Richards Bend Cabin Slide Show - 2000 - 2005

2004 - Life at the Cabin November 20 I also have my discontent moments here at the place. Not as many as I used to have, elsewhere. But I still have them.. Take this morning for example. Mornings are a busy time. Just like most folks, here you have to hit the ground running. I leave one lamp burning all night, very low. Once I turn it up, and brighten the place bit, I go around and light the remaining five. This can take a minute or two. certainly not the flip of a switch we all know and love, if not outright take for granted. Then if it's cold, like it is this morning, with the fire having died down or gone completely out, it's hard to get out from under the covers and into the cold air filling the cabin. Having provided myself with enough light to avoid a serious accident, usually shivering, I fling the stove door open, and scrounge around in the ashes for what ever coals may still be hot. Once I find some, I toss in a randomly oriented wad of small cut wood to kindle a new fire. So I sit and blow and blow until flame bursts forth. Then, as that crackles and burns, I get larger pieces of pine, then oak and fill the stove full. Once I'm sure it will take off, I dive back under the covers, wondering how I could have ever gotten from underneath them - they are pure comfort! The shutout of the cold air is bliss. It usually takes about ten minutes for the stove fire to warm the place, so sometimes I fall back to sleep, it having only been four or five in the morning anyway. Other days, like today, I go ahead and stay awake. Other days still, I stay up and wonder why the hell I don't go back to bed. I'm not sure what it is, but once I've been up for more than about ten minutes, I can't get back into bed. It feels funny to me. like I am lazy or something. I've been up an hour now, so there's no way I’d go back to bed, even though I feel like it. I feel tired and sleepy and I feel irritable. It wasn't enough I was feeling sleepy, but I knocked over and smashed a globe to one of my lamps; a $2 item, but when you don't have another one, and six lamps are exactly what it takes for it to be reasonably bright in here, a replacement globe is worth more than $2. Why on earth I don't keep extras is beyond me. Perhaps it has to do with the fact, there just isn't enough space here (16x16, the size of the medium sized bed room) to actually store anything. I can only keep what I will consume within the next few days, and that's about it. You'd think that lamp globes wouldn't take much space, but it's not only the space for the globe they need. They also need space around them to insure that nothing is placed on them or falls on them to smash them up, so I don't store any here. I just brave a dimmer cabin until I can get to town. And I usually don't mind the dirty floors, but sometimes it gets to me. I sweep my floors at least three times a day, and each time, it looks as if they haven't been swept in a year. Like I said, I usually don't mind, but I was thinking about it yesterday, as I was directing a plume of dust and debris out the door, this wouldn't work for most people. It only takes a moment to sweep the small space. But sometimes, I can't stand the feel of grit and sand under my shoes, and I have to sweep it again and again and again. No, I'm not the most content individual in the world this morning, but I am still glad to be here. The stars last night and this morning were and are something to be happy about. So many stars in fact, it's hard to make out the constellations you're so familiar with. There are so many more stars visible, the ones you know so well are hidden in the multitude. And the visitors. I like what visitors I have here. Yesterday, a man that I know of (I don't know him well, I just know who he is - he owns land on the other side of the mountain from me) came through here, asking if I had seen any of this hound dogs - beagle hounds. I hadn't seen them, nor had I heard them baying, but as I told him, it had been raining, and my tin roof makes it hard for me to hear anything during a rain storm. He said that he'd lost track of them down the river "a ways" from me, and they were last seen headed up this way. I told him that I’d keep and eye out and he was appreciative. Then talked about a great many things. the caves, the mountains, the old people and the old home places up in the high ways now victim to natures reclamation - and he knew so much. So even on my discontent days, I still have my great joys. I am working on an autobiographical history of Richards Bend. My autobiography from the period since I arrived here in 1998. all five years. I think you might find it interesting to know how I came to be here, so far away from my Son, where the idea hit me, and how and why I became so neurotic as to leave the comforts of a large city, and move not only to a small town, not only the back country of a small town, but to the woods. I am looking forward to writing it. I am looking forward to you reading it.