Winter Beater #1

A Wilson bellies up to the bar. Moose River, New York, August 17, 2015.

 


Back when I was about...three years younger than I am now, pretty much, there was a phrase my friends would throw around like dynamite when one of us got a really rotten set of wheels: nice winter beater!

No matter that I almost never bought a winter beater, much preferring for most of my life to drive year-round "beaters", the words from the past have stuck in my head to such an extent that they make me smile rather than cringe. Nice to have some distance between now and what seems from today's vantage point to have been foolishness. And yes; I said "seems". But you get the point.

I have nothing much to talk about regarding actual day-to-day goings on at The Settlement because like many winters lately (too many) I have not been there for months.  Early to mid-November was as long as work and weather allowed me to be there. And please tell me you understand I've only been away in a physical sense; my heart and mind and soul are from that place and seek return at all times, by any method of travel.

And now, unless we have a monster late-March blizzard (which happens infrequently but often and forcefully enough to make qualifications of timing not only relevant but necessary), the opening of my Moose River year (again; the physical presence type of opening) is within four weeks. Less than 30 days.

But I can feel the longing for the place building in me.  It's quiet-ish right now and doesn't drive my thoughts quite to the levels they will be driven to soon. After all, the weather hasn't been bad but it hasn't been overly cooperative with my inner hope of a long-term trend which will warm things up enough so that four weeks turns into two or one or a week ago. And since I now and for two decades have measured winter by when Moose River is accessible, that means it is still winter inside me as well as out. The warmth is not here yet, but it's coming.

And so, I offer winter beaters.  This one, anyway.  I suspect there will be more.


-MJ