Fish are jumpin’ and the fireweed’s high

Back to nature. Maybe it was the long, hot summer, but the drive for firewood has been at a low ebb this year. A year ago there was new snow on the mountain in early July. This year by the third week in August, no snow yet. I do have more than a winter's worth in the yard so that could have lessened the drive as well. But, it is coming, there is an August nip in the night air. A couple of swans showed up on the pond a week ago, but they are probably the nesting pair that hangs out in the sloughs and muskeg ponds farther back off the road, not resting on the migration. (Right. Still no one.) The water remains covered with many more bronzing lily pads than in the past few years. A few leaves have yellowed but nothing like full-blown autumn. Fireweed has gone to seed and people say it is the tallest they have ever seen.

There is a new solitary man. I have not seen the original in more than a year. That is probably more due to a change in my schedule than anything that might have happened to him. I just don’t drive through his part of the country at the times I used to see him in years past. This year a fellow, (at least I think he is a man) has taken up residence along the narrow road to the house. He lives in a decrepit old brindle brown van with a stovepipe. Most often there is smoke coming from the pipe. He first showed up in a narrow pullout near the river bridge but later moved to a more open space not far from the salmon fishing area. The highway people had gone along and cut back brush from the road and he found an open, level place to park. For a while he had a tent up but that disappeared. He has what looks like an old bicycle mounted on the front of the van and I have seen it off a time or two. I have only seen him once or twice, once sitting in the driver’s seat watching traffic, but masked so much by the windshield his features were indiscernible. Yesterday he was walking toward the van with an armload of what was probably firewood but he wore a headnet against insects so again his face was masked.

There are differences among solitary men and a glaring one between these two. Where the first fellow lived in the woods out of sight of other people, this one lives right out in the open, visible to anyone who drives the road. Some want to be seen, for whatever purpose and others prefer their privacy. It is as if one wants to be found and one doesn’t and we can only guess at the reasons for either. In my own solitude, though I have been quite comfortable, I think I fall among those who want to be found. I can understand putting on the front of self sufficiency, solitude and privacy, yet maintaining that little spark of a thought that someone out there you really want to, will find you. Grace or Fiona would be good. It is, of course, false hope nurtured by ongoing fantasy and the moments you realize that can be pretty depressing. But, a new day most often brings a new hope and you go on with your life secure with yourself and content with existence, though aware of that question and finding ways at least in your imagination of answering it. And doesn't the sight of those symbolic swans fuel that flight of fantasy?