here at the cabin since we
opened it up from its winter hibernation.
I would’ve been up here sooner but as
usual, nothing good comes without a price. This season, apparently the price is
going to be paid to the plumber. It took us a month to get someone up here to
look at the pipes and fix the winter's damage. And now the pump has stopped working.
Once
again I am reminded how integral water is to life. Or at least, how integral
running water is to a nice couple of days up here at the cabin.
Aside from the water problem, it is as quiet and peaceful and
astoundingly beautiful as it has always been, with 17 bazillion different
shades of green playing a constantly changing visual symphony around me.
As the trees slowly leaf Big and Little House Mountains disappear behind them.
Soon the cabin
will be encircled in a fortress of green and the mountains won’t reappear until
late fall.
Sitting here on the porch, drinking my early morning tea I
can hear the wild turkeys calling, and nearby there’s a woodpecker going crazy
on a rotten tree. And a hundred other sounds fade in and out as the creatures go about their morning ways.
There doesn't seem to be anything as insistent as the mockingbird in
our yard in town who cycles through her entire repertoire at the top
of her little bird lungs every morning, perched in the lilac just outside the
living room window. She even drowns out the weed whackers and lawnmowers that
seem to go from dawn to dusk every day from the beginning of March to the end
of November in town, although she can’t hold her own against the life flight
chopper or the ambulance sirens from the nearby hospital. Or the cacophony of
police and fire engines screaming through town.
On the other hand, there are no mice in the house in town
and when you turn the faucet on the water comes out without having to go down
to the cistern and pump it up the hill.
Or not pump it up the hill, so you have to call
the pump guy to come out and replace a worn-out machine that’s just
tired of shoving water 300 feet through a 1 inch black plastic pipe for the past
six or eight years. However long it’s been since we last replaced the pump. Not that he's going to come out on a Sunday morning anyway, no matter how beautiful it is up here.
The
spring ran just fine at the bottom of the hill before we captured it, forced it
into confinement in a cistern, rammed it into a pipe and sent it upwards
against gravity.
The woodpeckers found plenty of dead trees to knock against
before the cabin was built, although I am sure they appreciate the bounty of
carpenter bee larvae seemingly stored just for them in our eaves, waiting for
them to drill out each spring.
The mice had plenty of surfaces to run across before we
provided them with our counters, and even the ants probably managed without us
somehow.
The only thing I’m not sure about are the wild turkeys. I can’t
imagine how they could possibly have conducted their courtship every spring
without me, sitting bundled up in the cool dawn light, paying rapt attention.
