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Sunday, November 03, 2002 I have the feeling that deer hunting season commenced today -- I walked outside about an hour ago, the hills were alive with the sound of gunshots. Don't think I'll be taking many walks in the woods in the coming days. It's a beautiful early winter's Sunday, balancing out yesterday's nippy gray Saturday. Snow fell on and off during most of yesterday morning -- not my preferred early-November weather, but real damn pretty, with little accumulation. The nights here have been authentically cold, temperatures dropping to the mid-teens, the overnight temperature in the house also drifting down to genuinely cool levels. Which suits me just fine, actually -- I love sleeping under warm, thick covers, the air in the room nice and cool. I've gotten into a pattern of waking up on those cool mornings, pulling on warm clothes, heading downstairs to clean out the ashes from the previous day's coal fire, a process which would goes on for a bit as I sift through the ashes to take out the bits of unburned coal (the 'clinkers,' my downhill neighbor Mo calls 'em) and toss them back into the stove as a foundation for the coming day's load. Go outside, dump the ashes into a bucket, pick up some wood to start a fire with, build that, get it going. Once that's well underway and most of the wood's been reduced to embers, coal gets added, two or three shovelfuls at a time. Which gradually builds up a good bed of hot, cherry-red coals, the kind that gets the stove cranking out serious, concentrated heat. Not as much fun as being able to walk outside into summer sunlight in shorts and t-shirt, but it'll do. It does feel good to head out into the cold for a while, then return to a warm living space, the northern Vermont landscape doing its thing outside every window. And it's deer-hunting season. Not my kind of activity, but part of life's fabric up here. There have been one or two hunting seasons during the past few weeks, the more recent being deer bow-hunting season, nowhere near as popular or noisy as rifle season. And now everyone gets to bring their rifles everywhere they drive in the hope they'll stumble across some deer in a field. Trucks cruise slowly up and down country roads, looking for something legitimate to let loose a few shots at, the more serious hunters find a spot in the woods to settle down and wait for a likely source of meat (or antlers) to happen by. Me, I'll watch 'em all and write about 'em here. And the days will roll on. **************** Went to see a French film this afternoon, a kickass concoction called "Read My Lips." The scuttlebutt is that this film is already slated for an American remake. It's HIGHLY unlikely they'll improve on the original -- if you can check this one out, do it. **************** Cribbed from www.foxvox.org (w/ thanks to Kristen): "What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a Masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath." -- Thomas Crum rws 1:44 PM [+]
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