A Good Combination

Check the elm in the background… she’s going.

Penny and the boys decamped this morning for a four-day wilderness skills gathering, unadvisedly leaving me in charge of, well, everything. Their infrequent absences always put me in a state of mild bewilderment: So steady is our companionship that the sudden absolution of everyone’s needs but my own and the various critters under my care is an unhinging experience. I always think I’m going to do something a little crazy while they’re gone – you know, like drink two beers in a single evening, or maybe go out for pizza, or stay up ’til 10 watching a movie – but it never seems to happen. Instead, I just go about the workaday routines of this little holding, slowly lapsing into loneliness. At least I have the cows.

I don’t have a whole lot in me at the moment in regards to writing. The flurry of activity over the past month or so, coupled with the whispered urgency of the first frost, has put me squarely back in that spot of just wanting to do things. Hands, not head. Stop talking so damn much and just make some shit happen. Indeed, over the past few days, I made ample progress on the stack of sawlogs, while Penny and the boys harvested onions and a row of ‘taters. Nearly a full day was devoted to the slaughter and packaging of 80-odd meat birds and a half-dozen ducks. Of course, there was all the prep a four-day camping trip involves and when they return on Sunday afternoon, smelling of campfire smoke and exhaustion, there will be all the unpacking, the airing of tent and sleeping bags, the washing of camp dishes, the retelling of tales, and so on. I bet you know how it is.

Anyway. You know I’ll be back. You know that somewhere in the midst of everything that needs to be doing, something will remind me of something else, and that little itchy spark will be lit and then I’ll be back here, blabbering out of both sides of my mouth at once. But for now, at least, quiet. And maybe a little sweat.

It’s a good combination, really.