Smoking River

Stuck now. Pegi's husband, Steve, drove in to get her today, she'd been trapped in town for two days and he drove by my access, said I didn't want to go home unless it was absolutely necessary, because there was six inches of new snow out near my ridge. I'll stay another night in town, but I'll probably leave early tomorrow and beat a track home. High of 15 degrees today, a low of zero tonight, and more of the same for the next several days. It's brutal. The floor crew made it in today, and worked hard. They refinished the board room and sealed the back hall, started cleaning the carpet upstairs. It was so noisy, and so cold, that I went up to the third floor for my occasional cigarette; where there are no smoke detectors, but I have to put on a muffler and coat. Mostly what I did today was monitor progress, and lock doors to keep people from walking where we didn't want them to walk, but maintain egress at the same time. Mid-afternoon the noise finally got to me, four fans, two scrubbers, a wet-dry shop vac, and I went up on the roof for a smoke. Bitter cold. I closed up the museum and drove down below the flood wall and the river was a sight. Big chucks of ice , flowing in on the Scioto, and the edges of the Ohio beginning to freeze. The river was giving up heat, as vapor, but it was so cold it was re-condensing almost instantly as ice, skipping a state, in a sparkle of color. I'm sure those ice crystals have a name, but I don't know it. It's lovely. There was a muskrat, working the edge of the shore ice, finding good scraps in the eddies. Too cold to stay long. Worse noise today than yesterday, because they were cleaning the carpet in the offices, and everyone was distracted. I probably could have gotten home last night, but a fall on the driveway, at zero degrees, could easily be fatal. If I leave early tomorrow, it should be in the twenties, and I very much want to get home. I'll have to carry a sizable pack, so I'll need to choose carefully. I'll be stuck on the ridge for three or four days, what with the next Alberta Clipper arriving late Saturday, and I'm out of drinking water, so I'll have to melt snow. It'll be a pretty good slog, but if I get into Sherpa mode, and stop every fifty feet, I'm reasonably assured of success. I measure my risk more carefully now, what I will attempt at twenty degrees that I will not attempt at zero. I thought about going over to the pub for a pint, but I didn't want to talk to anyone; walked over to Kroger, bought a few things, made some plans, watched my footing. There were some remaindered marrow bones, and I'm feeling atavistic (I'll steep these for several hours, in broth, with onions; wood cook stoves are great for this) with either rice or mashed potatoes. I was nursing a glass of water, eating my signature Mac-and-Cheese at lunch, sitting at the bar; and this woman, that I know to speak to, eating with someone in a back corner booth, walked behind me on her way to the bathroom, touched me on the shoulder and said oello. It was like an electric shock because not that many people touch me, and I wondered if it meant I could touch her in return. I don't understand the protocol.