Access

Stands to reason that if Matt can get out here, in a Honda Civic, that I'd be able to make in and out of town in a Jeep. We're all parked at the bottom of the hill, the snow is slick and impossible, Matt allows that the driveway doesn't get any easier. To him, right? visiting once in a while. It does get easier for me, as I shoulder a pack, and head up toward the ridge. You do something twenty or thirty times, a few hundred, or a few thousand times, and it's no longer a big deal, but achieving the ridge is always special. Walking down, I'm struck, as I always am, by the way a carpet of snow reveals the lay of the land. I drive out Mackletree very slowly, because it never got plowed, though they did salt the hill at my end, and I stop several times to look at landforms I'd never noticed. No snow at all in town. Stop by the deserted museum, shave, wash my hair, and take a sponge bath. Stop at the pub for a beer and a bowl of the jalapeno/bacon mac and cheese that bears my name. Talked with the waitresses (I was the only other person when I first got there), then over to Kroger. It was a zoo there, everyone laying in supplies for the two nights (Monday and Tuesday) that it's supposed to be below zero. I get whiskey, a back-up pint of brandy, a back-up carton of cream, and the ingredients for a large pork fried rice. Sushi, for tonight, and a few other things, then drive slowly home. Thinking about fate, I don't know what brought it to mind, but I was chipping away at the whole idea of anything being preordained; though, as a decent debater, I had some pretty good arguments on the other side. The entire internal dialog disappeared when I got to the lake. A flock of turkeys had come down to the road, from the slope to the south, and on the lake side, the north, there was a gaggle of geese. There was much flapping of wings, and what I took to be insults exchanged. I had stopped, to watch and listen, but when I finally moved on, and stopped between to two factions, they both turned around and walked off. The rest of the way home, five miles on Mackletree, through the state forest, I'm doing a play-by-play for a radio broadcast of an imagined battle between turkeys and geese. Parked at the bottom of the hill, put on my crampons, organized my backpack, grabbed my mop-handle and headed up the hill. Done with the outside world. I'm carrying a pretty good pack, and I stop five or six times, but I make it, you know? either a Sherpa or a really stupid white guy; I build a very good fire, and settle in, bring it on.