Gettin' By the Best I Can
Silliness…somebody brought in
2 big boxes of donuts this morning
and I’ve been on a sugar high since.
Woe unto anyone who approaches
when I come down!
Have you seen one of these?
In case this isn’t Christmasy enough, here’s Krink to wish y’all HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
This week a mean streak of violent storms pounded us in Western Kentucky. Storms happen, the Cabin is built halfway up a ridge so shouldn’t flood, up here in town I didn’t hear any sirens. I even worked late to get stuff done and didn’t leave the factory until after 7 pm.
I stay up in town during the week to be close to work, but could still barely get home. The buckets of rain falling were hippo-sized! 20 mph all the way. That put me in a state of agitation by the time I got to the house.
I turned on the radio to get the alerts. Severe thunderstorms, yeah, yeah. I opened a can of beans for supper. Then I heard this:
I have NEVER EVER heard Flint Springs called out in an alert of any kind! It is not a town, it has no traffic light or post office, it is a gravel road! Every hamlet called out in the warning at least had a store or something, and they all surround the cabin, my precious, beloved home place as if they were the red circles around the big red cabin-shaped bullseye!
My heart thumped like mad. I turned the radio up to hear a repeat, maybe I was mistaken. The rock and roll station abruptly came back blaring Jimi Hendrix ominously whispering, “…and the wind cried MARY…”
Rural areas don’t have eager reporters nearby. I don’t have any close neighbors. Nobody would know. Schrödinger’s Cabin!
I panicked and emailed my boss that first thing in the morning I absolutely had to go to the cabin over an hour away and ease my mind OR face the carnage. I even told him about Jimi. I wavered…I could go now…no stupid, the weather was still too way too rough and the way there was probably flooding. Have faith. Have common sense – what could I do there at midnight? I forced myself to wait.
At dawn (so I could see the debris on the road) I headed south. I measured my breathing carefully until I got to the gravel and had to get out to move big limbs off the road. A very tall tree had fallen across the road but was held up enough by the trees on the other side for me to get through. I craned my neck to get the first glimpse of the cabin as I powered up the steep driveway.
Pristine, even the flags. Halleluiah!
The very first time I travelled from faraway San Diego to the remote reaches of a Western Kentucky forest, I fell swoopy-doopy in love. The Realtor I’d visited was in Elizabethtown. I wanted to build a cabin in the woods. Nada, nothing available, all the woods being sectioned up and bulldozed for subdivisions, sadness. The hour I was to leave the motel for the airport, she called and breathlessly rushed to say she’d just had a miracle pop up on her screen.
I sped over and met her at the door. She told me a 100 acre forested lot just came up on the wire, not even formally listed yet. And they only wanted $35,000 for it! She got a somber look and added that it was almost a hundred miles west.
We went and we poked around a little in the pouring rain. Gee, I wasn’t sure…We went back to the Realtor’s house and she let me stay there.
I called home and said I’d be away for one additional day, then remembered to change the flight due to family emergency. Sort of… The next morning I drove back out and everything seemed different, me and the trees in cosmic communion. The wonderfully sunny day was rather far along before I’d stopped wandering the deer paths, swooning in awe of the cacophony of birdsong and ogling the brilliant wildflowers. Before I got back in the car, felt the strangest, I couldn’t believe I was doing it compulsion. I hugged a big ‘ol tree. Tight.
I got back to the Realtor’s and picked up my plunder so I could return to the airport in Louisville. I had to talk a 35 grand commitment over with Bob, we had to look over the finances, we had to see if this could integrate into our plans, I had to convince him with a thousand pictures. I drove away. About 100 feet.
I ran back crying and signed the papers.
I have NEVER regretted it.
It’s Love A Tree Day, and as ABBA sang, “I do, I do, Id, I do, I do!”
Holy cow, just writing this has me in tears.
An Itty-Bitty Bobber!
Fudge likes it.
Want to see one of the top reasons I want to live way out in the woods in a log cabin? This is what I saw, heard and loved when I walked out the front door this morning:
I have a fervent hope that Puxatawney (sp?) Phil was wrong this year! A spiffily dressed gentleman holding the poor creature high somehow inferred 6 more weeks of winter. But I have peach trees and plums blooming! No hard freezes, please…pretty please?
The first harbinger of Spring has been in bloom all week everywhere I look around the cabin, and how beautiful they are. There are several spots were the flowers cover square yards of ground. I rather like this brightening of the drab woodland, myself. The Wild Branch is still up – rain, rain, rain. Better than snow, snow, snow like some of you poor souls are getting.
I thought I’d post a few timely pictures to show I’m still alive and kicking! Fall is my favorite time of the year; the weather starts cooling and I can cozy up to thick, soft clothes. Who doesn’t enjoy the vibrant colors of a majestic hardwood forest? And fortunate me – I live in the midst of a beautiful one. See the flocks of silhouetted birds headed for the beaches, see some of the squirrels hoarding nuts while other sneak up and steal them, see the evening sun arrive sooner and sooner.
Write down what size furnace filters you need and get a pack now because you’ll be too busy with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to think of them later. And a note to self, make up some of that superlatively soft fleece and faux fur you got on sale last spring…you have the patterns, now find the time!
My sci-fi eBook The Might of Defiance is FREE for the next couple days! If you wanted to be kind and review it, now would be a good time to get your Kindle copy. Remember, you can get a Kindle reader download for whatever device you’re using, if not a Kindle.
Could there be a brighter harbinger?
A panorama of flowers trying to ward off the mean old cold
The bright early plum
She wants to bloom free
Says winter’s a bum
I agree with the tree
Apples, coaching the laggard trees beyond
And the moss the moss on the stone is listening
As is the little strawberry nestled in the hay
Spring is coming, surely any day!
MARCH SNOW? NO!
How Would You Do It? 