Week of May 10-16

May 10, 2005

The cabin’s feeling more and more like home to me. I spent last night in Grants Pass, taking care of some school business and running the usual errands. As nice as it was to eat Middle Eastern, to get on the Internet, to watch the evening news, and to chat for a while with the pretty woman waiting my table at a breakfast joint, I was glad to make the turn down the DH road, to nap in the bed I’ve come to know, to light the woodstove, to cook a rack of ribs in the little propane oven. Right now I’ve got the kerosene and propane lamps burning, a hot bed of coals in the wood stove, and the solar inverter humming behind me as it powers my laptop. Gussie’s curled at my feet, content to have just hollowed out another marrow bone. The cabin smells of burning madrone and barbeque sauce. I know my way around this place in the dark now. I know where everything is and how everything works. Staying in town for the night, I missed my routine, even the morning chore of hand-cranking the coffee grinder, which takes me about 100 turns on the handle. While my water boils in the new kettle, I crank the grinder and look out the little kitchen window at the meadow, the old barn, the tall trees. Here, there’s very little to worry about—a bear getting into the garden, Gus getting lost, me falling ill or getting injured. The likelihood of any of these things happening is slim. Out in town, there’s so much more to juggle. Wearing a watch and carrying a wallet and a cell phone and three sets of keys and two checkbooks, and making sure not to lose any of them. Toting a laptop and my solar backpack and a bag of clothes, and worrying about them getting stolen. Keeping Gus on a leash and away from speeding cars. Worrying about what to do with him while I’m in stores, restaurants, the laundromat, the grocery store (thank goodness for the folks at Dutch Bros. coffeehouse, who allow me to bring Gus inside). When we got back this afternoon after the muddy return trip over the mountains, the sun broke through and the rain stopped, and it all seemed symbolic. We were home.

One thing I do like about going to town, though, is getting mail and email. In yesterday’s mail was a DVD from Jim Dowling: two episodes of Deadwood and a bag of oatmeal cookies. What a guy! I plan to watch one episode after writing this entry. There was also a letter from Neil Curry, who’s due to arrive from England two weeks from Thursday. He says he’s going to learn to play cribbage. I liked hearing that. Another treat was a copy of The New York Sun Crossword Collection # 6, containing my “Record Spinners” crossword. Yes, folks, I’ve been anthologized as a crossword creator. Good action. Another treat was a couple of DVDs from Paste magazine. I’d written the editor to say that I enjoyed watching the latest DVD out at the cabin, but that I couldn’t locate my previous two, which I thought I’d brought out here with me. Having never gotten around to watching them back in New York, I was looking forward to playing them here. I wonder if they were in the box that got lost in the mail. Anyway, he sent me new copies. I love that magazine. And I have a feeling he’ll be including my letter in the next issue. Finally, I had a letter from Sam W., one of my students. So nice to hear from her. It always feels a bit like Christmas to take all this stuff back to the cabin and open it.

I checked things out after unloading the new supplies. Dutch Hen laid two eggs while Gussie and I were away. She’s a machine. My garden looks much happier. I think the mulching and the rain have helped. Garlic is sprouting, one of the stalks three or four inches high already! I’ll have my first strawberry tomorrow or the next day. And cherries are forming on the cherry trees. I need to remember to buy Mason jar lids to can the cherries come June.


May 13, 2005

Finally, a few sunny days. Yesterday was just perfect. Cloudless. Warm. Pleasing breezes. Aside from mowing a swath around the garden fence and spraying more of the nasty herbicide in the pond, I took it easy. I read, did a couple of crosswords, worked on a new story, made chocolate chip cookies (rivaling Blue Mountain Center’s), and watched birds.

Goldfinches have discovered the thistle feeder I hung on the deck, and they visited all day, bright yellow and vocal. Between them and the hummers, I had trouble concentrating on my reading. A pileated woodpecker cackled periodically, and I finally got a good look at it in the late afternoon when it landed in a nearby tree and then flew across the meadow. Western tanagers and Steller’s jays added to the noise of my fine feathered friends. The female grouse continues to visit my apple tree every evening. Last night I watched her through the binoculars again.

I heard my first bear yesterday. Around four o’clock, in the tree line beyond the garden, came the crack of an old tree being knocked down. I heard snorfling, then more wood cracking. It was a bear tearing up an old tree to get at the grubs inside it. I didn’t catch a glimpse, but now I know they’re around. I was glad Gus was inside. If he heard the noise, he would have gone to investigate, I’m sure.

I stayed up past midnight working on the new story. I can’t seem to get to bed any earlier these days. I’m sleeping in later, too. I still wake up at seven, but then fall back asleep, lapsing back into vivid dreams. The other morning we slept in until nine o’clock, something I haven’t done in years.

May 14, 2005

This cute woman at the breakfast joint has turned into a Muse. Of course, I’m exaggerating, but it seemed like there was a connection. Anyway, she’s been the inspiration for a couple of poems. Here’s one:

Eggs Over Hard


We meet and there is no place to put my hands.
Your teeth, white as a stove, go where mine won’t.

Balancing? you say. Both of them, I reply.
You ask why I have two checkbooks, and I’d tell you,

but it’s a long story that ends with a divorce,
so I say something about being between banks.

I have lived so long now breathing my own air,
when we share it I come up short. You could be

twenty-five. I want you to be forty, and I don’t.
We both know that my eggs are getting cold,

that the party at the other table has closed its menus,
that the crown of my head is a clear-cut slope;

still, something reaches through the two feet
between us—you holding pen to pad as if to

describe it; me with fingers poised above calculator
as though math might explain my spiked pulse.

I’ll inhabit that charged space for days, shake
our sweet scene like a sugar packet—until it, too,

grows cold as a number. Age is a coat without pockets.



May 15, 2005

Exactly one month today that I’ve been here. One-sixth of my residency.

Sunday at the homestead, cool and drizzly and dreary. Again. I lit a fire for the first time in a few days. After breakfast I took advantage of the colder weather to suit up in my mowing clothes and trim down the whole garden, a big chore with the lousy mower unit and the weedwhacker. But it needed doing. These mowing clothes—an old pair of khakis and a sweatshirt, are filthy with grass stains, but I don’t bother washing them. Come summer, when I no longer need to mow, I’ll probably just burn them. Mowing is an odious task. I keep finding myself pining for the typical blade mower I’m used to, instead of this one that works like a giant weedwhacker on wheels. It’s hard to push and the strings are constantly breaking. But it’s all I’ve got. After mowing, I lit a slash fire out in the meadow and burned some of the broken branches from the apple trees and many of the boxes cluttering up the mud room. I need to start straightening the place out a little in preparation for my first (and probably only) visitor, Neil Curry. I fear he’s going think the place too cluttered and dirty. I know I felt that way when I first arrived. But one thing I’ve discovered about living in the wilderness: it’s impossible to keep a clean house, especially with a dog around, and after a while you give up on certain aspects of cleanliness. The floor is forever dirty with blades of grass and wood chips and ash. I sweep the linoleum of the dining area and the board floor of the cooking area. When I get really motivated I turn on the generator and use the vacuum, but I could pick up more sucking air through a straw. So I resign myself to the fact that there are grass blades and wood chips on the floor. As long as the bedroom, bathroom, and cooking area are clean, I’m happy.

I finished a wonderful little novella today, God’s Mountain, by Erri De Luca. It’s an English translation of an Italian book, and it’s about a thirteen-year-old boy coming of age in 1960 in Naples. There’s a bit of magical realism with a boomerang, which turns out to be much more than a toy, and an old, hunchbacked, Holocaust-surviving cobbler sprouting wings. There’s also Maria, the lovely upstairs neighbor who becomes the boy’s lover. I recommend it. This book was magically refreshing—a two-day read—after the month-long, laboriously thorough and repetitive Lewis and Clark biography. The latter was worth reading, but when I finally turned the last page the other day, I felt as though I’d done the expedition myself! I’m looking forward now to turning my attention to more of T.C. Boyle’s stuff. I have a tome of his short stories and a few of his novels.

As I type this a home-made pizza dough is rising in an oiled bowl. Toward the end of God’s Mountain, there’s a scene where they go out for pizza, and after reading it, I was craving pizza like never before. It’s been five weeks since I tasted gooey cheese on a crispy crust. The last was at my parent’s house, where we had a few pies from Uncle Tony’s as my farewell dinner. My mouth is watering thinking about them. I know tonight’s pizza won’t taste anything like Uncle Tony’s, but it’ll sate the craving. The Fannie Farmer cookbook I’m using is excellent! So far, everything I’ve made from it has come out great.

I’m heading into town again tomorrow for a resupply mission and to check for bills and email. Deadwood tonight, thanks to Jim!