Nasty Emails and Pleasant Families

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

I went out of the bush today at 2pm, having spent the morning letting the fire go out and packing what I needed. Crossing the stream was easier than I thought, with the garbage bags wrapped around my feet and inside my leaky boots from the illegal dump site. I tied them around my knees and mercifully they didn’t slide down enough or leak enough to get me wet as well as cold in the rushing torrent. There is ice forming on the rocks on the bottom of the stream, what Bashful calls anchor ice, but I jammed my feet in crevices and between rocks and ice and went across the stream fairly successfully.

Once over, I went up the hill to the pallet shed where I shook out the bags, upended the boots, and changed to dry ones I’d brought with me. Then I trudged through the snow to the road, and went to see Bashful, leaving my pack in his driveway in case Dennis came.

I chatted with Bashful a bit, about the birds he feeds, and how cold or warm it’s been lately. Once Dennis and Miriam came, just as I was taking my leave of Bashful, I loaded up my pack of dirty clothes for washing, books I had already edited, and we drove home. There I fired up the computer and dealt with the one hundred of messages that had accumulated in the eight days I’ve been out of touch. Many were junk mail, like office memos that specified what was happening at the university, but there were a few from students about their grades, and Tara about where I was, and one portentous one from Biss which said he wasn’t coming.

He rather angrily listed a long series of reasons why I don’t like him anymore and how that prevents him from coming and then he said we have to get together and talk about it. I have no idea what is going on down there, but right now Cin is away in the Turks and Caicos so maybe he is super stressed with that. The last time we spoke it went well, and he was bringing up things from the summer in support of why he couldn’t come now. Strange.

I dealt with the email, and then downloaded the sixty pages of text from the alphasmart onto my computer. I’ve written a lot here. Thirty-seven thousand words, much of it on the latest Blind Fish novel. I then downloaded the pictures and video from my camera and looked at them wondering what I was going to do with the video, and then I became more social and hung out with the family. Biss’ nasty letter hung over me, for after all his salutation was Merry Fucking Christmas, but I tried to put from my mind what I couldn’t change right then, if ever, and enjoy the family around me. It would be unfair to come out of the woods after a week to be mean to the kids when it is not their fault that I’m upset about something else.

We stayed up quite late talking, and it was three when I was finished spell-checking my long alphasmart document and then talking to Darius about the alternator problems with his car. I also answered email from students and from Christiano about a car he may buy. By 3:30 I was asleep only to wake again at eight when Dennis and Kim were stirring.

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Getting Wet in the Winter

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

You wouldn’t think that a shower in the icy cold greenhouse would be that nice, but I thought again today how it was at least as pleasant as other showers I have had in the UK, for instance, where the bathroom was kept frigid to save on heat, and the stall was tiny. That allowed for no flailing that necessarily must accompany a cold shower. I heat the water on the stove, and then pour it into the shower bag I received from Mike and Carol. Then I go with it and my soap into the stall, leaving a good fire behind me. I shower necessarily quickly, although it is much more pleasant than being bit by flies showering outside in the summer.

Actually, once the slightly too warm water is flowing, and the shower door closed, it warms up in the steamy stall. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMoisture settles on the walls and ceiling, where I can see snow through the greenhouse roof, and when I’m done, I scurry back into the main part of the cabin to dry off in front of the stove. The drips evaporate quickly, and I am warm as I dry and then dress. It’s a bit of a procedure, with the beating of the ice in the rain barrel, the carrying in water to heat on the stove and constantly checking it to make sure it isn’t so warm to burn me, or worse, ruin the shower bag.

Once I’m done, however, I sit in the comfort of the cabin beside the fire, gratified that I have wresting something from the frigid hands of the winter. Outside I would be either freezing or constantly moving. Inside I can shower, lie around and read, and write. We so rarely are thankful for the sheer luxury of our lives.

My stay in the cabin is half over, I realized today. I spent a few days getting here, but most of the time I’ve been building the fire, writing in the evenings, and filling up this word processor with the second installment of the trilogy Blind Fish. When the processor is full, which will likely be tonight, then I need a laptop to empty it. That makes me wish I had the laptop here, although I wish that less when I think of crossing the creek tomorrow.

I was up early today, for it was much colder outside and the temperature inside dropped more quickly. It was minus ten or twelve, and inside it was 45 F or eight Celsius when I got out of bed. Maybe I will have to keep a fire burning for Biss after all. I had a hot fire at one am when I went to sleep, but it was still chilly at seven or so when I woke up.

Speaking of which, today was the first day that I noticed my watch has been an hour off. I guess I set it incorrectly when I flew into Fredericton over a week ago. Small wonder the sun went down so early. My disregard shows how little the watch has meant to me here, although tomorrow I should try to be at the road in time for Dennis to pick me up. If I am too early, and I run into leakage in my hip waders made from two garbage bags, then I will be pretty chilly by the time he arrives. If I am too late, then I condemn him to wading the stream wondering if I am still alive. That’s not fair to inflict on anyone now.

I walked to the stream today, after filling my wood boxes and getting water for a shower. I tried to get some video of the many tracks around the cabin, and hopefully that turns out. Creekside there are still few tracks, maybe because it is too open and smaller animals fear attack from the air. I saw the tracks of what possibly might be a bobcat, although I am not sure. The tracks might have been a bit small for them. Also I would have thought the pattern would be different. Unfortunately the snow was soft enough that it obscured the pad marks.

I contemplated crossing the creek today, but once I arrived I changed my mind. It is a bit higher for some reason, and is starting to freeze on the rocks on the bottom. That’s when I decided that I should wade using garbage bags inside my boots to keep my socks and pants dry. I will carry an extra set of boots too, so I have something to wear on the other side other than what I have in the pallet shed. I have a pair there that Biss can wear for he might have a bad crossing too when he arrives. It looked like the water will remain open for as long as I am here.

Other than what is now becoming my accustomed walk, and some video and still shots, I worked on Isolates and Survivors. It is quite rough, and I am surprised that a story like “Doc” which is quite crazy already, was published without an editor catching what now look like obvious errors. I will have to be more careful with that book, and run another paper draft of it when I get back. Maybe that will be a book that Colleen can read. Suffice it to say the book is slow going, and I might not finish it tonight in time to pack it out tomorrow. I’ve read nothing else other than editing my books. I anticipated reading a lot here, but my own writing has taken quite a bit of my time and I’ve slept more than I would have thought.

I began packing for tomorrow, since I want to take out some laundry as well. That way I have fresh clothes to wear instead of just going through those I have here. It is really quiet here. I can even hear the tiny tick of coals in the fire. Oddly, it stays cool upstairs, but I think I am going to close the upstairs window for when I’m here at least, and see if it dries out a bit. It was dripping a bit today, and the inside of the metal roof is moist.

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The Changes in a Person

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

The night is very still. Outside the sky is clear for the first time since I arrived nearly, and the stars are brilliant and plenteous. My water supply is still largely due to the rain and snow that came off my roof and I collected in the first night here. The barrel freezes on the top, but I beat at it with firewood until I can dip my spigot container I am using in the cabin for washing up. I have gone through the firewood under my step, which I cut in perhaps a half hour total in the summer with the electric chain saw, and I am now a tenth of the way into my woodshed’s supply. I have more than enough, but I should get serious about my woodshed if I want to be here over some winter. The supply I have will last longer now though, that I have started to let the fire go out in the night.

I sleep much better straight through the night and also I think the twelve to fifteen degrees helps too. My two blankets are more than enough to keep me warm, and it is nice to not have to deal with jumping up all night and the heat when the fire alights. I wonder how Biss will deal with that when he comes, for he is accustomed to twenty five degrees and will brook little change to his environment. I wonder if I have grown increasingly rigid as well.

In my long poem, Multiple Personality Disorder the cavemen claims that the acorn does not describe the oak that it becomes. Change is not so easy to locate as we think. I know I have gone through some changes, and many of them I even see as positive, but I am uncertain of the exact dimensions.

When I went to the stream today, I noticed there were more animals around. A few rabbits had crossed my trail, laboriously sinking deep in the fresh rabbit_tracksdownfall, and mice were busy with their small lives, running from one indistinguishable hole to another across the top of the snow. I expected more tracks near the creek, but I’ve been consistently disappointed. Most of the tracks seem to be near the cabin. I’m sure I provide lots of housing in and below my various outbuildings. By the tracks and the hole burrowed beneath it in the snow, I expect there is a squirrel living in my woodshed, but he may find himself surprised when I dig deep enough into the pile to expose him.

I didn’t do any editing today, strangely, for I was busy with cutting tiles and lying them beneath my stove, a project I have waited a long time for enough light to do, and I put a stove pipe around the one in the loft, in case I have a wayward spark sailing out of a crack and lighting the upstairs. Apparently I changed the vertical stove pipe that used to be upstairs just in time, for the metal was thin and weak at what would have been the join above the loft floor that led to the side exit. The pipe is not really stove pipe, but rather ducting, so I should never have used it anyway. It should be fine as a cover for the real stove pipe though. It does make me consider again making something like a Selkirk flue in the loft. I cannot afford a break there, where I would not notice it until the rafters were alight.

I am eating through the last of my food, although I still have lots of bread. That is good, for I am meeting Dennis soon as he comes to get me on Sunday afternoon. The week has flown past, and if Biss comes on boxing day, then my trip will be over soon. I will likely get him to drop me at Dennis’ on the twenty-ninth when he leaves, since it would not be worth it to make Dennis make the drive again. Then I would stay the night there, and on the thirtieth go to Fredericton somehow, and then fly the next evening on the 31st. That might work the best for everyone, although it means closing up the cabin as Biss is champing at the bit to leave.

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A Stormy Day with the Mad Trapper

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

The storm the radio had been threatening me with came last night. It began yesterday afternoon, but when I woke this morning there was at least seven inches of snow on the ground, which means travel is slightly more difficult. Just tonight I was thinking of how to cross the stream and keep dry when it occurred to me that I could build stilt shoes, like disco rockers used to wear in the eighties.

I plan to be at the road by Sunday at three to meet Dennis and family, but in case they are late, I’d like to arrive on the other side with dry feet. As I was designing the shoes mentally, however, I had a sudden vision of tipping sideways and spilling into the stream with giant clogs on my feet. The idea might work, but I’d need canes to make sure I didn’t fall or trip on the rocks on the bottom. If the water continues to drop, I can also wade. I think it might be low enough now just above where my bridge would be, but I’d hate to be wrong about that.

With the fresh snow, which still fell throughout the day, there were a few tracks around, such as the squirrels outside my cabin and beside the tin shed and woodpile, and mice near the tin shed. As well, and this is more confusing, there were tracks of a coyote or fox, circling around the tin shed, coming coyote_tracksvaguely in the direction of the big pine, and then going to the workshop, where the tracks go in front of the building and then circle to the back. A rabbit’s tracks leave from underneath the workshop, so possibly the two are related. I’m not sure what animal it was though, and the tracks were old enough that I couldn’t see a paw print. All I have are the stride length, general paw size, and the sweep of snow that shows the paws scraped the snow as the animal strode forward. Interesting nonetheless.

I walked to the creek again today, but there were no more tracks except presumably the same animal, same signs anyway, going towards the west and crossing my trail about sixty metres from the cabin. The creek has snow buildup in the water along its edges, which I presume would turn to ice if the weather was a bit colder. Biss will be annoyed if he has to get wet to cross the stream so hopefully things freeze before he comes.

Since I was up so early, having slept before midnight, I was napping by noon. I’ve stopped feeding the fire at night, since the cabin actually is more pleasant when the fire dies and at twelve to fifteen degrees I am still in bed. Also, I sleep better.

Today I took some more footage, although I don’t know what I am going to do with it all. Maybe I will make a cabin-in-the-winter movie, with stills. I’m not sure, and I haven’t been very inventive with what I have. Too bad I didn’t film crossing the creek the first time on the fragile cracking ice and supported by an old door, but I had other concerns at the time. I also worked more on Glooscap’s Plan, which is a long book, nearly longer than Flat Earth and almost as much as Naked in the Road. I should have it done soon though, although it has been slow going with many awkward turns of phrase and repetition.

Today has been a lazier day than usual. I wonder if this is how Bashful is in the winter, and he only becomes active once it warms in the spring. In my case, unfortunately, I have a short spring, since Winnipeg is barely warming when I leave in late April. Here in April spring is in full force, and the bugs are starting to contemplate whether they want to play the same game one more season.

I was thinking today about the so-called Mad Trapper, who evaded the RCMP for thirty days before they brought in a plane and he crossed the Richardson mountains. The crossing itself is worthy of note, since the two passes were guarded and he went a different route. The local people of the north said that no one could cross the Richardson Mountains in the winter alone, and that even in a party it was a dubious crossing at the passes in the winter. The Mad Trapper crossed during a blizzard so his tracks were hidden and he did it where there was no pass.

They later suspected that he climbed thousands of metres in a blizzard with visibility only a few metres and -70 or more with the wind chill, while resting in dry creek beds under the ice. They also think that he never slept for the two to three days it took to cross.

I was thinking of him because I was ploughing through wet deep snow, which is what greeted the Mad Trapper when he arrived on the western side of the mountains. With more precipitation and a slightly warmer climate on the western side of the mountains, he was labouring through deep snow pack with his ten pound homemade snowshoes. The plane spotted him easily, once they realized he had outsmarted them once again, and then they trapped him on the surface of the Porcupine River.

There they called to him to surrender, he waved, and then they continued shooting until he was dead. It was finally a shot from the plane which killed him, severing his spine and adding to the trauma of forty-five days on the run in -60 temperatures, not being able to shoot an animal because they would hear his gun so subsisting on snaring hares and squirrels and killing gray jays. He was some thirty pounds lighter but still defiant when they killed him, and it was only later, standing over his body and realizing they knew nothing about him, did they begin to understand he had committed no crime until a RCMP officer decided him not opening his door to them was suspicious and tried to smash it in. The general feeling in the north is that they should have left him alone.

I thought about him today as I laboured through the new snow, breaking trail with my boots filling with snow, knowing I have a warm cabin to return to, feeling my chest tighten with exertion. I thought about how tough and downright stubborn he must have been that he cared so little about such privation.

If the cops were to come here, deciding that I should not be alone all this week, or that my behaviour needed explanation, I don’t think I would shoot them through the door but I would sorely resent the intrusion. I understand what he felt. We don’t come to the bush for its social aspects. At least partly, we come here to escape them.

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The Palimpsest that is Our Lives

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

I was listening to the radio today before I got out of bed and it was one of those days of poor reception. I was tuned to CBC in the foreground of the transmission, while in the background, for all the world resembling NB politics, a strident French voice fought to become clear.

I was reminded of the palimpsest, the text within text which was the result of the medieval monks reusing vellum. They would carefully scrape away a top layer of the text to be overwritten, for vellum was expensive and worth the trouble, and then they would overwrite that with the new story. Even now, under the ultraviolet light of modern researchers, the older narrative can be seen, struggling through, demanding to be heard.

The sixties theorists made much of this, and claimed that allusion and other references to earlier works, and texts which used such techniques deliberately were calling upon this doubled structure which is the natural by-product of cumulative culture. In fact, they went on to argue, in all text, in all utterances, this ghostly voice of the forgotten, the deliberately excised, the vanquished, can be heard faintly trying to assert its presence.

In truth, I thought only briefly about what those theorists had said, and instead I was reminded of the voices that a person carries within them. Not so much the diverse voice of history, such as the use of “holy” in Winnipeg, but rather the personal pasts which demand a hearing. It can be heard in expressions known only to a small group that have their origin in a specific historical event of meaning only to them, or more significantly, in the debris and misunderstandings we carry into our own future.

Outdated attitudes and meaningless opinions, such as notions about gay people or the position of women, persist in the culture in a kind of cultural palimpsest and trouble us all when they reach out of the past and demand to be heard. Likewise, the religions of the world, with their various and exclusionary truths about the ineffable should surely stop their shrill shrieking from the vegetable past. The reptilian demands of blunt bodily necessity, such as ideas about beauty and the transformative nature of love which may be at its base the urge to procreate are all dragged with us into a future which may not be suited for their incessant demands.

More positively, the voice of those we’ve loved, the ones lost to time, death, or merely change, are there as well. And we can hear their thin voices piping up when least heeded. Expressions come unbidden to our minds and scenes we’d thought forgotten and buried are pulled out and pawed over as the demands of the mind deep voices are met.

In my own life I hear my foster father’s stories even as I hear my foster mother’s condemnation. Caught between the magic of narrative as an escape from the mundane, voice as a combatant in an unequal fight with the vagaries of coincidence and the arbitrary nature of life, there is also the octave shift of derision and litany of shortcomings.

Perhaps story is what is left, when both voices are gone. That story can compete with the arbitrary nature of human spite and the natural world’s huge indifference, or at least story is a tool potent enough in the voices peeking through the quotidian day of the present to offer an escape from the moment, and a light that shines where superstition and vitriol cannot.

I am in my cabin here at noon. The water is dripping off the roof as the heating day encounters the warmth from my fire, and although I left the fire to burn out last night, I slept long and well in the twelve degrees or so of snow_on_the_cabinmorning. The cabin heated quickly, eagerly assuming the 20 degrees I have been keeping, and inspired by the light snowfall and the rabbit and squirrel tracks around the cabin, I am writing once again, mimicking by twitching fingers the outside world of still flakes falling onto the blank medium of text.

The creek has only dropped marginally today, and the expected snowfall has only amounted to half a centimetre. Here, after my too hot shower in the cold, and tasty fried veggie sausage and onion garlic meal, the fire is warm and I am sleepy. Outside the mix of snow and rain is falling, and my fire is too hot because I was cooking. It’s early evening still, just after six, but it always feels later due to the darkness. Soon it will be the longest night of the years, in just a few days, then the pendulum will swing again and summer will come back to this northern land.

You appreciate summer so much more in a northern climate, especially in Winnipeg where I have no doubt it is seasonably cold again. I’ve no doubt my cabin would perform quite differently in that climate.

I am now editing Glooscap’s Plan, which I am also relieved to see is a decent if strange book. There are even some funny bits in it, although for the most part it is an environmental manifesto, using Aboriginal stories and present social and environmental ills. I should have a few books ready to go when I get back. I wonder what will become of this enterprise. I wonder if these books are only a few grains of sand in the huge ocean that is amazon, or whether they will distinguish themselves somehow and become more commonly read. I am interested in seeing what my statcounter and amazon and smashwords purchase reports look like when I get to internet on Sunday. Also, once I get the physical copies up and ready to release, which has stalled at the proof stage in a rather trying set of problems with covers, I am interested to see how they do. I wonder how many books I will have by spring.

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News From Beyond the Cabin

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

I was up late last night, listening to some music on my mp3 player and feeding the fire. It was chilly by comparison, and when I checked the water barrel I have outside, it had a centimeter of ice on the top. The tap for it no longer works, but I can scoop water from the top so that is not worrying. Because I was up so late, and then awake for an hour or so around dawn, I slept until eleven. I find I am wondering if I should get up when I wake in the morning and then I remember there is no pressure on my time here and I can sleep as long as I please. In fact, I should use this opportunity to get as much sleep as possible, before I am back to the busy school schedule of the winter.

I let the fire almost completely die this morning but to my relief the cabin didn’t drop below twelve degrees or so. I guess that the thermal massOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA of the stove, the wooden walls and the over three hundred books, means this small space holds the heat well.

I am knee deep in a read through of Flat Earth, which is going quite well. It is a better book than I remember and has some great characterization. So many characters as well; I’m surprised that I kept track of all of them.

It is now dark out, at six thirty, and I have heard about the Russian currency collapse on the news. It is sickening that Harper was chortling about the losses of the Russians as if they have had it easy over the last few economic collapses.

Also there has been a school shooting in Pakistan, which makes me wonder about my Pakistani students and whether they knew anyone who was killed amongst the one hundred and forty children.

Here I am far away from the world’s problems. Instead, I check on the creek to see how much it has fallen in the night. Today I brought the pallet which I had used to cross when I first arrived, and otherwise read and relaxed through the day.

There are many people out there, I am sure, running from place to place with no more reason to their actions than an ant (less so, for an ant works for the hill), who would willingly come here for their holidays. They would love to park their car they can barely afford the fuel for, drop off the presents they hurriedly and thoughtlessly bought, and bring instead some food on their back, and pick up some wood on the way, while they come up the hill to join me in my solitude.

I heard a jet overhead today, so I know the world beyond the radio is still functional, or dysfunctional, but other than that, and the odd chickadee, I am alone with my books and my thoughts.

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Settling into the Cabin

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

Today seemed to breeze past. I woke four or five times in the night to put wood on the fire; the last time was likely around seven or eight in the morning when I built up the fire, went back to sleep and woke again at ten. I have no alarm clock bidding me to stand in the cold for a bus, no one waiting on me to arrive, no fear that I am missing anything by being so removed from society for a moment. Instead, I spend my day as I please and replenish wood as the fire needs it, and write and edit.

During the day strangely, I mostly edit, although if I were in cover_logbooks_and_journalsWinnipeg I would be spending that time writing likely. Today I sailed again on the Whimsey, and canoed down the St. John River. I’d forgotten lots of details of those trips, and it further establishes that what I say about our outsourced memory is true, at least for me.

I think a journal or a diary, even the modern version of facebook’s timeline and blogs is a post-humanist way that we outsource our personality. At one remove from ourselves, we ask this technology to keep track of our scattered selves, while we allow those memories to languish and finally erode entirely. I had forgotten that ten years ago by the sea I had met people, called my friends, and worked on my novel In Light of Ray and my short stories which would become Working After the Collapse. The terrors and exhilaration of sailing across the strait of Georgia in the dark on the wings of a storm have disappeared just as surely as the large jellyfish I saw off some nameless island.

I walked to the stream again today, and the water has dropped another few inches now that the temperatures are below zero, although it is still too high for rubber booting it across. It is going to be even colder tonight so the water will drop more, although apparently there is a storm of snow and rain coming in late in the week.

I am here until Sunday, so the weather conditions mean little to me right now. The cabin is easy to keep warm in these temperatures once it warmed up completely on the first night here, and I can spend my time as leisurely as I wish. On the way back from the stream, however, so the trip would not be a waste, I picked up a piece of birch that had fallen from a tree in the recent storm and brought it to my wood pile on the sawhorse.

I also brought down the remaining carpets from the loft where I have them spread on the floor for extra insulation and softness on the feet. I am now settling into an evening of working on Blind Fish. I am hoping to get a good draft of the second book in the series done here so I can work on it when I get back.

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Writing and Editing in the Woods

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

I must be getting used to waking at night to feed the fire, for it is automatic enough now that I cannot count the next day how many times I rose in the night. Last night I had a fire nearly the whole night, although it burned steadily and slowly. I was up late, and wrote ten pages or so on the next book in the Blind Fish series. This keyboard will hold one hundred pages only and I began to think about how I was here for a week and could likely fill it quite easily. That remains to be seen, however.

I thought I had a mouse problem in the night, which woke me a little more thoroughly, but I think it was a squirrel running back and forth across the roof. I slept this morning until after ten, and wasn’t out of bed until eleven. How the day slides past a person out here. Many people, especially my students, find it unimaginable that I could be here alone for a week at a time, and they would be even more horrified to learn that I am caught here unless I want to wade the stream. But it is actually very pleasant. When boredom strikes I merely glance at my stack of books to edit or the keyboard, for there is always writing to be done.

Today, I ate after my slow start while the fire warmed the cabin, and then I creek_in_the_snowwent for a walk to the creek to see that it is still high. Even less ice is in evidence with the torrent and the melting. I also went to the back of the property to the swamp area where moose have been relatively recently, although there were only the fresh tracks of rabbits.

I was just warming the cabin from my shower, which was an interesting procedure in the cold, warming the water on the stove, pouring it in the shower sack and then suspending in the shower stall where I took a relatively pleasant shower considering it was nearing zero degrees. I had put away my pot and shower bag when Dennis came with news that they would not be visiting on Friday the 19th after all. They have overbooked so they don’t really have time anyway after Erin finishes school to rush to the bush and wade the stream.

Dennis waded in to tell me that, and he didn’t seem too cold, but I imagine there would be some yelling from the girls if they were to do the same. Dennis brought in the door I had used to cross the ice, since it seemed as though I wanted it here. He stayed long enough to warm up a bit, and then left so he wouldn’t have to fight the stream in the dark. I walked out with him for company, and picked up some firewood from the poplars which had come down in the storm on the way back.

Once I was here, I warmed up my leftovers and ate, and then finished the edit or read through of my long poem. Hopefully it will be a bit tighter now. Tonight I thought I would return to my underground community before I sleep, but I am tired from the day and being up late, although a full stomach and a warm cabin likely is taking its toll as well.

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First Night in the Cabin

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

I guess last night was my first night in the cabin alone in the winter, if we disregard that frantic time in November when I was building the shack quickly enough that I could sleep in it instead of my cold car. Then it was minus 3 degrees or so, although it descended as far as minus 10 or 15. Now it is warm, a balmy four or five degrees, and I have a good fire. Even when I go outside, like I did today for wood and to check on the creek, I am never cold. The cabin is very comfortable.

Last night I slept a bit uneasily, as I woke to feed the fire and then again as the night wore on. Also, I had gone to sleep at nine in the evening since I was so overtired from last week of preparation and flights. I was awake at one in the morning to build up the fire again although the cabin wasn’t really cold. It had dropped to 14 degrees perhaps. I stumbled to and fro a few times in the night to do that and then, after lying awake in the light of a cloud-obscured moon, I slept again. Only when it was late morning and I woke for a final time at 10 am, did I realize I had slept over a period of at least twelve hours. I rose, built the fire, washed up outside, since my water barrel was full from the rain and melt from the roof in the night. Then I walked around a bit, cut up the tree the storm had dropped on my path, and listened to the radio. Then, lying in the warmth on my bed, I slept again for some twenty minutes. I shall certainly sleep enough here.

I have been working my way through Coming Home to Newfoundland, the talking animal book, and I am pleasantly surprised to see it is more than merely that. It is more of an environmental treatise and a call to arms, and it might even be sellable if I get it up on Amazon, which I plan to do shortly after I get back. In the meantime I think I will see if Miriam has time to read it. I’d like her opinion on its readability. Now the fire is built up in the evening, the light is gone now at six pm, and I have an entire evening of writing and editing ahead of me. I think I will try to finish editing this book, which is surprisingly clean given that I have likely read through it only once. Then I will write a synopsis before I start on another editing or writing job that will wipe it from my mind.

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In the Cabin in the Winter

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Barry Pomeroy

I am in the cabin now, after thinking about being here for so long. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what being in the cabin will be like, and reality rarely lives up to what actually happens, but here the fire is roaring as it strives to warm the place, and the rain and melting snow melting off the roof is drumming. I am tired from the trip.

The flight which left Winnipeg tried to land in Montreal twice and then landed in Toronto for refueling and releasing the passengers for Halifax, and then took us back to Montreal where they had plowed out from under the blowing snow enough to land the plane. Then I waited in line for over an hour, watching the next flight from Fredericton drift closer and closer. Finally I was at the counter and after a quick phone call I was running down the electric walkway to see if I could catch a flight that was ostensibly leaving in ten minutes. It was delayed too, of course, and I heaved with dry coughs as I took the thirty minutes to recover from the run. Once aboard, it was a bit rough, and arrived in Fredericton late. I taxied to Mike and Carol’s place where Mike met me at the door, up by alarm, at one am.

It was still a late night, for I sent information to Air Canada trying to track down my luggage that was likely either in Toronto or Montreal. Luckily, they called this morning, just a few hours later while I was trying to meet up with my friend’s kid but she was examined out and had forgotten. But I met my friend on campus and then went back to find my luggage and buy food for the cabin.

Grocery shopping for the winter is very different than what I normally do. Typically I worry about food going bad in the heat, but in the winter I have remember that some food can go bad after freezing, although the food I normally worry about rotting I can keep frozen now. I bought three loaves of bread, a bag of basmati rice, and lots of tofu products. Also since I don’t have to worry about soy milk going off I can but two litre jugs. I have the perishables in the porch, while the fire is hot enough now that I am getting sleepy after bring up so late last night.

Dennis came by to pick me up after work and I jumped in the back while he picked up Dean and his daughter Katie, so we got to meet after all. Once we were home and were sitting around the table with the family it felt like summer again. I visit them often when I am in the cabin, and it is always a delight. We covered a hundred topics and I gave Miriam a toolbox only to find out in a whispered conference with her mother that she already had one wrapped and under the tree. Ah well, I guess that means it is a good gift. I am not a gift giver, typically, but I wanted to support Miriam in her interest in tools, and I had the toolbox from my friend.

Because we were up so late I tried to sleep in but I was thinking about how to get across my stream considering how much rain we’d had. The creeks are over their banks and I was worried until Kim drove me to the bush and I saw the creek covered with broken ice. Large panels of ice were cracked in the middle and melting under the middle of the creek and water was rushing over the top of the ice on both sides. I laid down a pallet and then an old door and walked over them, since I didn’t trust the ice. I expect the middle of the ice IMG_7738_smallwhere the crack is thinning and likely dangerous. If the ice cracked I would likely be pulled under the ice. I wasn’t, although the ice cracked a bit under the door.

Once I had carried my two heavy backpacks over, as well as the four litres of water and a bag of three loaves of bread, I pulled the wood on shore where it wouldn’t get washed away if the ice breaks and the water rises.

The cabin is in excellent shape and now quite warm and cozy. The fire is heavy coals and the temperature is 22 or so. I am heavy with sleep as I write this, looking forward to being here and the peace of my solitude, although my foreign students don’t really understand it.

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