Morning and Me

Michelle has spent the last two nights away from the homestead for work and to help out friends in town. With Aly away at college, I’m enjoying a little alone time on the land.

mountain morning

My morning view. Those contrails indicate that some people have urgent business elsewhere, but not me (Photo: Mark Zeiger).

Alone, except for the cat, Spice, who, as usual, has spent much of her morning trying to cry me into following her strict schedule. That seems to be “get up and feed me,” “let me out on the porch,” “let me back in from the porch” “scoop my litter box,” and “sit on the couch so I can cuddle with you.” I’m not buying into it, except for the feeding and porch outing. For a blessed few moments, she’s sitting happily by the screen door, watching the door yard. She’s on vole patrol, I assume, keeping a critical eye on the rodent that seems to have moved in under the wood pile. At any rate, she’s silent. Before long, she’ll come in and find a place to sleep on Aly’s bed.

Our recent north winds, which have blessedly restored our battery bank to 100% and equalized it for the period, are absent this morning; Lynn Canal has calmed to a mirror. I see no fishing boats this morning, so the clunking of gear and the shouts of the crews do not intrude on the silence. Any cruise ships headed to Skagway passed by hours before I awoke. I have a moment to sit with a small breakfast and a good cup of coffee, to enjoy the view.

The stillness is misleading. I’ve got a full plate today: I’m reseasoning our cast iron frying pans, cutting and hauling more of the coming winter’s firewood, I need to write a blog post to get on line, there are dishes and a grimy homesteader to wash, and hopefully fish to catch. At least for now, there’s nothing more that can be done for the new counter. There’s always a lot to do, much more than these tasks I’ve set for myself today. But for a few moments it’s just the calm, quiet morning, and me.

This entry was posted in Homesteading and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *