Logging Truck

Slept late, up writing in the cool again, then wake and wash my hair, take a sponge bath, a hearty breakfast (pate and a fried egg on toast), and headed into town. I knew they were logging on Lampblack Road, which runs into Mackletree, so I drive that section very carefully, and sure enough, on one of the blind curves, there's an eighty thousand pound log truck taking up the entire road. I was already as far over as I could go, so just drove into the grader ditch. The truck didn't even stop. I had to rock, in four-wheel low, to get out. Stopped at the lake and rolled a cigaret, to let my heart catch up. I was already off the hill, and rather than ducking back home, which was my first thought, decided to finish the trip to town. Cory is so happy with a slab of pate that he buys me a beer, and Lindsey buys me a bowl of yesterday's soup (the last of yesterday's soup), so I get out with just a tip. Then the library, where I spend an hour finding a couple of fictions, to leaven the load of non-fiction I'd been reading recently. Another hour at Kroger, for a few things to go with the pate (black olives, and the makings for an onion jam, some good crackers), then a bottle of whiskey at the in-house liquor store where I talked about splitting wood with Jessie. He's been trying to find me a cheap, used log-splitter. Doesn't seem I would need one if I qualify for Heat Assistance, which is a great program that supplies firewood for old assholes like me that are getting too gimp to use a chainsaw. The fact that there is such a program is surprising, but there it is. If you are so poor, that you can't pay the electric bill, or the fuel-oil bill, or the gas bill, or too frail to cut and split four cords of wood, so that you don't freeze to death in winter, there is a scant cup of rice, held out at arm's length, by someone who might or might not be a friend. Might not, because if I can't, then I don't deserve to live this life. On the other hand I've paid my dues and I actually could use a hand here. Do I want to go on Wood Welfare? I'm conflicted. For six or eight years I didn't make enough money to pay taxes, but I've never gotten food stamps (my food gathering skills have always produced a surplus) or any assistance; though I am a fan of safety nets, a liberal after all. Though I'm not left-handed (sinister) I've always supported oppressed groups. Asymmetry is an interesting concept. For the turn down to Upper Twin, off the dead-ended Mackletree, a logging truck has to shift down to first, a large and uncertain beast. Like watching an articulated centipede negotiate a turn. Haiti was denuded to provide fuel to make sugar, and that's what these clear-cut sections of forest look like. The difference here is that the clear-cuts grow back so quickly. I've been watching the succession in the State Forest, I've been told it's the best hardwood growing area in the country, and it is amazing. My specimen poplar is 30 feet in ten years, the specimen red maple is over 20. The farmer's market tomatoes are sublime right now. I toast them, on good bread, usually with cheese, a little olive oil, a grind of pepper. Herbert always said that symmetry was the last refuge of the simple-minded, but I can push things around, so that the last bit of tomato and the last piece of toast soak up the last of the liquid. That's merely logistics. Turning second-growth mixed hardwood into shipping pallets. Moving goods through tunnels or arranging contacts in a third location, no wonder I'm an anxious mess, is enough to make me paranoid.