Sharing a blaze-orange vest
Friday, November 19Ð
8:30 a.m.-
Light titter-titter on the roof. Now louder, more rapid. New sprinkles filling in the lighter rain. A gray Ford pickup--blending with the sky--just floated by. Looking for what? It's always curious to me what/who/why these motorists come into this half-mile dead-end road. Explorers? Hunters? (Traffic is heavier during the first three weekends in November) Thieves? Adulterers seeking privacy for their tryst?
Just went to the truck to retrieve my glasses. Fresh cut oak grabbed me by the lapels, shoved me back into a birch tree and commanded "here smell this!" Fresh-cut oak has a rank pungent odor. Dad used to say it smells like pig sty. It smells like nothing else; once whiffed it stays in your memory forever like fresh ground coffee and vanilla and--to a woods person, just as friendly.
EZ's on the bed. Snoozing safe and silent. Rain has ceased ... an occasional "splot" of a limb drop landing on the cabin roof. Ally went to live with another family in late July. I was working six days per week cooking for tourists at the height of the season while she and EZ languished at home and Ally taught her juvenile tricks. Like eating great gobs of unauthorized food and filling the house with bedlam and humid ripe clouds of intestinal gas. Which wasn't so bad but the rocks she chased when I threw them for her began appearing on the carpeting mixed among watery stool samples. When I adopted her I'd had much more time to devote to her training. The new summer job was a disservice to her. She was given to a young family with kids and a fenced-in back yard.
EZ and I are sharing the use of a blaze orange vest. She got it first yesterday, wrapped around her neck and shoulders like a jester's fringe. A good sport she was about the nuisance. I wore it this morning for the trip to the biffy. Stopped at the Store yesterday on my way here to ask whether hunting season was over yet. Hadn't needed to ask since at one table sat four surly-burly un-shaves dressed loudly in blaze. I asked anyway.
"Ends Sunday."
So, off to the hunting apparel department in search of a second blaze Velcro-attaching vest like I'd purchased last year. No. Only orange sweatshirts, hats and gloves. All above my wallet's willingness. So, for now, EZ and I stay indoors and share the use of our one blaze orange article. Had thought perhaps of going to town and buying a can of blaze spraypaint to paint a piece of apparel ... or EZ's fur. Still undecided.
EZ's food tote, which holds a two-week supply and was nearly full when I forgot it here last trip, is completely empty. She's got her head down inside, sniffin' at mouse turds. How the hell do mice eat that quantity of food in only a month. (They don't. They store it.) How the hell do mice get in and out of a tall container with smooth plastic sides?
Oh yeah, here's one now. EZ's excited by it. At the bottom of the wastebasket, a live mouse. And it will not be getting out of there on it's own. Can't have been in there too long. Looks right healthy actually, shiny fur, bright eyes, flecks of dogfood on its whiskers. Another mouse in the companion wastebasket. Dead.
This is really an irritation and there seems no way to battle these bastards. Tempted to build a bonfire in the firepit and dump this little live guy in at the fiery pyre.
We went exploring last night. Put on nearly a hundred miles through dark empty land. Un-maintained roads, pot-holed, muddy. Grandly unpresumptuous.
Passed a deer yard along State Line Road. When I came through in May there was a congregation of thirty or forty deer milling in a large meadowy spot on the Minnesota side of the road. Going through there tonight at least that many, if not more, were congregated on the Wisconsin side of the ditch. Do deer know it's hunting season in Minnesota?
Why are these roads here? Due to a 1932 act of congress? "Let's build roads where nobody needs 'em to give people work." So, these roads are here. They certainly aren't maintained. Nobody lives on them. So are they, as an excuse to exist, called fire lanes, allowing speedy access to fire fighters?
It's easy to forget, while exploring and forging ahead, that one has to return equal number of miles those already traveled. Hoping to make it a circular route, rather than retracing, hope was all I had. Even the most detailed map doesn't assure accuracy out where no cartographer has been. We turned onto "Summit Trail." Unusually broad and smooth compared to earlier trails. First few miles revealed it'd been used by forest rapists ... which explained why the road was in such good shape. The easier to quickly get done what they came to do and leave the victim, scarred and bleeding, torn and trembling, to her sadness. Great broad stretches of bulldozed emptiness, broken and deformed timber piled into holocaust mounds. No attempt by pillagers to tidy up. No pretense toward healthy timber management, harvesting thoughtfully. Such logging operations take place in remote reaches where inspectors and ecologists have little interest. So, no attempt at selective cutting is taken. Nothing is left standing except a wan line of youths far across who aren't worth the trouble.
Generally northward we narrowed into the isolated night. Growing awareness of our vulnerability if the truck should fail. Or get stuck. Map told me where we were at every consult ... working north toward Holyoke. Came to a junction, better smooth gravel road not indicated, where the map stopped helping. Which way to turn? Go left ... west is it? Lights appear, mailboxes and driveways, a man pissing off his stoop under a pool of single-bulb light. Another junction. Blacktop! Turn right. Stop. Consult map. (When you're unsure where you are you don't know where to look on a map, like trying to find how to spell a word by looking it up in a dictionary.) Turn around and follow blacktop the other direction. Paved road winds through open field country. Scattered mobile homes, trundled barns, east wind gusting. EZ whining. Stop us for potty break.
Back in the truck, study the map. Hard to know north on a cloudy night. Flip the map away and continue on. Miles pass.
"Holyoke Community Facility." Must be approaching Holyoke. Another mile with no more mention of Holyoke and I stop again. Discover I'm on "8". But heading which direction? Proceed.
Suddenly braking hard as a feeble faded "STOP" sign hurdles up. Car whisking through, new pavement. "Minnesota 23." Turn onto a grandly smooth new highway. Out of mystery, finally. But, fifty-five miles from the cabin. Settle into a 50 mph pace ... watching for deer. Ten miles later, infrequently overtaken and passed by other cars, I nudge the cruise to 57 mph. Through Duquette, Kerrick, Bruno, wondering what life is like for those few who's lives center in these tiny places, each featuring a single supper club, "ON/OFF liquor" and empty parking lots. Perfect examples of "blink and you'll miss it."
Askov's business district. Ford dealership, Clip 'n Curl hair salon, tiny news center storefront "Askov American." Streetlights illuminating empty avenues.
Across the tracks, past the Lutheran church--lights all on, cars crowding heavily along the street, on this Thursday night. Turn again and head west out of town. Miles to go. Eyes weary, EZ sleeping. No traffic, roadside weeds blowing head-on in the stiff wind.
Friday--
12:06 p.m.-
Coming into Askov, down mainstreet, past Askov Dance and Fitness Studio featuring ballet-tap-jazz-aerobic.
Lena's Scandinavian Gifts and Coffeehouse is along the left. "Historical store of 1905 featuring Malts, Sundaes, Cappuccino, Kafe', Phosphates, Sodas, Pizza."
Askov Custom Process and Old Home Smoking is open next door.
White metal trash receptacle outside Lena's is hand-scrawled "City of Askov" on the swinging lid.
A plastic pavilion, "Bestemor's Garden." Hand-made sign on the shelter, "The Bulbs are Here!"
Lots of Scandinavian gifts in Lena's, most of which appear to be authentically made in Denmark, Sweden or Norway.
Toward the back is a lunch counter. A guy sitting, talking with the clerk, finishing lunch. An impatient man wearing an engineer cap comes in the front door, "Didn't you hear me?"
"No."
"I blew the whistle seven times." The railroad tracks are a half-block away. Tiny town.
7:40-
Standing in the yard fifteen feet from the cabin door. Brilliant nearly full moon. Sky has cleared completely since a few hours ago. Norma's light white through the leafless trees.
Standing now in the dark beside Joe's pond. Hear a low rumbling. It starts in the southeast, moving north, then for a brief instant bursts louder. It's like the volume was turned quickly up, then down, as the car out on the gravel drove past the road's treeless opening.
Saturday--
5:45 a.m.-
Still dark. Although I do detect a faint light in the east. Coming to rescue me from this darkness. High wind sighing through the treetops. Such a sound of unhindered wildness, whispered secret urgings. Such a pull at my soul. Got EZ on the bed. Re-stoked the fire for the second time, first was 1:30. Cold in here. Don't know what the temperature is but it feels like twenty-below. Moon was out in the low southwest at 1:30, now gone. It's always a waiting game with the fire no matter what state the coals are in. This time the coals are few and dark. So it's at least a five or ten minute wait for the wood to heat up until, in one whoosh, it all ignites.
4:51 p.m.--
Have seen lots of hunters today. Walking along county roads, getting
in or out of trucks parked in the ditches, blaze orange bright, rifles strapped
across backs. Gives me a minor pang of fear. "Let's take a pot-shot or
two at that red pickup truck out on the road."