Suppressing My Instinct to Run
Saturday, July 1Ð
I am spoiled living in the sedate northwoods of Wisconsin. It is not a joy to travel to a serene place like The Woods when one has to endure worn out curse words filling the car, swept along with aggressive vacationers on motorcycles and bicycles and ATV's, in cars and trucks and motorhomes and tourist busses out for a long 4th of July weekend. The abundance of vehicles is bad enough, if their drivers would cooperate and work together at the task, like kindergartners who'd been taught they lived in a world with other people. But mindless drivers--those distressed by daughters in labor and a flaming casserole in the oven and afflicted of a vicious outbreak of The Heartbreak of Psoriasis--put us further at risk by driving 80 and passing on curves with oncoming traffic approaching white-knuckled from the other direction. Turning north onto the ten mile gravel road is a breath-loosing moment. Accumulated carbon dioxide retreats from the lungs and a serene pace of 25 mph drops the blood pressure.
A high-eighties day with humidity about the same. Backroads in this season are decorous with daisies and buttercups and hawkweed and Indian Paintbrush and purple clover and other pleasant decencies. I mused late in the trip what a classic summer day we had going, temperature almost hot--but not uncomfortable--with humidity elevated enough to assure me that this day of peak summer is not a cheap imitation. All of this was observed from inside an air conditioned car--whose capacity to dehumidify and keep me cool I assumed had degraded, allowing it to be hotter than preferred, since the car was new a long time ago.
True. The machinery was doing its damn best to keep up with the swelter. I'd departed home late morning when the air was still in the 70's, and lost track of the rise in torrid discomfort outside.
Slowing to round the sharp left curve at Tamarack Lake I noticed the
boat landing beach elbow to shoulder with frolickers displaying abundant bare
skin. "What a perfect day to be beachside and nearly nude," I mused.
Kiddies romping, and adolescent daughters approximating bare nakedness. I
was shortly to discover that the beach is about the only place to survive
on a day like this. Or camping in a cave ... or browsing in Walmart.
Arrived at The Woods
about 3 p.m. Searing moist heat wrapped around us as EZ and I emerged from
the car. I had to blink back spontaneous tears at having to live so uncomfortably;
bitterly resenting my misfortune that The Woods has no electricity to power
central air conditioning. Short of keeping the motor running and staying inside
the car I was going to have to live miserably in my own sticky sweat.
Then I opened the
cabin door. Hah! A hotter blast rolled out at me like an atomic concussion.
Quickly suppressing my instinct to run, I charged into the cabin and out the
other side, opening side windows and screened panels. Nauseous waves of heat
surged up out of the cabin and away into the trees, creating leafy bedlam
before rushing into the sky.
I changed into shorts and flip-flops and set about the chore of emptying the kitchen in preparation of painting the floor. Stiff tree-top breezes couldn't penetrate the forest canopy far enough to trickle through window screens. Fetched a filthy cotton headband to absorb some sweat and began dismantling counters, moving the refrigerator and cabinets, and two heavy old bus seats, with loosely attached 2x4's swinging wildly behind. Then cursed extra to discover I'd neglected to bring along the cordless screwdriver. The kitchen was emptied except for scattered remains of spiderwebs, acorn husks, cobwebs, mouse shit, gnarled leaves, mouse turds, dead flies and moths and other exotic insects, and more mouse shit.
I discovered a bottle of wine had popped its cork during last winter's freeze. Astonishingly, a bloated mouse corpse hovered intact inside the bottle. Tiny toes and ears and muzzle suspended in a hazy stew. A ship-in-a-bottle phenomenon. Neck of the bottle was typically tiny, too small for a mouse to squeeze through, though it had. The bottle, with its corpulent decay, was photographed, then set safely on an outside shelf for future use, like tormenting my visiting children. Chuck's brother dubbed it "Mousecatel."
I was preparing to prime, then paint, the bare plywood floor which was laid ten years ago and is showing wear. It's at risk from moisture in its unprotected condition--winter boots dropping snow, leaky roof, dishwater and coffee water (splashed around in post-sleep witlessness), all of it penetrating and rotting the wood fibers. Numerous portions have already begun to raise signs of resentment.
Sweep the floor. None of the smaller trash it wants to give itself up. Wood grain clutches at dog hair and spider webs and mouse shit. I figure the morsels of waste will provide improved skid-resistance. Entomb them to be remembered fondly on cold January nights.
"One part thinner to 9 parts paint," is what the paint lady said. I pour the bucket 3/4 full with paint then splash a dollop of thinner into the oil-based "Desert Sunset" Floor and Deck Enamel. Mix it with a small stick of firewood (extra non-slip fibers get added to the mix) and set about brushing it into the plywood.
Sucking sounds immediately drift up. Wood grains gasp at this salve soaking into their fibers. I hear murmurs of gratitude and a few tenuous, "thank you's," and one or two mutterings of, "it's about time!"
Prime coat on.
OOPS. Forgot the paint can lid on the table. Giant steps across the expanse, "stick-stick" sounds from my feet. OOPS, back again. Leatherman tool left on the table. Smeary footprints will be covered under tomorrow's second coat
Down to the river for a quick dip, soapy lather to smother the sweat.
EZ instantly submerged into the cool, swimming languorously in the late afternoon
shade. I expect horseflies, which silently seek out and drill into wet white
bodies, especially near tall grass and underbrush on woodsy hot days. I quickly
pull off T-shirt and shorts, hat and watch, then in bare feet and bare everything
else gingerly step through weeds and ferns to the streamside rocks, down into
the murky rootbeer water.
Although the rain gauge indicated more than an inch of rain had fallen within the past two weeks the river is low and very slow, barely pushing its scummy foam along. It's not actually scum in the sense of industrial waste or corporate bad judgment, rather a benign film of pollen and June effluvia accumulated on the surface, with inadequate current to float it away. Last time I tried wading I was provided with sudden leg raises and cursing reflexes as unknown creatures chomped at my feet. I'm wiser now and know that the nipping is mere teeny minnows, Piranha tinyous, and won't hurt me a bit. So, I wade to my knees and fall horizontal into the sweet coolness. Blessed be! Nothing is more splendid than tingles of sweat washed over by cool soothing water. Hah!
Back to the streambank
to retrieve the bar of soap. Lather the head, the torso, the groin, the pits,
the face, the legs, then sink backward again.
Rinse. Do not pause
or those irritating tiny teeth will find me again. Climb bank-ward, grab the
towel (full of musty cabin-floor fragrances from laying for months behind
the bus seat along the cabin's east wall) and dry off. EZ's rolling on her
back in the grass, transferring moisture from fur to earth, and not for a
change squirming her neck into rotten scat or dead stinky things.
Back to the car (sweat already beginning to ooze) and up to the cabin. Change into jeans and head for the store.
Meg gives gracious welcome and asks if I'll be dining.
"No. Thanks."
So she puts the menu away and brings from the kitchen a tiny dish holding water and a cluster of tiny purple flowers. She's excited by this gift; a local brought it to her earlier in the day. She shows her Reader's Digest wildflower book with a bookmark set into what she's decided this floral elegance must be. Purple Loosestrife.
The window fan is blowing right at me and I like that. We discuss how business has been on this Fourth of July Sunday. She rolls her eyes and recounts how a Lake Association group used the barroom earlier in the day, but failed to order the "special" she'd cooked up especially for them. Her grandson saunters in--a good-looking young man in his mid-twenties, carrying his dirty dinner plates. She introduces us ... a daughter's son from Wisconsin. We chat in the ingratiating warm air of this late July afternoon. This is where life lives. Real and genuine people without agenda for their moment. Or for those others around them. I flourish here, knowing there are simple folk--honest and sincere--still residing in small pockets of this life. What will happen in years to come when everything has been paved over and high-rise vacuity wipes away all memory of real people? Will deceit and pretense and litigious foolery be all that's left? Will industrial contempt and consumer psychology finally win it all? I am living in a time when that agenda is accelerating, thrust along with an evolutionary attention to life at the center being about how to swindle our neighbors into buying what we sell of ourselves, of the faxed insurance policy, detailing what a good deal it is if we'll just shut up and believe what we're told. I don't like living in that world.
The Woods is an infrequent bastion of sense, where people still take care of neighbors and not view them as fodder.
Departing the Store EZ and I head aimlessly west. Now what? Clouds are teasing in the west, but hold little promise of excitement. Five miles, then turn around and head back. Mow the grass for an hour, civilizing the clearing with the same fervor as a Dutch missionary. Re-mowed A Road Les Traveled. Swore pointedly as the mower blade shaved rocks lurking beneath the ground canopy. Lit Caleb's Father's Day Tiki lights and settled by the fire.
OOPS! Mosquitoes descend humming around the ears, biting without warning, or remorse. Into the cabin to work for half an hour, an accommodation for the bugs to weary of not finding me and go to sleep. Wrote in the dim, Coleman lantern hissing, after failing to find more than one candle. The others are on the paint-confined kitchen table. Mused about marriage and fidelity and fear and maturity and learning from mistakes made once-upon-a-times ago. Grand rhetoric, but feeble under the weight of circumstances, three years beyond a failed twenty-year marriage.
10:30 p.m.-
Ground beef formed into patties. Coals prodded under the grate. Meat dropped onto searing steel, wait. Mosquitoes gone. Darkness complete. Heavy booming off to the southwest stirs a hope of zesty weather building over the horizon. Another boom, and it's apparent it is pseudo thunder, thanks to a fireworks factory, so American Patriots can explode childish fingers and annoy neighbors while expressing wild joy about independence and final release from British tyranny.
First burger was not as good as the second, due in part to a forceful hunger provoking my removing it from the fire a tad early. Cold and slimy inside. The second was gloriously tasty after thirty shakes of pepper and twenty of salt ... although the inedible bits of eyeballs and bone and hoof maggots made both burgers sour and tiresome to chew.
11:00-
All right. Go to bed.
Forgot to bring the flashlight from the car. Pitch black outside. Not a problem. Use the video camera's "Nightshot," an infra-red system (invented by the Chinese in the 1300's as protection against warring rice boles) to illuminate my way west to Red's Shed. This ancient technology lights complete darkness much as Rush Limbaugh does ignorance, on the radio. Take my eye away from it for an instant, hoping to get my bearings--without its illusory assistance--and I'm met only with darkness ... due to the effect of the brilliance of artificial light on the iris, which now will not adjust on its own. Trudge stumbling. Find the path leading to the sleeper, open the door, gaze in for bearings, push the door a bit wider for EZ and say "OK."
A "clunk," apparently of some part of EZ's body clouting the partially open door. Push the door wider, turn Nightshot toward her and see a dog peevishly sitting on the ground waiting for the husband to get it right, pupils bright against this infrared invisible.
"Okay!"
She leaps, and she's up, and skooching into her accustomed place at the foot of the bed.
I follow.
Though the ambient temperature has diminished by three degrees and night has descended, the humidity still sticks the clothing against flesh. Swearing does not help, it only infuriates. Sweat tickles. Jeans are finally peeled off, T-shirt is stripped up. For a sweaty-footed person in socks on a humid night ... I don't want to talk about socks. Lay back, breathe deeply and sigh. EZ's already snoring. She doesn't suffer these misfortunes. I feel around in the dark for the zip-lock I'd brought along, with a Kit-Kat, an Ultimate Milky Way, a Watchmacallit and a Butterfinger. I find the Kit-Kat and wander my fingers over it in the blackness, searching for some way inside, seize the seam and rip.
Plop. Onto the floor half of it scatters, into mouse shit and dust and 30-year old spider webs. So What. It's dark. Eat it anyway, yielding a sweet-bitter crunch. Swallow anyway. It's late and I'm hot and sticky and tired and ready to get done. Maybe the future of the world depends on chemical engineers diligently developing more exotic flavors to sprinkle over products like potato chips and inject into partially hydrogenated suet. I mean, flavor is a great correctant to unhappiness. Just think. In the political quest to increase society's apathy, the savory flavoids injected into the foods we consume these days could be increased, just to keep us subdued and stuporously impassive by the endorphins they release.
Complaints and discomfort will suffer gladly under this leafy calm canopy. Imprisoned lives in suburban Atlanta and Phoenix with air conditioned ease and infra-red security systems--shrieking patrons of success--leave me panicked with fear that someday I too will lose my way and someday wake up at that address. So I will cheerfully endure these pittances of irk, if not to suffer vacant cathedrals in the outskirts of Babylon where superfluity cavorts.
SundayÐ
Awoke under cloudy cool sky, so slept again. Awakened to a brightening in the west and got up for the day at 9:30. Made coffee, built a fire outside as sun began filtering through light hazy clouds. Coffee done I set about rolling the second coat of paint onto kitchen floor. The broom handle doesn't fit onto the roller handle after all, damnit, so hands and knees will have to do. The second layer of paint seeps more slowly into the floor and cheerily brightens the kitchen.
Down to the store for a coffee and conversation with Herb and Meg.
A first. Herb is
sitting with his back to the door, playing Solitaire. I've never known him
to take such leisure, except for quick breaks during late afternoons when
he clomps in and mixes a small glass with tomato juice
and beer. I noted this break from his usual. He claimed not to be enjoying
it since he was there "against his will" to help Meg in the event
of a 4th of July rush and besides, he was "losing at Solitaire."
I picked up a bag of popcorn and a can of rootbeer and returned to the cabin.
Mowed, enlarged the clearing and shaved a few more rocks. Went atop the cabin
to measure square footage for new roof.