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 
downfall, 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.
