when you think about it, a hundred chairs and you're ready to go for a very cold month. All you need is a hatchet and a match. And these pallets I'm getting from the board member's plumbing supply house are perfect, all oak, 4x4 skids and 1x4 slats, eight feet long. I can spike the stove for several days with one of these, and I don't need to spike the stove so often anymore, now that I've learned to be cold. It's not that bad, except for the fingertips. I start missing keys. One thing leads to another. Next thing you know, you're writing fiction and mistakes plague you, wondering who you are in the face of things. There was a French guy at Janitor College, Maurice, he was cool, he smoked Lebonese Gold Seal hash in a small Adena pipe he'd found in a recently plowed corn field, and he spoke perfectly several languages, including at least two that required a different alphabet, a different language, different characters, a whole different mind set. I tried to pick his brain, but that first year and last year he was there, I was seeing someone, and my recollections are spotty, other occupied, as you might say, knowing you. He died in a hellish flame that erupted from an oxygen bottle too close to an open flame. What, I have to ask now, what questions before I build a fire in a tree-tip pit?