HIke Out

Much more snow overnight, and still snowing when I get up. Warmer, though. I dawdle around, warming the house, reading some Harrison, then head out to B's. The top of the ridge is awful, and the driveway, because I had to break trail through a foot of snow. The roads hadn't been plowed, so even when I got down to Upper Twin, it was slow going through eight inches of increasingly heavy snow. When I got to B's I was breathing hard. We talked for a while, an hour and a half, about building projects and book, he commented on my lack of stamina, which is certainly a fact, mostly because I haven't been walking up and down the driveway. He drives me back to the bottom of the driveway, and I have a pack with mail, whiskey, tobacco, and I stopped often. I knew it was going to be a slog. But then I could see around the last curve, the top of the driveway, then I could see the print shop, and I knew I could stop there and rest my weary ass. Just a last hundred yards to the house, and because my exertions, it actually felt rather warm. Built a fire, put things away, read my mail, put my outer layer near the stove to dry. Sleet was pelting me, the last couple of hundred yards, but it's difficult to express how excited I was to get back home undamaged. I sat in the open door of the print shop, reattaching a crampon that was caked with ice, letting my heartbeat return to normal, watching the wetter snow start clinging to everything. It's incredibly beautiful. Every stick is encased. Late afternoon ground fog, which is what you get when a great deal of snow is sublimating into almost saturated air. It tends to hang around. If this turns into an ice storm I'm going to follow Mac's advice, hitch a ride into town, and rent a motel room for a week. I could take a great many baths, lotion my entire body, watch TV, and trim my toenails. A cruise at the Super Eight. No housekeeping, ground floor, a smoking room, $250 for a week sounds like a deal to me, there are places to eat nearby and machines that distribute candy. I have a list of shows people think I need to see, and I occasionally do see one of them, in a motel room in Nebraska, and they're usually pretty good, if a discerning friend had recommended it. And I don't mind watching a movie, it's a little like reading a book, it can be a good way to fill time. I'd rather be discussing a particular piece of punctuation, but what the hell, hot running water. My outside thermometer was ripped asunder by a snow slide off the roof. When I get back from my adventure, I sweep the back porch (actually just a path across the back porch) and the snow is up to the second step. At the head of the driveway there's 14 inches. Tentative arrangements to ride into town with B on Wednesday, it's his early day at the college, he can pick me up and drop me off at the bottom of the hill. I can walk to the library and Kroger, and wait for him at the pub. I'll have to carry a full pack in, but I won't be in any hurry, and if it doesn't snow much more, at least I'll have a path. The shopping list is very considered, for a hike out and back in deep snow. I'm pretty well set on meat, grains and beans, but I need vegetables, and I'll need juice (frozen, mixed with melted snow is the lightest solution) and maybe a library book. The book is optional because I have several thousand at home. I need to make another soup. I'll split some wood and stamp out some trails. I can use the Jeep, I think, to make a trail over to the head of the driveway, and leave it there, so I can ferry myself the last two hundred yards back and forth to the house. Arrangements. Confusing tracks, on the last leg in (after stopping at the print shop to regain my breath) where something had happened, a rabbit had been killed by either a hawk or an owl, the entire narrative was spelled out, but it was a confusing blur in the snow. I find myself, often, reconstructing what might have happened, in a medium that disappears right in front of my eyes.