I found the listing on the ECOSLO bulletin: Irish Hills Docent-Led Hike. A good location to see early flowers, and Jody a congenial leader. As directed, Jan and I drove to the end of Madonna Road and parked in the new subdivision bordering Costco and the Open Space. The houses are large and densely situated on the flat valley floor, stark, typical sprawl bedroom neighborhood, but promising a different atmosphere once the trees have grown enough to provide something of an urban forest. Jan noted that the park with basketball courts and baseball field that can be used by the residents of the  projects across the street were required of the developer, Marshall, while she sat on the City Council. So was the preservation of the old farmhouse at the trailhead, which was sold to a private party who could only renovate and expand it in such a way as to preserve the look of the original building.

It was one of those mild spring mornings with a touch of cool brought on by the slight sea mist especially welcome as the group of about ten people mounted the winding trail. The perennial bunch grass was bright green, and several lilies were coming into leaf. The first bloom a white flower I cant identify.

Ascending the serpentine ridge, we gained larger views of the Los Osos Valley, shopping centers and new subdivisions creeping over the fields and hills in every direction.

But a large green patch in the middle of the sprawl remained where the decades-long struggle over the Dalidio property has left the land fertile and fallow. Adjoining it, is the “Gap” property situated along Prefumo Creek between automobile dealerships and the South Laguna residential neighborhood. This was the parcel before the planning commission last Thursday night that Citizens for Planning Responsibly urged be developed in accordance with the General Plan. Jan wrote a long and expert treatise that formed the basis of all the testimony and for which the Commissioners expressed gratitude, since the City Staff had not done the job.

Jody stopped on the way up at several places to fill us in on some of the details of procurement of the 700 acre patch of open space that serves as one part of the city’s future greenbelt. The Madonna family, which owned vast acreage both of the hill property and the fertile alluvial plain down below were required to deed some of it to Open Space in return for permission to develop their huge shopping center. The same was true of the developer who built the neighborhood we passed through, as well as of the owners of the adjoining Foster property, who ended up developing only two lots on their more than 200 acre parcel.

At the shoulder of the ridge, the trail levelled and headed west parallel to Froom creek below. As civilization disappeared behind us, its sounds were replaced by the rush of water. Ahead and up the creek the only sign of human impact was the gash of the road gouged in the canyon by the property owner, the late Alex Madonna, master of the D9 Caterpillar bulldozer, whose ostentatious signature is inscribed on mountainsides in every direction. Above the opposite bank rose a high wall of impenetrable looking scrub oak woodland. The trail was bordered by the first bloom of Ceanothus cuneatus, light purple, odiferous, exuberant.

We continued down into the canyon along a branch of Madonna’s road that the city along with conservation organizations has tried unsuccessfully to restore. The disfigured walls were neverthess beautiful in baring the browns, greens and whites of weathering serpentine. The surface of the road was carpeted by a strange red plant, apparantely chlorophil free, which I havent yet identified.

Walking upstream along the creek, we found the first California poppies of the season, dazzling two-toned goblets of orange and white with red tipped leaves and buds.

Further along we came upon a tributary creek surrounded by the leaves of rare and endemic local native, the San Luis Obispo bog thistle.

Following the tributary to some its sources, I discovered water seeping straight out of the porous serpentine rock.

After a snack break in the shade of oaks and bay laurels along the rushing creek, we headed back up to the ridge, passing banks of bush poppies whose leaves were dried but whose blooms shared in the festivity of an early California Spring.

Despite the sound of hammers and traffic, the world seems emptied out. It’s two days after winter graduation, three weeks to the end of the year. The sun so low it makes windows glitter all over the valley before me.

Why do I face the city and leave my back to the back country? Its not a friendly season, despite the quiet, the warming sun and cooling breeze. The ground I sit on is bare dirt. A scattering of small hard berries: deer pellets annealed by the fire that’s burned off the grass, blackened the rocks, trimmed the yuccas into globular bulbs topped with brown quills surrounding a few spared green ones. Their needled tips curve south clawing for light.

A few days ago I wandered through the restored ruins of Poly Canyon. Now I look down into it, shadowed by a warren of rising buildings flanked front and back by massive rectangular parking structures.

Only a half inch of rain was left by last week’s much heralded storm. The grassland has turned from green to gold to tan to a corpselike gray.

Much of the way up here, I followed a deer trail along the blank margin of the scrub. Ecotone. “Why do they choose this route,” I’ll ask the class on our hike in January after we read Mary Austin’s “Water Trails of the Ceriso.” They’ll answer, “to stay close to the cover.” Just like the birds and rodents who harvest the grass and seeds close to the edge. Below me a rustle breaks the silence and two rear ends bounce three times downward and out of sight.

Fire and drought.
A land dry, silent, withdrawn,
aching to soak up moisture,
to shine and swell,
to burst into flower and song.

7:15 Chet Baker singing and playing as I drink my coffee, thinking of return to Jan.

Time after Time
I tell myself that Im
so lucky to be loving you
so lucky to be
the one you run to see
in the evening
when the day is through

I only know what I know
the passing years will show
you’ve kept my love so young so new
and time after time
you’ll hear me say that Im
so lucky to be loving you.

Woke with a start at midnight from the sound of three sharp knocks on the door. No lights, no follow up. I sneaked around in the dark and locked all doors. Wake up at 5, achy as usual, take hot bath, go back to bed to feel the pleasure of warmed, relaxed muscles, meditate and sleep. Get up again at 7:00.

4:20 p.m. What’s happened to this day? After oatmeal breakfast, I write a guide to keeping warm and disposing of trash for visitors at Knoll House. Then split kindling to leave behind. Again enjoy feeling the aim improve as I tilt the axehead back over my head, bring it down on the quarter round, hear the crack of the fibres and the pop of the pieces shooting out in opposite directions. Pack the garbage to take to Lund, where I buy lamp oil, candles and matches for future power outages. An easy glide down, but a tough slog back up to Malaspina Road and then down to U. to give back one bike and pick up another. I make it all the way home on Peter B’s bike. Get back at 12:15, read for fifteen minutes and then start a cleanup that lasts four hours. After the morning’s splitting and bikeride, it’s hard work. The rain gets stronger and steadier, Savaryview fogged in.

Sad songs play on the computer. Now its time to pack my bag, lock up, and catch the little bus to Powell River.

How many vertical layers in Savaryview?

1. Deck surface
2. Railing
3. Close clearing with rocks
4. Path to bluff
5. Proscenium of trees
6. Lower fringe of trees in front of water
7. The passage between Mace and Hurtado points
8. Mace point
9. South beach and Savary trees
10. Georgia Strait
11. Comox peninsula
12. Comox Valley
13. Lower cloud layer
14. Front Range
15. Skyline Range
16. Distant sky
17. Overhead sky

What are the movements?

1. Sun, moon, star light: the time of day or night, the seasonal angle, the cloud covers
2. Skyscape: cloud density, color, shape, texture on horizontal and vertical axes
3. Wind: intensity, steadiness, direction, in sound, smells, effect on land, sky and seascapes
4. Tidal ebb and flow, shrinking and expanding the beach
5. Current in the channel
6. Snow cover on the mountains, expanding and receding
7. Wildlife: bugs, birds, mammals

The temperature drops a degree or two. Does the stove need a log? It’s been an hour. I go downstairs to check, feel warmth as I reach the bottom steps, hear the rippling flow of combustion, see the flicker in the window. Not at all. Instead of raising, I lower the damper. There’s a living being at work for my comfort down there that requires close tending. When I came home last night and the stove was cold, I worried that the jack pine was poor fuel, that Dick may have tricked me, that I’d have to order a load of fir for any visitors. But the fire lit easily, and when I woke up this morning, it was still going.

What are the planes of consciousness?

1. right now: the temperature, the stove, the view, the list, appetite
2. observing and recording right now
3. reading and revising right now’s entries
4. reading and revising yesterday’s entries
5. reflecting and commenting on yesterday’s entries right now
6. recalling: old stuff in the computer. Old stuff remembering earlier stuff¦

A phone call. The College Dean wants to know if I’d be willing to moderate a round table discussion on Sustainability and the Liberal Arts with a distinguished visitor the day after I get back. Suddenly there’s homework.

I walk down to the bluff listening to the glocks of three ravens flying formation.

I encounter a squirrel cheeping loudly and take his picture and a film and sound recording.

Douglas squirrel Tamiasciurus douglasi ¦skull olive brown on the back and buff underneath, the two colours being separated by a black line. The bushy tail is also darker above¦coniferous seeds from the mai pat of the squirrel’s food, supplemented by berries and mushrooms. ¦does not hibernate¦stores large quantities of cones for winter use¦.active during the day, scolding and chattering as it tries to chase other animals from its home territory. Nature West Coast 205

Follow the trail to below the summit. See Cortes and Twin Island.

Walk back and hear chipping and see a little wren on the path back to the house. Winter Wren, Troglodytes, troglodytes

Repair gasket on woodstove.

Eat the last leftovers of Michael’s Snow White Chicken. The water chestnuts and baby bok choy and diagonally sliced asparagus and the local grown chicken, stewed in its own broth, whitened with the corn starch”along with the remains of a bottle of Okanagan Semillon Chardonnay.

Finish reading Prodigal Summer. Its happy ending makes me feel happy. A vulgar enjoyment. I will enjoy sharing it with students.

This is my last night here until April or May. I love this house, this land, this neighborhood, this province, this country.

Peter B. is back here at 6:30 in morning to pick me up for a hike up into the Coast Range. I have some difficulty getting going and packing what I need for the day. We drive two hours to the trailhead on logging roads where no old growth remains and the second growth is harvested with the haste of looters. But this grandiose landscape would be inaccessible without those roads.

We ascend through juvenile yellow cedars and wine-red blueberry twigs above Gamma and Alpha lakes till we come to the half-iced over Beta lake, at the base of the two Knucklehead peaks.

This is the easiest ascent of any of the high mountains in the area, and Peter’s plan is to make a loop between the two peaks and around the lake. But as we pull ourselves up by gripping the heather protruding through the iced-over snow, it becomes evident that the going will be rougher than expected. At times the snow is soft enough or the crust is thin enough for us to break through and gain traction. But in most places the surface is slick with hard ice.

At a little plateau where the vegetation gives way to pure rock and snow, Peter unpacks his single pair of crampons.

One goes on his left foot the other on my right. If you put any weight on the foot without the crampon, you are sure to fall, not something you want to do, given the slope and dropoffs. With the cramponed foot, you carve a rough, flat resting place for the useless foot but dont move it until you’ve stepped sideways and a little forward with the cramponed foot. Then you move the useless foot into its prepared spot and repeat the sequence. This is a lesson on the complexity of normal walking. It takes half an hour to make what would be a five minute traverse without the ice.

The weather is clear, the views spectacular and proceeding is not too strenuous or frightening if you slow down and pay very close attention.

We decide to stop for lunch at the saddle between the peaks, forgo both summits and head back the way we came.

The way down is easier because we have tracks to follow and the snow has softened a little. What a substance: hard, soft, appearing and disappearing–a solid almost as mercurial as liquid or gas.

Once returned to the lake, we split up to meditate, sitting on cushions of heather in the early lowering sun. Back by nightfall at Peter’s house, we’re served a salmon dinner by Margaret. A girl at the reserve sold her the fish, which, it turned out, was stolen from her grandmother’s freezer.

Woke up at 5:30 this morning, eager to start the day probably from anticipation: dinner party tonight, Lucien coming to cut firewood”company. But also solitude: the sensation of the warm bath, reading, meditating, and returning to this journal. Researching granite and moss, liverworts and lichen. Photoshopping pictures of the rocks with the sequence I came upon yesterday: filter>artistic>cutout>4.4.1 and 4.10.1.

And searching for Knoll House journals in the computer.

Back to the day of the dead: excerpts from Court Evidence transcribed in the blog of two years ago: Glimpses of Kenneth.

A 1998 poem and reflection about Ellen’s coming death.

June 21 1998

Amazingly you’re back
And still “with no deficits.”
Each message feels like my last,
And yet there comes an answer.
This is what war was like:
Someone at home writing
To a soldier on the front.

Why is it that death interests me so? The only thing worth writing about. The only relationship really worth pursuing–with a woman who’s got one foot in the grave. “This is it,” she wrote in an email a year ago. This is it.

And a sonnet to her dated May 10 1964, my first year in grad school.

Indifference has only one cure that I know
The solution is obvious but hard to apply
Cold shoulders and hearts must be warmed up with snow
Not answering in kind will produce a reply.

The icier my silence, the sooner you thaw
But you freeze when my temperature rises.
“Nothing from nothing,” declares the old saw
Yet here nothing claims all of the prizes.

Passionate pleadings and drunk declarations,
Whatever displays my feelings, my fire
The overwrought products of late lucubrations
Won’t further but frustrate my ardent desire.

Though I realize restraint would be much more effective
Still I’ll send you these lines and forsake my objective.

The song playing in the morning darkness: Eric Clapton’s “Drowning in a River of Tears.”

A poem to Jan written a month after we met, preserved in a 1992 Journal:

May 10, 1966

Reveille

This morning I awoke from sleep
And smiled although you weren’ there.
Exuberant with gratitude
That I’d returned from solitude
Back to a world we share.

The bed I lay in still was warm
With the languid memory of your breast
And sense with fancy subtly blent
The sweet trace of our mingled scent
The room itself was blessed.

A dumb indifferent world transformed
Into a friendly welcome place
Reminding me of last night’s kiss
And promising the next night’s bliss
Denying time and space.

The taking of the vitamin
Acquired a sacramental drift
My imitative ritual
That answers to the purple pill
Which served to pledge your gift.

And later in the day I found
The promise of the early hour
Fulfilled again when sight unseen
My ugly, lonely brown machine
Was changed into a flower.

Morning meditation: noisy but with a buzz. Sounds of rain hitting roof, hard to distinguish from sounds of fire and stovepipe. The inside temperature always changing. The outside world without color.

Shore pine, Pinus contorta. Bundles of two needles. There’s lots around. Someone once told me it was worthless for firewood. I cut a stick out of a windfall with the handsaw and put it in the stove to find out. Seems to burn nicely. Check with Dick. He says, “Jack Pine, its great firewood.”

“Short to 20 m. bark moderately thick, scaly or deeply furrowed into plates, dark brown to blackish¦ Restricted to dry rocky areas with shallow soil, not because this habitat represents optimum growing conditions for it, but because it is intolerant of shade and connote compete with other conifer species in the more favorable habitats.”

The sun is lighting up half the sky and droplets in the wire mesh on the deck railing.

After two hours of cutting, splitting and loading wood into the shed with Lucien, it’s close to half full. We took down two trees. The top of one came within two feet of the house. The other bent his chain bar, but he was able to unbend most of the curve. Both mishaps resulted from following my advice.

Michael comes over at four and completes the dinner preparation he’s been working on since yesterday afternoon.

Company arrives soon after 5. Lucien brings a huge bag of Chanterelles he picked in a favorite spot after this afternoon’s woodcutting. Sophia loves Ethan’s toys and the slideshow on the computer. Don comes with Paula, the one person here who wasn’t yet family. Peter B. brings a packet from Margaret who’s on Savary with her woman’s group: a new signed copy of Sheila Munro’s biography of her mother”cost $19.50, not the $450 asked for by Amazon. Mara’s birthday adds festivity. She looks little changed from the Mushy who lived on the Funny Farm in 1971. While everyone delights in his dinner, Michael recites Robert W. Service poems with a professional actor’s presence and range.

7:20 A.M.

Forgot to meditate last night, an opportunity missed. I remembered as I dropped off to sleep. Instead I read Prodigal Summer till 10:30, the book absorbing, enjoyable but too long. Kingsolver’s characters are stagnating, but factual material about small homesteading and predation and insects is informative. I’ll have to space out this winter’s Ecolit class’s reading assignments over two weeks, while we do the short poems.

The theme of predation in Thoreau, Oliver, Austen. Other themes to pursue from the start of the class: evolution, meditation and Solitude, observation, primitivism, ecological harmony, ecological disaster, rural life, progress, natural patterns, the seasons, fertility, stages of the life cycle, the erotic.

10:58 My worry: the excitement I feel at returning here after absence, the delight in the house and the view, the thrill of seeing people like Lucien and Peter U. and Michael and Don, all are transitory and contingent. A few more hours or days and all will get stale and then the memory of the excitement will summon disgust.

I go out to the two rocks whose pictures I collected from the archive last night and take more photographs”of the moss and the lichens and the granite, of the spaces between them and the lines of their convergence, of the juxtaposition of large and small, parent and offspring. “Land Art.” But the shapes don’t please me as much as they did this summer while I cleared them.

The downloaded pictures don’t help. I try cropping. Name them them Adam and Eve? Play with the spaces between them, and their adjoining borders, remembering couples by Brancusi and Henry Moore. The only images that aren’t terrible are several of the large rock alone, massive and weighty, but with a readiness to pounce: rhinoceros.

Should I get rid of the smaller rock? I could sledge it to pieces. “Two paradises twere in one/ to live in paradise alone.” If the small rock broke off the big one, the one became two. Is two more or less? Can the two again become one? Questions for couples.

Moving the pictures around into a sequence: from the two discreet weighty masses to the negative spaces between them to their direct juxtaposition, like a yin-yang, to their combining as a single image. I’ll need a better camera with manual focus and tripod to carry it out.

Moss show”mosses on the rock. Story of the rocks. A legend of the rocks. Father and Daughter, mother and daughter, father and son, married couple.

4:30 p.m.

Back from shopping trip for tomorrow’s dinner with Michael. We looked at the dying salmon making their way up Sliammon creek, went to the Hatch-a-Bird and bought a chicken and veggies, shopped at Overwaitea. He’ll do all the work. I paid. Downloaded email at River City Coffee Shop to read at home.

Notice sent to everybody in the department with links for student newspaper profiles of Larry and Todd but not mine. I’m relieved, but saddened by that. My colleagues’ cordiality covers disdain. Also a note from JW whom I’ve had no contact with since he went right wing in 1967. He found my website and sent me a link to something of his, which I cant check out till I’m back online. Also a note about Columbia 1968 strike 40th reunion coming up. Not sure I want to celebrate that failed revolution.

After reading the email, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a large hole, about to fall in. Novemberness. Wet, cold and dark now, wetter, colder, darker ahead. Even in the sunshine yesterday, when Lund was almost empty of people, I sensed the quiet like a cloud of nothingness surrounding whatever was there.

I talk to Jan. She’s at an art opening and tipsy on wine, people and politics. We share news of the last 24 hours. My mood lightens.

I walk over to the neighbor’s place. D. pours rum-cokes and talks about hunting. B. cooks and watches TV and says nothing. I return, defrost Renee’s soup and eat it with toasted bread and broccoli salad. I load and run the dishwasher and come back to the computer to play with images of the rocks in Photoshop. My work is desultory.

It’s close to nine. I meditate fifteen minutes. More quiet than this morning. I continue for another fifteen minutes, more quiet than before.

The story of digging out the rocks last August? Clearing the fir stump and red dirt and arbutus tree and salal around the base, the roots tearing at them, exfoliated pieces broken off by the concerted action of vegetation. Moss and lichen exude acid which breaks granite down to soil which they can grow in. The shrubs and trees thicken their roots to wedge in the cracks for stability, but the rocks split and no longer provide it so the roots spread further to regain it. The cabled fibrous texture of root is harder for me to break with pick and shovel than the rock, but yields to saw and axe. When the vegetation, soil and broken rock created by the vegetation is cleared away, the boulder’s real shape is revealed, seated not on bedrock but floating on its own detritus.

I read Michael’s crumpled menu and shopping list with affection. I ask myself to enjoy the piece of dark chocolate I break off and not just let it go by. I ask myself to look at this room and enjoy it now, as well as when arriving and leaving and away. It’s not only a room but a living space, a globe. Let me love what and whom I love while present. All moments have value, those of sadness, loss and self-hate are as fine as those of triumph and pride.

Or am I looking too hard? And cloying again? The trees intruding on the view of Savary were bothering me. Was the view of Savary bothering me too? Is being here now both enjoyment and loathing? Is all this oscillation the product of too much time on my hands? Or is time on my hands what I need to find what I seek? And what would prove it found? Written work worth publishing? I peruse my archives and come up with a downloaded pdf of last year’s Presidential Address to the American Studies Association that cites my 1989 essay on Diablo Canyon. I reread the essay with pleasure.

7:45 am

The light comes up slowly to reveal a clear sky. The wind has shifted to northerly, blowing the smoke from the bark burning in the stove down across the clearing. Carbon: burning cellulose, cutting down trees to make a view. No freedom from sin.

I slept better on the hard mattress in the small bedroom last night, except for the old teaching anxiety dreams just before wakeup: classes start today and I’m unprepared. It’s a relief to open eyes and remember I still have two months.

I switched beds also to close off the lower bedroom, which was draining heat from the rest of the house. The fuel was consumed, but there was no chill this morning. “Sticks in box, no more cold,” Ray Mungo’s mantra at Total Loss Farm in Vermont, Winter 1969. The basics of survival and satisfaction.

It took five minutes to start a fire, get the coffee going and draw a hot bath. All systems work. The enjoyments of simple and civilized. No car, internet, tv, radio, but yes, hot water, tight house, computer, and camera. I’m settling in.

The silence is like the blanket of warmth that envelops me when I go near the stove. I stop what I’m doing and snuggle in it. It’s heightened indoors by the discreet sounds of the house, flames in the stove, stove pipe pinging with temperature changes, the electric water heater or the pump switching on and off. Outdoors it’s the distant lap of waves, a raven’s croak, a car on the highway.

The extra dark coffee with goats milk has the thickness and taste of mocha. Sip slow.

The dawn is late and slow, lighting snow on the island peaks.

Frost, shoes sliding on the icy deck. The sky starts to overcast. Alterations of light and temperature mirror mood and desire.

Today what I want is to be inspired by this place to create.  Knoll House to be my muse, as it was in August when I was led to dig out the paired rocks, when the earth and the vegetation directed me to undress them and their glory was revealed, when they asked to be embellished with ferns and moss and they stood forth in splendor.

I step outside and am captured by the wide-eyed gaze of a doe. I return the stare, lock on her eyes, huge cupped ears, white-margined black tail.

I back up slowly to get the camera. Does this effort to appropriate the moment corrupt it or pay it tribute? The deer waits for me. Unfazed by the meretricious flash, she keeps grazing and then wanders off. “Coast Deer or Columbia Blacktail”Odocoileus hemionus. ¦a twigeater, browsing on Douglas fir, western red cedar, yew, blackberries, huckleberries and salal.” Nature West Coast p. 211

M comes up with his pickup and we load the canoe for a trip to the Ragged Islands. He hasn’t been in this boat, which he paid half for in 1974, for thirty years. It’s battered but still seaworthy. He paddles stern, weight too far back for the boat to balance stably and rusty on steering skills.

We piddle around the Lund Harbor and then head for Finn Bay against a stiff westerly breeze. We go through the little channel at Sevilla Island, and try to round the point into Thulin Passage but both agree it’s too dicey. Wind behind us, we coast back to Lund, the weather now again clear and brilliant.

We load the canoe into his truck and out onto the ramp in the sunshine come Carol P, and her daughter Cindy. Carol and I hug”she worked at the store during the seventies”and Cindy and I look at each other trying to place faces. Michael introduces me as Steven Marx of the Marx farm. She says I babysat for you. She’s nine years older than Joe. Most likely while we were doing the camp. Carol reminisces with Michael about the best of times, when he was chef in Lund and the restaurant was always full, even in the winter.

Michael parks the truck while I wait on the ramp, and comes walking down the hill with a tall man, whom I recognize as Don. We all retire to the pub. Don taught English in Powell River for 12 years, worked in a sawmill in Tahsis, then ran a school for troubled teenagers in Victoria. We schmooze for three beers. On the way home I propose to Michael that he be the cook for a dinner party on Saturday night at Knoll House, and that we go shopping on Friday. He agrees.

I come home and make myself supper”again Renee’s frozen lasagna and there’s still a portion left, along with local broccoli from the Lund store. Sounds like something living in the wall behind the couch where I sit. I doze off and am awakened by Peter U. delivering the bottle of whiskey I’d left in his car yesterday.

Speak to Joe on the phone. Tomorrow he goes to Hawaii for two weeks to build a barn with five members of his crew. He’s been working ten hour days the last three weeks. Amy’s business is dormant. They are under pressure. Appreciates our gift of Y membership. Voice is deep and sober.

This morning I wake up at a more decent time, drink coffee, meditate in a world of chaotic voices and impressions.  I microwave a bowl of the oatmeal left here by guests, and after fussing with the phone for a while manage to reach Jan. She tells me the doctor she saw in Santa Maria confirmed that the lump wasn’t a problem. Ian was just arriving in Halloween costume with Dennis. He said he missed me.

I find the red handled axe I bought at Canadian Tire this summer, gather some rounds of firewood scattered near the house and set up a chopping block. The first big round shows traces of previous efforts, is twisted in its grain, and has spongy outermost rings. Go slow, I tell myself, find the fine cracks, focus eyes where the blade should hit, angle the axe head with the grain. The first few blows are off and the blade buries itself in the soft tenacious outer rings. After about ten my aim improves, but the wood remains intact. After another ten, shoulders sore, I’m about to quit. Then with a loud crack a half inch gap opens across its diameter. My “yeah!” echoes through the woods. The next three rounds go quickly. Instead of asking to borrow a chainsaw or buying one or trying to get the old Homelite going, I roam past the perimeter of the clearing and find twenty or so rounds strewn in brushpiles. I throw them up on the road, carry them to the block and split enough to last for my stay. In the woodshed I separate three categories; kindling, starter wood and fuel.

I bike down the driveway. I have to dismount a few times to move the derailleur manually. It’s a thrill to speed down the curve toward Malaspina Farm. I find Peter working alongside Lucien, yarding out huge rounds of freshly cut alder that a faller had just taken down along his hydro line.

He tells me to borrow his bike which is smaller and better. We take his dog on a walk down a steep road to the edge of Okeover Arm, stopping at a lovely house, lawn and orchard with a landscaped stream winding through it to the shore. It reminds me of the stream on the Marx farm in winter rushing under the bridge and alongside the house.

We talk of children and grandchildren and my hopes to spend more time here with and without them and his hopes that S and W and their children will locate here at the completion of medical school. We come back to the house where Lucien is making lunch and Ronnie is coring and peeling apples for drying and adding to their homemade granola.

She’s recovering from the flu, but as animated as ever. She says, “Steven will know this,” and asks me a question about the proper ritual for unveiling a gravestone a year after her mother’s death. I have no idea, and I fail to link the question to the fact that today is Halloween, the day of the dead and of my father’s death. I do know that on such an anniversary it’s customary to light a Jahrzeit candle and say the Kaddish.

After lunch of two slices of bread and mustard”I turn down cheese and salami much to Peter’s disapproval”he drives to Lund to pick up the Globe and Mail for the word puzzle to which he’s addicted. At Nancy’s over coffee he tells me the story of Sacha and Wendy’s trick announcement of pregnancy by giving them an elaborately packaged giftbox with a positive pregnancy test stick inside.

Back at Knoll House I make a fire with my new wood. Jan calls and mentions mourning for Henry. I remember with shock.

The sun starts doing amazing things with the clouds behind Savary.

I go out on the deck and down to the bluff to take pictures.

I light the kerosene lamp for Henry, gather his pictures on my computer and read my account of his death on October 31 1995, my eulogy and my obituary.

I collect the pictures in my computer of other dead people I cared for and put them into an album. There are 11. Actually 10, since I find out a few days later that Terry K. is still alive.

The morning is dark and overcast, the house cold. I get up three hours later than usual. The bad smell in the bathroom is back. This time I look high rather than low and see a swatch of fur protruding through the insulation panels in the ceiling. After coffee and a new fire in the stove I return with pliers, lift the panel, clasp the dead mouse by the tail and cremate it.

Since I’m offline, no new input here today. Writing about yesterday, when nothing really happened, has already taken up six hours. If I were online, I’d be interrupted every few minutes.

I eat soup and empanada at Nancy’s bakery and bike back up the hill to M’s place. Since returning here a year ago after 21 years away, he lives alone in his trailer, works on his subdivision plans and his art. He seems healthy and happy, but how does he handle the solitude and lack of stimulation? The TV is on, next to his internet computer. We talk about old times.

Peddling up the steep driveway in the dark I meet neighbor Dick in his diesel pickup on the way to dump his compost for the bears down below the rock bluff. He tells me that our tenant last year showed him a photograph of a cougar sunning himself on the moss near the deck.

I meditate from 7:30 to 8:00, the silence of this place amplifying the static in my head. Usually it “settles down” for the last few minutes, but not now that I’m doing it twice a day in this perfect spiritual retreat. Nevertheless afterwards, I feel clearer and more optimistic than before. I read till ten, finishing My Year of Meats, carrying on a conversation with the author, as if she were the protagonist, Jane Takagi–a Japanese-American documentarian filmmaker. Though a DES child, Jane wants a baby and gets pregnant. Then loses it with a “missed abortion,” a form of miscarriage involving carrying a dead fetus for several weeks. That rare term awakened long-dormant dark personal memories.

The truest material for me in the book’s somewhat contrived denouement is expression of grief for this loss. All the happy endings”Jane’s career success, the defeat of the feedlot hormone conspiracy, Akiko’s pregnancy, her escape and welcome in America, the rekindling of Jane’s romance with Sloan”don’t mitigate its pain.