October 30

Mallards on the creek this morning, the first I’ve seen. The deer are moving across the Snake Hills, passing into and out of view as they cross patches of snow. The sun is strong today, and the remaining snow cover from yesterday’s squall will be gone by this afternoon.

Here is how it was: the house served as a reed instrument to the wind; the snow parallel to the horizon so that it never actually fell to the ground, but was captured by vertical objects. The power went out, soon trailed by the phone and water. All day in a house with magnificent windows, I stoked the wood fire, padded from room to room, ate almonds and raisins, made hot tea from the pot on the wood stove. I brought out paper and envelopes and beautiful stamps with images of clouds, and wrote letters to my aunts and uncles. I climbed into bed and read a novel, a beautiful story about a man who took many years to build a tower of stone over his wife’s grave. My housemates and I gathered for dinner from the grill: steaks, asparagus, red peppers, potatoes, onions, rutabagas and apples.

There is an insistent schedule here. It revolves around the available daily light, the sunrise, the drawn out sunset over the BigHorns, the pelt of rain or horizontal snow. When the sky is clear and the sun strong, it is time to walk up into the hills, take off most of your clothes, nap on a rock outcropping, find a snakeskin. When it is mild, it is time to take two quilts to the bank of the stream and sleep.

When the moon is cast in red from planet-shadow, it is time to walk to the meadow in the dark, spread ground cloth, quilts, sleeping bags. Let your eyes remember their scotopic vision, let them shift from cones to rods so that the best vision is from the corner of the eye. Wait for the clouds to shift away, with the moon already eclipsed. Tell stories with your companions about color, about sound, about gadgets you have loved, about wakes. Stay until midnight.