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7 & 1/2 Acres |
2003-05-24 - 8:07 a.m. So I'm reading Cold Mountain and I love every bit of it. I'm about 2/3 the way through and it really is the right book for me right now. The reading of this follows on the heels of The way of the Pilgrim which, actually, I didn't quite finish. I got to the near end where the books themselves are more or less quoted and so I wanted to savor those with particular relish, but instead laid it down and picked up Cold Mountain. The Way of the Pilgrim though is wonderful and saw me through some darkness. It is a book to carry always and I'll return to it soon. But to be Inman with such a quest, ahh now that's a dream. Not really, not quite, Ruby is more the place I'd want to be because of this--Inman's sole purpose is to get back to the mountains and get up with his gal. He spends his days walking west. This part, I could dream for, to spend your days with the sole purpose of walking west. But the thing I think that would get me, and that seems to get Inman is, having one's eyesight on the end. I'd constantly feel restless and unsettled and'd not enjoy the journey for the end. Here he is eating goat with this weathered old woman some where along the Blue Ridge as the seasons become Fall and his mind can only be on Ada and returning to that place where she is at. That feeling downright sucks. Now Ruby, on the other hand, she's got her sights on down the road, especially in terms of what they're going to eat this winter but she's ever attentive to what's going on around her in the moment. That's how I want to live, and be especially attentive to the things that Ruby is paying attention to. --You say you want to know the running of this land, Ruby said. --Yes, Ada said. Ruby rose and knealt behind Ada and cupped her hands over Ada's eyes. --Listen, Ruby said... --What do you hear?... Ada heard the sound of wind in the trees, the dry rattle of their late leaves. She said as much. --Trees, Ruby said contemptuously, as if she had expected just such a foolish answer. Just general trees is all? You've got a long way to go......Until Ada could listen and at the bare minimum tell the sound of poplar from oak at this time of year when it is easiest to do, she had not even started to know the place. And this by Ada but through Ruby's influence--"I am living a life now where I keep account of the doings of particular birds." All throughout this book, I'm jotting down tips--I'm taking the information as if from a manual. I'm going to do these things. ...they went to the [cabbage] sacks. One they held back for making into sauerkraut when the signs came around right for it again. Do it otherwise and it might rot in the crocks. The rest they buried for the winter.... digging the gravelike trench...and lining it with straw and heaping the pale heads in and covering them with more straw and then dirt. Ada had noticed that it was not alway's Ruby's way to start a job and finish it all at one time. She worked at things as they came up, taking them in order of urgency. If nothing was particularily urgent, Ruby did whatever could be done in the time at hand. Putting down the first row of fence rails was chosen that morning because it could be done in the hour or so before Ruby went off to trade with Esco: apples for cabbages and turnips. I'm going to go drink some more coffee and see what I get into. I may just read all morning as I gotta pick up my folks and quiet time will certainly be over.
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