Clutch at a Chair and Breathe Hard
Friday, March 16Ð
The Store was resting. No cars, or snow machines; no helmeted snowmobile suits milling out front, or inside. Purple and yellow ski scratches criss-crossed the gas pump apron. A hand scrawled sign, "please use pump #7" There are not 6 others. Everything has melted to mud. Arriving from Wisconsin a few hours earlier, I'd seen two snowmobiles depart the Store, rasping across a muddy ditch, plowing through it, grit chewing into skis and skids, turning onto the mucky county road to link up with Herb's pasture trail at the top of the rise. The snowmobile trails are still fine where they still hold winter's snow. But sections of the network run along logging lanes and intersect barren roads. Grumblings about conditions have been heard at the Store. But, it's mid-March and the sun is strong.
Driving over today I saw several snowmobiles resting at odd melty angles out by the highway with "FOR SALE" signs taped to their snouts. Trying to sell used snowmobiles on a sunny warm late-March day is like stumping for congress without feet.
I unloaded empty water jugs, apologizing to EZ for having to "stay," and pushed through the door. Meg finished straightening a table as I stepped inside, turning, offerimg a depleted greeting to another stranger in snowmobile colors. She made a quick switch to recognition, weariness brightening to a, "thank god it's not another one of them," smile.
It is nice to be liked, the quantity of a person known, the guard put away, settling into the ease of fond friendship secured by some years, assembled spacious and safe through long history of familiarity. Meg thinks of me as another son, a woman who cherishes her children no matter how old they grow, or whose they were at the start. That's a good thing. She knew me as a pre-teen when she had pre-teens of her own. I will forever be a chick to be cuddled and brooded, even when I'm sixty-eight and she's in her wheelchair.
I asked for water, (she generously allows me to tap their taps.) She prepared the sink by swinging the faucet into position and turning it on. I filled jugs. She hovered near, chatting, chasing random topics including what a good winter it's been with lots of snow for snowmobilers; the toll it takes even though the money is good. The previous five years had been financially dismal, warm with scarce snow.
"You need more jugs?"
She scooted through a dusty brown door and came back with two hefty bottles, apologizing if the water should take on flavors of pancake syrup or hummingbird nectar (1 part sugar, 4 parts water), and scrubbed vigorously against one, trying to excise "hummingbird" from its side. (She was unsuccessful, and I like it there.) She rinsed and filled, then swiped the outsides dry with a dishcloth, and deposited them at the door with my others.
"Get you something?"
"Coffee would be great." She poured from a hinge-lidded plastic carafe, zapped it in the microwave, then brought it in a thick mug stenciled, "Herb's Eatery - Escondido, CA" across the side, explaining with pride that her son sent it at Christmas.
She sat, we talked, an interlude I'd wanted two weeks earlier. But it'd been customer chaos most of the day. No time for Meg's ease. She and Herb worked the kitchen, took and cooked food orders, "plinged" the register's crank, and delivered baskets of burgers and platters of pancakes, all without panic. Snowmobile engines snarled out front and Frankenstein boots stomped and humidity rose from clothing in teetering heaps. The space heater whooshed without pause as we chatted and riffled township flyers taped to its belly.
The snowmobiling public is mostly a patient lot, recognizing the scale of stress put upon a tiny outpost, realizing this is not a convenience mart situated near a suburban interstate. And, that those attending to its needs are doing their best.
Most.
There are those who ad-lib their piss onto the outdoor propane tank, curse cloddishly about time wasted in line, spin snowmobile treads through slush (showering their buddies with grit) and swig great quantities of beer hauled around in Igloo coolers strapped to rearend snowmobile racks.
I'd arrived at The Woods early afternoon. Deer lingered in my path and scattered into the woods as I approached, bounding over four-foot high plowbanks, paddling through deep snow, twanging across submerged barbed wire fences. Some wires broke, gyrating like unattended fire hoses. Turning into the township road, another swarm of deer scattered up and over the snowbanks like teenagers fleeing a keg-party bust, pausing safely a hundred feet inland to impertinently watch us pass. According to Meg, Herb has grown this deer herd to fifty with alfalfa and hay. It's up to eighty head at another feeding area two miles west. He raises cattle in the summer, whitetail in winter. Aroused since turning off the pavement ten miles earlier, EZ vocalized her urge to be loosed, until I shouted "No."
She slinked low as if to say, "OOPS! I know. Sorry."
Little had changed at the cabin in two weeks. Access into the clearing with a car remains a laughable prospect, short of hiring military earthmoving equipment with inch-thick steel plating. From the cabin the top of the car remains visible above the plow ridge only when viewed on tippy-toe. EZ lunged out of her backseat. We peed together in the sunny road, climbed the ridge, and set off toward the cabin.
The footpath was still passable but hammocked with a recent four-inch snowfall. Packed snow - when frozen, makes a great solid surface, but thawing temperatures soften the solids. Unexpected sinkings to the knee are a cursing man's pleasure. So I swore and worked and wheezed, marveling at how out of shape I'd become. Then stopped to relish the silence and catch my breath before continuing the final thirty feet to the door. Evidence of the sun's warmth showed itself around the stoop, widening the space I'd shoveled last time. Got the key and blurted, "aww," to discover the Mousecatel bottle had burst.
There is no best technique to open a padlock with one hand while balancing luggage between the shoulder and chin, grasping groceries and beer and a tote of dogfood in the left hand. The lock pivots defiantly. Leniency fades from one's good cheer. Oxygen-deprived muscles disapprove. EZ's restless panting at my feet adds exasperation to the moment. Swearing at a twirling padlock only draws out the process and excites my vocabulary. The sun's hospitality--absent for so long and now hard against my back--is broiling. I want to get the damn door open and it shouldn't be this hard! A great craving to collapse my load onto the ground and crumble down onto it suddenly seems the right thing to do when the lock springs open. (Bastard!) I open the door. EZ plunges in, mindless of her manners. I mount the step and release my load to the floor, then clutch at a chair and breathe hard.
I hauled bedding from Red's Shed and filled my boots with grainy snow. The sun, though hazed by high clouds, encouraged my wearing only shirt sleeves. Cabin temperature: 52. A fire was built, propane tank around the back was opened, firewood carried inside, mousetraps checked. Empty, although I glimpsed a tidy cartoon-classic hole in the side of the kitchen bus seat--exactly the diameter of a mouse, with a frizzy cascade of excelsior chewings beneath it on the floor.
I brought a chair outside and sat in the sun against the cabin wall, baseball cap pulled low against the reflected sun and snow. The quiet began to seep in. I noticed a rustling of oak leaves nearby to the east, airily clacking one another in shallow wind huffs. But it's pseudo Woods, a lingering of tedious confinement from the past months of winter. The woods are inaccessible. Escape and freedom to walk are limited to plowed places. Though the sunlight is delightful on the skin and foretells relief coming "soon," life remains defined through a grim season of winter's rules.
Glad humor and bucking-up to adversity has taken a toll. Options are suppressed. It's not a proud matter to a Minnesotan, who's always accepted conditions and gotten after other things, when the confines of icy outdoors press in and turn us dingy inside.
I blocking the afternoon sun with two towels secured by nails across the south and west windows. Invited EZ up beside me and settled briefly into John D. MacDonald's The Quick Red Fox, which I'd brought along from a forgotten twenty-year-old collection the "ex" dumped on my doorstep a few days earlier. Plopped it on the comforter beside me after three minutes, and tipped over the cliff into a solid two-hour nap.
Got up after the sun moved low. The stove had cooled and was campaigning for more fuel. EZ wasn't ready to leave her nest on the comforter beside me. Shagged her off. Headed to the Store for a cup of coffee. Told Meg I was going to town and asked if there was anything she needed?
"Two head of lettuce. Don't know what tomorrow will bring."
Sun down, dusty blue and pink raising the dusk in the east, sunset yawning orchid in the west.
Sandstone's Friday night. Two weeks ago it was hopping, though that's a relative matter. Two weeks ago was the first day of melt after months of temperatures in the teens. Rooftops streamed and gutters gushed, residents roamed, and children drenched sunlit puddles.
The Grocery parking lot was calm. Shoppers parked and trudged inside through sliding doors. Youths slouched in circus tent pants. A woman and five-year-old boy emerged, teetering towers of empty boxes. The boy raced ahead with his three. Mom dropped one, then kicked it toward a Ford stationwagon. A mirror red Camaro swooped in and skidded to a sandy stop. A man burdened with mid-life extricated himself and trotted, then limped, to the entrance, then returned in three minutes balancing fifty pounds of dogfood on a left shoulder, stooped, unlocked the trunk, tipped it in, and escaped east, vomiting smoke and scorched rubber.
Saturday--
I traveled south to spend time at an acquaintance's sugar bush. He began tapping seventy acres of sugar maple today, eight thousand holes. Tap time is when he hires or begs assistance from local construction workers or a church membership, or motorists passing out on the highway. Arriving about 10 a.m., I found Phil several hundred feet through the trees, walking easily twenty inches above the ground across the still-frozen snow. Working solo, he lugged a gas powered drill with a gallon jug of gas swaying from a cord around his neck. His tool belt holds nails and marking flag tape, a hammer for tapping taps, gloves and a headband. His ears are quieted with spongy foam plugs. A ten-inch length of thick copper wire flattened on one end--for pulling wood chips out of tap holes--dangles from a cotton cord around his neck. Two other teams are away through the trees, one of whom is Jim, Phil's long-time assistant who wears a cowboy hat and a trim white beard and a circle of snuff in a left rear pocket.
Phil shut off the motor, set it and the gas jug down. We greeted, marveling at the hot bright sun and the promise of the day's warmth, increasing fast. Flu has canceled two workers. Another two locals have yet to show up. (They never did). After a few minutes he loaded up and resumed tapping. By noon a few dribbles had begun to seep from south-facing holes, but my excitement was dulled by Phil's explanation that these deceptive dribbles were not a true sap run, but moisture melting in the sun and seeping out.
His acreage of hundred-year-old maples clings to a bluff along the St. Croix river. In Phil's judgment a maple tree needs to be ten inches in diameter--approximately sixty years old depending upon competition--before tapping. Those take only a single tap while the older trees--some larger than thirty-six inches in diameter, accommodate four or five tap holes. Many of the larger maples are hollow; some have high gaping cavities around their base, yet remain solid enough to tap.
Around noon, through some secret communication I could not detect (maybe it was Osceola's noon whistle blasting across the river) tapping ceased and both other crews wandered to the cook shack for lunch. Two men quit for the day. One had a wedding to attend; the other (furtively nicknamed "Twinkle-toes") disappeared without comment to a nearby house. His friend explained that he had never seen snow before and had other obligations.
Jim dragged three beat up kitchen chairs out of the cook shack shadows and we ate in the clear blue sun. Water dripped, geese honked and banked above the trees. Whispery soothings seeped out of the air, setting up headquarters nearby, sending highly trained sleepers into our midst, who sifted fairy dust and sandman's sand into our eyes. (They'd already been at EZ who snoozed on the road) My eyes begged for a rest, anywhere, even on the snowbank up against the cookhouse in the warm sun.
Ralph returned from lunch and the sandman fled. Jim decided against "shoes," insisting that they, as the snow had become too soft, would hinder, rather than help. The rest of us paid no attention and strapped snowshoes back on along with gaiters--nylon sheaths that slip over the boot and tie tight around the upper calf to prevent snow from filling one's boots and adding a layer of snow repellent fabric to keep the ankles dry. Back into the woods we labored, snow sinking, making travel more vigorous. Without snowshoes the work would've been impossible.
Snowshoeing has become a faddish pastime in recent years.. Sporting wannabes study snowshoe design, compare lightweight materials, and balance snowshoe shapes against anticipated use--forest, brush, open spaces, then spend hundreds of dollars on expensive shoes and bindings. Binding designs can be solid rubber laced to the shoe, or neoprene toe sockets with lacings over the top, with straps and buckles surrounding the heel. Webbings can be varnished leather woven through wood frames, one-piece injection molded plastic, or titanium structures interwoven with aircraft cable. The tips may turn sharply up, or be nearly flat. Trailing edges may be short and round, or straight and narrow, two circles of the frame meeting, serving as a rudder to help steer.
Snowshoes were not originally intended for sport use, or day-tripping along groomed trails, with performers wearing high-tech fabrics. Snowshoes were invented of necessity when Glog wanted to get where his two feet wouldn't take him because the snow was too deep, and Doris yapped from the back of the cave to, "go git the rest of that critter by the crick," but snow had deepened another three feet during the night. Snowshoes were designed to accomplish a task and make travel through snow more efficient--higher off the ground--than without. Snowshoeing was not intended to be the main point. They were meant as a tool to assist one along the way to a higher purpose, like, say, tapping maple trees. One does not need six-part lessons. Or special clothing. You strap 'em on and go; on-the-job training. One swears and falls and gets up, goes on. Distracted by the work at hand, endlessly pounding sap taps, one forgets to remember snowshoe balance technique and proper tip placement, and how the Experts say to turn around on a deep sinky hillside. At the end of a first day one realizes gladly that the skill had been learned by the mind's secret ways and we got a hell of a lot more work done than had I been in tennis shoes. That's what snowshoes are for.
Anybody have a neglected nearly-new pair of titanium's they want to sell?
We finished for the day around 4:30, returning to the cook shanty, removing equipment and sweaty clothing. The sun was lowering in the west. A chill was creeping in, face and eyes hot, muscles shaky. A profound sense of good inner contentment at having done honest work.
