My time in the city was reasonably well spent. I saw a couple of friends I wanted to see, and ran into two others less deliberately but no less delightfully. I am also caught up on my blog and uploaded my recent writing to my email. It is horrifying to think of losing something I’ve written. Supposedly it would improve on the second writing, but I have my doubts.

I came back to the bush at the beginning of a storm after I was done shopping at the grocer. We often forget however, that change is the one constant of the universe. As I shouldered my bags and went down the hill I saw a burned out hulk that had been Bashful’s 4-wheeler and the trees and ground were black. Apparently Bashful’s fire had gotten away from him. I first wondered if he was OK, so I dropped my bags and went back up the hill to talk to him.

I thought he had company, but as he said when he came to the door, he was just talking to himself.

He told me he’d been creekside on Saturday evening, had a fire and some candles, slept in his chair until two in the morning and then went to bed after blowing out the candles.

He had a few theories about how the fire started. He said his tea lights might have been overturned by a raccoon or squirrels after he’d ineffectually put them out. He also advanced the theory that squirrels might have chewed the wires on the 4-wheeler and that led to an electrical short.

I imagine that a spark from the fire, unseen when he was sleeping, lay amongst the needles under the firs and when a night wind blew up, or it had gathered enough ember, it ignited. Although he had a few propane canisters, neither of us heard them blow. The fire likely happened sometime around four or five in the morning. We’re lucky he didn’t cause a forest fire. I would have lost my pallet shed and car and he might have lost his life if it extended to his cabin. Luckily, it’s been wet lately so the fire didn’t spread beyond the circle of small firs and one poplar. He apologized abut the trees and said he would clean up the mess, but I told him I was just happy he was alright and that it was too bad about his 4-wheeler.

Apparently, after he found the mess, he came to talk to me in the cabin, ostensibly to tell me what happened but he also said he just wanted to talk to someone. I imagine he was pretty upset. He said he approached the cabin early on Sunday morning, but I was sound asleep and apparently snoring quite loud. He mentioned that several times. He didn’t want to disturb me so he left me alone. I saw no signs of the fire when I left yesterday, but I didn’t look at his land, and I’d been occupied with tearing up what I thought might be poison ivy by the stream.

After I left Bashful, and he thanked me for stopping to check on him, I lifted the remains of the 4-wheeler. Likely I could haul it up the hill, although it would be arduous. I might go out and do that tomorrow to help him out. I came back into the bush and ate dinner, and then put away my groceries and checked the garden. One of my zucchinis is ready to eat tomorrow so I think I’ll pick it, and everything else is in good shape. A slug has taken out another cucumber plant, but I’ve grown to expect that.

I watched a movie this evening, for I have a theory about how to charge my laptop. It overloads my 12 volt adapter so I’m going to hook up the 120 volt adapter to the inverter with the laptop off, which should simplify the electronics the rough sine wave has to work through. It should be able to charge that way and then I can use it at night until its battery dies. The battery is now at sixty-seven percent so we’ll see how that works tomorrow.

I’m tired now, so I’m going to do some editing on Naked in the Road and then crash. I never sleep that much in the city. I take advantage of the internet to get some work done, and to read science articles and talk to my friends, and then wake early since I don’t know what time it is and I don’t have my watch.