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.