Moss-Breek

A broken spot on the fells, where sheep rub against the stone. You can bet there's a name for it. I was reading names for various wet spots on the moors, and there are dozens, describing specific characteristics. Low place after rain, trembling bog of uncertain footing, high ground for easy walking. In Mississippi, where there were no rocks, I'd set a fence post so that the goats had something to rub against. Country guys do this, drinking a Bud Light after work, scratching the eternal itch. You don't see it so much with bankers or people in suits, but we worry about parasites, out in the boondocks. I suppose it is, the ridge, out in the boondocks, but I consider it mainstream, the world as I know it. Look both ways to see if there's a bear. Deer have long noses and you can watch their nostrils quiver. Data, right, Glenn and I talked about this, the way information cascades. I can take a short walk, down to the head of the driveway, and there are a hundred plants, a hundred insects, and a hundred unexplained curiosities. Dung has a thousand names, as do turves of peat, boles of oak, deposits of hard coal. I had to laugh, I had the temperature down to about 80 degrees inside the house and I'd had to stop and put some books away, the piles were exceeding the angle of repose. Some of the books were being returned to specific places and I, oddly, remember those places, others had never been shelved, and I had to find a shelf for them. I always enjoy this process. I usually bring something back to my desk and today it was Herzog's Annapurna which I must have read 40 years ago. It's a slender book, 200 pages, and I needed a break from the dictionaries. There's a shadow, I read somewhere and know nothing about, about their having achieved the summit, but there were a lot of field amputations on the way back down. A typical book of exploit without enough attention to detail. I read Thoreau for a while before I got back to the Macfarlane. Made a nice ground beef patty that I had on toast, with lovely tomatoes and a blue-cheese dressing, I had to make a second piece of toast to clean up the mess. I'm struck with an enormous sense of well-being, not that my physical frame isn't groaning, but that I feel good in the morning and enjoy my consciousness. I can poach a perfect egg in a ring of hash, I've built a couple of nice houses, I once skipped a rock nine times. Tested, you might say.