Zipper Pinches My Neck

December 6, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  I have to work today.  Moi has not gone hunting; she says it’s too windy.  Perhaps it is, but out the office window I only see a few bare branches sway slightly, if at all.  I don’t think she’s taken Mway for a walk; she’s still in her bathrobe.  Squeak’s on my lap.  Although I don’t see much wind I seem to hear it roaring around the house – and, there, now I see whole trees moving.  It looks cold out there in the drab brown fields, and I’m not looking forward to going out.  I just heard Moi let Mway out the door, telling her “you’re a damn fool.”

State of the Path:   I keep my sweatshirt on, part of my lounging-around clothes, and put on my snow suit.  I find the birch branch next to my boots.  Outside, Moi wants to take a picture of me and Mway with her iPhone for some reason;  I call Mway, but she keeps coming and going, and Moi has to take a quick shot while Mway’s looping around my legs.  Walking down the sidewalk, I think it doesn’t seem too bad outside, but when I get to the pig pen I feel otherwise; my chin and wrists are especially cold.  I zip up my snow suit as high as it goes.  The path is soggy in places, crunchy in other spots.  There’s a few flecks of frost.  Mway takes the side path, and I follow.  Past the cedar, some of the gill-of-the-ground below the brown goldenrod is withered and pasted to patches of ice, but others of it lie burgeoning in full leaf.  Through the maples I scare out a small flock of birds, those that, righly or wrongly, I always think of as mourning doves.  Down by the creek, the bare spots of ground on the path are crinkled.  The pin oak branches and multiflora briars make grabs for my cap, but I manage to stop or duck just in time before they can snatch it away.  We don’t bother going over to the crest of the skating pond.  The water in the marshy spot between the ridges looks like it has iced up, but the streak of water in the path on the other side of the ridge is still liquid.

State of the Creek:  All the branches that were in the log jam are gone – the last few were pushed up onto the bank by the last flood.  All that remains there are two multiflora shrubs on either side that throw out branches to each other across the water.  Moi’s green plant is still there in the cascade but it looks a little more scanty.  Just beyond it I see where the floodwaters have pushed up some dirt from some mounds of grass that jut into the creek.

The Fetch:  I again make the circle tossing the stick.  A couple times Mway runs off in the wrong direction, but she manages to find the stick without me having to walk all the way up to it myself.  When I bend over, the zipper of my snow suit pinches my neck.  There are small patches of ice in the middle of the clearing.  We make the circle – I don’t know how many times.   As soon as Mway comes back and just keeps chomping on the stick, I tell her “that’s it.”

He Rested on the Seventh Day

December 5, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Work all day today.  Listen to John Cage’s “Works for Prepared Piano” on the way home.  When I arrive, though Mway meets me in the driveway, it’s dark and the path would be too perilous to venture upon.  No walk for her from me today.

Wary of Hunters Again

December 4, 2010.  Saturday. 

Situation:  I wake up later than I have been lately: about 9:40.  Out my office window I see a dusting of snow on the ground, with green grass sticking up through it.  I don’t know if Moi has already taken Mway for a walk or not; she hasn’t gone hunting because she has work this afternoon, then we both work together tonight.  She’s on the phone, maybe talking to Jazz.  Last night she was telling me about the dearth of deer she and Ezra have been seeing and the possible reasons why; probably the main reason is that Ezra had many of his trees timbered and this has disturbed the deer’s habits; there are also the two brothers who own the adjacent farm: one of them likes to hunt and the other one doesn’t, and the one who doesn’t like to hunt has been slaughtering deer so the other one can’t.  Then as Moi says, “Ezra’s starting to think he’s been jinxed because he shot that piebald buck.  He shouldn’t have shot at it because he didn’t have a good shot. The thing was standing twisted and the bullet went through the shoulder.  It ran off, running on three legs just as fast as if it were on four legs.”  But right now, just as Moi is on the main phone, she reports to me that she’s gotten a message on her iPhone, with a picture, showing the buck that Ezra has just shot.  “He shot it down in the hemlocks,” Moi says, “I don’t usually go down there.”  Moi has gotten off the phone, and is now taking a bath – probably a sign that she hasn’t yet taken Mway for a walk.   While I’m waiting for her to finish, I might as well relate the long dream I had this morning:  A friend of mine, who is someone I don’t recognize, wants to go see a new version of Roman Polanski’s The Tenant; he insists we sneek into the movie house, not because we can’t afford the admission but in the spirit of things, but we end up in an adjacent theatre where a different movie is being shown on a small projector and small screen in a room set up with long folding tables and chairs.  A ham and turkey supper is being served by Pennsylvania Dutch women --.  Oh, here’s Moi now: I’ve just asked her if she’s taken Mway for a walk.  She says she hasn’t and warns me that today doe season has opened up.  “I wouldn’t take her for a walk today,” she says, “but, well, I haven’t heard any shots this morning.  If you go out, just be careful.”

State of the Path:  I decide to slip down along the summer house, take the reverse way, bringing with me the thick birch branch I found yesterday in the music room.  A lot of the dusting on the ground has disappeared, but there are light flurries falling around me.  On the path I spot a red perforated top from a can of shaker cheese, and then some yellow pieces of plastic strewn about.  Heading down toward the strawberry patch, I note a lot of red berries on a vast swatch of multiflora shrubs.  I realize that my eyes are attuned to color: and indeed I’m looking around for any signs of orange or red hunter’s garb.  When I get close to the Russian olive, I hear Moi out in the back yard yelling.  She calls out to me, “Sis.  Call Mway.”  Apparently Mway’s still up in the yard, probably chasing chickens.  I call for her, and soon I see her running down the path, a big smile on her face.  Moi calls out to me again (I can’t even see her from where I’m standing).  “Good,” she shouts, “You have your orange cap on.”  I pass through the break in the ridge, keeping my eyes on the field and ridge across from the creek.  I see a hunter's stand up at the edge of the woods on the ridge, but I see no color in it; among the brown weeds in the field are some bright green plants near the top, and I wonder what they are.  As I pass through the “chokeberries,” I recall the deer stand that sits in the oaks on the other side of the creek; I figure, though, that if someone’s in there, I should be able to spot the orange or red through the bare gray branches.  Mway goes over to the feed channel, but then turns around and scoots down along the creek.  I follow.

State of the Creek:  The air’s damp and cold, but with the flecks of snow on the logs along the creek and in a few spots on the ground, it seems cozy, and I take my time walking along the creek, just enjoying the brisk air.  Up ahead, I see Mway bounding across some grassy mounds that jut into the creek, then I see her pick up a big stick in her mouth and start to walk into the water.  What the hell is she going to do with that? I wonder.  She reminds me of a beaver.  But when I get up to where she was, I see that she’s dropped the stick and has continued up along the creek. I reach the tree stand, turn left to go up along bug land.  Up ahead I see Mway running through the maples, with another stick in her mouth.  When I reach where she was, I see it dropped on the ground too.

The Fetch:  In the clearing, Mway is hopping up and down, eager to fetch.  The center of the clearing is a patch of ice, so I stand off to one side.  I pitch the stick in all directions: toward the sumacs, toward a honeysuckle on the other side of the clearing, toward the electric pole, between the “chokeberry” and the honeysuckle, toward the strawberry patch, and even into the goldenrod near Moi’s evergreen plantings.  Everywhere I toss it seems there’s some obstacle, a shrub, where the stick could get stuck in; but this, and making a circle of the tosses, keeps my interest up.  Mway fetches a lot, and even more as we go to level 2.  We don’t quit until finally I start saying “are you done now?” “are you done now?” about five times, and Mway just keeps chomping on the stick that’s rattling between her teeth.

Sound of Saws and Hammers

December 3, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Moi went hunting again today.  I have lots of work that came in for me to do today.  It’s 9:15: Mway is waiting for me to take her out.

State of the Path:  I can only find the gashed stick, so that’s what I take with me.  I stop in the path at the outbuilding, surprised to see how much water is still trickling down here – seems not from the springhouse but somewhere around the barn foundation.  I hear a woodpecker in the old orchard.  Mway might hear it too, for I catch her standing sideways in the path, snout pointed in the air.   She heads down the main path, and I follow.  She veers right to sniff in the sumacs.  I look down a pathway with a lot of goldenrod bent down in it.  At the maples, the water is not trickling so much, but it’s still standing in the second stream and in the spillways to bug land.  All over the McNeighborhood I hear the sound of skill saws and the pounding of hammers.

State of the Creek:  The sound of the flowing stream is almost loud enough to drown out the sound of a skill saw – but not quite.

The Fetch:  I move quickly along the creek, over the swale, along the ridge, though it, and up to the clearing.  I realize that I’m tossing the stick pretty much into the sumacs; a couple throws down the path almost reach the strawberry patch.  The clearing is getting clearer.  When Mway starts bringing the stick back without dropping it, I play “Put it down” once or twice, then tell her “that’s enough.”

Water Still Flowing into Bug Land and at Swale

December 2, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  I worked last night, and I have to work tonight.  Moi has gone hunting again.  I wake up a little later than I have been recently.  Mway went to the door to be let out, so she’s waiting outside for me to join her.  Last night after work I stopped in at Dan’s house by the river; the river was creeping up his back deck and could crest, he said, at the floor of his house, though he thought that unlikely.  There’s blues skies and sunshine out my window.  I can see the berry cones of the sumacs.

State of the Path:  When I step outside, Mway dashes off the porch, starts running down the chickens; I have to yell.  The plank and cement slabs in the path at the garden pond are still underwater; beyond, the path is soggy, with puddles around.  Flecks of frost here and there – maybe earlier this morning there was frost all over the ground.  The leaves are almost totally gone from the honeysuckles – only a shrub every now and then has scant leaves on it.  (Back in the back yard, I noticed that the willow still has some green leaves on it.)  I haven’t seen any deer in a couple days and no hunters, so I’m not thinking too much about that.  Round the hedgerow; a rabbit runs across the path; Mway doesn’t see it.  Through the patch of goldenrod, water is trickling, and when I get to the maples, there’s water trickling down the path here too.  The side stream is still flowing, and the water is collecting, though not nearly as much as yesterday, at the ridge and still spilling into bug land.

State of the Creek:  The creek is back in its banks, flowing brown and gently, gurgling at the cascades.  I see where grasses have been swept down, leaves and branches shoved about, dead leaves lifted up leaving behind bare spots of ground.  This is the case with the path, which is now nearly one long trail of bare ground winding along the creek.  I note that Moi’s water plants survived the high water; I see them sticking up at the same place in the cascade before the two big logs, which look like they’ve been pushed in tighter against the creek bank.  A couple dead branches have been caught in the little willow tree (if that’s what it is) that leans across the creek; the branches are matted with leaves.  I suddenly hear Mway barking; I look up and see her along the ridge, looking over at me; why the hell is she barking at me over there? I wonder.  A briar suddenly swipes me across my thighs, scratching through my pants (probably at a threadbare spot in them), and, wincing, I fling it aside.  Mway barks a few more times.  I note the swept-down grasses of bugland.  At the swale, a little water is still flowing into the creek; I pick up the plank behind the “chokeberry” and toss it across the swale so I can step across it.  I cross the feed channel, which still has water in it, though it’s not flowing.  The water in the skating pond has gone down.  When I duck under the pin oak, one of its branches lifts off my wool cap, and I have to retrieve it and scrunch it back down on my head.  I now see Mwayla: she’s backtracked from the ridge and is pushing her way through the goldenrod, which here is so bent over the path is nearly obliterated.

The Fetch:  Though the water’s down in the skating pond, there’s still water visible in the marshy area between the ridges.  And the path on the other side of the ridge is very soggy.  I note that, like the honeysuckles, the leaves on the Russian olives are gone.  I see the fairly recently shed leaves of one shrub strewn across the path just before the strawberry patch.  The goldenrod along one side of the path on the way to the clearing is now trampled down a lot, but on the other side the goldenrod is still sticking up.  I’d like to toss the stick there, but I see two white posts where Moi has planted evergreen trees, and I’m afraid Mway might trample those down too.  Up at the clearing, on one side of it the goldenrod is pretty well smashed down, and I end up tossing the stick sometimes into a honeysuckle or multiflora shrub, where it’s a little hard for Mway to get it.  I toss the stick down the path a lot, but I also start tossing it a few times on the side of the clearing toward the house, where there’s a lot more goldenrod for Mway to smash down.  As soon as Mway starts bringing the stick back without dropping it, I tell her “that’s enough.”

Stepping Through High Water

December 1, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  I didn’t mention it yesterday or the day before, but when Moi comes home from hunting, she likes to spend the next two hours drinking whiskey and talking about her day in the woods.  “It can get cold and windy up there in the tree stand,” for example, “sometimes I’ll go down into the hollow, but it’s dark and I get lost there.  Ezra has a blind but I don’t like to go in there.  It’s down on the ground, and that’s the last place I want to be.  Your suppose to be wearing orange and the thing has camouflage around it.  Ezra says there’s not suppose to be any other hunters in the woods, but I’ve seen them in past years.  I was down there today, eating candy, and I could hear the wind around me, everything sounded like a bear walking around.  I was so tired I eventually fell asleep.  I started having this weird dream about an angel named Rachel, and then I woke up to this sound like ‘rrrrr-rrrr- rrrrrr-rrrr.’  I suppose it could’ve been my own snoring that woke me up,” and on and on and on.  This morning Moi wakes me up to warn me that there’s a thunderstorm, flash flooding, possible rotation clouds.  I hear wind howling, rain hitting the roof and running down Moi’s rain chain.  By the time I get up, it looks like the worse of the storm is over, but out our windows you can see where the creek has overflowed its banks.  Moi hasn’t gone hunting because of the weather, but she plans to go out this afternoon if it gets better.  I’m eager to go out and look at the creek, and I keep checking out the window to try to tell if it’s raining and how hard.  Maybe I spoke too soon about the storm being over – the wind is howling again, the trees swaying.  “Listen to it,” Moi says, “It’s like a hurricane out there.  I better check Doppler radar.”  I hear the rain now hitting the side of the house, see it outside the window falling at a slant and carried by in little gusts; there are puddles of water in the yard, in the path by the summer house, in the lane behind it.  But as soon as I have the chance I’ll be taking the little dog for a walk.

State of the Path:  Finally Moi tells me “it’s only lightly raining now.”  I put on my usual walking clothes because I don’t have a raincoat or parka.  Yesterday afternoon the gashed stick broke a bit, so I choose the thick birch branch, which at least has some heft.  At the outbuilding, there’s water over the cement slabs and wooden plank in the path; water seeps from the spring house.  Moi’s garden pond is overflowing, with water spilling out toward the pig pen.  Beginning at the walled garden, the path is one long puddle of water.  Mway heads down the main path, but she turns around when she sees I’m taking the side path.  Already my pants are getting wet, there are raindrops on my glasses, and I’m wondering why I’m walking out here.  The path along the orchard is not as streaked with water, but there are tiny streams flowing through the black walnut trees (though not as much as there used to be typically before the coming of McNeighborland.)  But when I round the bend and start through the goldenrod, clumps of which are bent over from the rain, the path is again saturated with water.  Back on the main path, the water trickles faster as the ground slopes more.  At the maples, a second stream of water runs alongside the stream of the path, breaking up into tiny rivulets through the maples, most of this collecting along the ridge and pouring into bugland.  Beneath the pin oaks stretches a long deep puddle.  From here I can see the creek, rushing swiftly along, a tan torrent, streaked with white bubbles.

State of the Creek:  Mway is ahead of me, and I hope she has enough sense not to wade into the water.  She turns to walk along the creek, and I lose sight of her.  At the tree stand, the creek does not quite reach the path, but there’s water over the banks on the other side, creeping up into Hutchinson’s wood lot.  The water speeds along, carrying foam and bubbles, churning, turning this way and that, humping upward into long flowing mounds.  At the first stand of honeysuckles, the path is again covered with water, and I’m grateful to have new boots because I can walk right through it.  After I pass through the honeysuckles, I look ahead and see the water flowing right over the bank at the bend where the log jam used to be, and there’s Mway walking along right in it, just beyond the plastic barrel which seems to have been moved a little bit.  When I get to the overflowing bank, I hesitate to step any further; at places I can’t tell what’s water flowing down the path and what’s water in the main stream.  But I soon realize I can guide myself by following the multiflora and other shrubs sticking out of the water and the little islands of leaves here and there -- and besides, there’s Mway up ahead walking along without getting swept away.  When I step into the water, it feels weird because I think my leg should disappear into it, but somewhere beneath the gushing water is the path which holds my feet up, although I can sense soil being eroded away.  There are tree branches fallen across the path and into other branches.  At the big locusts, where the path winds around the trees, the water follows these twists and flows into the grasses of bug land.  I walk especially careful along the narrows, every step worried that my boot might sink all the way into the water and I’ll lose my balance.  Through the shrubs I see Mway pacing back and forth on the dry side of bug land.  When I reach the swale, the water is spreading over the dirt bar, and I see the plank’s been uplifted and is caught in some branches.  I pick it up and wedge it behind a “chokeberry” so it won’t get swept any further.  I then try to step through the swale, but the water reaches to the top of my boot.  I wonder how Mwayla got over to dry land.  I try stepping in a different spot, but again the water almost overflows into my boot.  I turn around and start to backtrack along the creek, thinking I’ll have to retrace my steps all the way around to the clearing.  I test stepping into the grasses of bug land near the big locusts, but the water is too deep here too.  How did Mwayla get over to the other side?  Finally at the honeysuckles just before the tree stand, it looks dry enough to walk into bug land, and I alternately plod and high-step across the large area of the thick brown, usually untouched, grass to reach the ridge.  I wade through more high grass along the ridge then head down the soggy path through the “chokeberries,” intent on looking at the skating pond.  The plank over the feed channel is still in place, but it’s only inches above the water, which flows from the creek toward the skating pond, so the feed channel is actually acting like it's suppose to.  Even before I step off the plank, I can see ponds of water that have swelled up around the catty-nine-tails: the skating pond looks like the marsh that I suppose it actually is.  I head toward the creek.  The stream around the oaks is very wide; there’s water flowing in around the pin oak which I have to duck under, and I spy a golf ball in the grass but don’t bother to pick it up.  Then in the middle of the crest, even though the ground is high, water has made a giant pool, and I have to stomp through this while shoving my way through sheaves of bent-over goldenrod.  

The Fetch:  By the time I reach the clearing, my pants are completely soaked.  I can barely see out of my glasses, and the last thing I want to do is throw a stick.  Mway’s not even anywhere around.  Still I give her a call, I don’t know why -- maybe because I figure if I don’t throw the stick there I’ll still end up throwing it in the yard.  I call for her several times, mistaking the sound of rain dripping through the weeds to be the sound of her approaching footsteps.  Finally she appears in the path along the sumacs, running with a big grin into the clearing, and I start tossing the stick, hoping she’ll give me a break and only fetch it a few times.  But soon I realize that’s not going to be the case and start muttering to myself.  Then it starts raining harder, and I realize that gives me a good excuse to stop.  Long before she’s ready to stop, I tell her “that’s enough.”

Don't See Any Deer

November 30, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  This morning when I wake up, Mway is lying on the floor at the foot of my bed.  Last night Moi came home without meat for the freezer – she saw only a few more deer all day than I did just in a short while yesterday morning, and they were all doe (this year the game commission has limited the first five days of deer season in our county to the hunting of buck), so she has gone out hunting again today.  There’s no frost on the ground; the sky is gray.  Out my office window, the light is dim: I can’t see the red cones of the sumacs.  I hear the roosters crowing now and then; one of them’s making almost a perfect cockle-doodle-doo: “ra-hah-roo-roo.”  Yesterday I didn’t hear any gunshots all day, not even shortly before sunset when I took Mway out to the clearing to fetch stick again.  I don’t know if there will be any hunters out today.  I wonder if the deer will be hiding in the brush again down by the creek, or perhaps even on our field.  Well, there’s only one way to find out.

State of the Path:  When I step outside, I see the sidewalk’s wet, hear rain seeping through the trees, making a pucking sound on the cover to the pool.  I creep down by the summer house; Mway takes a dump in the lane, then a couple more on the path.  I walk by a tall narrow cedar (yesterday afternoon I had looked for blue cones on it; didn’t find any cones on it at all).  Mway turns toward the clearing, but she doesn’t go very far; based on what we did yesterday, she’s half-expecting I’ll keep on going straight toward bug land, and she’s right.  The water in the path before the ridge, which was icy yesterday, is now just soggy.  I break through the ridge, look up into the field across the creek.  I walk on the soggy path, pass through the “chokeberries,” don’t bother with the side path, cross the swale.  I move fast along the creek, the upper parts of my pants now wet, drips of rain on my glasses.  A multiflora branch snags my wool cap.  As I approach the other end of bug land, I recall that I’ve seen deer jump up from the brush there.  I walk up the soggy path toward the maples, walk across the plank on the ground, and, because I’m wet, decide not to take the side path here either.  And that’s good, I reflect: if the deer are bedded down anywhere, it could be over there along the side path, and this way I won’t risk disturbing them.

State of the Creek:  I see the riffles in the cascades coming toward me, ripples in the pools colliding with each other.

The Fetch:  On the first toss, Mway bounds off in the wrong direction, and I have to help her find the stick.  When I point to where it landed with my walking stick, she just jumps up at the pointer, and so I have to step toward where the stick lies until she stumbles upon it.  Mway makes only four or five fetches before she starts chomping on the stick without dropping it, and we only play “Put it down” twice, which is good, because I’m cold and wet.