A Living Magazine - Tap Root: Days 129 to 136 - Happy, Neat and Clean

The trip into town was something like walking on a bundt cake, powdered with confectioners sugar, and impressed with the wheel marks of a candy tractor...  

By midday the sun had burned the snow away. I settled into a downtown Dunkin Donuts table with their special deal of a large hot chocolate, flavored with caramel and sea salt, topped with a goopy swirl of whipped cream. Yum! A large hot chocolate had almost as much caffeine as a small coffee, at least fulfilling that part of my daily medication.

I reached into my backpack to retrieve the phone charger and realized I had forgotten it. It was my first time in town for several days and everything I owned was running low on power. I'd planned on this trip to get a free charge. Shit! 

Then I realized one of the other outlets had a USB power port, and thankfully at least I had my little cable. I moved one table over and plugged in. The first thing I wanted to see was a weather forecast from intellicast.com, my very well-informed, but highly ad-imposed weather site. And, damn!, when I say "highly ad-imposed" I aint kiddin'. In a world of seeking maximum efficiency and excluding wasteful time-consuming activities, watching the forecast stand still while seven ads for things that I've already bought, including my new heater (I mean, how incredibly stupid is it to show people ads for the things they already own and will not buy again?--but web-scampering bots don't care), turns my eye rolling into impatient foot tapping.

Eventually, the forecast came up on my screen and I saw it would be pretty calm, while very cold, for the next week or so. Even the wind was not going to kick up again for a few days. College kids came and went studying for midterms. Christmas music had replaced the trendy Millennial "acoustic versions of pop songs" that had heavily rotated at this store ever since I moved to town five months earlier. As much as I despise Christmas music, after 49 years of hearing the same unrealized bullshit musical sentiments and unrealizable fantasy about "the most wonderful time of the year" - a time that for me, has only involved the death of friends, the divorce of my parents, the destruction of my home by fire, and my own loss of love - I actually found this Christmas music to be a refreshing change from the shallow, three chord folk music of uninspired young "singer-songwriters".

Without even gaining much of a charge on my phone, I packed up Green Bean (my backpack) and left to hit Tranten's (the local grocery store) before heading back to the land. At Tranten's I looked for my typical day old steaks, and cheap chicken thighs (skin-on, of course!), a baguette, a 99 cent instant potato package. I found it all and stuffed two beers into my basket as well. I figured I would drink one that night and save the other for the next night. Naturally, the other side of my mind knew full well I'd drink them both that evening and be all the happier for it.    

The walk home reminded me that I was no longer an anonymous ghost in this town. Three cars, each with a neighbor I'd met in the last few weeks, stopped to very kindly ask if I wanted a ride. Folks have a hard time understanding why IWALLK. When I tell these well-meaning folks that I'm doing fine, or lie that I'm doing it for "exercise," they half-smile, with just the hint of that "you poor crazy man" look in their eyes and furrow their brows, then accepting that I am just slightly insane and perfectly happy doing something they would never ever choose to do, they roll up the window, wave goodbye and proceed on to their warm homes. 

There is always a weird feeling just before Christmas. And, if you are a (formerly) homeless, vagabond, vagrant...blah, blah, blah, walking down the road, you get to know this feeling with uncomfortable familiarity. Where for 11 months out of the year, you are treated like a piece of trash, the pre-Christmas "spirit" suddenly turns you into a potential Christmas "miracle" for some doting good-intentioned stranger to treat as a charity. "Peace on earth and goodwill to men," transforms otherwise-uncaring, thing-fetishizing, consumer-oriented, shallow people into temporary lower-class philanthropists. Whatever... "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

I climbed the steep incline to the top of Weeks Mills Road, then turned right onto my dirt road and continued past the chain across it. Whenever I get to this point I suddenly feel free and unable to be bothered by anyone. As I made my way down the road I saw a man (apparently a hunter) ahead of me. He was walking incredibly slowly, in fatigues, with an AR-15 carefully drawn out to his side. When I got to within 50 feet behind him, I thought it reasonable to let him know I was there, or risk receiving a bullet to the head by surprising him. I called out. And, when he saw me he stopped and let me catch up. It was obvious he only had a few hours to enjoy going hunting on this land.

He was a neighbor I'd met a few weeks earlier at our neighborhood get-together last fall. Although he was a very respectful and polite young man, I got a strange and cold feeling from him, like there was a lot going on in his mind. I distinctly felt like I was intruding on his only peaceful moments. On this day there was something else being processed.

When I tried to joke and lighten the atmosphere, telling him I felt I had to call out in order to avoid a potential gun shot in my direction, he said (almost too quietly and with no expression at all on his face), "Oh...I'd never do that..." I apologized for breaking his stride, and passed him to complete my walk home.

* * *

In the next few days I continued my processing of fire pit wood...

One night, it occured to me that - in light of my having to deal with the severely low temperatures to come - I could probably have even more comfort at night by setting up my IWALLK tent inside the bigger tent, where my bedding was. Ha! What a cool idea!

My latest air cushion (the third of four faulty ones that I would buy) fit quite nicely in the tent. On top of the cushion I laid out a down-filled army sleeping bag, then a queen-sized comforter was draped over my regular sleeping bag. I will tell you right now, that no bed has ever been more comfortable! I looked forward to every single night that I would crawl into that cloud of wonderful sleep-inducing fluff!

My shortening daylight activities, brief fires to cook my meals, and immediate retreat to the joy of my bedroom tent each night was intoxicating. It was a very fresh and satisfying way to live. The propane heater functioned exactly as advertised, and for the first time in many weeks, I simply revelled in the joy of turning my wilderness domicile into a nightly heaven on earth.

I was so happy and gratified that of my Five Basics for Human Survival, I had water, food, shelter, heat, and electricity--all of them. My tent was clean and comfortable. The heat, food storage, a way to cook it, coffee every morning, my illuminated desk light to write by every night before falling into the bliss of my bed, fit my expectations for what I'd wanted to have during the winter. In adjusting my ability to store food, a one-meal-a-day routine allowed me to have a wide variety of leftovers...     

Baked beans, pepperoni, fresh bread, Ramen noodles and delicious steak.

This was a peaceful respite from the harsh implementation of winter's cruelty - or more appropriately, its introduction (winter doesn't mean to be cruel). For the first time in years, I actually flirted with feeling the Christmas spirit myself! Those who know me and have followed this blog know how completely I bitterly hate the commercial aspects of this season. Yet, with my gorgeous location, fresh-aired tent, heat when I wanted it, delicious fire-cooked meals, sweet rainwater and freedom to come and go as I so chose from my own land, I had a small glimpse of what my future could be. In this novel seasonal optimism of mine, for fun, I built a reindeer into my fencing...

Can you see my reindeer?

When venturing down to get more paper birch I discovered this kind of midway bark...

...it is a layer located just under the white paper of the tree, and before the wood is reached. It's corky, multi-layered makeup, even when completely soaked, can serve as an incredibly efficient fire starter.

The eight blissful days allowed me to further sweep up my paths, tack more slats onto my pathway railings, and basically just slow down. I'd wake in the morning, and make my coffee...

...enjoying my mug as I walked around, sipping the smokey, slightly-birch flavored concoction, and dreaming about the future.

In spite of my many shortcomings, I can thank God for a natural ability to focus my mind very intensely upon my future vision for this property--literally seeing it in my head. I'd peer at a section of the yard and the future image of its development would overlay itself in my imagination. I'd step over fallen logs and make note about how I would clean them up in the spring. I'd stop before great indentations in the ground and see how they could be developed into little ponds, or natural planters where herbs and flowers would one day claim the ground at the base of my few majestic pines. I saw the sunlight of future springs sparkling off carefully maintained, stone lined channels where rainwater would leisurely trickle in its own relaxing way, wherever it might...

Day to day, I'd spontaneously decide to stay peacefully on the land or wander leisurely into town, passing the well-known sights, like this...

Apples cling proudly, but in vein, in the deadness of the post-harvest air. 

I took this picture to show how nicely a fallen pine tree could be used as a border barrier

with its sharp branches detering passage for animal or human.

Sauntering into Tranten's one day I found a day old $11.00 steak for $4.00. It was marbled with lines of delicious fat, spider webbing through bright red meat. I had to buy it. I also dropped one perfect tomato into a plastic bag. 

With a song on my lips and a spring in my step, I made my way back to my land, just as the copper sun floated above the mountaintops in the distance. It was the Golden Hour--the time when the bald trees on the hillside of my property seem to soak up the evening light as if they were auditioning to be the holders of jewels.

Along with leftover mushrooms, the remainder of my instant potatoes and my one last garlic roll, the meal came out perfectly...

A few days later I made another trip into town. This time the air was seriously colder. An unexpected cold front had swept in from the north and painted the earth with the white frost that looks so beautiful but finally destroys the cells of grass and other annual plants. Along Middle Street I noticed for the first time how much straw there was in the bog. I thought that maybe it might be nice to grow a bit of this stuff myself. It would be good for insulation, maybe in some future out buildings that need it? Maybe that was just dreaming. Nevertheless, I took the time to venture down into the swamp and gathered seeds from the few plants that still had wispy seed tips, just incase...

Frost covered marsh grass that could serve as a wonderful padding, or for insulation.

In tune with my week's cleaning and organizing, I made an additional effort to make the space under the canopy more domestic, setting up a bathroom area, where previously I had been taking my toilet into the tent to do my business. Now I could "powder my nose" outside...

The lining on the floor is an old faulty air mattress, cut in half and flattened

out to make very effective, waterproof flooring.

The space was quite acceptable at this time...

Nighttimes were very cozy...

I thought it might be worth the effort to capture as much of this idyllic life in pictures as I could during these last few days of fall. Some of the following are panoramas and they deserve a good zoom-up and pan left to right to get the idea, especially the last image...

To say that all of this was the "calm before the storm" is to express an astounding understatement. Still, in a blog that has so frequently focused upon my suffering and seemingly unending series of challenges, I found writing this post to be cathartic. Rather than expressing my typical cynicism, I thought it more valuable to remember these good days publicly. It was a brief time of peace and calm.

Having said all that, on the tenth day after hooking up my heater, after nearly two weeks of relaxing existence, good food, healthful walking and inspirational contemplation...and just before bedtime...the propane...ran out...