Baby got back (last night).

Well, after 21 or so hours on the road, the northwoods giving way to deciduous trees giving way to prairie giving way to flat scrubland giving way to the Front Range, I'm home. I'm still a little sleepy from my drive yesterday, and Annyong is not quite sure what to do, but it's good to be back.

I needed this, and I feel reenergized in a way I haven't in a long time. This was a good thing, a necessary thing, and although I will keep looking over my shoulder every two minutes to check on a fire that isn't there, my shower last night was the best thing ever. "You mean I didn't have to earn this by a 30-minute drive or six hours of melting snow?"

Here's a post I thought I'd put up, which concerns my last night there. Warning, it's pretty hippy-fied:

Wolves were howling again last night, and because it was my last night, and the moon was big—and yeah, because after cleaning all day I was feeling mawkish and maudlin, I went outside upon hearing them, and I actually howled back. I felt ridiculous, absolutely stupid for doing so—until they answered. This began a five-minute dialogue between me, the wolf to the northwest and the other one due north, and my god, that was, perhaps hands-down, the most amazing and transformative thing that has ever happened to me. My wolf impersonation sucked, first out of embarrassment and then out of amazement, and I'm sure this is why the howling, which had gone on for 20 or so minutes before I went outside, stopped. "Who's this jackass?" they were thinking, no doubt. "Why is he giggling between howls?"

Thanks for reading, all of you who did. And thanks for your support.

One big last pictures post.

I've been cleaning all day and following the cabin-closing guidelines laid on the piece of paper tacked to the inside of the cupboard door labeled CABIN CHECK-OUT, but I just took a long and rather maudlin walk wherein I snapped about 200 pictures that would be of interest of exactly no one but me. (For example, I took a bunch of bittersweet photos of the thermometer outside, thinking, Oh, thermometer. How many times a day did I look at you? while shaking my head sadly.)

So here's some more:

Aaaand, Day 30.

It's a bit chilly here today, if only by virtue of a stiff wind coming in off the lake. The sky is clear, though, and, as this is my last planned day here (although probably not my last, all told, but I'll get to that), I'm going to take a very long walk. There are small groups of birds I haven't seen before around today, but they haven't gotten close enough for me to make a positive identification. They're a mottled brown, very big, with sort of a striated brown-and-white underside. I want to posit a guess that they're hawks of some kind (maybe chicken hawks?) but I have no idea.

I don't want to leave. Sure, I do want to, because I miss my wife and my house and Colorado and my friends, but I just love it up here: the expanse, the stillness, the fact that I actually need to use my eyes and ears and hands here. It's so trite, the whole "getting back to the land" thing, but this is something I needed to do. The Smiths are up again this weekend, which has made for some needed company, but I'm again looking forward to having the whole lake to myself when they leave today, to go for a night walk and have the only lights I see be the ones at the cabin.

Two chapters in two days, and I'm writing the climax of the book now. One of them needs serious reworking, but if I've learned something about writing up here, it's that the work is never, ever going to suffer from rewrite. And ha. Just writing this blog post, I figured out how I'm going to do it. The book is almost done; I've got my climax, my denouement, and then the no-doubt long process of revising the whole damn thing, to say nothing of selling it.

I did here what I came to do, and although I don't really want to rid myself of my solitude and the Zen-Master-with-Schmidt's-novelist thing I've got doing for me, it's time to go home. It occurred to me that being up here did the exact opposite of what everyone was warning me about; instead of becoming a crazy shut-in, I think I'm a lot saner than I was before. And instead of this shredding my relationships, I think it's actually strengthened them. I'm a lot nicer than I used to be, I think, if only by necessity (you never know if someone you're addressing might be a bear in disguise). So I'll pack up and go either tomorrow or the day after, and devote a full day to cleaning this place to a point where my mother won't flay me alive upon seeing it.

I've still got about six pounds of meat to eat. Today, if the wind dies down, I'll fire up the grill and make burgers with the rest of my ground beef and my bacon, and maybe, just maybe, I can put together one last batch of jerky to bring home with me—although I'll need to hide it somewhere in my luggage to stop myself from eating it all on the way home.

I'll post again before I go, and again when I get home, but this is it: Day 30.

Day 28.

I completely neglected to post anything yesterday, and I wish I could say that it was because I was just so busy with the book that it was impossible to tear myself away. But that wasn't the case; although I started a new chapter and polished up another one, I spent the majority of my day staring at a blank page, then going for a walk, then staring at a page, then making more coffee, then staring at a page. I didn't even take any pictures outside. Meh.

What I did do, however, was start on some deep-cleaning of the cabin in anticipation of leaving in a few days, since my mother would have a heart attack if she walked in right now: "A stick! A stick on my brand-new carpet!" And then she'd get out the belt.

I was snowed in yesterday, but I called over to McArdle's, and it looks like he plowed me out this morning. So, on my agenda: Replenishing myself with stuff I'll need for the next two or three days, then coming down and writing and writing and writing and writing.

It's warm today, past 40 already, and I'm hoping the road doesn't give me trouble on my way in or out. We'll see.

Day 26.

Re: this:

April Fools.

I assume you figured that out, but this did not stop me from cruelly giggling, even when my wife told me I was dead to her, like I'd personally gouged out my dog's eyes. A cruel prank? Yes. As brilliant Google's CADIE? Not even close.

Annyong is, as you can see, just fine, two-eyed and wholly unpunctured, and it's just gorgeous here today. It snowed most of the day yesterday and started again at night, and I woke up this morning with a whole world painted in white, like a Japanese print or one of the winter SundayCalvin and Hobbes panels. Just beautiful.

This means that I'm again snowed in, unless I can get somebody to plow the road or until it melts. This is just fine with me, since I've got plenty of wood, I'm making water today with the fresh snow, and I've got a Crock-Pot full of awesome green chile stew.

I finished up a problematic chapter last night, and I started on another that I'm steadily adding to today. The problem is that it's so pretty out, and so mild and still and quiet, that I want to be outside. Annyong the Two-Eyed Dog is also having fun outside, running at full speed and making furrows as he ducks his head into the fluffy snow, grabbing big mouthfuls of it and rolling around. Time to make some water.

Day 26 (sort of).

Things are not good. Annyong is at the vet, and don't worry, I think he'll be okay. But jesus. I'm back at the cabin from Bemidji, but I'll go back tomorrow. Okay, long day.

It blizzarded here until late, and the dog and I went for a walk when it stopped, up the road.

Annyong ran off at one point, and I assumed he was chasing a squirrel until I heard a scuffle and him whining. I went to find him, and he walked out of the woods, wagging his tail but covered in porcupine quills. He was a mess, and I was able to get him back to the cabin, where I realized he really needed to see a vet, so I wrapped him in a blanket so he wouldn't scratch at things and put him in the van and drove to Bemidji. It was an hour in the van with him whimpering and me constantly reaching over to pet him and try to keep him from moving around.

He's still there now. The vet, a very nice man, said that he's relatively sure they can save one eye, but the other is apparently a total loss, which I think I knew even before he got in the car. He was a mess. But no organs were punctured, and most of the blood was from his face, so I think he'll be fine, even if he's a little blind. I'll drive back tomorrow and report. I hope he'll be okay. God, I hope he is. I guess I'll find out tomrrow.

Day 25.

It's nasty out there, snowing and with a fierce wind from the north. There's not a whole lot of snow on the ground, if only because it can't gain any purchase; the wind whips it away and all that's left are tiny little drifts. It's howling over the top of the chimney and really giving all the trees a good shake.

The snow started last night just shortly after dark, and the wind has picked up since then. I woke up about 3 or 4 in the morning and stumbled outside to pee, barefoot and shirtless, and on my way out, I reflexively went to thumb the knob on the door that locks it. I managed to stop myself in time, but had I not, I'd be huddled in the shed right now in my boxers, shivering, draped in the lawnmower bag, and trying to figure out a way to break into the cabin.

But for the wind, this isn't that horrifying. Visibility is still pretty high, and although it's supposed to continue for the next day or so, it's nothing some winter wear can't weather. Weather.com says the wind is only 18 mph, but there's no way that's true.

I cut a nice pile of wood yesterday, and I'm glad I did. In addition to making sure I didn't freeze, the work was intensely satisfying, and I came in to have lunch, covered head to toe in sawdust, my hands buzzing from the saw, and felt like Mister Honest Labor. Fresh-cut wood smells just wonderful, and I've now got a good-sized pile of birch that, for whatever reasons, seems to burn more slowly than the stuff I've been using.

I reconstructed my lost chapter yesterday, and it's much, much better for it, as I knew it would be. I finished up my awesome chicken over the course of the today, and today I start on the pile of pork roast I pulled from the freezer. What to do with it? Probably just sear it off and eat it with some beans or something, since I've certainly got a load of those. Ooh. Black-eyed peas.

Day 24.

I am in a rotten mood, and I attribute this to three things:

1) The low-battery indicator bleep of my phone, which started around 6 in the morning and continued, every 30 seconds or so, until I woke up. My phone now has the battery-life of approximately 13 minutes, and the fine people of Motorola designed this indicator bleep to be the most annoying sound ever created or heard by man.

2) The insistent licking of the dog, who ignored my suggestion that he go outside before I went to bed and bugged me from sunrise on. Having done so he's now curled up on the bed, having gone back to sleep. That little shit. It's a good thing he's so adorable, or I would've made his legs into ham a long time ago.

3) The dream I had in which everyone I know—indeed, perhaps everyone who has ever lived—came up to visit me here, packed in like sardines and constantly bickering. "I want to sit near the fire!" "No, I want to sit near the fire!" "We're all out of cereal! Who are all the cereal?" "Don't look at me! It was him!" Thus begin my returning-to-society anxiety dreams.

Anyway. I am now listening to my surefire, knock-my-ass-out-of-a-bad-mood soundtrack. It never, ever fails, and I'm already feeling better. Would you like to know what it is? Yes? Promise not to laugh? Okay. It's John Deby's score from the Back to the Future trilogy. My favorite track is number eight, "Doc Returns."

Anyway. I made pie last night, which was lovely, since I don't consider myself much of a baker. Graham cracker crust, whiskey caramel-tossed apples. Mmmm. It really made me wish I had some ice cream, but I settled for a glass of milk.

I heard wolves again last night, but these were farther off. I was also going to take pictures of birds I thought were snow geese this morning, since my father took the curmudgeon's side in the Great You Didn't See a Snow Goose Argument of '09. It turned out that these were not, in fact, snow geese, they were swans. But, this doesn't mean that all birds I saw weren't snow geese, only that these specific birds were not. My greatest goal is to get a picture of snow geese and put this whole thing to rest.

Okay. I have to drink some coffee and wake up suitably enough to operate a chainsaw.

Day 23.

Today was pretty quiet and I don't have a lot to report. It was sunny and in the 40s for most of the day, and was quite nice out. We've lost a lot of snow again in the past we days. I broke up and grilled my remaining chicken, chopped some deadfall, and now I'm watching The Great Escape, which is still one of the finest films ever made, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever be as cool as Steve McQueen.

My chicken is awesome. I did a little dry rub and made a Carolina mustard sauce for it, then enjoyed it with no utensils and a pile of paper towels. The plan was to birch-smoke it, but the smoke birch produces is just too acrid, even if it's been soaking for a while, so I just grilled at low temperature. I enjoy breaking down chickens, I realized today, almost as much as I like chopping wood, and for good reason: they're fundamentally the same activity, partitioning big things into useful little things with something sharp. And there's often blood involved in both. I could be the world's first butcher/lumberjack author.

I need to bust the chainsaw tomorrow, since one of the two remaining portions of the woodpile consists entirely of birch too big for the fireplace. Whee to that.

Day 22: a recap.

One thing that sucked about today:

Due to a hilarious misunderstanding between me and my power strip, I lost an entire chapter.

Many things that did not suck:

—The chapter wasn't all that good anyway. It'll be better for the rewrite.

—On my way out the door today, with my boots on and everything, I got a little ditty stuck in my head and, on a whim, picked up my guitar to figure it out, and then sat down and wrote and recorded the best song I've ever written.

—I drove down to Longville, past the Federal Dam, and back around, and on my way back saw wolves. WOLVES. Saw. Wolves. The dog was sleeping in the passenger seat and I woke him up by shouting, "No shit! Wolves!"

—I drove up Cass Co. Route 7, up the east side of the lake, past all the hoity-toity resorts and the Winnibigosish Dam (where, apparently, most of the walleye fry in the country are produced. Chances are good, if you're eating walleye from the Pueblo Reservoir, it came, somewhere down the line, from right there). I'd forgotten how gorgeous it is: all huge red pines and little birch gulleys. In the setting sun, it was glorious.

—I went to the Gosh Dam for a bite to eat, having picked up a copy of the Star-Tribune in Longville, and sat down to read it, and there was a story about a guy I know, a classical pianist who is coming back to play with the Twin Cities Orchestra. The article was glowing.

—The Star-Tribune actually has well-written, intelligent pieces on classical music, almost as if they'd actually employed someone to write them who isn't making shit up. (This item dedicated to a few papers who will remain nameless.)

—The Gosh Dam has mighty good wings.

—I pulled into the driveway and cursed myself for not thinking to turn on the outside lights before I left, but on my way from the van to the cabin saw one of the most amazing night skies I've ever seen. I walked out to the dock and just looked and looked as the dog shivered next to me and licked my hand, urging me to open up the cabin and start a fire.

—Wolves!

Day 22.

I’m sort of running out of food. This isn’t a bad thing, since I’m also running out of time up here, but in my blind rush to prepare balanced, hearty and nutritious food, I overlooked the other 600 pounds of meat in the freezer. So it’s meat, meat, meat from here on out, which should make for a gripping colonoscopy.

It’s gorgeous and sunny, although only about ten degrees out, and I have to get out of the cabin today. Yesterday’s ambitious plan to interact with people fizzled out when I wrote about four pages, did some puttering, and then took an afternoon nap that stretched into the evening. Since it takes so long to do anything here and I woke up about 7 PM, the idea of preparing and then giving myself a bath, shaving and changing clothes was too much to handle, so I just made dinner and moped around all night. There was a gorgeous sunset last night, one of those turns-the-whole-world pink affairs, and I’m pleased to report, courtesy of a bout of insomnia early this morning, the sunrise was fantastic, as well.

Last night, I went to empty my slop-bucket, which was chock-full of vegetable ends and stuff from making stock, and twisted my ankle in the snow and fell, scattering food everywhere about 15 feet from the cabin. I cleaned up as much as I could in the dark, but I imagined that the rest of it could be smelled from miles away and that it would result in a scrum of scavengers, buzzards and bears and wolves and probably wolverines and yeti squabbling, like the animal Thunderdome, over a few boiled chicken bones.

This didn’t happen, of course—all that happened is that I had to yell at the dog from nosing around in that area, but it was a good reminder that up here, in the Endless Struggle for Food, I have it and nothing else does.

I’m going to go on a drive today, see some of the other 9,999 lakes (although, misnomer alert for non-Minnesotans: it’s more like 30,000 lakes here), and then I’m going to come back and barbecue a chicken, temperature outside be damned.

Day 21.

The sun is out, sorta, and it's a little colder today. I need to do some stuff around the cabin, and I'd like to take a long walk through the woods at some point. There's a football-field-sized chunk of ice that broke off from the channel and drifted very slowly onto the lake, and the cold temperatures have re-frozen some of the river. But for that, and for the snow the past few days, it's been busy out there, and Annyong is having a blast chasing angry little red squirrels around.

Went to the Winnie Store yesterday, where I was hit on by a very cute Chippewa girl driving a BMW with tribal plates. This was a new experience for me, but I simply finished filling my water jugs and moseyed on out, because I am a well-trained husband. I've also apparently befriended the kid who works there, a sixteen-or-so-year-old who was seemingly trying to impress me with how cool he is. "I think I need a smoke break," he told me, lackadaisically.

As I was carrying my beer and water jugs back in from the van to the cabin, I had a conversation with the dog, as I generally do, about how he was not helping me at all. "You're a lazy bastard," I told him, and he took this to be a game, darting around me and running, at full clip, rings around the cabin, until it devolved into me chasing him through the yard, shouting at the top of my lungs, "LAAAAZY BAAASTARD! LAAAAZY BAAAAASTARD," him barking joyously at me until both of us were exhausted and covered in snow. This would, I imagine, have been an interesting tableau to anybody who might have come across it, but of course, no one did.

I'm going to track down and chop some more deadfall today, since the woodpile is really starting to look meager. I'm halfway through the book, and those 60,000 words have been well worth it. I'll get back down to writing this evening, but I'd like to be around people tonight, too. Maybe I'll grab a bite to eat and a beer somewhere.

Day 20.

Snow continues here, but it's the lazy, pretty variety, and it's quite nice. I need to get out of the cabin. I haven't left since Saturday, and I'm getting a little stir-crazy, despite my late-night online drinking with friends from home. (Point of interest: bourbon chased with milk? Not altogether bad. Give it a shot.) I might take a run into Cass Lake to get water and a few things and interact with people for a little while. The snow on the ground isn't enough to preclude me going anywhere.

It has become a big bald eagle party up here. I'm not sure how many I'm seeing, since I'm only seeing them one or two at a time, but it's become totally routine to see one in the branches on the bank, or soaring overhead, or even setting down in the yard.

A fun story: A few evenings ago, after I'd closed the blinds, I was writing and was suddenly shocked by a weird noise coming from the yard. It sounded like all the word like there was someone out there, playing the trumpet. This was the evening after I met the curmudgeon, so my initial thought was, He's crazy. He's an insane trumpet-player and he's come for me. I whipped open the blinds and saw a swan, pecking at some slop-water I'd thrown over the bank. It looked toward the cabin and honked.

I also need to get rid of some trash and some recycling. I wonder if the Winnie store will let me dump some stuff there, if I buy some of their overpriced beer, perhaps. We'll see.

Day 19.

It's snowing out, little flakes that aren't accumulating on the ground, since it's still above freezing. The snow's a nice break from dismal gray.

I've discovered that the only thing that burns worse than aspen is wet aspen. It's like nature designed the tree specifically to suck at providing heat. I've chopped up some birch deadfall I found in the woods, and that's much nicer.

Yesterday, I finished up the chapter I'd started the night before and found myself unable to write anything new. So I just combed back through everything, doing a little rewriting and feeling bored and spent and a little lonely. The nonstop rain didn't help much, since I couldn't even go outside.

The dog was hating the rain; he was constantly bugging my to let him out, and I'd do so, and he'd venture out nervously and then dart right back inside, his tail between his legs. And five minutes later he'd be nosing my hand again to go out. After dark, I had to pee myself, and put on a jacket to do that. The dog watched me from the door as I peed in the driving rain. He's such a desert wuss.

No sign of the curmudgeon. He hasn't been around and when I took a short walk yesterday afternoon down the bank, during a break in the rain, I didn't see any lights or smoke at any of the other cabins. He seems to have been an apparition. Or maybe he travelled from the future to warn me about the dangers of being grumpy. Maybe he's me!

I've got stock on the stove right now, which I'm now thinking was just a tremendous waste of water, although those lamb bones do smell good. I'm also thinking that I'd love to barbecue some chicken—or better yet, smoke it—but I'll have to wait for a dry day to do it.

Day 18.

It's still rainy and dismal, the world divided neatly into shades of gray and green, and the temperature has been slowly dropping since this morning. It's still in the 40s, though, and it's wet and icky out, a good environment in which to write and drink coffee.

The bald eagles up here have become much more visible. Scarcely an hour goes by when I don't see them. Yesterday they were at work all day, collecting branches to build their nests with, and I'm sure there'll be eaglets soon.

I looked up from writing today and was surprised to see a man in the yard. I went out to talk to him, after calling off the dog. I have no idea who he is, but he apparently has a cabin up here, and we chatted for a few minutes about the coming spring. He's a tremendous curmudgeon. I told him that the bird life has increased by leaps and bounds, that I'd seen snow geese and herons and swans and ducks. "You didn't see snow geese," he told me irritably. And right now, as I type this, there's a snow goose winging her way over the river.

I went for a nice walk yesterday to chop up and haul back some deadfall, since the woodpile is shrinking rapidly. There's something incredibly wholesome about breaking a trail through the woods, an axe on your shoulder, a dog at your side—in a way that, say, walking down the city block with an axe can't really touch.

It's supposed to get cold out again in a few days, and I'm looking forward to a shift in the weather, in whatever direction. I think I'll start on a batch of stock tonight, since I've been hoarding bones since I arrived here, and I'll turn that stock into some sort of delicious soup. But for now, I have to go and eat green beans.

There's another one, a snow goose. Didn't see a snow goose, my ass.

Day 17.

It rained last night, and now the snow has been reduced to sort of a sloppy film on the world. The patch of open water has exploded outward and, when I went out this morning to get wood, I was startled by the amount of bird chatter going on. It's gray and chilly, although well above freezing, and there's not a soul on the lake.

I got a whole lot of nothing done yesterday. I went out to chop up the last of my whole aspen logs and in the process pulled something in my shoulder, and I couldn't seem to make words on the page, so I essentially sat around and ached, did some dishes and ate leftovers and watched DVDs while feeling sorry for myself. I gave myself another bath to the sound of the rain droning on the metal roof, then turned in early and slept for 10 hours. Despite the dreariness, I have "We All Shine On" stuck in my head. At this point, I think the ghost of Lennon is mocking me.

I'm going to start letting my fire go out during the day, since I'm concerned that I'll run out of wood and then get caught in a spring blizzard. So I'll build it up in the morning, let it burn for a few hours to dispel the cold that set in during the night, let it die, then build it again when it gets dark. Like an incredible dumbass, I left my boots on the deck last night, to guard my mother's carpets from mud, but now they're soaked through. I actually poured water out of them, which I then boiled and used to do dishes this morning, just like the pioneers did. They're drying in front of the fire, and they better hurry up, because I'm sort of dying to take a walk. More rain is supposed to roll in later, so I'd like to get some air before it does, then jump back into the book.

Day 16.

I'm officially halfway through with my stay. As I write this, two bald eagles are perched on the edge of the ice by the river channel, watching the open water. They're the two tiny dots you can see in the photo above. It's a clever way to fish. Go America.

Jeff left for North Dakota after a couple days of hangin', drinkin' grillin', philosophical chattin' and other assorted dudery, him having listened to me yammer on about various subjects because I hadn't spoken to anyone in so long. Our first night, we did up some ribeyes, then went for a walk on the lake in the dark. It was quite mild out, and fog was rolling in. We walked probably a quarter-mile out or so, then looked around, seeing only the lights of the cabin, what looked like a permanent ice-house and the glow of lights past the horizon. With the mist, it was really quite eerie. Then we went back to the cabin and drank Canadian whiskey until late.

Yesterday, we took a little day trip to Itasca and the Mississippi headwaters and then through Bemidji, where we got a bite to eat at the same bar I'd been to before. On the way back, we saw what might be the most awesome thing ever: a roadkilled deer being eaten by a bald eagle. I crept up in the van and managed to grab a few pictures as the eagle flapped away. We later saw a roadkilled wolf, as well, which was sort of sad.

Jeff had brought out some North Dakota lamb, which we grilled with peppers and apples. This was unbelievably awesome, and a recipe I should remember.

The lake is really opening up. The open water in the river channel is widening by the hour, and the ice is retreating onto the lake. It's really quite neat to watch, and there's definitely been more wildlife activity as things warm up. We're supposed to get some rain today and tomorrow, which will make short work of the snow.