Departing the Sensory

Observations Part 2 are a collection of selected email and text messages from the last couple of days. (I've done minor editing for clarity and anonymity.) Regarding climate disruption: We [the US] can't get our act together about shit that's killing people now, why would we ever get it together for shit that's going to kill people later (soon).  The economy: People our age sometimes discuss retirement in various contexts, like how's the 401k doing and stuff like that. I've been saying for a while now that I don't worry too much about retirement savings because I think there's around a 30% chance money will be irrelevant to the sorts of problems we'll be having at retirement age. I would have put money on climate disruption before virus, but whatever. Broken legs and blown knees: What got me most was force-realizing how much mobility -- and I don't mean doing moderately impressive for my age athletic feats on skis, I mean like...

I went to my physical therapy appointment today as scheduled four weeks ago, the day after I had surgery to repair a fractured tibia plateau & torn meniscus. My PT folks are at a local clinic that does urgent care, but is not in any way a hospital. I decided to go even though I generally think we should all be acting like we're on house arrest, because there's a non-zero chance that I'll walk with a limp for the rest of my life if I don't get this recovery right. Driving in to park I saw for the first time an actual drive-thru testing setup. The clinic has put up a big tent like you'd see for a wedding or event, and the tent covers five parking spaces. Apparently, people who have been prescreened can drive up and park, and clinicians in hazmat gear do the nasal swab thing thru the window. (I don't know what prescreening looks like in Utah right now -- it's still very difficult at best to get tested -- and I assume the test is the swab, though I didn...

Pausing, I stand at the top of the world now well into February with my concerns half your wood, half your hay behind me. I stand in the clarity of my neighbor's expanse of sky it might be ten degrees I move snowshoed above the earth our uplands a frozen sea I am in shirtsleeves barehanded to stillness where the bottom of my fear drops away. - Jay Robinson, 2016

Look closely ... this is "snap wood." Not a tree species, but a name given to the process of cutting up a small tree for firewood, where one makes each cut deep enough so that a long section can be easily "snapped" by hand. Some care must be taken to leave enough wood at the end of making each cut so that the whole tree can be hauled easily without breaking up. If your stove takes 16 inch wood, make your cuts 12 to 14 inches apart, as the remaining hinge of wood will break with the wood's grain, rendering a somewhat longer stick. For years, whenever I cut up pole sized firewood, I remember Frank Farrin, who first told me about snap wood. In fact, no one else has ever mentioned snap wood before or since. I recall him at the store, foot up on the newspaper rack, describing how Alva Bridges (someone correct me if I'm wrong) would get in his firewood. If anyone else out there is running low on dry wood, find a small dead standing pine or ...

Mid-March. I always think of my father working at the woodpile, and myself tapping maples. Snow's half gone, some bare ground, some crusted snow drifts flecked with a winter's worth of wind driven bark and twigs stripped from nearby trees. Out in the middle of the field, less debris, but still bits of straw or feathers, or whatever skims the fastest on thin crust. What's left of winter's drama is fossilized in March's freeze and thaw -- a broken stem of Queen Anne's Lace lies in its cold imprint, the scant remains of a kill marked by its frozen blood. I notice these things in March. It's the time between seasons, a place between worlds: out from under the blanket of winter, yet not merged into the moment of summer. I see the shortening shadow. I count even paced footsteps. I hang my sap buckets made from my father's old George Washington pipe tobacco cans with homemade wire bails. I hang my buckets from the maples that line the stone wall that runs f...