Free Range

Silent explosions of snow out of the trees, mid-afternoon the overcast breaks into patches of blue and intense light, and then the crystalline nature of snow becomes incredibly beautiful. I work outside for a while, but it's fairly brutal, blowing snow filling every crevice of clothing and cold hands finally drive me back indoors. If it clears completely, as it's threatening to do, tonight could be very cold; so, after a mug of tea, I close off the upstairs with an old comforter. Brought my sleeping bag downstairs and I'll sleep on the sofa. I have a good reading lamp there (I don't have one upstairs, because I almost never read there) and since I finished the Sandford this morning I scour my shelves. I have about 300 linear feet of bookshelves, arranged in no particular order. Most of the individual bays are about four feet long and the shelves are all back supported, and made from either one inch thick oak or five-quarter pine, and they don't sag, even when overloaded. Since I use and relocate books constantly, I get familiar with each of the bays and I can usually find what I'm looking for. But I was roaming around, and found a book I didn't know I had. The usual routine is that I have a place where I stack new and old books that I haven't read, and books live there until I read them and then either give them to the Goodwill or find them a home in the stacks. This book should have been in that pile. I know it's from the Goodwill, because of the 59 cent label and the fact that part of the cover is cut off. Long way around. but the be-all is that I'll be reading "The Collected Stories Of Wallace Stegner" for the next couple of days. I've read a lot of them, but I didn't know I had a copy of The Collected. A few birds, as the sunlight emerges. A raucous pair of crows and a Pileated Woodpecker that weathers several showers of ice crystals that he actually generates with his insistent hammering. I need an egg-poacher pan, because I'm not very good at swirling the water and dropping an egg in, they end up a mess, and I tend to top a great many things with an egg. At lunch today I made a batch off instant mashed potatoes, the Ida-Reds are wonderful. It's supposed to be four servings, but it's three for me, and two for most of my friends. I had a serving at lunch, with butter and black pepper, then for dinner I took the second third and dished it out with the back of a tablespoon and nuked it while I poached an egg in a metal measuring cup, suspended on a coat-hanger rack above boiling water. Crude, but the result was perfect. I've long extolled the virtues of egg yolk as sauce. The cold encourages a nap, and as soon as it's dark I sleep for a couple of hours, then get up to stoke the fire, a piece of an oak table top (The Year Of Burning Furniture) and a stick of Osage Orange. The moon has broken free of the trees to the east, still almost full, behind a hazy overcast. Moon-dogs at twenty-two-and-a-half degrees, and the clouds are illusioned into a halo. The quiet is absolute. It's spectacular. I still don't have a phone, so I can't call my girls, and I wanted to talk with Mom and Dad. On the ninth of January Dad will be 93. I think about the compression of history for a while, get a drink, roll a smoke, sit next to the stove in the rocking chair that came from Selma, Alabama. Turning the corner on another year, that I should live so long. Two months of renovations, repair, and painting at the museum (I am going to take a week or two off) and editing myself for the Janitor College manuscript, the various research projects, navigating the physical world, it's all I can do. I'm much more careful now, in everything I do, to not damage myself, especially in the field, where I could well go unnoticed until the spring. Splitting wood today, I noticed I was taking longer than previously; I'd set the splitting wedge with a few taps from the back of the hatchet, then stand and hit it with the maul. For decades I've just put the wedge in a heart check and wailed away. You see where that's gotten me. Mangled hands and a sour outlook. Not really. I love the world and it's machinations, eight inches of snow is a perfect place to begin. I assume you'd melt snow for drinking water. Country Mama, take me home. I'll filter everything through an old tee-shirt, you can't be too careful, but the future is looking good. Noon, New Year's Eve, phone restored, I'd better send this.