(Posted March 6, 2011)
Yesterday I finally got off my duff and went outside to clean up the snow in our driveway. Usually, Barney the plow guy takes care of all of our plowing needs. But we’ve been away from home for awhile skiing in Montana and though it didn’t snow much while we were gone (much to Barney’s dismay, I’m sure) the wind has whipped a fair amount of powder into the driveway: Enough so that my Pacifica ground to a halt a couple of days back, when I was racing out the door, the clock against me, to get Jack to school.
“You don’t have to swear, Dad,” my thirteen year old reminded me as I muttered and cursed and rocked the van until it was buried.
More bad words.
I retreated to the garage, grabbed the first snow shovel I could find, and trudged back to the drift-encased Chrysler. It wasn’t a big deal. I got the car out after a few minutes of shoveling. But it took a while for my blood pressure (more from the anger than from the shoveling) to return to baseline.
“Sorry about the bad words.”
“No problem. I’ve heard them before.”
Indeed he has. From me. From his buddies. From his brothers. But Jack knows better than to curse in any argument between us. Though he’s too old for it now, he’s benefited from my mom’s time-honored remedy for cursing: the dreaded bar of soap. Happened with each son only once. Mom was right: that’s all it takes.
Anyway, yesterday. A bright, open, late winter’s sky stood above me. My list of chores loomed over me like Lone Peak, the mountain that defines Big Sky in all its craggy glory.
Bring in the recycling. Snowblow the driveway. Clean the garage. Stack the wood pile. Vacuum, dust, and wash the hardwood floors in the house.
These tasks awaited me as I wandered into our crowded garage and looked at our own little Lone Peak of recyclables that had accumulated.
Better than sending it to a landfill.
The run to the township recycling shed went smoothly. I was back at the house, behind the purring engine of a snowblower, in an hour. But the snowblowing wasn’t as easy as it looked at first glance.
Gravity.
What I thought as I labored to force the snowblower through defiant snowdrifts was how, as we age, Mother Earth’s hold on us seems to grow. You know, how your legs, legs that once carried you across the finish line of marathons or allowed you to avoid tacklers on the football field seem as dead as logs. And how your shoulders and back and thighs and hips-parts of your body you once relied upon for steady strength and endurance-now seem ready to allow your skeleton to collapse into goo. I came to the conclusion, as I waddled (twenty pounds over my “fighting” weight) behind the snowblower, that despite my successful conquest of three Montana ski resorts (no major falls, no broken bones) that gravity was a force I could not, and will not, outdistance.
This morbid thought stayed with me as I swept winter leavings on the garage floor into piles and sucked them into oblivion with my shop vac. The weight of the world pronounced itself to an even greater degree as I pulled plastic slider after plastic slider filled with dry, split maple (for our great room fireplace) through melting snow, revealed dog shit, and decaying ice. Gravity’s embrace clung to me like a fat lover as I filled my arms with firewood and climbed the steep stairs to our covered front porch to fill the wood bin.
Gravity. Grave. God.
The sun stood high as this succession of “G” words came into my head. I sat on the top stairs, exhausted, having done as much of my chore list as my body would allow a fifty-seven year old man to do in one day. Daisy, our aging black Labrador-something-else-mix, nuzzled my gloved hand with her wet nose. I removed my glove and scratched her black belly.
She so loves the sun.
Kramer,the other geriatric Labrador patrolling our acreage, stood at the bottom of the stairs, gravity having robbed him of his ability to climb. I stood up and descended the stairs to give Kramer his due. One scratch on the belly didn’t satisfy the old moocher. As I wandered down the now-cleared driveway to retrieve the day’s mail, Kramer followed by my side, occasionally nudging my bare hand for attention. Daisy, gravity thick in her hips, rose slowly from her sunny repose and joined our walk down the lane.
Despite the weight of all things, it was a gorgeous day on the river.
Peace.
Mark
When the Woman is Right… (Posted March 3, 2011)
A long drive. That’s what it is from Duluth, Minnesota to White Sulphur Springs, Montana. By any calculation: miles, kilometers, hours, minutes; it’s a long freakin’ way by car from here to there.
We’re on our semi-annual family ski vacation. Usually, we drive from Duluth to Bozeman and ski Bridger Bowl, Moonlight Basin, and sometimes (if the wallet is still full), Big Sky. This trip, I’m driving with my wife, Rene’, my son Jack, and my nephew Alex to Montana but we’re not going directly to Bozeman, where we’ll meet up with other Duluthians. No, because I have a new novel ready to be born, a novel set in the Smith River valley, a novel set in the Big and Little Belt Mountains that surround White Sulphur Springs, Montana we’re gonna stop in White Sulphur and ski Showdown before moseying on down to Bozeman.The visit will be, as my sons like to say, “an experience”.
You see, all four of my boys have had “experiences” with their old man on any number of jaunts and journeys; from train trips to Montreal; to hockey weekends in Mora. Some good. Some bad. But all definitely, “experiences” of one kind or another. What I really want, what I really need from this diversion into central Montana, is to obtain a sense of place for my book, Laman’s River (see above dashboard under “Work in Progress” for a sample chapter). The Minnesota scenes I was able to write with ease. Duluth. The Gunflint Trail. Grand Marais. Recall for those settings was automatic. But scenes set in Montana’s Smith River valley, a place I’d never visited? Taking a peek in that “neck of the woods” can’t hurt the veracity of my effort. Am I right?
“Hi,” I tell the lady behind the desk. “Mark Munger. From Duluth.”
“One night, right?” the woman says, looking at her handwritten reservation log.
“Right.”
I’ve pulled my Pacifica and its rooftop ski rack, the cargo bay filled with ski gear, two teenagers, my wife, and our luggage in front of a lodging venue that, to be accurate, looked a hell of lot better in the photos displayed on the place’s website. Still, the manager is pleasant. The office seems clean. I hand the lady my credit card and we do business.
“You’re all set. Your cabin is just around the corner. Pull your car in and you can unload.”
“Thanks.”
I move the van a few feet. It’s a tight squeeze between the office and the one-room cabin that will be our home for the night. I’m hungry, tired from driving, and anxious to “set up camp” and then wander off to find a good steak or a burger in this tiny town.
“This is it?” my wife asks softly, incredulity clear in her voice as she stares up at a cement block wall painted white, the cabin’s windows facing the office building (the office is a mere fifteen feet away from the cabin) crudely boarded over with chip board that has been painted white in an equally inept fashion.
“Sure. So long as it’s warm and clean. It’s only for one night.”
I open the back of the Pacifica and lug my suitcase towards the front door of the place. I slide the key into the lock, turn the knob, and enter the very cold interior of the cement “cabin”.
My wife walks in ruefully behind me. The boys follow.
“How much are you paying for this….?”
Rene’ doesn’t finish her sentence. I know she is already mustering an argument against spending the night. The inside of the place is as crude as the exterior. Again, the photos I viewed online do not bear any resemblance to the room we’re standing in. Beyond the aesthetics, which, I silently have to agree with my wife, aren’t very appealing, the place is as cold as ice. I look at the wall heater.
I doubt that will warm this room.
“It’s only for one night,” I say loudly, my patience worn thin. An argument ensues. Some bad words follow. My wife recoils at my barrage, a linguistic attack that is really, as I look back on the situation, wholly unjustified.
“I…am…not…sleeping…in…dog…hair…” my wife says slowly, fighting back tears, pulling the quilt off one of the two beds in the room, revealing an accumulation of petrified black dog hair.
She takes my credit card and receipt from my hand. I say nothing. She leaves.
In my mind, I turn the scene over and over, searching for a reason I’m so damn insensitive and vehement.
Pride. Grandpa Duane was very, very skeptical when I told him where we were staying. He’s been coming here for years. In his subtle way, he tried to warn me. I didn’t listen. I knew better. The website said…
“There’s a room available at the hotel down the street,” Rene’ says quietly when she steps back into the icebox of a cabin. While she was gone, I’d turned on the heater to no affect. The dog hair hasn’t vanished in the interim. “She made the reservation and refunded your money.”
Not much more is said as I lug my suitcase back to the car and slam the tailgate. We drive a few hundred feet to the hotel, the same place my mom and Duane stayed the day before. The lobby is bright, cheery, and spotless. The owner greets me with a smile and when he finds out Duane is my stepdad, he gives me the “Duluth discount” plus discounted lift tickets to ski Showdown the next day.
My pride takes a beating. We save twenty bucks on the room, nearly forty on the lift tickets, and I redeem myself in some small measure with the wife.
We eat big burgers at an old fashioned supper club next door to the hotel and, after turning down the lights, I fall asleep wondering how the hell I’m gonna explain this all to Grandpa Duane.
Peace.
Mark
