High Ground

Determined to get home, I shaved one more time at the museum, stopped at Kroger, and headed ridgeward. Supposed to get to forty degrees in town, which translates to thirty degrees on the ridge (sure enough, hours later the icicles on the front of the house are not dripping). The roads in town are a total mess again, though they should be dry tomorrow, but once I got out of town Routes 52 and 125 were clear. Four-wheel drive on Mackletree, compacted snow and black ice, but I didn't meet any other vehicles. Bottom of the driveway has about ten inches of settled snow, but the Jeep got in fine. Parked, arranged my pack so that there was a decent surface against my back; things that poke, in a soft-walled pack, are a pain. B had broken trail, up the hill, and it's wasn't too bad, you just have to concentrate on where every foot falls, which means no looking around, so I stop every fifty paces, specifically to see. Many tracks. The large buck again, but I've yet to see him. Twelve inches of snow at the house. I had a fire all laid, so I just had to strike a match, dump my pack; go back out and shovel a path on the back porch and clear the ends of the two steps. A tough hike, from the top of the hill to the house; it's only a couple of hundred yards, but, unlike the driveway, there was no trail. The sun came out, when I was halfway home, and it was utterly blinding. I remind myself to get a pair of sunglasses from the Lost And Found at the museum, and keep them in the car. Tracked in a lot of snow, but I swept it up before it melted (the house was pretty cold) after going out to the woodshed for an armload of wood. Put a frozen block of ham and bean soup on the coolest part of the stove, to heat for dinner; I'll make a corn-pone later, with dried eggs and dried milk. Might be able to bring in a load of supplies at the end of the week. I'll be in the throes of a mud freeze-thaw cycle, but there might be a morning or an evening when I can drive in and out without totally fucking the driveway. Toward such end I make a list. It's a long list, it's been a brutal winter, and I'm out of almost everything. I'm out of sugar and salt, for God's sake, and I don't use much of either. The olive oil was solid again. I need some relief from this. Melting snow to get water for my morning coffee seems cool, but it's actually a pain in the ass. Any given year, I'd rather be at Cross Creek. Wondering where my freak flag would fly.You, I suspected as much, a blues cord, something about a lost relationship. Tom Rush. I feel like some old engine, done lost it's driving wheel. I have to take a nap, the hike in is difficult, and takes a toll; so when I get a good fire going and damped down, I crash on the sofa for an hour or two, dead to the world. When I wake up, it's midnight, and so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Wind, from the northwest, sings in the stick trees, and the earth moans, but the chatter is gone. Stripped bare. I manage to get a wee dram and roll a cigaret, not without some difficulty, nothing is easy anymore, my hands don't work and I don't see as well as I used to. Chalk it up to friction. Eventually things wear down. Even mill-stones. I'm so happy to be home I could dance a jig, but I'm careful, lest I fall, and I limit my celebration to sitting quietly and considering the heat-death of the universe.