“I feel the crack, then hear it ... see the results of my strike, the blow sending fragments in opposite directions, almost as an afterthought. I’ve practiced the move. I’ve had to do it, to save myself, at various junctures. This year is no exception. I’ve promised dry wood to my Airbnb guests, who may, or may not, know anything about the rituals, of making winter fire. It’s a day anyone might cherish up here, but I’m alone in my dawn preparations, trudging up the hill, snowy mountains to the north, cloud banks so purely drawn & the stars on twinkle, as I assess the current state of my yurt’s wood pile, weighing heavy on my mind. Each building on my property, has its own dedicated allotment of combustible fuel. I touch each & every log. The rule about how many times a wood pile warms due to how many times it’s relocated, holds some accuracy, in my case. However this mixed blessing, the cumulative benefits of repetitive handling, is often missed. Doing it wrong, can be okay. You get to it when you can. There may be months of annoying tarp wrangling, involved. Or misdirected loads dumped where you thought they’d be out of the way. Or your decision to buy green this year, instead of seasoned. Or dry, instead of something more affordable. I guess I’ve learned to accommodate my own lack of foresight. I am not a gypsy fortune teller. I’m just winging things blind, but enthusiastically. Sometimes spoiled by having lumber scraps. My French-speaking yurt guests have just shown up at my door for garlic, for milk. They are cooking outside tonight, up on the hill. They stumble through the icy, dark meadow to find me in my kitchen door, & we exchange a few appreciative words, meeting face-to-face for the first time in the November dark, by flashlight, full of shy smiles. The crusty snow is rough, trippy, & unpredictable, after a week of crappy weather. I’ve added spikes onto my boots, no kidding. I’ve been pulling plastic totes, man-handling dodgy, overloaded wheel barrows, tip toeing on ice, catching myself as I crash onto car & truck bumpers, pitching construction trash as if I were Roger Clemens, up over the tailgate, with a chaser of cardboard or anything else, ready to go. I hear the hollow thunk of my neighbor tossing stuff too, which confirms that it’s Saturday, & all our pitching ricochets off the pond, the stream gully and the metal of our respective beds. My ambitions have gone a bit beyond the pale, I think, as I coax a metal filing cabinet onto a black plastic sled. The warmth of the day, a thawing into the 40s (just), reminds me of the plants I left in a bucket a month ago. This, also, is an off piste moment, when one realizes that being completely too late to the party, or off trail, can be a good thing. And so, I drag what looks like cat guts, and equally as smelly, to an unremarkable corner of my yard. Last minute planting. Not dead yet, no, but might as well be, but, hey, who am I to say? I am not god. An exquisite white iris, some clumps ofJapanese anemone, and a sweet rose colored daylily. NDY. Not dead yet. Our newest mantra? I remember viscerally, being unable to discard them in September. My spade hits the sodden field grass, flinching. Sink or swim, I tell everyone, which seems the rule I impose, upon myself, these days. Haven’t I gone the distance these last few years? Haven’t I split a few extra cords for humanity? I can only live in ways I understand. I never got along with hall monitors or school marms. Never towed the line of some imaginary, flimsy, parrot-like dirge of death narrative. Never betrayed my own intelligent design. We’ll see who has the last word on matters of deep intuition. Who will hold up to the shattering of the culpable. Which animals or plants or humans, will come out on top, of the ultimate love biology.”
