Laid-By

Gray day but no rain early so I make the trip to town. Stopped at the pub for a fortifying pint, then took my list to Kroger. Picked up another smoked jowl and a few more canned goods, a large jar of salsa, too many grape tomatoes and another jar of great blue-cheese dressing, which, together, I eat at almost every meal, with a spoon, a back-up box of dried salted cod. Rain has started again, I fill my rain-water pot, from the buckets on the deck, because I need to wash some dishes, then retire to my nest and read. The Nature Conservancy calls and they want to come up and park, so they can walk the State Forest clear-cuts, looking for invasive plants. I'm not paranoid and I'm currently not breaking many laws, but why is the NC doing field-work for the state forest? I know they want a corridor opened between two state forests: the Black Bear, extending its range. I was thinking about this and dealing with some punctuation that wasn't quite right when a white pick-up hove into view, Chet, from the NC, looking to see where to park. He comes inside for a cup of coffee, so that I can explain driveway protocol, and he's completely flabbergasted by all the books. He has a master's degree in forestry and we talked a bit about trees. He agrees with B that Mackletree Road is probably named for the Sycamore, which was commonly called the Mackletree just a generation ago. We actually had a conversation about oak-galls. He asked me why I read so much, and I explained that there was a public library between our house and the public swimming pool when I was a kid, I think in Norfork, Virginia. Later, I think it is interesting, why I turned to books. First, because it is my universe, private and inviolate. A place to go, when things became confusing. Second, to focus on a specific thing, a particular play of light, what a pause might mean, that specific hole in a leaf.