When darkness falls on The Mountain at the end of each day, we retire to the homesite. We pull in. We don’t venture far afield, turning the night watch over to this peaceful kingdom’s more permanent residents.
Beyond reasonable caution, we harbor no fear. The night simply belongs to other creatures.
There are, of course, a few good reasons for us to be about in the dark. The dogs, for one. Gazing up at stars on a clear night. Basking in the glow of a harvest moon, as we have this week. The seasonal squeezing of daylight into fewer and fewer hours.
Smudge and I were outside at 5am today, well before the sky began to brighten. From the south, perhaps only a hundred yards away, came the frenzied howls and yips of coyotes — lots of ’em.
A pack. Maybe a den.
A wild serenade. A night sound.
Up on The Mountain, in the darkness, I’ve also learned a new word — new to me, at least — for something I’ve experienced all my life. When we’re out with the dogs after nightfall, scanning the surrounding woods with our headlamps, often we’re reminded that we’re not alone. Rarely are we able to make out a form, but we catch pairs of eyes staring back at us.
The word is “eyeshine.”
Savvy woodsmen and Country folk can identify an animal just by its eyeshine — color, shape, height above the ground and so on. It’s a skill I’d like to acquire myself.
I’m definitely in the right place to practice.
It’s been pointed out to me that I’m living my Life backwards. Convention dictates that after serving a decades-long sentence in the working world, I’m supposed to pursue ease and comfort, preferably in a warm climate, ideally on some sort of sand.
Labor, which has occupied most of my adult years, is to be avoided — or perhaps engaged in only occasionally, for the sole purpose of recreation, and it must accommodate the diminished capacity that accompanies the privilege of aging.
And I’m not doing that.
I’ve “retired” to what I enjoy, certainly, but it’s anything but leisurely. Deb and I are, essentially, starting over, actively building a new Life rather than passively suckling the withered teat of an old one.
We had our nomadic adventure, month after memorable month on the road. Now we’ve undertaken the biggest challenge of our combined 125 years.
It’s real work, every day. It demands everything we have. Some days it’s hard. Exhausting. When our brows glisten, that’s sweat you see — don’t mistake it for tanning lotion.
You won’t find a tiny umbrella in our tall glasses of sweet tea.
Maybe that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done. Maybe I’m doing this “golden years” thing all wrong. Maybe I’d be better off if I’d just “go gentle.”
Yeah, well, fuck that.
Oh, we’ll have our leisure, our rockin’ chairs, our porch-sittin’. We’ll amble through quiet woods and linger by slow-moving rivers.
All work and no play? Hardly.
But for us, for me, this is the age for building, for honest work we do to satisfy us and no one else. Let’s get on with it.
I managed to get a good bit done by the time 10am rolled ’round this morning. Nothing that’d knock the planet off its axis, mind you, but necessary stuff. It wasn’t physical, just productive. And being productive is one of my favorite things these days.
Deb came out as I was transferring fresh water from a barrel in the buggy to the fifth-wheel’s tank. She was smiling.
“You do realize that this could be the last time you have to make a run for water, right?”
She had a good point there. Our electrician will be here tomorrow morning, tasked with running power from our panel to the pump. If he succeeds — and we’re not countin’ our chickens just yet, ’cause a lot has to go right — water from our very own well will flow from the hydrant next to the cabin.
Though we don’t yet have faucets and toilets inside the cabin, still we’d be able to run a hose directly from the hydrant to the RV’s “city water” connection. Long showers would be possible. Even if we needed to pull water from the onboard supply, which may well be necessary on bitterly cold winter days, we’d fill it from our well, skipping the barrel and the transfer pump.
So yeah, tomorrow could change the way we live.
Recently Deb got me a clever kindling fixture designed to be mounted to a stump or a chopping block. I’d always wanted one of those, just because, despite enjoying the ritual of splitting my kindling with a hatchet. Today I mounted mine to one of two large rounds I set aside last year and took it for a spin.
Pretty nifty. In the winter I may move it up by the cabin.
As long as I was cleaving firewood, I split a few more sticks and checked the moisture content — that is, to see just how “seasoned” it really is. A decent handheld moisture meter is ridiculously inexpensive, a lot cheaper than a chimney fire or becoming a repeat customer of someone selling green wood.
The electronic gizmo confirmed what my old-school thunking told me the day this load was delivered — the oak is between 14% and 16%, the cherry 13% to 15%. A few chunks of hickory measured as high as 22%, but I’d been told that was the least seasoned of the lot. It’ll get there.
And “there,” by the way, is below 20% moisture content. This looks to be a great load of firewood.
So it was a good day. It played out just as I intended. If I can say the same this time tomorrow, we’ll have taken another big step toward making a cabin our Home.
Here are a couple of scenes captured this morning by Mountain Two.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Dylan Thomas (1947)
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.