Who Wants to Live Without That?

I busted out at 6 o’dark this morning to plow. We got a decent storm, enough to put the cats off their usual pre-dawn prowl. They stretched onto their hind legs and peered over the bank of snow that’d pressed itself against the front door, as if the snow itself were trying to gain access to the warmth of the house and, proving themselves yet again to be creatures of comfort, slunk back in the direction of the fire.

It’s a nice storm. Not the biggest ever, and certainly not as big as the pre-storm hype made it out to be, but still. A good storm. A worthy storm. Penny and the boys went about the animal rounds while I finished clearing the drive, and then we all came inside to thaw the wind and 5-degree cold out of our bones and cook up some sausage and sourdough pancakes atop the woodstove. There is no coziness like the coziness of a woodstove on a snowbound day, the wind tumbling across our pasture, blowing spindrifts and runnels, the sausage spitting fat and the sweet ache of blood returning to the fingers. A fellow could want for more, I suppose. But I’m not sure he could ever get much more. The Gods know greed when they see it.

The response to the addition of the generosity enabler (now tucked discreetly – but hopefully not too discreetly – into the sidebar) has overwhelmed whatever wild expectations I might have held, if ever I’d dared hold such expectations in the first place. Thank you all, and this includes those of you who of choice or circumstance have not utilized it. I did lose a handful of followers over it, or at least I assume that’s why they left; it hardly seems a coincidence that I shed a half-dozen subscribers to this blog on precisely the same day I added the button, when I’ve never shed a half-dozen subscribers in a single day before. I do not understand how the mere option to contribute could be so offensive to some, but there is much in this world I do not understand, and the older I get the clearer it becomes that not understanding is a perfectly acceptable state of affairs.

Actually, if you think about it, not understanding is where wonder comes from. And who wants to live without that?