So much has happened and we've been so busy that every time I've thought of writing in here I've been discouraged. Therefore, there is no live newscast of this year's Spear Christmas. A few highlights:

John played Santa Claus at my school. Some of the littler children still believe in Santa, others have outgrown him, and still others don't know about him or are culturally distanced so there is no magic. After a rollicking meal filled with jokes, teasing, carols and games, the students were led into the song, "Here Comes Santa Claus," which is the cue to whoever is playing Santa that it's time to enter the dining room. John ho-ho-ho'd his way in and was a genial and warm Santa. The littlest kids sat on his lap and he charmed them. The older kids teased him, ("Santa, you're looking thin!" "Atkins diet," responded John.) I couldn't help myself, I was beaming like a bonfire. Someone later said she identified who Santa was by looking around the room and seeing my face.

Another holiday highlight--our septic tank backed up the day before Christmas Eve. It could have been much worse--what backed up was shower water, not poo. John handled it all with grace and cool. He got the local septic guys to come, three brothers whose family was formerly in logging. They located the tank with a minimum of digging and determined a couple of potentially troublesome things: our septic tank is very close to the house and is homemade--well-made but homemade, and one or two of the various pipes leading from it may empty directly into the river, or may not. Those things can be left for now. Our yard is now deeply rutted with backhoe tracks, one clump of shrubs has been torn up, but the septic tank is empty and ready for another twenty years of use. As John told the hamlet's postmaster, we didn't need that bill just now. The postmaster in turn was glad that the mischievous god Feceus had left his home and come to ours.

We visited a friend in Saranac Lake for drinks. This was very pleasant as he seems to be gay, and I at least have been starving for gayness up here in the mountains. I do understand that I will never again have the community that I did when I was with women, but even so, whatever I can get makes me feel good. We met second gay man from the area, also recently moved up from NYC, but older (retired) and well-to-do.

Carolers came to our house, led by Paul J., our neighbor and town social diva. They sang lustily and I gave them cookies, and they invited us to Wellscroft, a nearby mansion that is now a bed-and-breakfast the owner of which was one of the carolers. I finished a batch of green white chocolate mint cookies and we drove up the road to Wellscroft, where we danced and admired the spectacular woodwork, furnishings, architectural and art. Our hostess was as big a character as the mansion and probably as expensive to maintain.

We did barn chores for several days, and John did them Christmas morning while I slept in. The septic fiasco stole the money for my Christmas presents, thereby proving my theory that John always waits to the last minute to buy my presents. Sleeping in was part of the "princess-ing" he gave me instead, which also included a hot oil and salt bath with candles, a foot massage, and a promised full-body massage. I gave John a certificate entitling him to five sessions as apprentice to a master woodworker at my school. John will build an Adirondack chair for us and help Larry G. build his porch. I also gave John some warm comfy clothes from EMS. After he returned from barn chores I drove around to various neighbors delivering cookies and fudge and peeking at their Christmas mornings. That was VERY nice and resulted in an invitation from our next-door neighbors to come over in the evening, drink and play games. We accepted the invitation and had a great time. They have invited us for New Year's Eve. Wellscroft is also having a New Year's Eve party, which while not so close and easy will undoubtedly be more visually memorable. We'll see what other invitations come our way and maybe will do nothing at all, which is what we usually do on New Year's Eve.

John has been puttering around the house ticking off one item after another on his handyman list. I have been reading, resting, fooling around on the computer, cooking. We watched the movie "Orlando" last night, which gave me a joyful sense of homey queerness and lovely genderfuck.

I feel safe and content and easy. It is good to be home with my husband and best friend.

We've gotten whomped and it's still coming down. John and I spent about two hours shoveling this morning, just the front end of the driveway. He's talking about coming down to Boston this Friday to see Nana and get Uncle Frank's old snow blower. I can't come with him that quickly so will have a quiet weekend at home, which I always like.

The mammoth snow plow machines knocked off our mailbox. I climbed the snow to try to retrieve the mailbox and ended up falling flat on my face into about three feet of snow. I flailed around blindly. It was a little scary at first but then I started laughing. I had been sweating from shoveling so the snow that clung to my pants seemed to steam off and then freeze into ice.

I'm now indoors in my jammies. I have my second hacking cold in two weeks--did I complain about that already?--so I'm not going to work today, I don't think. John has just left for Lake Placid in his macho Nissan Pathfinder. He's happy. I'm feeling a little discouraged but also energized by this new adventure and grateful that, at least this early on in my north country career, my boss doesn't mind if I don't brave the roads on a day like today.

Our 80-year-old landowner neighbor, Mr. B. is out there plowing the mud logging road. He's a tough old bugger.

Last night we spent a quiet hour gazing at our decorated tree. It is beautiful, of course, the most beautiful tree either of us has ever had. My mom sent up the bulk of her ornaments, some from my childhood, and I had bought a bunch from the library here, and we had the few dozen we've collected. It's a lopsided, awkward tree but so beautiful.

Rhonda the feline plow truck LIVES! This morning John cleared our driveway with her. I did shovel work and dug a little racetrack for Papi, who after his initial horror of the whole experience decided snow wasn't so bad. He even plunged into a two-foot drift in order to get to John, who was inviting him into the truck. The cats, however, won't even come near a door. "Heck, no," they say. "See you next spring."

Snow is still coming down, as if it will never end. Confectioner's sugar is being shaken out of the sky. "Fresh powder," John says, "Whoever gets to be the first down Whiteface will be a lucky person." Yes, but they won't be able to see where they're skiing.

Snow, snow snow. When will I fall out of love with living here? I can't imagine not being excited about this.

Snow. Martha's sense of snow. Snow that bedazzles, glitters, winks. Sometimes it's hard to believe that it's snow because it is so perfect, each flake opalescent, diamondine. It's been snowing all day and will snow all night. Rhonda, the plow truck with nine lives, is getting a nice thick white blanket, which tomorrow morning John will sweep off so he can start her up and clear the driveway.

This afternoon I started Christmas decorating and put a single white candle light in each window, including the two triangular windows in the attic. Now that it's night, from outside the house looks prettier than a painting, and I must confess that I suddenly understand the appeal of Thomas Kincaid's artwork. Moonlight and snow combine to make the outdoors glow. The electric candles reflect off snow and snow-covered trees. The scene is gold, blue, and a million shades of grey blue gold.

Today I roamed Jay running errands and socializing. The postmaster shared his lunch with me--homemade baba ganoush, flat bread and spanakopita. Paul Johnson entertained me and a half dozen other customers with stories and gossip. I bought our Christmas tree from him and intended to get a loaf of homemade bread but forgot. The Aubuchon hardware man in Au Sable Forks helped me find a timer for the Christmas tree lights. When John got home from proctoring the SATs we took a drive back to the hardware store--I needed more candle lights--and I drove us home in the snow-pouring twilight. At John's suggestion I took a back road and nearly crashed us into a stone wall because I didn't see the turn where the Jay covered bridge is. Better the stone wall than the river, which is not yet frozen solid. Me, quiet panic voice while we slide quite out of my control in the whiteness: "John? John?" ...and John, "Get off the brake! Get off the brake!" The Nissan did stop, and we shook it off and kept on going.

Just now a brightly-lit industrial-sized snow plow vehicle drove by the house spewing a plume of snow higher than itself.

Today I practiced Christmas carols on the piano. John's family will be here in less than a week and today I came to the conclusion that my dream of playing carols while everyone stands around and sings is not going to happen, at least this year. No one could be expected to try to sing along while I crash around trying to find the notes and chords. I am disappointed but have been enjoying myself anyway and won't stop playing just because I'm bad at it.

Bedtime soon. Smidgen is wandering around making her strange howling sound, dragging her coyote foot between her front legs. Bean is a sphinx on the chair next to me. He has been following me around like he's tied to my shoelaces. He wants me to change the weather back to warm so he can hunt and not be cold. Nickie is probably asleep on a radiator somewhere. John is finishing up his bathroom renovation for the night--brushstrokes of pungent shellac. Papi is curled in a donut on a pillow on the couch. I am a happy person tonight.

Winter is here like... John wrestling with me, us laughing, me thinking I might possibly win with wily tactics like hair-pulling and armpit tickling, and then WHAM he's got me pinned down on the mattress. It is 10 degress outside, so cold that the inside of my nose freezes. Not only do drafts come into our house through the usual cracks and crevices, but also through the exterior walls themselves like ghosts. God bless the previous owner who had a nice new furnace installed. God bless the inventors of fleece.

Been living the small town life today. Vacation at home is so nice.

I went to the library down the road to return an overdue book and buy some second-hand ornaments, and ended up browsing the archives in the company of a middle aged lady volunteer. I was looking for old pictures of our house or information about the former owner, Mrs. T. Our homesteading predecessors, (I'll call them the T family,) are related to everybody else in the area. It seems that from ten founding families in the early 1800s, there was only intermarriage or marrying "away" and very few new folks moving here until the middle of the 20th century. The names interweave: maiden names, middle names, last names are all those same ten.

My history guide showed me photos of the house's previous owner at various library functions during the past 25 years--she was a big library volunteer--but there are no pictures of our house at the library. I hope that they exist elsewhere in the town archives or county history society. A home like this built in 1832 must be recorded somehow. By "like this" I mean it has four bedrooms and is set up for entertaining. Many people must have been here for gatherings. Fortunately Mrs. T. was a school teacher and paper packrat, and I am sure that in time I will learn lots about the area thanks to her dedicated note-taking and story-preserving.

As I was departing the library I revealed that I have worked in an archive before and offered to volunteer. The library ladies were quite pleased. I left with a selection of gently used Christmas ornaments and old holiday cards, including two hand-made Currier & Ives prints for 5 cents each. One is already addressed to my very urbane friend Electra and her partner.

This evening I joined some local folks for a rehearsal of the town's upcoming performance of "A Christmas Carol," in which I play The Niece's Sister and John plays Topper and Marley. He would have been there but has study hall tonight. Scrooge is played by another Brooklyn import, a garrulous and tough-skinned man who ran unsuccessfully for town office in November. He was an emcee at the Jay Town Green Saturday evening entertainment this summer, and during the "Oklahoma!" show (I was in the chorus) he teased John and me for having brought a wicker couch to sit on. That's how we remember each other now. "Oh, yes, you're the folks who brought that wicker sofa..."

I am starting to get the impression that people here are deeply self-sufficient. I don't know if it's by choice or necessity; in a way it doesn't matter. It's hard to describe or prove by anecdote, it's just a feeling I am getting. There are not many options for anything here, from home decor to cooking to clothes. Few people ever look polished here, no tailored clothes and certainly no suits. The weather doesn't permit it. I fit right in this way, except for my short short hair. Catalogs and internet have their influence, but as far as I've seen, generally people seem simple in their tastes and energetic in their creativity. The room in which we met this evening, at the home of the proprietor of a bed and breakfast in Jay, was filled with crafts-in-progress and her seven-ish-year-old son's artwork on the walls. The walls themselves were sponge-painted and not with any great sophistication--could have been done by said child. Maybe this impression I have is due in part to MY choices to participate in local things and make friends through certain venues, like the library. The folks to whom I am drawn and vice versa are going to be similar to me. Now there's a solipsistic tautology for you.

So this is my blog. My first blog, although I have been keeping a journal since 1971. The posts below are in a messed up order because my technological skills are not so good, but they are representative of the past few months here and that's what matters. Enjoy.

Our first snow storm. I drove home after dinner and wine with folks at work, drove at twenty mph with flashers on, feeling happy but cautious. Never seen anything like that snow, horizontally across the road and in swirls like boiling air. Could barely see ahead of me—thank God for reflectors. What did people do before such technology? Much more snow up in the mountains where I work than in the valley where we live. The snow here is merely pretty. Up there it was awe-inspiring.

Saw the Northern lights tonight! It was pink, like a huge chrysanthemum or zinnia or aster filling the sky, transparent so the stars shone through it, moving like smoke, greenish at the edges. The entire sky was lit and the center of the aurora seemed to be right over our house. It was like sunset, sunrise, fireworks all at once. Joyful feeling! John and I arrived home at about the same time, excited to the point of hysteria, each eager to be with the other and see it together. We danced and hugged and kissed and went out to the field to stare. I have a crick in my neck.

Yesterday when we were walking around our land—and our neighbors’—we met one of the folks who live diagonally up behind us. I invited the man to our housewarming party which is next weekend, and he didn’t seem to know about it. So my plan when John left was to ride my bike around and introduce myself to various neighbors and give them invitations to our party. But by the time I got myself going—had to eat some leftover chicken pot pie and watch a few music videos—the rain had started so instead I went for a drive with Papi.

I intended to look for the home of Mr. B who just bought the forest acres behind us and will be logging there. John chatted with him this morning while I was making breakfast but forgot to mention our housewarming, so I planned to find his house, which he had described to John and he to me, but in my driving I realized that my self-confidence was kind of low, and I wasn’t really in the neighbor-meeting mood. So I looked only half-heartedly for the house, Papi in the car as my reason for not staying if I met anyone and was invited to come in. Didn’t find Mr. B's place, kept driving, and ended up exploring some back roads and trails.

It was raining a little bit, quite warm compared to what it has been, and I stopped twice for walks with Papi. The first time I was headed to Wilmington (“home of Whiteface Mountain”) to get some ice cream and detoured into Au Sable Acres, where our second choice house had been. From there we wandered at 35-40 mph through a winding forest road until I saw some vistas off to the right, a gorge of the Au Sable River, I guessed. There was a sandy pull-off so I did just that and Papi and I walked a bit through piney woods, on coppery pine needles. The path was well-worn and I found a campfire with a folded-up lounge chair. There were quite a few empty bottles and some dumped cinder blocks. Off to our left was the river, roaring louder than it does in my experience, and as I explored I saw that there was an old dam. The water rushing over it was causing the roar. Papi and I went down a steep rocky path—I was nervous but am trying every day to be more physically active so I can really LIVE in this wild place—to the remains of what was clearly once a big industrial dam of some sort. There were spillways and tanks, rock and log walls, and plenty to gaze at and admire. There was no one else around, no houses visible. I kept saying to Papi, “careful,” to which he responds very well by stopping his rambles and edging away from whatever he has been nearing, in this case scary, mossy concrete edges.

Getting up the trail was easier than getting down, and we continued our drive into Au Sable Forks. I had just today been reading an old tourist brochure about the area that I found on the town website, and it mentioned both this kind of abandoned dam and various industries—coal, iron—that no longer exist here.

After driving a bit more I came across another interesting byway which led to a dead end. I parked and we walked and found a very large factory complex which was abandoned. It was full of interesting scenes of wreckage and past industrial aesthetic—dentil-type brickwork at the top of the walls, great iron pipes, crumbling wooden beams. There were a few doorways that I would probably have explored had I been with John and it wasn’t raining. There were no “keep out” signs. Papi was very good. As I walked I passed through bits of cold air and scents of old wood, very pleasant and intriguing.

We have this big house that I am just starting to get used to. I loved it from the moment I saw it, and yet loving it doesn’t make me fit into it yet. Rooms and spaces and staircases, bookshelves, stone basement, acres of trees and meadow, the river across the road, vistas of mountains and woods. It is paradise and I don’t know how I earned it, and then I realize that of course I deserve this. Partly because I’ve had a rough life up until this mid-way point? Partly because fate is capricious? I had a dream this afternoon where John and were to part and meet again in Addis Abba (sp?). I wasn’t sure, or he wasn’t, that we could meet up again, that the logistics would work, but I knew that I would get there with my angel’s wings and strength and we would be together again, doing good in the world. I woke up feeling very happy and peaceful.

Today is Saturday and it has been a relaxing day. This is the first weekend I feel absolutely fine not thinking about work, although I do think about it every once in a while. I like my job a lot. I wake up looking forward to it. I don’t necessarily like to get out of bed, especially now that the mornings are dark and cold and John is there next to me so warm and firm. Often he gets up first, and then even more I don’t want to get up. However, once I’m up, I love to go to work. I especially like Tuesday mornings when I arrive there at seven to help with barn chores. I like this part so much that I could easily commit to doing it every morning, but the real cold and dark of winter haven’t started yet, so I must be careful. I'm getting so much guidance from people who’ve lived here for a while about how to drive, how bad the weather can get. It is scaring me.

I am seated in our office which is on the second floor, north-by-northeast corner. The only movement I see is on a curve of rain-grey road, foreshortened through the window glass. A great maple is in the foreground, closing off the road view. Our and our neighbor’s contiguous field stretches to the right, still green but going gold. A mountain I’ve been told is named Winch rises purple-grey-green in the distance, deceitful because you don’t know how big it is unless you get a certain closer view. The clouds are pale and glowing with late-day sun. Clouds roll here, tossed between mountains and bounced off valleys and look like the undersides of ocean waves.

What else about me right this moment? I have dry hands from doing chores, from the hard water and the chill. I am unwashed – a drawback of this house is our sluggish bathtub drain that makes me not love taking a shower, not that I was ever a clean freak. My right elbow and lower arm are nearly limp from a dull pain, recently diagnosed as tennis elbow and due probably to being a frantic NYC consultant typing away all day and on the phone without any proper ergonomic support.

Life up here is calm and peaceful and good. I can see how cabin fever may set in – that is another scary thing I’ve been warned about. I tend toward physical sloth but like spending time with people, so the trick will be to find friends. Everyone here is kind but they’re also reserved, and I am an unknown quantity. Everyone here is related to or knows the intimate life details of everyone else’s lives.

Yesterday evening a little before six while I was helping Libby to arrange the trustees’ cocktail party at Selden and Hock’s house, it became clear that a colicky horse was going to die. Selden, who had been in her office trying to write her speech for later that night, was quite nervous and edgy, understandably. She planned not to go up to the barn, trusting Bonnie and Rachel could handle it with the vet’s assistance. But she checked in with them and they said they thought the horse was going to die. They were concerned its insides would explode, which apparently can happen, and thought it would be best to put the horse down. So Selden changed clothes and departed the cocktail party. I went with her, charged with finding one of the men to dig a hole. I found Jeremy, a maintenance man who also works with our kids, who was at dinner supervising a table. I beckoned to him and he came and I explained the situation tersely. I was just as nervous and edgy as Selden. He knew what was needed, got a replacement table head and moved quickly toward the garage and the tractor, which is a large John Deere thing with a backhoe bucket on one end and a big rectangular scooping thing on the other. We met John C. walking toward the garage, on the same errand. So John took over, as was best, and I went to my car and drove up to the barn.

I parked where I always do and saw that the upper barn light was on. The cows bawled. I was expecting to hear the horse’s screaming and was glad to recognize simply cows, not agonized horse. Inside were the vet, others and Selden. The horse was lying down in the center stall, and the goats and cows on either side were watching curiously. The goats were standing up against the fence, gazing at the action. I wondered if they knew this horse was terribly sick, if they were upset. They didn’t seem to be but I petted them anyway while I watched. Katika the black cow sniffed me suspiciously but then seemed to recognize me and went back to watching the horse and people. Bonnie has the greatest experience and was leading the activity, but the male vet was clearly knowledgeable and in control. They were trying to get the horse, Sparky, to rise. He just lay there in the fresh straw, covered in a dark blanket. They pushed his rump, rocked him back and forth, pulled on his bridle, but he wouldn’t budget. I learned later that he had just been given a powerful pain killer. Someone suggested removing his blanket and that took a while. The vet did it very gently, and then with rocking and pulling and pushing they finally got Sparky to scramble upright. He seemed totally fine to me, but what do I know. Bonnie led him out of the stall into the cement-floored hallway and then the barnyard. His hooves made that wonderful clopping sound and all seemed normal except for the white faces and somber, urgent energy.

Selden needed to be there because she is the barn manager, but there was no good reason for me to be there. I should have been back at their house helping my boss, Hock host the trustees. But I really wanted to experience this. I am getting to know the animals and barn routines—barn chores are my chosen beyond-the-job duty. I love horses, I care about all the animals, I want to learn, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to experience the death of a horse. Grim, gruesome, ghoulish; I did not feel any of those things. I felt sincere and earnest and good-hearted. I knew it would be ok that I chose to be with them and the horse rather than at the cocktail party.

John C. was by this time arriving on the tractor. They led Sparky into the upper field, a rocky slope to the right and behind the upper barn. John followed slowly and kept a good distance. I had never been in that field before. The horses often graze there but are usually closer to the barns when I am around. This is glacial terrain so the boulders are large and everywhere. The horse was curious—I saw his ears going around—and he whinnied a few times. I later learned that he was saying, “Hey, this is odd, why am I out here? Where is my herd? Why am I with these people and what is that noisy machine?” Selden and Bonnie petted and cooed to him, and he seemed so fine that I wondered if the colic had passed or they were going to let him live. But no—it was the painkiller making him seem ok. They led him to a particular place where it was flat and there was a bare patch. Selden and John conferred about where John would dig, and implicitly, where the horse would fall. He was so lovely, a smallish, well-behaved horse with a graceful arched neck and two perfect white socks on his back feet, freshly groomed except for his long chestnut tail, which was covered in wood shavings from where he had lain.

They spent a long while loving him and the vet waited patiently. Rachel, Bonnie’s daughter, stood several yards distant on a flat boulder, watching intently, resignedly. John stood a ways off as well, the tractor left behind, his hands clasped in front of him. I stood adjacent to everyone, a sort of triangle of support around the horse and its three caregivers. It was not too cold, and the sun was leaving—clouds over the mountains were gray with an inner glaze of fading colors. The wind blew firmly but not hard. The ground was cold and rocky and I was quickly becoming uncomfortable in my Birkenstocks. I tried to take everything in without thought, to record the weather and view and emotions, the singular experience of being on this rocky hill with these people, this dying horse, all of it after my first board meeting as the place's new development director, which now seemed so trivial when it had consumed me for weeks before.

Then through some word I couldn’t hear or signal I didn’t see, they knew it was time and the vet took out his syringes. He talked Selden and Bonnie through it, but I could hear. He said the needle was large and the horse might jump. He said he would use two syringes, and they should step back if the horse started to go down. Selden and Bonnie held the horse’s halter and talked to him as the vet bent to locate a spot in the horse’s neck, his jugular, I guess. The horse did not jump as the syringe went in, and then the second one. The vet stepped back, and in a moment the horse sort of grunted and its forelegs buckled. It landed on its knees and then fell over sideways, his round brown belly like a boulder, Selden and Bonnie and the vet at his head. His back legs stretched out straight and his front right leg was curled under his extended front left leg. He was motionless. There was much soothing and petting and soft talking to him, good boy, there there, good boy, that’s right, everything’s going to be fine now. Rachel and John and I shifted slightly, both of them as uncomfortable as I was, I would guess, but just as sincere in their desire to stay and honor the death of this large, loved creature and support Selden and Bonnie, who loved him.

As I write this my cat Smidgen is chirping and canoodling across the desk and around the office. She is very sensitive to my moods and responds when I have intense feelings. Also it is cold outside and she might be bored because she can’t be out as much as she likes.

Sparky groaned three times with long moments in between. His legs and body were completely still. Each time he groaned their voices rose and then dropped. And then some signal again, and I knew he was dead. Selden was crying gently. Bonnie looked simply grim. The vet rose and the others followed, and he helped them decide how to tell the children. Tell them at breakfast so they don’t go to sleep with sad thoughts. It was a bad case of colic. Sometimes horses get over it and sometimes they do not. The vet said we are such good caregivers. Selden thanked him, and he left. We all regrouped a few feet from Sparky’s body. Each of us knelt to pet and caress him. His coat was so soft and clean, quickly losing warmth. I tried to close his eyelid but it sprang back. His eye was opaque. His mouth was open and his lips and tongue slack, his large ugly teeth there against the earth.

Emotion left very quickly and they talked about where to begin digging and how to move Sparky’s body into the hole—chains pulling him. John began to open up the hole, the bucket biting easily into the dark soil and scraping out a growing trench. I stayed as he dug, listening to Bonnie and Selden and Rachel talking, asking questions. Selden said it was her first colic. Rachel reminisced about other horses she had lost, her own childhood pony, her mother’s two favorites. Selden said there were “a zillion” horses buried out in this field, along the fence. Twenty, to be exact. Years of horses. She said she used to sell their carcasses to meat vendors but did not any more. Someone said that Larry G. was thinking about digging up one of the work horses and putting its bones together to form a skeleton that we could display and use to teach the children. It got too dark for John to see well and Selden and Bonnie walked away down the slope to get the “gator,” a tractor-ish golf cart thing with headlights that they use to get around the farm. Rachel came to stand near me and cried into my shoulder for a few moments. I was trying to take it all in and manage all my feelings and keep myself together so I could return to my trustee duties. Selden was still going to give her speech about the farm, with the added intensity of having just put a horse down. I couldn’t comfort Rachel as I wished I could have. I didn’t need to cry myself.

They returned with the gator and positioned its lights as John continued to dig. The hole was probably five feet deep and three feet across. Sparky lay there next to it. We each knelt by him again in the new light. I petted his barrel belly, now like a rock with fur, slid my fingers along the skin over his ribs. As I rose, stiff from cold and standing so long, I leaned against him with all my weight and thought of his strength even in death. I guessed that they would put the horse in backbone first, legs in the air. Selden said, “They’ll be rigor.” Then a taxi entered the campus and we watched its lights proceed slowly up the dirt road toward the main buildings. I thought it was coming to pick up a trustee, and Selden said that it must be her son, returned from Lake Placid to take over babysitting so Hock could go to the board dinner. That is how I knew that it was seven p.m. Selden said she hoped Hock was doing the right thing and ushering people from their house to the dining room, and I knew then it was time for me to go back to my real life.

After a week's hiatus, the logging crew is back at work in the field and mountain behind our house. There is that low hum of machinery that at first saddened me, and when I first woke up this morning I saw the machines' lights far off in the field. A week or so ago John and I walked through the woods behind our house and looked at what the logging operation had accomplished. The back of the field itself is rutted and muddy, layered with stripped-off balsam branches with their fragrant needles still attached. There are several towering stacks of neatly trimmed logs, some of them with a diameter wider than from the tip of my finger to the center of my chest. The logs seem to be oozing out their life, and their ends are sticky with sap. There is a vast pool of sucking mud spread out from the little creek that runs back there, now dammed up by a corduroy road of logs so the enormous skidder can move back and forth from field to hill. The mud is smooth and deceptive--I tried to walk on it and sank quickly, would have gone up to my knees, I think, and definitely lost my boots if John hadn't hauled me out. I hope that they break the dam when they're done harvesting trees.

We walked through this scene and I decided to view it dispassionately, not as wreckage or carnage but as small-time industry, local economy. The skidder has cut a mud road straight up the steep slope, bordered and bolstered by logs too small to be of value but big enough to cut and place. Skidder roads branch off to the side every once in a while, off to what were thick stands of timber, I guess. Now the forest is simply lighter, more sky and wider expanses of earth, more saplings visible. It's hard to know how much of this is due to winter leaflessness and how much to the absence of culled trees.

They left the old--ancient--logging road that John and I have walked, that we think our homeowning predecessors walked on their way to their dairy farm a mile up the ridge. This road is not wide enough for a car or truck and so deeply worn that it has a sort of shelter. It meanders up and up the ridges, crossing little streams. In the logging and grazing past maybe it had good views on some of those rocky curves--now it is all woods. I have imagine generations of old Mr. Torrances as a bow-legged, bearded, good-natured but not deep-thinking fellows who lived for labor: tapped trees, milked cows, tinkered around the house. Ate the meals their wives cooked, slept in cold beds.

John and I worry that in some of the flat places where they have logged heavily they are in fact clearing home sites. We hope not. We like our isolation, the darkness behind us, the naked starry sky. We like the unbroken expanse of that eight-acre field, less than half of which we own. But now that the other half has sold, the logger placed markers--trees he cut and stripped by hand--along our boundary line. He knows that eventually John and I will fence ourselves in so we can have some animals. All this old man needs is markers to signal his territory and ours.

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John goes back to work today after a week off for Thanksgiving. Today commences my week of vacation. I will miss him while he's gone, but I have lots of projects going on. I have been working on family history, which is fascinating, labor-intensive and very exciting.

In two weeks John's entire maternal family will be here to celebrate an early Christmas. We will trim the tree on December 13th. I will play "Amazing Grace" and Christmas carols on the piano for Nana and the others to sing along.

This morning began with barn chores, which is always lovely once I get there. I enjoy the company of the animals and don't mind mucking their poop and pee. Did you know that 1,000 pounds of sheep will produce in a year six tons of manure? One thousand pounds of sheep is probably four sheep. Does this weight of manure contain all the straw and wood shavings as well, or is this just poop and pee? These are the things one thinks about when one has five country acres and an old barn foundation upon which to build. Do we want sheep, goats, chickens, cows, horses? The larger the animal, the more tonnage of poo.

The perils of anthropomorphized Rhonda...

Well, we’ve gotten our $400 worth out of Rhonda the flatbed F150 plow truck. Approximately 60 trips back and forth over the Whiteface mountain notch and she’s a goner! A skilled Lake Placid mechanic tinkered and got her going. I volunteered to drive her home since John has study hall tonight and we knew I in daylight would have a better chance of getting help if needed, as opposed to John exhausted at 11 pm.

She drove fine out of the town of Lake Placid proper, sparing me a certain level of humiliation and then started to faint. With my coaxing and her own brute strength we got through the Cascade pass and then coasted the three or four miles down the mountains into Keene, the town adjoining ours. She died with a cough in the parking lot of the used car dealer where John DIDN’T buy a more expensive truck.

Guess who was at this garage towing another vehicle – the same mechanic! The joys of small-town living. He said a little gas would help (how mortifying) and pushed Rhonda, her one-ton plow and me up another hill to the nearest gas station – in his towtruck with a car on the back. Strong truck. I want THAT one. He pumped ten dollars of fuel into her and got her going again. This assistance gave Rhonda enough oomph to get herself to 10 mph all the way home with me fluttering the gas pedal and the engine light on. She did coast to 35 mph on the downhills. She died again in our driveway, or perhaps I let her die there. I almost hit a tree in our front yard – once the power steering went out she was too much for me. One more gasp of stinky, smoky strength and she hauled herself onto the grass by the garage, and then couldn’t even muster enough power to raise her windows against the rain. I must find a tarp.

RIP Rhonda, at least until John comes up with a new strategy. It was fun while it lasted. I am thinking about last week (9/11) when Rhonda and I cruised up and down dead end dirt roads as I tried to shake the anniversary funk with adventure. Thank goodness she didn’t die up on Winch Mountain. What would I have done? Can’t charm a bear.