Winter #04
Long nights, departures, and some observations from Montana.
Three degrees when I wake, but calm without wind: the earth’s turning momentarily halted. Through the windows the faraway lights of town phosphoresce beneath stars. I can’t tell them apart, orbs on the prairie from orbs above as they swim through glass into the dark house. When I went to bed moon glow shimmered opalescent on the prairie, but now hours later it has gone.
I light a candle, make coffee beside the flame. Then day breaks. Above the eastern plains enameled with snow there is no cloud vapor to reflect the rising sun. The light arrives at once as burnished sky, another cycle of darkness going and then gone as I feed the wood stove bricks of fir, the dogs snoring on the couch.
When I look north toward the Crazy Mountains I feel a familiar seasonal longing for pastures thick with animacy, a hide of land dense with wildflowers worked by bees, sweat running down my back, a fragrant cow pie parting around the sole of a boot. Winter is stillness, a lacquer applied in late autumn and unlifted until May. I want to go, to explore, to camp out long days away from home, but I must wait or travel far to the south to the Sonoran Desert ranges: the Pinaleños, the Rincons, the Santa Catalinas.
Weeks afoot scuffling dirt and stone, the unimpeded sun parabolic through blue ether, mornings cold with frosts and the hissing of the propane stove and black coffee out of a tin cup, nothing but miles ahead amid scrag and motley forms. I crave the odor of my down sleeping bag, the chime of the tent zippers. Ruins among needled pines. Anything I want is always but one button removed. Press it, there it is a few days later boxed on the porch. Only I could care less for all of it. I want the real thing, peaks and springs vadose above forever wandered paths and proximal beasts driven by imperatives gone dim in us according to conveniences.
Twice yesterday I trained, then this morning slept too late, my body overtaxed, nerves jangled. Inside me a cumulonimbus of impatience storming. I watch a dozen mule deer walk single file out of the shadows toward sunlit prairie spread like butter beneath the rimpled chine of the Absaroka. A holy beauty, she called it, a word I’ve never heard her say. And it is holy. It stops me in my tracks again and again, the clouds heaped over mountains and the peneplains turned to pools of honeyed light. This morning from their redoubt of scrog the horses all face east with their eyes shut like prayergoers beseeching vague gods. Some days I watch them watching me, ask how they seem so peaceful. Are we all that different?
From corkscrewed junipers and limber pines a flock of swallows shoal, the undersides of their wings flashing white as they cut and change direction in unison. I see them from the kitchen window rinsing dishes, certain I’m missing something, but what I can’t say. It’s possible to waste an entire life waiting. People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there.1 That’s it. Somehow it is always easier to be convinced of a future than invested in today. Quit waiting, fool, quit waiting.
As we carom over icy road through the mountain pass a tire goes flat. There is no place to pull over safely. I drive until the first exist, aware that the tire will be frayed and useless, but at least we are out of danger. Blankets down on the ground and under the jack so it doesn’t slip on the snow. A dozen people stop and ask us if we have it covered. Yes, we say, but only after I question a man about the anti-theft lug nut. Never seen one before.
“Check the glovebox for the key,” he says.
I find it, mount the spare, only not in time to make her flight. Curse myself for the paltry setup the manufacturer gyps its customers with and vow to build my own kit: a Milwaukee Cordless High-Torque 1/2 Inch Impact Wrench ($499), Big Red floor jack ($228), square of old snow tire for jack base (free; think traction), set of wheel chocks ($10), a flat shovel from the shed (ours), a bucket of gritty dirt mixed with road salt (DIY), road flares ($67.92; good to start a fire too), a pair of insulated coveralls ($109.99), a blanket to work on (thrift store).
Overkill? You bet. There is something about preparedness courses in the blood of a man. His fixation with tools is no fixation. It’s competency he seeks. Things go wrong. What can be done with hands, grit, muscle? Without competency near to nothing but destruction. The rest of the day I’m rattled. In the mountains I seldom experience fear or anxiety, but in this world of haste and noise I crumble. Nothing to do with it, that’s what I want, only attendance is its requisite. Sometimes participation is in order.
Guy once told me he was delivering beer at forty below when the diesel in his lines congealed. Said an old-timer rancher stopped to help him, working with bare hands under the hood.
“Bare hands at forty below,” he told me.
Nothing I could do but nod. There were no cell phones then, no roadside assistance. Either you got it fixed or waited or prayed or both or found the ranch lamp burning way off like a lighthouse for lost mariners. Said he got back on the road, made it home. That happened a long time ago. For some reason he never forgot. Nor did I.
Tomorrow another year, and no more waiting.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
So much in here, so good. While tuna fishing earlier this month, I watched the mate strip ice off the frozen lines with bare hands. 20 degrees.
-40. All we can do is nod.
Simply outstanding!