Thump, Thump, Thump
The sun pours through the sliding glass doors, spills over the floor, and each day it does resolves every question about having a dog.
All the leaves are down and the sky is gray. Not exactly how the song goes, but you get the idea. Our neighbor across the pond has headed home to New Mexico, which leaves just three of us at the water’s edge to fend together through winter. The 2025 Old Farmer’s Almanac is forecasting kinder, gentler weather: cold, but not as cold; snowy, but not as snowy. So far, they are on track. Earlier in the week we woke up to a light layer of snow on the ground. A few days later, temperatures were in the mid-seventies. We have settled into the mid-fifties since. I am afraid to start planting spring bulbs for fear they will think about growing.
But we have gone through one pile of wood stacked in the basement heating the cabin by stove, which is our intention for the season. It is not simply the cost of propane; it is the uncertainty of delivery that rattles the nerves. The trucks eventually make it through the storms, slowly backing down the driveway—even narrower than normal because of snowbanks—but, if the generator has been running for a day or two because the power is out, tanks can be perilously low. More comforting to keep them near full strength, much as we can.
We have two wood stoves. Upstairs a Vermont Castings model, that is quietly ornate, with a couple of bells and whistles, including a catalytic converter. The converter burns the fuel more efficiently, trapping excess heat from going up the chimney, leaving less ash. It has fine brass hardware and a window in front through which to view the fire. Downstairs is a Fisher, a burly, cast iron box that is all business: no viewing window or brass hardware. All iron muscle. While the temperatures are moderate, down in the low forties at night and fifties during the day, the Fisher heats the place on its own. The hot air rising via the stairwell holds the temperature upstairs at sixty-seven or sixty-eight and over seventy downstairs. We take stock of the fact the manufacturer extolls the two cooking levels on top of the stove, molded as if they had tugged on the top and bottom ends of the letter Z to extend it. This is no suburban woodstove, comfortable around children or pets. It likes life in the woods and the idea of steam rising from a pot.
The moderate temperatures have me procrastinating about putting the vegetable gardens to bed. In my earliest years as a gardener, I embraced the practice of turning plant remains back into the soil: the stalks of tomatoes and beans, carrot tops, and the spent leafy parts of potatoes. I cut it all up and till it by hand into the ground, which is why I procrastinate. It is not without its exertions. This year we have our new asparagus patch. The foliage has to be cut back to the root, and then, because this is New Hampshire and the Old Almanac’s prediction of moderate temperatures simply means relatively less biting cold than usual, I will cover the patch with straw. The young asparagus has thrived this year, as experts said it would in a raised bed. We are hopeful that some will be harvestable next spring. There are stalks that will be in their third year.
By now, the sun is not getting much above the white pines after it makes its way around the sky to our side of the pond. The cabin faces due east. On clear mornings, once it crests the hill, the light is straight on and blinding through the windows while we have our coffee. By ten or eleven, it has moved to the southern end of the pond, high enough to peek over the smaller trees and dry out the cushions on the porch if it rained overnight. It spends the early afternoon running its fingers through upper branches behind us until it reaches the openness of our field. Usually, at that time, I am here, in the studio above the garage, doing what I am doing now. The sun pours through the sliding glass doors, spills over the floor, and each day it does resolves every question about having a dog.
It is not in me to get down on the floor with him right now. It would not bring me closer to the contentment he is radiating from his spot on the rug, stretched out in the sun, and warm to the bone. Too close and I might erase it. I might disturb his dreams, which have triggered a twitch in his paws, and a few thumps of the tail. The thumping tail is the best. He must be happy. What a pleasure to know, unscripted. It has to be a memory of some sort—of a walk in the woods, a swim. Breakfast? Am I in his dream? Is it me he thumps his tail for? When he wakes up, I will give him a cookie as a reward for being happy. A total surprise. Gee, thanks, he will think. And, maybe, gosh, what time is it?
It is getting time to turn the lights on. The sun is sinking below the hills behind us and, now, Huckleberry is stirring. Tomorrow we fall back to standard time so it will be nearly dark by this same moment and colder. Below freezing tomorrow night, in the twenties.
But we have our Fisher stove, and the next stack of wood, and the Huckle-Buckle.
And all of you.
Thump, thump, thump.