Hell isn't fire. It's ice.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Just in case anybody was wondering.

That is what it still looks like here.  After two weeks of digging out.

You know, I really hate the so-called "spoon theory." The imagery just irritates the hell out of me. But at the same time, it gets the job done in explaining what existence is like for some of us.

I have no spoons right now, none, zip, zero, nada, gaawiin gegoo.

We haven't had plumbing, not in any real sense, for two days now. Frozen solid. [Yes, we've already taken every step you've thought of, and some you haven't. Trust me on this. This is a yearly thing, given our current living arrangements (and for what I hope is the last winter in this thing), and there are only so many options, given age, obsolescence, and extreme temperatures.]

We have spent this year so far shoveling snow and shoveling shit, and in the few minutes cadged here and there between those two, the laborious work of caring for Cree, and half a day consumed with closing off the hay barn to keep the elk out. We've shot way past fatigue to somewhere well beyond exhaustion by now. For me, it's the kind of exhaustion that beggars sleep; I've had virtually none since 5 AM or so yesterday. I did greet the morning with subluxed knees, so there's that. I'm managing with them, but the pain in my collarbone (effects of the cold on an old stress injury) is about to take what remains of my sanity.

I had thought, hoped, that I could get to some other things this week. So far, it's not looking very likely. The last two days have been frankly unspeakable. There is one possibility for relieving one part of the workload, but two of the major issues can't be handled by anyone else. Yes, the plumbing, which is highly specialized and also way beyond old, and trust me, there's not anything different that a pro can do about this situation, which we face at least once every winter in this place. Now is apparently that time, and I'm as at the end of my tether about it as every year. The second is Cree, and there's no hiring anyone for it. there are exactly three people here who can handle it, and that's the vet, Wings, and me. We're all doing our respective parts.

All this is by way of saying that I have absolutely nothing left for conversation. Nothing. And I will not be around much save for my two sets of required daily posts, and perhaps the occasional venting. It's not you, it's me, and I have no ability for personal interaction right now beyond what's required for the gallery. That takes everything I have left.

Also, I'm closing comments, and I want no comments on this elsewhere, either. It's not a cry for help (and there is none anyway; it's not a question of money, but simply of who can do what), and It's not a plea for sympathy. It's just a combination of safety valve for me and letting everyone else know why I've gone quiet, and need to stay that way for a while. I have a huge additional workload looming on top of everything else, and since I'm already spoonless by this point, social engagement is one of those things that just is not going to happen.

This first half of 2016?  Two weeks in, and I'm already over it. 




All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Strange Gifts

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

It's been a day of strange gifts.

Weather out of season, visitors out of place.

For a couple of weeks now, we've been getting monsoonal thunderheads daily, mostly with no more than a couple of dozen sprinkles. Until now. It rained all night last night, something that almost never happens even in the wettest season here. Today, it was intermittent clouds and fog and sun and thunder and rain and hail and sleet and even a snowflake or ten. 

August's monsoons seem to have decided to make an entrance three months early again this year, wedding themselves to late-Spring snows.

That photo? An hour or so ago, maybe a little less.

The Chokecherry Birds were back today, much of the clan joyously flinging oiled black sunflower seeds in the feeder. The Say's Phoebe showed up again, too, this time to cadge nectar out of the hummingbird feeder with his long bill.

And we had a pair of very-early-morning visitors who perhaps explain Raven's agitation last night, running great distances to and fro, barking and howling, for more than hour despite the impending storm. Normally, at the first drop in barometric pressure or distant rumble of thunder (so distant it's out of human hearing), he's scratching at the door, begging to be let in. Thanks to idiots shooting indiscriminately up on the ridge, he now associates the sound of thunder with that of gunfire, and having had the real thing aimed at him as a puppy before his rescue by us, it terrifies him. He won't go out in it, not for love or money Milk-Bones.  

And yet, last night, for more than an hour, as the storm hurtled closer by the second, he ran, in the wind and eventually the rain, back and forth and back and forth, patrolling, barking and growling and howling, impervious to my repeated entreaties and demands that he come inside.

This morning, we were visited by what we believe were two young adult gray wolves. The photos are too blurry to tell; they run fast and low to the ground, powerful sloping hindquarters and big shaggy heads, and when in full predatory sprint, they're nearly a blur. One was buff-colored, the other a black-and-silver mix that is known in the breed as grizzled. ["Gray wolf" is the species designation; their actual color varies along a spectrum of off-whites, grays, tans, browns, and blacks.] I know what you're thinking, but we know the neighborhood dogs, and these were not that. They also did not, to my eye, appear to be hybrids.

This is unprecedented here, at least in contemporary terms. The Mexican gray wolf is indigenous to this area, of course, and there are clans of them in the mountains, but overdevelopment and human encroachment have forced them continually further back, limiting their "safe" range even as climate change decreases their options for survival in those spaces. Still, we've never seen one here, at least in daylight; they may very well visit at night while we're asleep, but allowing themselves to be seen is a first. To the best of my memory, I've never before seen a wolf in the wild, save along a New England highway once twenty years ago. 

We're not sure what to make of it. On the one hand, it worries us that weather and creatures alike are showing up here out of season; it's yet another indicator of the rapacity of advancing climate change. At the same time, it feels like a gift — that they all seem to feel secure enough to come here, to this place.

Here, they are welcome, and they will be protected.

It feels like grace.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Benediction

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

I had intended to post this last night, but didn't get a chance.

Spirit apparently had one final gift in store for Wings last night — or maybe I should say set of gifts.

This is just one in a series of a half-dozen shots he got of a rapidly-changing sunset. The clouds and colors are just that; this isn't smoke, although the fires are still burning. A storm was on the way (so much for "red sky at night," huh?), and before he could get to the clouds in the northwestern sky, the amazing effects had already melted back into the deep purple cloudbank. Still, he captured these.

And later, it rained. Oh, how it rained: thunder, lightning, wind, huge loud drops, even hail, off and on throughout the early hours of the late part of the night.

And now, we have more of it. I think the monsoon season is early again this year; in fact, I fear that we're looking at a permanent shift.

But for now, we'll enjoy the rain and what it brings, and this unexpected set of gifts to coincide with his birthday.

It feels like a benediction.