The Journal: Cracked Earth Read Free Page B

and
that’s better than nothing.
    I still need to shut the outside water off.
An onerous task since I don’t like going down in that eight foot
deep pit where the valve is located.
     
    * * *
     
    I love productive days. The weather is
holding, sixty-eight degrees today and mostly sunny, a good day to
be outside. I dug up a pound of Jerusalem artichokes. Too bad they
don’t keep well; I’ll keep adding them to meals before they spoil.
I relocated some of them to another part of the garden. I hope that
they take.
    I cleaned out the onion beds, planted some
garlic, and dug up as many of those darn creeping weeds with the
geranium-like leaves as I could. The wheelbarrow was completely
full. I knew they’d be back, at least these wouldn’t be tilled
in.
    I took down the fence charger and pulled up
the cord, storing it all in the barn for next year. One more task
to add to the winter prep-fall chores list since it was a new
addition this summer. I left the wire at the top on the fence in
place. I will have to see how it fares this winter.
    I washed sheets and hung them out on the
line, then did all my laundry.
    The day was still young, so I decided I’d go
for a walk.
     
    * * *
     
    I ended up on the public side of Eagle Beach.
It was wonderfully quiet this time of year since all of the
tourists were gone and the kids were in school. I had the whole
beach to myself. I walked for a bit and then found a large piece of
battered driftwood to sit on. Where this piece of wood came from is
anybody’s guess. Lake Superior is a huge lake and it might have
come from Canada or the other side of the bay. In spite of it being
cool, I took off my shoes and dug my toes into the damp, rocky
sand. I sat there for a while watching the waves gently lap at the
shore, trying to think of what I wanted for this coming winter. Try
as I might, my mind kept drifting.
    I remembered a night so long ago, when my ex
Sam and I were new to the area and still working on our house in
the woods, long before we split up. It was a warm August night, the
moon was new, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Sitting on the
beach at midnight and looking at all the stars was mesmerizing.
There is no light pollution up here and the sky was brilliant. From
the bay, the view out to Lake Superior is more than 180 degrees.
That night there were so many stars I could actually see a subtle
curvature of the universe. I know it was an optical illusion, but
the sky seemed to bend around us. I will never forget that
night.
    I dug my toes a bit deeper and felt something
sharp. Digging with my fingers, I found a nice piece of hematite to
add to my rock collection and stuck it in my pocket. After
disturbing the sand, I was visited by a couple of squawky white and
gray seagulls, curious if I dug up anything for them. They can be
annoying little creatures and it’s part of life on the lake. Almost
immediately, there was another shriek, then another. They have some
kind of code in that caw, I swear. Soon there were a dozen of those
pesky birds swooping down, their raucous cry piercing the quiet,
parading up and down the shore or fighting with the next one for a
piece of twig. It was a good thing I didn’t have any food or else
they’d never leave.
    My attention kept coming back to the first
house on the other side of the break wall, which separates the
public beach from the residential section with the marina. That
first house is where John Tiggs and his co-workers live. I’d been
seeing John as a massage client for a year now and I’ve grown
dangerously fond of him. During our many hour-long sessions
together, he has told me much about himself, past relationships and
how he never wants to be emotionally tied to anyone ever again. I
wish I could say the same.
    I pulled my focus away from that house to
watch an ore freighter chug its way across my view a few miles out.
Last year during a particularly violent storm, a thousand-foot
freighter took refuge in the much calmer