In The Rough

Pick a spot almost anywhere, build a crude shelter. Take care to influence your local environment as little as possible. There are codicils and protocols. It's fine to rake out small natural dams that form in the drainage ditch or even to drag branches off the path you use to access the outhouse. I finally got around to reading the several different versions of the snake story. All of them, I admit to writing, or I admit to probably have written; a couple of them, I think were ghost-written. It was a real event, but recounted in different ways, depending on the time available or the interest. I was listening to Ronnie tell a story recently, I'd heard the story several times earlier, but I was mesmerized by the telling. All those aspects that come into play, animal magnetism and tone of voice, and the story itself, the context. More rain, I feel guilty, so much water. I replenish my wash water, do dishes, take a bath, launder some underwear and socks. That early evening mist/fog thing, when the ground is saturated and the air is saturated, and the vapors hang around like in an English film. I read Gretel Ehrlich today. A wonderful writer. The attention to detail. A walk, between squalls, to collect enough morels for dinner. Mushrooms in milk gravy on a pounded veal chop. I thought seriously this afternoon about building a summer kitchen: a grill and an oven, with a roof, a smoking chamber. A raised floor of stone. A place where I could safely cook a brisket for 20 hours without wild critters getting to it. It's an interesting design problem, and I spend hours thinking about how I might build it. One could form it up, the guts of it, and pour it in special concrete, or lay in special bricks, the various dampers would have to be fabricated, but I know a guy who works in cast iron. I have to go, the trees are laying down, but we should talk about this. Bathtub gin and that silly parrot; I told you early on to be careful what you said. I view nothing as a good thing. Wait. If they had promised me a cherry Danish, not that they would. Rodney called, late, and I didn't want to talk, he needed someone and I wasn't that person. I don't want to talk about silly mistakes. I'd rather sink into the woodwork.