The More I Saw The More I Saw
Friday, March 2Ð
9 a.m.-
Brilliant sun. Deep snow 30 inches on the level, soft pregnant mounds carpeting submerged stumps. Water plopping off the cabin roof.
We start a walk down the road. Eight deer are congregated near Joe's feeding trough a quarter mile away. In late winter they spend time mostly on plowed places to avoid deep woods snow. EZ, more interested with nearby scents, doesn't see them. But the deer are on to her, and stir into a defense, two evenly spaced rows facing us.
EZ spies them at two hundred yards, sticks her tail up, striding briskly, head high, hips wiggling, moving quicker. The deer stay put, watching our approach. A hundred yards back she stops. Deer twitch and swivel their ears like circumspect cats. EZ glances back for reassurance that I am backing her up. She resumes her trot, slows, and stops again in the center of the road, measuring her prey.
Boots crunch icy snow. She lowers into a stalk and advances another fifty feet. One deer whirls and leaps in retreat, then the others do too. EZ erupts, snarling. A barking Tazmaniac swirling a propeller tail, who would transact considerable discipline if only she could get at these miscreant bastards loitering her road.
The deer scatter over the six-foot high snow ridge and disappear down deep narrow pathways kept open during the winter. EZ stops where the deer had stood and turns sideways in the road, looking back at me, hackles raised, like a rooster is riding the scruff of her neck.
Small animal footprints criss-cross a prism field of sparkly new snow. Blue shadows stretch off bare limbs, lanky winter sundials aiming northwest. A solitary bluejay "jee-jees" from a hillside at my back. Snowdrift borders, undulant shadows, sharp contour lines. Navy blue shade brightened by reflected aquamarine. Joe's ancient crane sinking into a ring of trees, the forty-foot boom pointing southeast like a sky cannon.
EZ and I are alone, but I feel watched. I scan the woods and thickets of tangled brush but nothing is there except trees and snow. A deer standing head-on narrow takes form two hundred feet away. Watching. Another, the color of tree, is staring a few feet back of the first. A third, fourth and fifth materialize out of the camouflage. The more I saw the more I saw. Counted to twenty before figuring there could be a lot more, but that they wouldn't mind, so I quit.
9:55-
I've returned from the walk, sitting on the tailgate with EZ. Two faces with unmistakably white whiskers, lips slightly apart, one panting, pink nubbin tongue visible between front teeth. Four eyes staring into the far away east, eyebrows and ear hairs wisping unalarmed on the breeze. We've both got good warm coats, one of dyed animal skin, another of live animal skin with natural red hair. Nostrils pulsing, processing subtle spring scents. One of us could use a shave, both need a shampoo.
A feeling of infinite possibilities on this day we've been given. And it's still early; at a quarter before ten the temperature is already nudging at five, between thirty and forty.
5:30
p.m.-
EZ is still on the bed amidst a rumple of quilt. I have arisen from a two-hour nap (they've become routine this winter) and want to do something. I open the door and she stumbles out of her nest, shaking her rear as though dislodging a mouse, and we go outside. The un-shoveled trampled-down path to the cabin has become unreliably slippery and collapsy as warmed by the sun. The height of snow throughout the clearing seems to have lowered under the weight of the day's warmth. Although it may be merely fruitless hope fueling the perception. The sun is still up, but casting me tall at the top of the road's plowridge. Bare patches of gravel have opened since yesterday, when then it was laced crispy ice, half-an-inch thick.
"Okay!"
EZ jumps into the truck, over chainsaw and toolboxes and a thermos or two
and goes to her spot at the window in the cab. I climb to the driver's seat,
trying to adjust zipped-up layers of clothing into comfortable accord, all
the while battling a harsh sun blasting low into my eyes.
I drive straight
ahead, down toward the river. The final five-hundred feet has not been laid
with road gravel--a blended mixture of sand and clay to make it firm--as has
the rest of the road.
"Oops. Mud." Then I try to back up.
"Rrrrr," say the rear tires. They whine it more rudely an octave higher, when rocking for momentum doesn't do any good. "RRRR" sounding from a futilely spinning tire or two is a sound many males have heard nearly from birth. It's the sound that precedes sudden outbursts from put-upon fathers. It's the sound that says you and your girlfriend are going to have to walk a very long way in the dark winter night, because you cut that county road corner just a bit too tight at a quarter to one in the morning. It's a sound that is never amusing at the time, but becomes funny a lot of years later.
But today we have four-wheel drive to lock the front wheels into. Such a delight.
I get out and lock both front hubs, climb back inside and set the gear lever back so the light lights on the dash indicating "everything is ready." With a cavalier glance into the rear-view mirror I release the brake and give it some gas, then mutter "Oooo" when all four tires--in harmony, go "RRRRR!," and slide the truck sideways toward the ditch. Forward I go just a bit to reset our mood, and set the tires back into a fresh grip. Then reverse us more strenuously with furrowed brow and steering wheel gymnastics.
So, now. What would I rather complain about? It being so damn cold that we're cooped up in the cabin shivering? Or that the mud is now inconvenient because the earth is melting?
6:45-
A self-conscious teenaged girl is standing outside the Grocery's sliding entrance doors, arms crossed inside a black leather jacket. Flare-leg jeans, feet tight together in low black shoes. A minute goes by, then two. She scans the street, tips back a water bottle and sips. A slight change in mood stirs in her eyes. They stop moving and lock on to a distant intent. Lips begin a slow curve upward, chin dips demurely. The water bottle cap is unconsciously turned and turned. Light brightens briefly, headlights sweep through a turn. Young woman lifts her chin, smiling dimples deep into both cheeks. The Ford pickup stops, then rolls forward as she starts to cross its front. She stops and glowers at the driver, grins, pounds the hood with the flat of a palm, hurries around and climbs up inside.
A woman is swinging an absent-minded leg and talking on a cell-phone, tossing emphasis into the night sky. Through the window to the right a rack of Easter Cards is surrounded by dogfood and hanging plant baskets. The day's melt-water streams down a corner of the steel building. Three blocks away a red neon sign blinks "CAFE."
Nothing else.
Saturday--
11:15 a.m.-
We take another drive into town. I'd like to see again what people and motion look like. Temperature at the Bank of the North: 45 degrees. An empty school bus passes the post office. A Ford Crown Victoria splashes through a large snowmelt pool and parallel parks against the sidewalk. Pedestrians are neighborly in the bright light. An exuberant small car--red and loudly revving with a sunroof opened high, accelerates two teenaged boys and two backward baseball caps over the tracks and out of sight.
Sun starbursts twinkle along the curb. Citizens smile. The boys in their car blast past going the other way.
Off main street a van has been pulled out of winter's disuse and parallel
pushed to a curb. A plush two-foot deep snow mattress lays on its roof. A
man in a lumberjack shirt is leaning over, pushing and pulling snow away with
the armpit end of his crutch.
Water splashes on
sidewalks. An outgoing yellow dog with an expression of glee greets shoppers
at the Grocery, then curls up on a ramp in front of the door. Children's voices
shriek in the sun. Dog looks up, then rises to sniff the crotch of a passing
man. Two women, one with a toddler in arms, exit the store; three boys from
the north and a man from the east converge all at once. Dog looks up, trots
into the foyer behind the three boys. One boy, then two, turn and point toward
outside and yell, "go home."
Four ramshackle
children emerge. A girl about 10 carries a boy about 6. Another girl about
12 carries a droopy plastic grocery bag. A girl about 4 is doing hard work
carrying herself tottering in a purple snowsuit. Dog follows.
11:45-
Two blocks behind the grocery store, Dog is laying in the center of the street. Two boys are throwing a football. A white Oldsmobile turns onto the street. A boy runs to Dog and tries, by the tail, to pull it to safety. The car pulls over and parks. Dog barks but stays laying in place. Children go to the car window and lean inside. The woman exits her car and heads for a house. Dog rises and sniffs at her rump.
Dog strolls back to the street and lays down. Heat waves liquefy the jittery scene. A van turns in, Dog gets up. Van pulls to the curb. Two kids climb in and it pulls away. Dog moves back to the pavement and lays down in the sun.
1:45 p.m.-
The Store is under siege by riotous color. Snarling. Snowmobile skis scraping up a hullabaloo. Snowmobiles whining. Snowmobiles revving. Snowmobiles lined up double-file and thirty-five deep at a one-hose gaspump. Snowmobiles crowded near the Store door, and parked to the east in the field. Snowmobiles congregated across the road, along the road, and in Joe's front yard where, when it's warm and not under custody, he likes to grow flowers. Snowmobilers talking in groups. Snowmobilers slapping in and out of the Store, and reclining in the sun. Bright yellow and limy green and purple hues tint the air. Jackets and helmets and curvy cowlings polished brighter than the next neighbor's machine. Fire engine red is there too, and sedate elderly black.
The gas pump pad is free of snow. So is everything within fifty feet. Concrete becomes blacktop, but nobody seems to mind. It's the only fuel for miles. Snowmobiles surge in from every direction. Out of a ditch, from across Joe's meadow, up the gravel road and into a muddy township parking lot across the way, splashing through grit, skis trenching new channels for meltwater to run away through.
How gas is kept track of and paid for is a mystery. I have seen six machines fill. The hose nozzle is not hung up, but passed from one rider to the next who plunges it inside a tank, then passes it off and drives away.
A cluster of guys stands off to one side wearing baseball caps and lively attire with checkered flags and brand-names and arrows and graphic motifs encircling their clothing. Five snow machines intermingle, cloned colors and design. How fast it'll go and solo performances are disputed. Budweiser is tipped.
A sheriff's cruiser glides up and stops on the road. A snowmobiler crosses over, leans down to speak at the window and hands over a beer. He points east and the deputy moves on.
A dozen more machines splash in from the west and line up at the pump. But some sort of holdup has developed. Nobody is filling. A man has been holding the nozzle high for a few minutes, occasionally dipping it into his tank, then withdrawing it and shaking his head.
"They're out of gas!" (They weren't. Just a glitch in communication, as fueled by a rumor.)
A trio of riders on black machines raise left hands in greeting, one waggles his, or her, fingers at me. (Snowmobile drivers are asexual inside their anonymous enclosures, including full-coverage helmets with shiny mirrored portholes in front.) Single file through dirt, across the township gravel road and back onto soggy white snow. Bursts of power and noise and they're away, on Dancer and Dasher, now crowning the hill.
It is surreal, this
tiny outpost swarming with demands from persons unreal.
4:40-
Back at the cabin.
The outdoor thermometer reads 46 degrees. A twig has sunk two inches into
the snow beside the path, pushed by the sun's weight.
Mere and Chuck appear
on the road. An impromptu trip down from a house-building seminar in Duluth.
They are intent on supper at the Store, though I menace them about snowmobile
crowds; we'll surely not get near. And worse, go hungry, but for the half
sausage, rationed in my cooler for just such an emergency. We went down around
6:30 and, contrary to alarm, had no trouble taking delivery on food.
Sunday--
9:35 a.m.-
In preparation for
the new house, Chuck is wanting to prepare a stout birch as a central support.
He starts the chainsaw, puts on a hard-hat and headphone-hearing protectors,
and heads toward the back of the cabin, looking like a George Price cartoon
character. I'd suggested he use a birch I'd cut last fall and, since it was
leaning up off the ground, had been drying for a few months. For now, all
he wants to do is cut a groove up the trunk to allow moisture to escape.
Progress is grim through the thigh-deep snow. He grabs a ladder and lays it out toward his goal, standing on it to spread his weight, then advancing it ahead. Smart.
His passage is slow,
especially carrying a chainsaw, but Susie--his half-pound-or-so-dog--prances
atop the crust and shows him the way, urges him on.