Dead Tree between Posts of Electric Pole

December 13, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  This morning I had to go to the dentist early to get my filling refilled, so I couldn’t take Mway for a walk in the morning.  Downstairs Moi was on her laptop, spending all morning, I believe, writing more deer hunting stories – it looked like she hadn’t taken Mway for a walk either.  When I got home, I checked my email – no work had come in today.  Mway was pacing around, following me from room to room, staring at me, and I considered taking her for a walk then – but before I could do so she and Moi went upstairs to take a nap.  Right now, it’s 2:59, and I’m waiting for them to get up.  Whenever they do, I’ll take Mway for her walk.

State of the Path:   Out my office window, I see a large cat striding down the lane behind the summer house; perhaps it’s what made the prints in the snow the other day.  I suit up, gather a couple sticks from the music room, one of which I bring along.  Moi has put weather stripping along the back door, and now you have to slam it shut several times before it stays closed.  A cold wind blows against my cheeks and nose.  The snow is gone, but Moi’s garden pond is still frozen.  At the side path, I turn to go on it; Mway, just ahead on the main path, looks behind her, and I mumble “we’re going this way today, Mway.”  Near the hedgerow my wrists start getting cold and my arms start freezing – it was not this cold this morning.  As I past the cedar tree I realize I’m not paying much attention to what’s around me; instead I’m thinking about my plans to post this journal online as a blog, and in my mind I’m pouring over words for an introduction to it.  My plans are to make the last journal entry on the day before Christmas, and then on Christmas day to post the first entry from exactly a year earlier.  The words going through my mind are mainly repetitions of words I’ve already written, although new words slip in now and then.   When I realize I’m not paying attention to what’s around me, I try to start looking around.  I look at some ice on the path down by the wigwams and at an old brown stalk of ironweed, but it’s hard for me to break through the swirl of language in my head.

State of the Creek:  At the tree stand, I look up into Hutchinson’s wood lot, through the two posts of a high tension electric pole, at a dead tree broken in the middle of the trunk with its top half leaning over, all of which is framed neatly, from where I stand, between the two posts.  I’ve been catching a glance of this dead tree, perhaps the most distinctive sight here, on most of my walks lately, but this is the first time I think about mentioning it.  It seems dark around the creek, and despite how cold it is, there’s no ice in the stream.  I spot some gill-of-the-ground, which has bounced back after being covered with snow and doesn’t seem to mind the cold.  I walk quickly, just looking to see if I come across any ice.  There’s none in the puddles in the grasses of bug land, and none in the water trickling down the swale.  Just by looking at it, I can’t tell if the water in the feed channel is frozen or not; but when I poke it with my walking stick, the stick makes a thud.  There’s ice in the puddles on the path along the ridge, which cracks as I walk across it, but there’s no ice in the soggy path on the other side of the ridge.

The Fetch:  As I walk up toward the clearing, cold spittle is forming around my lips and snot building up in my nose.  As soon as I toss the stick, I realize this is a way of keeping warm, and I try to bring my whole body into motion as I toss it, instead of just lackadaisically pitching it underhand.  I wind up for each toss, bringing the stick behind my back, and follow through on the pitch, even though I’m not trying to throw the stick as far as I can.  I go around the circle, flinging the stick into the corners of the roughly rectangular clearing, Mway dashing off in pursuit, snatching up the stick from whatever straggle of weeds in which it landed.   When she brings the stick back, she drops it at my feet, barks and spins once or twice.  If I hold the stick behind me, she stands still, ears erect, tongue draped over her teeth.  If she has to wait too long for me to throw it, she starts barking again.  She goes as far as two pitches into the second round before she brings the stick back and keeps it held in her mouth, gobbling on it.  I tell her to “put it down.”  She drops it, then makes a few more fetches, but when she starts chomping on the stick without dropping it again, I feel the snot gathering heavy in my nostrils and tell her “that’s enough.”

And God Blessed the Seventh Day

December 12, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Yesterday afternoon, about 2, while I’m working in the music room, Moi came back from her day of hunting (we both had to work last night).  She doesn’t say anything when she walks into the kitchen, and I know this means that she hasn’t gotten anything.  I stop my work and go into the kitchen to make a late morning stir fry, and to listen to what she has to say, because I know after she pours herself a glass of wine, she’ll have a lot to say.  “I had a shot at a doe today,” she says, “but I just couldn’t bring myself to kill it.  If I’d been seeing more doe this year, I could have done it.  But I don’t know, I guess I was just thinking conservation.  I’m a BFF – big fuckin’ failure,” and she flops her arms in an apologetic manner.  “Are you mad at me because I wasted all this time, and didn’t come home with anything?”  I’m busy trying to get my food together and have trouble paying attention to her.  “No.  I’m not mad at you,” I say.  “I went out there today,” she continues, “with the resolve to come back with something, to shoot a doe if I had too.  It has to be the right situation for me to shoot a doe.  If I see one with fawns, I won’t shoot it.  When I’ve shot doe in the past years, it’s always been a bad thing.  One time I shot one and when I went up to it its mammary glands were spilling milk all over the place.  But I was resolved, if the right situation came, to shoot one.  The right situation came today, and I had a good shot at a doe, but I still didn’t take it.”  She’s saying a lot more, but like I said, I’m trying to fix my brunch.  I tell her about seeing cat prints on the plank yesterday, and ask her if they could’ve been from Squeak. “No, Squeak was up in my bed all last night,” she says.  “A BFF,” she goes on, “that’s what I am.  No meat for the freezer this year, I guess we’ll have to eat chicken all year.”  I tease her that perhaps she hasn’t been getting enough testosterone as part of her hormone therapy.  “No,” she replies, “it actually has more to do with estrogen,” and she says something I don’t catch about taking estrogen.  “There’s usually only a short window when I’m willing to shoot something.  If the right situation doesn’t come along then, then that’s it.  You know, I’m only telling you this, but this year I prayed to Matt’s mom that if the situation was such that only one of us could get a deer this year, then let it be him.  When Matt got one on the first day this year, I thought, well there you go – he’s the one who got a deer.  I was so happy he got one.  All these years, since I started hunting, I’ve gotten a deer, and Matt’s been having trouble.  And I want him to feel like he’s a good provider for Jazz and all that.  This morning,” and I scrape my food out of the frying pan onto a plate, “since this was the last day, I prayed to Blue to bring me the right situation – he, you know, always liked it when he had scraps of meat and fat to eat from deer hides – and, what do you know, the right situation came along.  About 11:30 this morning I saw about ten doe passing along the ridge, but I didn’t even bother picking up my gun.  The right situation came along, and I just let it pass.”  I move into the living room, and Moi starts telling me how in getting up into the tree stand that morning her gun barrel got filled with snow and how the red light on her viewer was not working because the battery was low, and a bunch of other things that I can’t quite all take in.  She asks me again, “Tell me the truth, are you mad I didn’t get a deer?”  I tell her that it would’ve been nice if she had gotten one, but if she didn’t, that was alright.  “You know,” she says, “I think I just like being out in the woods.  You see a lot.  You know – in your walks with Mway, some time you should bring a lawn chair with you.  You’d be surprised what you see when you sit outside for a while, what comes along.  Or maybe some time take a walk without Mway.”  Like most Sundays, work all day.  Come back, it’s dark.  No walk for Mway from me today.

Following Tracks in the Snow

December 11, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Moi has gone hunting, and she left a note on the coffee maker that she gave Mway a half cup of dog food this morning and I’m suppose to give her a second half after my walk with her.  The snow’s still on the ground.  Mway’s lying down on Moi’s bed.  It’s 9 and I’m going to go put on my walking clothes.

State of the Path:  Outside I immediately notice a bare circle in the snow on the sidewalk where I had placed the chicken’s water dish yesterday – Moi hadn’t left a note about the dish:  I guess now I’m suppose to “just know” to haul it out in the morning, like I “just know” to take Mwayla for a walk, so I go back in the house, get it from the laundry room tub, and place it down on the bare circle.  Little birds are flitting around in the lilac bush – I don’t know what they are.  Tiny snarls of grass show through the snow at places, especially through the footprints that are all over the place by now.  I follow my foot prints down the path, then take the side path.  There are no prints in the snow here until I get to the monkey vine portal, where I see some animal prints on the path, and I wish I had brought the Boy’s little pack of cards for identifying animal tracks.  But the prints are kind of indistinct, and I think to myself that they’re probably made by rabbits, for what animal do I see out here all the time?  A bird sings very melodically in the hedgerow, and it makes me angry that after nearly a year I still can’t identify bird songs.  More snow seems to be on the ground out here: the gill-of-the-ground is covered up, and I wonder what happens to it in such a state.  The flattened down goldenrod is weighted down by undisturbed snow, so I figure if anything was bedding down here lately it didn’t do so last night.  Then I note that the goldenrod is not pressed down all the way to the ground, like it should be if something slept on it, and I guess that it must have just collapsed from the cold, although it has done so in an oddly uniform manner.  Past the wigwams and into bug land, I feel ice beneath the snow cracking under my feet.

State of the Creek:  The stream is flowing gently, a strip of brown winding through an expanse of white.  Actually I can only see it flowing, or trickling, at the rocks; the pools themselves seem stationary, with bits of slushy ice at their edges.  Moi’s green plants are covered with snow, and I look at the underwater plants – wonder how much longer these plants will last.  A few more little birds flit about – again I’m angry I can’t identify them.  I don’t see any prints in the path here, and I realize that Mway has not been following me – she must still be back around the old orchard, maybe sniffing at the rabbit tracks.  Finally at the swale I see, pretty distinctly, a set of animal tracks.  I follow them toward the feed channel, then over the plank – I see some on the snow-covered ice of the channel.  I continue following them to the pin oaks, where they suddenly stop in a dip of the ground.  Since I don’t have the Boy’s print packet I have no idea what animal made them, but I consider the possibility that they might have been made by one of the raccoons that Mway and I have disturbed down here, and it makes me happy to think this animal is still managing to live.  Back here at the office, though, I do consult the Boy’s packet: it looks like what I saw were not raccoon tracks.  If I remember correctly, I counted four toes, and the packet tells me raccoons have five.  A red fox has four toes, but there were no claws showing in the prints I saw, which the packet tells me I should see if the prints are those of a red fox.  The tracks look mostly like what the packet identifies as those of the “Family Cat,” so I figure they must have been made by a feral cat.  Or had Squeak been out last night and had she ventured all the way down to the creek?  This morning I had found her in a deep sleep on the top bunk of my bed, lying among the neglected clothes heaped up there.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, I have to call for Mway.  Soon she comes jaunting down the path through the sumacs, indicating to me that she had spent our entire walk up at the old orchard sniffing rabbit tracks.  I pitch the stick, making our usual circle, and Mway, though she dashes off after each toss, seems distracted, stopping several times to sniff at the tracks here (which are probably mostly mine and hers).  On the second round, after a few tosses, Mway brings the stick back without dropping it, chewing and gobbling at it in her usual fashion.  I tell her, “Put it down.”  She drops it, spins around once, splashing up snow on my arm sleeve as I bend down to pick up the stick.  I toss it again.  She goes after it, snatches it up from a tangle of goldenrod, then comes galloping past me, stick athwart her snout, back toward the house.

A Few Honeysuckles Hang onto a Few Leaves

December 10, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  When I wake up, Mway is on the floor next to my bed – I left the door open last night so heat would waft into the room.  Moi’s not downstairs, which means she went hunting today.  I feel tired, I think because with my bedroom door open last night Squeak was able to come in and walk all over me a couple times during the night, disturbing my sleep.  I let Mway out, but a couple minutes later, she barks to be let back in.  I’m mentally steeling myself against the cold – I really don’t feel like taking Mway for a walk right now.

State of the Path:  I have to take the chicken’s water dish out, which Moi emailed me about.   Actually the air is refreshing – my first thought is I’m happy to be outside, like taking a swim on a hot day.  The path has that same faded look, with dead leaves and browning grass receding into the ground.  On the side path, a few honeysuckle shrubs are still hanging onto a few yellowed tattered leaves.  The gill-of-the-ground remains shriveled and frozen.  I come across a large circle of goldenrod that has been flattened – I wonder if deer have been bedding down here, or if the area just collapsed from the cold weather.  I walk along at a brisk pace – again I’m somewhat in a hurry because I have work to do today, and also I have to call the dentist because I lost a large filling last night.

State of the Creek:  The water is flowing brown and gentle, but in most of the pools a soupy film of ice has formed, which I stir up with my walking stick.  I look at Moi’s green water plants and wonder when they’ll disappear completely.  I see the underwater green plants still floating in the brown water and wonder how long they’ll last too.  I cross the plank to the skating pond crest, and when I duck down under the branches of the pin oak, I realize I don’t come this way sometimes because ducking down under these branches is hard on my joints and muscles.  When I return through the “chokeberries,” I expect to be struck in the eye by the ball of sun over the marshy spot near the ridge – but it doesn’t happen.  I look up in the gray sky, and there’s no ball of sun anywhere to be seen.

The Fetch:  I make the circle, Mway a couple times having to search hard for the stick.  We make a full round, then before we complete it a second time, Mway comes running back with the stick without dropping it, and I tell her “that’s good enough.”  Back in the house I don’t know whether to feed her or not – Moi didn’t leave any note about whether or not she did earlier.  I decide to feed her: better she have two breakfasts, I guess, than none at all.

Addendum:  When I get home from work, about 4:30, Moi’s not home – she had come back from hunting before I left for work, and I expected her to be home; I assume she went hunting again, so that means I have to take Mway out again in the afternoon. Moi had told me, by the way, that she had fed Mway earlier today, so that means Mway did have two breakfasts this morning.  Since it’s getting dark and I already took Mway for one walk today, I figure I’ll just take her in the back yard to fetch stick.  During the afternoon it has snowed, and there’s a half inch to an inch of coating on the ground.  I go out to the back yard, but Mway runs past the outbuilding onto the path.  I call her once, but she doesn’t come, so I figure I’ll fetch stick with her out in the clearing. I find Mway traipsing through the shrubs around the pig pen.  As I shuffle through the snow, my feet feel cold because I’m only wearing my street clothes – no wool socks – beneath my snow suit.  In the path through the sumacs much of the goldenrod is bent over into the path, not just from being dead, but from the weight of the caps of snow on top of their fuzzy spikes.  Mway follows me to the clearing.  I make the circle once, both the stick and Mway splattering snow off the goldenrod.  We only make the round once, though – about five fetches -- when she comes running back without dropping the stick.  I start to head back down the path, but Mway’s looking up at me, and I think what the hell – I shout “put it down.”  She drops the stick, and I throw it again, this time toward the electric pole, Mway bounding down the path toward the strawberry patch.  When the goldenrod swishes as the stick lands, she realizes her mistake, skids around, and zips up toward the sound, but she ends up sniffing around in the faint light, unable to find the stick.  I have to trudge over to find it myself.  I spot it right away, right in front of where she’s standing all bewildered.  When I bend over to pick it up, she suddenly catches sight of it and snatches it before I can reach it.   As she runs off, I walk back toward the path, telling her “okay, that’s it.”

Ground a Faded White

December 9, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  I wake up shortly before 9.  When I step into the hall, Mway slinks out of my office.  I turn on the computer, go to the bathroom to pee, and downstairs I’m surprised to see Moi sitting at her laptop at the kitchen table.  She tells me she didn’t go hunting because it was 15 degrees outside, 7 degrees wind chill.  She’s making minor revisions on her story, and while I roll a cigarette, she talks to me at length about that.  I ask her if she took Mway for a walk.  “No,” she says, “I let her out when it was still dark outside.”  I go into the living room to smoke my cigarette and drink some coffee while my computer’s warming up.  Out the living room window I can see the swing set sitting in the driveway of our McNeighbor’s house – the one that Moi told me had gone up for sheriff’s sale – I’ve been wondering why the swing set is still there.  Mway comes into the living room and buries her snout in my hand.  I pet her head for a while and then, when she starts walking away, I pat her backside and a cloud of dust rises in the air, as thick as a cloud of cigarette smoke.

State of the Path:  Mway is at the door pacing as I suit up.  Outside the ground is a faded white, as if there had been frost, which, had I been out an hour before, I might’ve seen.   Moi’s garden pond is frozen over with thin ice.  The path is a faded white too, crinkly.  My lips are cold.  A lot of the goldenrod is knocked over, probably collapsed from the cold.  At the wigwams there are patches of ice in the path, and, through bug land, I feel like I’m stepping on the crust of a pie.

State of the Creek:  The water’s flowing at the tree stand.  At the former log jam, a shelf of ice hangs along the far bank.  I poke my walking stick in the water, to confirm that the whole stream of water has not yet frozen over.  Moi’s green plants are still in the cascade, but they look withered and battered.  A few brown leaves cling onto some oaks, and I look back and see that there are still some brown leaves on the oaks just before the creek as well.  I hadn’t taken the side path by the old orchard, and I don’t take the one to the crest of the skating pond either – I have to work today, so I’m somewhat in a hurry.  As I walk along the ridge, the sun, reflecting off the ice in the marshy spot between the ridges, catches me blindingly in the eye – exactly as it did yesterday.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, for some reason, the frost that must have covered everything this morning is still apparent here, glistening in the sun.  There’s a strip of snow down the center of the clearing.  I do the circle, Mway running, smiling, spinning, barking, but after I come to throwing the stick down the path, on her way back she glances over her shoulder and then, for whatever reason, prances past me to head back to the house.  I could insist that she drop the stick, but I don’t bother.  On my way back I think to look at the willow by the corn crib to see what’s happened to its leaves – amazingly there’s still quite a few green leaves hanging onto its uppermost branches.

Whispers

December 8, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  Last night I reread Moi’s story, “The Old Man Who Took His Gun for a Walk.”  I hadn’t told her yesterday that when I read the story it brought tears to my eyes.  I hadn’t told her this because I wasn’t sure I cried solely because of the story.  Last night I waited until Moi was sound asleep, and while there was no sound in the house but the blower on the wood pellet stove, I reread it.  This time when I finished I cried uncontrollably for a half an hour.  Again I don’t know if this was solely because of the story.  But whenever my crying would subside for a moment I would reread the last two sentences and again the tears and mucous would well up: “He would just wait for that thing you see that wasn’t there the last time you looked.  He would wait for the whispers.”  Moi has gone out hunting again today – out my office window it looks very cold outside. 

State of the Path:  I select the same stick I used yesterday; it’s not as long as I’d like it to be, but it has some heft and a nice, what I imagine to be aerodynamic, bend to it.  The chickens are huddling in a lilac bush; I wonder if they find enough to eat this time of year, maybe seeds and nuts.  On the ground, looks like the same flecks and patches of snow as were there yesterday.  The water over the cement slabs has dried up, the ground crunchy underfoot.  I take the side path.  Mway turns around from the main path to follow.  Seems very quiet, very still, along the old orchard and back to the main path, except for a slight breeze.  I begin thinking I’m not going to see anything, when suddenly a gray body appears, disappearing behind a maple trunk.  I at first take it for a bird, but I know it was a squirrel; I don’t know why it’s in a tree among the maples.  I keep my eyes on the tree for a while but I don’t see it again.  At the wigwams, the water on the path is starting to freeze.  Across bug land, some birds are stirring in the shrubs along the creek, probably black-capped chickadees.  They fly off  before I get to where they were.

State of the Creek:  The water flows quietly, but at the former log jam, a thin shelf of ice seizes the far bank.  A multiflora briar makes a grab for my cap.  I stop quickly, take a step back.  The briar unloosens, and I duck under it and continue forward.  At the narrows I walk upon footprints I left in the flecks of snow yesterday.  I cross the plank, stepping on yesterday’s boot treads and poking the solid ice in the feed channel with my walking stick.  As I round the crest, I look for the rodent skull on the ridge but don’t see it and figure it’s been washed down the bank into the channel and out into the creek.  Recalling the bones I put under a small tree near the “chokeberries” many months ago, I decide to look for them.  I don’t see a skull, but I find two leg bones, frozen into the ground at the base of the tree.  At the ridge, the sun, reflecting harshly off the ice in a marshy spot, suddenly shines bright in my eyes.

The Fetch:  Mway is waiting for me at the clearing, smiling, taking little jittery steps backwards as I walk into position.  I do the circle again, play “Put it down” once, then tell her “that’s enough.”  Back at the house, I’m in a quandary whether Moi already fed Mway early this morning or not, but I dish out some dog food for her anyway. 

Yellow Turning Pink

December 7, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  I wake up around 8:45, expecting that Moi has gone out hunting.  But even before I go downstairs, I can tell she’s home: hear the TV murmuring, hear her mumbling to the animals.  She tells me it was too windy to go out this morning, and she says she’s already taken Mway down to the creek.  That means I’m relegated again to an afternoon walk -- I have to work today, and I’ll have to make sure I get home before dark.  Out my office window I see a coating of snow on the ground, just an inch or so, but the first full covering for the season; I’m a little miffed because it would’ve been nice to write about this this morning.  Yesterday morning, while she was not out hunting, Moi wrote a hunting story instead.  It’s about an older hunter who goes out in the woods and, for the first time in his life, decides not to shoot a buck he has a good shot of.  I read it late last night, and Moi asks me this morning what I think about it.  I’m milling around the kitchen, heating up coffee in the microwave, rolling a cigarette.  I tell her that it seems to me that the “older hunter letting the deer go” is a theme that’s been addressed many times before, but that the story has a “quiet subtlety to it.”  “Well, I know the theme’s not original,” she says, “but this is about a hunter who lets the deer go because he can’t see to shoot anymore,” and she goes on to tell me that the story is based on what Ezra has been complaining to her about his father going hunting and that it has many of her own perceptions about hunting in it.  I tell Moi I’ll have to read it again because last night I was distracted by typos.

State of the Path:  By the time I get home from work, about 4:30, most of the snow is gone, the lawn largely green with wisps and patches of white here and there.  I hurry to get into my snow suit, not even changing first into my walking clothes.  Mway paces around the table, at first huffing, then unable to contain herself, bursting into a round of barking, which I tell her to “knock off.”  “She’s been waiting for this all day,” Moi says.  “But you took her for a walk this morning,” I protest.  “A walk’s not a walk until you take her for one,” she retorts.  I pick up several sticks from the music room, one of which I decide would be a good one to toss.  Outside the setting sun is scarring the sky yellow, jagged streaks through heavy blue clouds.  There’s a puddle of water over the cement slabs, thin ice on one edge of Moi’s garden pond.  The path is muddy, only a few flecks of snow under some shrubs.  Goldenrod stalks and briars paw at the sides of my snow suit.  Down at the wigwams, there are streaks of water in the path and at the spillway into bug land.  In bug land itself, the path turns muddy.  I’m happy to be wearing good boots, but my feet feel cold because I’m not wearing my usual wool socks.

State of the Creek:  There are still flecks of snow on the creek bank, which contrast sharply with the quietly running brown stream.  I stop at the former log jam and, with my walking stick, poke at some sort of root, caked with dead leaves and grass, that sticks out into the water, the only remnant of all the debris that used to be jammed up here.  I manage to duck successfully under briars without getting my cap pulled off.  At first I plan not to go over to the crest of the skating pond, but when I see there’s snow on the plank over the feed channel, I decide to walk across it, leaving my foot prints on it.  Under the oaks, it looks like the pool of water there has a lot of small round stones in it which I don’t remember seeing before, and I wonder if these have been washed down by the last flood.  Walking along the ridge of bug land, I see that the yellow streaks in the sky have turned pink.

The Fetch:  I make the circle of tosses, same as I’ve been doing the last few days.  The center of the clearing is a streak of snow; otherwise, it’s brown all around.  I play “Put it down” with Mway once, without actually saying “put it down,” just jabbing my finger, but after that I tell her “that’s enough.”  Back in the house, since Moi’s now up in the bath room, I feed Mway.  When Moi comes out of the bath room, she tells me that this morning she saw paw prints in the snow, “I don’t know if it was from a feral cat, a raccoon, or what.”  “Yeah,” I say to her, “you told me that before.”