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.