Quarter to eight and it’s completely dark at the park. Came particularly early tonight as I rode straight home rather then going out to Five Rivers as I had all those zucchuni and tomatoes from the Farmers Market today to unpack and I was hungry for dinner.
Autumn and winter is coming. It seems too soon, maybe in part because I don’t have a lot planned for the autumn with my eye surgery and creaky old truck. No big West Virginia trip. Or how late my summer vacation was out in the Finger Lakes.
Winter will be fine, once I figure out how to make it through it. I guess the new windows upstairs in my apartment is an approvement, still it seems like many dark and cold nights ahead with my heat kept at 50 degrees and lights dimmed early as I hide out under the cover.
I don’t have a plan when it’s too dark to ride home once the time changes as the bus is no more. But maybe I’ll take the local, but that is very slow – getting out at 5 PM but not arriving home until 6:15 PM due to delay between the shuttle and local bus transfer – seems so slow even if it does give me a chance to walk laps in the Plaza. Or when the bike trail is icy and snow covered. I’m not going to beat the shit out of my bike riding on hard ice all winter long, or slogging through the deep snow on the bike path just to save a few bucks on a bus fare or gasoline.
I continue to have dreams off the off-grid cabin, that homestead, the land. And I keep reading and studying. But I don’t like any of the options out there, when the best they can seem to offer me is a very standard large suburbanite house out in the sticks that smells like cow shit. I just hate how big, expensive, fancy and modern today’s houses are – especially the ones showcased off in the magazines. Really, I like the rustic, maybe a bit run down small cabin. Rather have a bigger barn and more land then a house that does more then keep me dry and warm by wood in cold and damp of winter and snow.
It’s not that I need to save money, if not for that dream of that simple way of living. And while I envision a life in little more then a hunting cabin, I also don’t know quite what that looks like in my own life, even if I do backcountry camp a lot on remote dirt roads in wilderness. I’m not desperate, I am a professional with 18-years experience at my career and going on two-years overseeing my unit have made significant improvement to targeting and digital media capacities. I make good money, especially in world when there are many people who would be happy making $75k or even just a flat $100k. Still, I’m very tied to my job and to New York State and it’s not clear in my mind that’s the place I want to build my homestead with the burn ban and gun laws.
I’m getting away this weekend, even if Sunday turns to rain. I have windshield wipers. Saturday still looks like a beautiful early autumn day. I should hike or ride, or at least spend it in the woods. Probably Vermont but Schoharie is also a possibility. I’m not sure. I need more time in woods, even if the nights are now long and chilly as autumn gets underway. It’s just hard living in city, especially in a rundown apartment that is renting for the same rate that County rents out discount motel rooms for those truly down on their luck who can’t find a market rate apartment in the era of rent far higher then my own. I do wonder when the landlord is going to fix the window screen he broke on installation and install molding around the windows.
Some of the cabins, trailers, and rural houses I idealized about are truly run-down. But in many cases they are real. While there are perfectly landscaped, modern dairies and farms out there, what I really love are those less then perfect places up on the hills where people struggle or at least appear to be on the edge. Junk cars, hogs, cattle, bales of hay on driveway. I want my land to smell like a farm, because I’m producing my own meat. Maybe like in Pennsylvania with a burn barrel out back and freedom to own whatever firearms you want without special government permission. Or the vast mid-west and west, far beyond my imagination. I do look so forward to seeing Ohio, Michigan and maybe Wisconsin to learn what more of America is like outside of New England and New York.
I better get to bed. Zucchuni and cornmeal pans of bread dough is rising in the oven and kidney beans are soaking in the fridge. At 5 AM those beans need to start boiling so they are ready by the time I head off to work on my mountain bike at quarter after 8. I’m tired, I need rest, darkness has taken over the land and it will be dark when I awake in the morning. Then tomorrow night, it’s packing for Vermont or Schoharie or wherever God and Big Red take me Friday after work. Good night!