A Place in the Woods

The flames, bright orange from the sodium in the wood, danced and flickered in the field stone fireplace and told Jack Darcy that he was in the right place at the right time, that his decision was as sound as the bed rock beneath the cabin.

He sat there in the rocker, in front of the fire, in a seat that sagged about six inches from level, and mused about fire's immutable connection to human evolution, and smiled broadly about his circumstance. Surrounded by hemlock logs that he had cut two dozen Springs before, logs he had shaved, shaped, assembled and chinked one on top of another, fortified him with a sense of safety and accomplishment that he found nowhere else. It was a solid building and it protected him physically and metaphorically from the world.

Outside, a foot-and-half of overnight snow sat on top of what already was there and made him one of the happiest prisoners on earth, even as the strength of the storm had surprised him. His cabin, and it was his cabin, was arranged in a sixteen- by twenty-foot oblong with an eight-by-eight-foot kitchen addition at the rear of the building. There were five windows in the structure, one on either side of the kitchen, and one on each of the three walls beyond the fireplace. The fireplace, for which he had hauled tons of field stones, rose ten feet from a precast concrete floor that he had had installed. The chimney was the most difficult construction project he faced. It required him to precisely arrange the stones and the mortar around a preformed flue. A used gas stove, fed by an outside propane tank, took up a quarter of the small kitchen that offered entry and exit. In front of the fireplace was a row of two small, secondhand easy chairs and the rocker. Behind them were two bunks fitted with foam rubber mattresses with denim covers resting on two-by-four and plywood sheet constructions, and a modest table with three chairs. Darcy had an old sleeping bag rated at five below that he usually slept on top of because the fireplace provided more than enough heat for the 300-plus square foot building. He used his grandmother's old comforter because it was handmade and reminded him of a woman as kindly as any he had met.

In one corner, a pair of Ojibwa snowshoes, tapered at both ends, stood awaiting later use. He had constructed them with help from a local Ojibwa man; each was made with a single 60-foot strand of rawhide woven inside a wood frame he had purchased at a sporting goods store. He could walk out to the county road, about two miles from the cabin, but the snow depth made driving his four-wheeler impossible, and he was happy with that. His 160-acre property, with a tote road easement, sat surrounded by thousands of acres of timber company land and offered even more isolation. It had been willed to him by his grandfather, via his father, both long gone. His supreme well-being prompted thoughts of a jig to demonstrate his euphoria, but the flames told him to sit where he was and enjoy the money he already had in the bank.

The kitchen cabinets, there were two, contained canned goods, pots, silverware and dishes. There was a small metal sink with a drain. The cooler outside contained a venison roast from the previous deer season and some beef steaks. Snow could be melted for drinking water and coffee.

He owned a cell phone, but the cabin was not close enough to a transmission tower and there was no one to call anyway; cancer had taken his wife six years before and their only son had moved to Oregon shortly after her death. He saw a few friends when he lived in the city house, but they were not close though they had offered help after Sarah passed. And anyway, for Darcy, the lack of phone service at the cabin was a blessing.

And so he sat by the fire until it was time to open a can of beef stew, the reason being that his contentment had so slowed his metabolism that he had no energy left to prepare anything else. By 9 o'clock, or so, according to the battery-operated clock on the north wall, not always accurate, it was time for Morpheus. The humorous irony was that time was the last thing that concerned Darcy. A battered old radio, also run on batteries, gave him three daily weather reports if he wanted them, and often they were only partial reports because of static from an FM country station that operated on the lowest wattage allowed by the FCC. He put several more sticks of maple on the andirons that were about a hundred years old and had come from his grandfather's house, doused the two propane lanterns, moved the screen in front of the fireplace and fell into his bunk, grinning until he lapsed into unconsciousness about five minutes later.

* * *

The morning crawled slowly into the cabin, at about the pace that never tired Darcy. He thought briefly about perked coffee and then decided on Grampa's “cowboy coffee,” which involved a handful of ground beans dumped into a pot of not very carefully measured water and set on top of the gas range. Three eggs stored in the cooler were cracked and made into an omelet with ground pork sausage and onions. There are two provable verities in the world, he thought, onions and the jump shot, even though some people did not like onions and some others couldn't make jump shots.

Then, after a second cup of coffee and half a cigar, it was time. At 63 years Darcy was not exactly young, but he was in shape from profitable work as a handyman who set his own hours and allowed him to visit this wood castle in the forest. He climbed into an old pair of worn but strong wool bibs over a fleece turtleneck and then struggled into a black-and-red checked wool jacket that had belonged to a favorite uncle who had taught Darcy many things when he was a kid. One of them was that you shouldn't talk in church and so, when Uncle Dan and Darcy walked in the woods, they usually did not converse. It wasn't by design, but it was as natural as the trees that canopied above them, as soft as the rush of a breeze perfumed by balsam firs on a deep summer evening, as lovely and gentle as a stream side bank of trilliums and marsh marigolds in the Spring.

Darcy had killed deer, and grouse, and waterfowl in his lifetime and he had eaten most of everything he could from his wild harvest. He admitted to himself that there was a slight pang each time because he truly believed that he was related to every living thing on Earth. He did not rationalize his activity because he had consumed everything he killed and in his mind it was a kind of recycling that he would be part of eventually when he was planted. Some of his city friends did not approve and told him so. He did not defend his hunting, though, because they had a right to their opinions; he just thought differently.

The property was criss-crossed by roads cut by the timber company before it was offered to his grandfather, and hiking was not difficult, but did produce a series of warm memories. He had walked these roads in all seasons with his uncle and heard stories of the pioneers who originally settled the land, some of them even true. But vastly more important was the notion that there was a viable connection between him and the trees, the wild raspberries that he gathered in summer for the absolutely best pancakes in the universe, the skunk cabbage that blossomed in the low places in the spring, even the field clover and the marsh grass that rippled in the wind as if it was waving to him personally.

His uncle and father had nailed a series of wood signs marking various roads that were arbitrary and solely for identification. Darcy smiled as he slogged past the intersection of Molly and Feather Roads; it was where a grouse had flushed and literally knocked off his orange hunting cap before disappearing into a grove of jack pines. He passed the small spring that ran throughout the year and sampled some of the water with a tin cup that always hung from a nearby branch. Uncle Dan told him Moonshiners had used the spring to make illegal whiskey in the 1920s and '30s even though it was before Dan's birth and was really, only a story. He crunched past the Big Rock, a huge boulder that he had climbed when he was eleven, and tore a ligament after falling from it that kept him out of action for half the summer. He checked the remains of a field stone wall said to be the site of a root cellar used by an immigrant German family that settled in the area at about the turn of the century.

He stopped at one point, built a small twig fire and heated a can of chicken noodle soup that he had slipped into a jacket pocket. It was so simple, so plain, so absolutely glorious, sitting alone on a downed tree trunk in a silent winter woodlot spooning the liquid into his mouth. Chickadees flitted above him and squirrels chased each other as squirrels do when they're having fun. He remembered seeing a beautiful fisher, bouncing in front of him, seeming to challenge him to a chase but staying just far enough away, its black fur shining in the sun like an ebony jewel. It was one of the forest's most beautiful animals, Darcy thought, and he was happy for it without knowing exactly why.

Then it was time to return to the warmth of the cabin, maybe put that venison, with onions and carrots and beef broth into a roasting pan. He also decided he might open the two remaining cans of beer from the cooler to celebrate a spectacular day.

That evening, with a full stomach, the fire banked for the night, and tomorrow still a mystery, he thanked Whoever was in charge for his life and promised to be kinder, more dutiful, more aware of others and their needs. He also thought, with a little smile, that if he did not wake in the morning that maybe there would be a cabin somewhere in the vicinity of his ultimate destination. Wherever that might be.