The Plebe Spews

to emphasize the cold, winds have blown with purpose for the last three days. it is too cold to ski and so i sit at the computer and work on reports and when i run out of big words, i play with the cats.

sam has created the habit of going into my bedroom and staring at the wall. then he meows. he wants to chase the reflection of the sun off of my watch. "it's okay....i really want to do this", he says in the language that only a north woods resident, stuck in his dwelling at the end of january, can understand.

"meow," i reply. "i mean, okay sam."

i have made several forays into the woods to look for owls, but other than the great gray nikky and i found in early january, the world is a desert. a cold, snowy, uninhabitable desert.

the cold, if nothing else, keeps the riff-raff out. crime is non-existant here, primarily because most people can't make the drive up my driveway. i walked down to the mailbox on highway 61 yesterday, while winds sucked snow towards the sky and even the heat of the sun was irrelevant.

it's about a half-mile to the road and coming back ... up that hill ... towards the north horizon ... mount oberg and moose mountain stood like book-ends on my world. it is a gray and white world, nestled beneath blue. it is dark more than it is light. it is cold. it coddles me like a mother. it doesn't get any better than this.

okay. so my attorney said that i should avoid any references to the anti-christ and skankdom, so i will do that. i have labored through 2 weeks without my son and everything is now a legal matter. we can live and die and in between, do all the citizenly things society demands, but lawyers will always want more money.

let's see. dear diary. in the last two weeks, my obsessive desires for snow were answered by the mocking gods of winter. over three feet of snow has fallen and now, i am checking "hotwire" for discount fares to el paso and birmingham. i want to go south, but not the south of all those gape-jawed, plaid bermuda, calf covering, athletic sock-wearing tourists. silver bay is about how far south i want to go.

it's not that bad. it got down to -26 f. the other night, but inside, it was (is) toasty. the red squirrels have gone sub-nivian with a a tunnel complex that extends for miles. i still chase them, but have let my paintballs and slingshot rest. harassment isn't proper when survival enters the north woods picture.

my feeders are busy. grosbeaks and redpolls exhibit a symbiotic relationship. the grosbeaks work the seeds like a parrot, and the redpolls skitter below them, picking up the discards. during cold weather (and it has been cold), the redpolls rouse their plumage in attempts to insulate-away the winter.

yesterday, a rough-legged hawk perched in a nearby birch and watched everything, and nothing. the gimpy raven hasn't been seen since the snow, but corvids are survivors and you gotta believe he is along the highway 61 corridor feasting on some road kill tenederloin. or viscera.

i dropped nikky off at school and had to temper his excitement, for dance class was starting again and he wants to be an after-school barishnikov. dance is a good release and when you are 6, sometimes a release is all one needs.

an hour later, i was informed that the son i have fed and clothed and tucked into bed for most of the last year, who has grown like a weed, and who has metamorphsized into a beautiful, kind, considerate, sensitive, funny, huggable flower, was being taken to maine by his mother. she lied and deceived and when karma comes to pay her a visit, karma will be busy.

now, nikky's room is in the same disarray as it was when he left for school on monday: his koala and blanket are in a tussled mess, his sponge bob and bob the builder pillows lay hidden beneath the comforter, and his dirty socks are piled in the corner.

on the table next to his bed, a smokey the bear bookmark signals the end of our last reading and beginning of the next. every night, he asked for and received four things: "scratch back, rub belly, hug, kiss." truth be told, he didn't have to ask for them.

for three nights i have slept fitfully. my eyes open when dreams tell me he is running to the bathroom, or that he is standing next to my bed, waiting for me to tell him to "go get blankie and koala" so he can fend off a scary dream in daddy's bed.

of the pages and pages of artwork nikky has produced, one sits atop my computer desk. it is of a rocket ship on its way to the moon. inside are two people. "one", he said, "is nikky" and "one", he said, "is daddy". we are both smiling. happy kids make happy pictures.

i never got to say good-bye.

today, nikky and i went to the sawtooth challenge, a cross-country ski race for those who are able to go fast and nimbly on two slabs of graphite and wax. my best chance of winning was as a spectator.

i love to ski and in fact, do so at least 5 times a week. but let's face it, mine is a body best suited to driving a car or sitting at the keyboard or sucking down microbrews, and not laboring on narrow, winding ski trails. on a good day, not counting bloating and water gain, i top the scales at around 220.

i watched the races to see if i could pick up some pointers...you know...some techniques that would make me move like the wind. the only thing i learned was that i need to be 20 years old and weigh somewhere in the vicinity of karen carpenter during her last tour.

my right leg weighs more than the winner of the 15 k freestyle race.

nikky thought it was all pretty cool, but still won't commit to the life of an athlete. after watching the races, i don't think i will either.

during the 320 days of a tofte winter, life is characterized by cold and cantankerous skies, bending branches, and a slew of affronts to exposed skin. everything else (i.e., the other two days), are rockwell moments.

last night, it started to snow. not from the sudden release of a surly, canadian front, but from the slow exhalation of a winter system in no hurry to move. flakes dropped from the sky in unbothered vertical lines and then settled like down on the ground. after an hour, the world turned soft.

when i awoke this morning, my onion river world was locked in a snow globe. branches drooped, pine grosbeaks and redpolls flitted at the feeders...the wind did not stir.

i have waited for a day like this since the first snows of november - have waited for winter to expose her soft underbelly - to coddle and inspire my son. she succeeded today and i believe nikky now feels welcomed by the northern latitudes. nikky and i have one more thing in common.

************
a few hours later……

"but I don't want to drive the back roads daddy."
"nikky….every time you say that and we drive the back roads, something cool happens….remember the wolf?…the moose?….the deer?….the eagle?"
"yeah."
"okay. just relax."
"but it takes too long."

a mile later, the owl sat atop an unbending spruce. she didn't mind the slowing vehicle or its uneven, yet purposeful change of direction.

"nikky…look…it's a great gray!"
"where?"
"right………there!!!"
"wow…she's beautiful."
"yes she is nikky!"

the gray perched then moved with purpose, leaving us in the middle of nowhere. she coursed down the open road then disappeared into the birch and spruce, to continue her life as a ghost of the north woods.

"see nikky?….that's why we drive the back roads."

"yeah…can we do it again?"

i started skating when i was 4. nikky started putting skates on at the same age, although i don't know if i would call his actions skating. whenever metal was attached to his feet, he whined and then wanted to go home...and usually did because mommy was receptive to his whining.

as a doting father, i would watch as they left the skating rink and avert my head in shame, telling myself, "he can't be my child."

today on a frozen ice rink just east of tofte, a gaggle of bold yet uncertain, daring yet reserved kids strapped on the blades and slipped and skidded their way into winter.

when i arrived, nikky was doing a splayed, hold onto the boards for dear life pirhouette, and was so immersed in survival that he didn't know i was watching him.

other kids were moving like scandinavians; my child was locked in a death grip on horizontal pine.

"nikky...how you doing?"

"what does it look like?"

"ahhh....not good?"

"help me daddy."

so i grabbed a chair and nikky sat while i pushed him in rapid circles around the rink. he didn't have to skate, but at least he knew what going fast and in control felt like.

will it turn him into a skater? probably not. but now he knows how special he is because, when all was said and done, all of the 21 kids at birch grove got to sit in the chair and skate "really fast", but only nikky got to go twice.

nikky's first science experiment was a success, unless you are his father. then it was a failure.

for some reason, he wanted to see how much toilet paper could be swallowed by the "system". a quarter-roll was about it. there was so much paper that moose and sam were getting ready to take a nap in the bowl.

after forceful, yet compassionate discipline, nikky understood the error of his ways and said, "i'll never use toilet paper again."

"no nikky, that's not what i meant....you can use toilet paper, just don't play with it." and then i went into an erudite's explanation of our septic system and how its limited capacity is already being threatened by "daddy's diet."

"i mean jeez nikky...what about your legos? don't you like to play with them anymore?"

"yeah."

"okay, but toilet paper is not a toy, it is a tool."

his look confirmed i had lost him. science will do that to a kid.

not yet 9 o'clock, and already the thermometer is toying with minus 20. the winds are mere whispers compared to last night, and i think nikky sleeps better when the generator isn't being enticed to generate.

i went skiing today and for all the preparation, i may as well have had 120-grit on my ski bottoms. the cold changes the snow to its impervious form. its crystals harden and it clings to its neighbors in immobile defiance to the wind and sun. perspiration wicks to the frozen air, then turns white. glide is a luxury soon forgotten.

lake superior is amazing in the cold. coming down the hill to deliver the nikster to school, vapors swirled atop the water and its blue waters looked sinister. nikky said it looked like i was boiling water for spaghetti noodles. the cold may grab you by the lapels and shake you senseless, but the lake renders you insignificant.

at the same time a bubble-wrapped probed bounced and then deflated itself on mars, i came to grips with my world.

i am a biologist and it is cold.

a stiff northwest wind blows off of oberg and moves through the valley like an ungrateful visitor. there will be clouds tomorrow, but they will be inconsequential because winter wins. for now.

i stepped onto the porch tonight and my breath left me. it had no choice.

it could be worse and it will be worse and yet...i love the cold and my immersion into winter. i want more cold. i want more winter. is that wrong?

on a night when planets aligned along a plane above my world,

and the moon glowed like a coleman lantern,

tree bark cracked under an arctic whip,

and i moved deep beneath a thick layer of down.

i am safe here, beneath my roof,

because above and about me,

life goes on, and inside,

the fire glows red.