As she got the horse watered and fed, with a warm blanket draped over him, giving him some precious oats as a thank you, she realized that this seemingly sturdy body, that serves her subtlety and so well, is only so much meat, and her thoughts and life history would only be a night’s sustenance to some creature of the woods… or to fate.
As the snows gave way to rain, she thinks hard about what the upcoming winter would bring. She has enough to eat, and enough wood to keep her place livable if the power went out, if one liked living while wearing a parka in the house. But one fall, one accident, one encounter with tooth and claw might be a game changer.
There had been no signs of life in a while, no cars on the road, though in September she swore when she was gathering kindling within a glimpse of the road she saw a guy dressed in dark clothing on a bicycle with a backpack, riding around the mountain before it starts the drop into the next state.
The light is all but gone as she heads back towards the house as if the night had slipped up behind her, her back exposed to the creep of time, so enmeshed by the dimming of the approaching darkness that she scarcely heard its whisper. The moon is out, the shadows diminishing to its curve until even the shadows are drenched in black. There at the edge of her property is a young whitetail. For a moment, there is no movement, the deer’s still form barely visible, its outline growing weightless and faint; the night itself mesmerizing her with its own primal inertia. As the little deer turns to leave, she thinks that with the coming spring, it too may be her time to slip away from here.
As she enters her home and lights a candle, water trails off the tin roof, the sound of it ebbing and flowing, lapping at the corner of her thoughts. Let there be a time and a place, she prays, where she can have this, and the company of friends, without sacrificing her freedoms and her safety.
As best as she could figure it was Christmas Day. She’d been marking days off on her calendar. She had thought about getting a little tree from the forest and decorating it with her Mom’s old decorations but she couldn’t take a risk of a fall out in the deep snow. The winter still was fairly mild, given the elevation, little in the way of snowpack but there was enough to fall and end up frozen to death. It’s as if the entire area, after previous winters of deep snow was collectively thumbing its nose at Al Gore and his friends in Cali.
Unlike the summer, where the light has a weary quality to it, like a backwater pool of light lying low, winter’s light is crisp, clean, illuminating everything so clearly. Even with sunglasses on as she goes to bring in some firewood after feeding and watering the horse the vivid noise of sunlight’s dance plays on her eyes as she walks, causing her to blink
She can’t honestly imagine living some place where it never snowed. She wouldn’t enjoy living where, at Christmas, you can’t tromp out into the snow at and cut down your tree instead of buying one, limp and smelling of French fries from the McDonalds next to the tree lot.
Tonight, there was just one small branch that she cuts a safe distance from the house, with a couple bulbs on it and a little star. It sort of looks like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree but the subtle scent of it in the air was enough for her today.
She picks up the phone. Nothing, no signal. She hadn’t expected anything new but there is a part of her that always thinks “they’re going to fix the mess, get the infrastructure going, life will be back to normal”.
A silent phone reminds her of what a lie that is.
Cell phone coverage in this area was always bad, but until her landline phone quit, she tried calling all the numbers in her directory. There weren’t many. Her uncle, who was in an assisted living center in Chico, her boyfriend, her best friend from college, her minister who lived down in the Valley. No one picked up. At first, there would be an answering machine or recorded message on a cell phone to which she’d leave a message
“It’s Lisa — I’m at the cabin and I’m OK. Please let me know you are OK too. I love you.”
“This message is for Mr. Anderson in room 211. Please tell him his niece Lisa is safe.”
“It’s Lisa, Julie — please call me, it’s the landline number, I got rid of the cell.”
“It’s Lisa Anderson, Pastor — please let me know everyone is OK.”
There were no return calls.
After a while, there were no answering machine or voicemail messages either.
Today, it would just be herself. She really wishes one of her loved ones or friends were here with her to celebrate this day.
She isn’t seeking company or the distraction of noise. She is seeking something familiar from which she can measure the happiness of the past, even if she could not recapture it. It wouldn’t be gifts, or money or a party, but simply the gathering of promise and hope and faith, that true gift of love without reservation that makes all other things look puny in comparison. But as she put on a cassette of some Christmas hymns in the ancient cassette player she found out in the old shop, it came to her. Whether she is sitting alone or surrounded by others, when she hears the strains of a Christmas hymn, the warmth of that gift came back to her.
To the west, she sees no lights. She’s never been able to really see any of the cities, being on the backside of the mountain, but on clear nights, there would almost be a small glow from the West. Tonight, it is as dark as sin, as she gently holds the tiny Jesus from her mom’s antique nativity scene in her hand, as the tears flow.
The first day of spring and it was 82 degrees. The sun dips towards the water, its glow, burnished breath upon her skin. The sky is so clear, the soft trailing puffs of clouds, spun air gathered around the tops of the trees like cotton candy. Lisa loves this time of day, somewhere between the first cool breeze that blows against the back of her neck like a lover’s kiss, and the first stinging bite of the mosquitoes, marking their territory in blood, driving her in. Outside her home, cicadas will soon strike up the band, off in the distance, replacing the sound of lawnmowers that she only remembers now in her mind with the comfort of familiarity.
She hopes the mild winter and the hot Spring isn’t a portent of another scorching summer, with lots of work to be done outside, hot brutal work, everything you touch, burning, sapping strength faster than she would have thought possible.
She never had air conditioning, being in the shadow of ancient trees with a nice evening breeze, but that’s a moot point as the power’s been out a while. At first, she thought it was just a line down after March’s windstorm but it appears the grid itself has failed. Fortunately, there’s a manual pump from the original settlers of this place for the well so she can still get water from the ground for drinking and the garden and she still has about 100 gallons stored in the barn in large plastic containers each with a few drops of bleach in them. But with little snowpack this last winter there’s no guarantee there will be enough well water by mid-summer. Tending to the garden for food means many hours out in the open air, sun beating down as she catalogs each and every burning piece of earth in which she will pray something takes root. That’s not something that she can do without adequate water. But she is thankful she didn’t knock down the outhouse that was here when she first moved in, used as the last owners fixed the fire damage and made the home at least somewhat livable as a hunting shack.