Semi-Prepared

Not many acorns this year, at least in this hollow. The squirrels are working hard, and a few of them, from last year, have moved away. Requests for copies of The Cistern have been coming in, and it's a little strange, still, for me, and wonderful, when people come up and tell me I that I had written that book. Mailed a few today. There're so few copies out there, that they've gotten expensive. Joel wanted to buy another copy and the only one he could find was $65. He called and gave me a raft of shit. It was very funny. Cory was friendly at the pub. He wants me to take the job. He knows I won't. They had a nice soup today, Chicken Pot Pie, and it was just that. I love pot pies, and the idea of making a soup from them had never occurred to me. Every time I go to town now, I buy a couple of cans of something, mostly staples, but sometimes I buy a can of eel filets or something odd so that midwinter I might have a chuckle. Candied honeysuckle pistils, or ground dried ants. It's nice to have something surprise you, midwinter, when you're skulking around, with a blanket over your shoulders, looking for something to eat. I usually make an omelet, mushroom and cheese, with a piece of toast, lavishly buttered and dressed with local honey, or slurp noodles, or make a hot drink. I was reading, and looked up, out the window. I'm sensitive to local sound, it's a habit, and I knew there was a deer. Several small saplings of sassafras nearby had been stripped completely of their bark, and the surrounding ground was trampled in splayed hoof-prints. Here he was. A big guy with a big rack, ten or more points, and completely royal, majestic, words fail me. Proud, heroic, and rippling with muscle just under the skin. I watched him for fifteen or twenty minutes, until he disappeared into the underbrush. What a rush. He's so beautiful. He's here to breed the doe who lives between me and the driveway, they have an arrangement, I spoil the fawns with snacks and toys. I don't like cats and I don't like dogs, they interfere with whatever connection I might have with the natural world. This buck knows more about me than I know about him. But I'm prepared to learn. At first I thought a buck in the woods didn't signify, just a buck in the woods. Like that fox you meet on the driveway. There was a landslide on the river road a few years ago, and they hauled away hundreds of cubic yards of overburden. What was left, exposed, were these sandstone layers. I could do a power-point presentation here, The Formation Of Wet-Weather Springs, but it would probably be pretty boring. In the light of day, it's pretty obvious. I only call attention, because when I climbed them today, they seemed like giant steps; to the way each stratified division, a few million years, weeped. Channels of lower density material washed away and water found a way out, which is what water does. Follow the water.