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I’m quite a few miles from the nearest human. Out here there are more rabbits than humans. Thank Heaven. I hope it long remains so. Here doze a medium ute, a winsome off-road caravan, and me. We are all three of us weary, worn, pudgy, rattly, and middle aged. Our pitch is improbably wedged into the side of a remote foothill. We have become friendly with local friends, flora, fauna, and a few nebulous others.
Rain falls, lightly but earnestly. It doesn’t rain all that often. I’m jake with that, on the whole. And yet, how wondrous it is when the rain doth come. Rain is all the more precious when it falls on a dry land. The smell of the cold and clean land perfumes the universe. Hermits have always sought desert, to share the immediacy of diligence and thirst with all nigh creatures.
It is perhaps why, of all the internet’s myriad dives, I enjoy the Smolnet and Pubnices best.
Ozone and waking brush chatter through smell. Thunder beats His drum.
I do worry a bit about my antennas. I’ve not put up an HF antenna yet, but have a few others sandwiched amongst the solar panels. How to set up a lightning arrestor to better secure a camper’s antenna and electrical systems. I reckon the VHF antenna would serve well as a lightning rod, if simply diverted to a copper rod buried as deeply as my pick-mattock can plumb. I’ve yet to have the opportunity in a town to research this and order requisite materiale.
The wind gusts enough to rock the caravan.
This is odd, as the new Flexiride axle does yeoman’s work in mitigating jostle. I’m really quite pleased with how it turnt out. The Flexirides are splined suspension, meaning one can gear it up or down between 20°-45° I believe. Mine I set at 33°, which given my accoutrements seemed a just allowance to account for settling. And it did, a few degrees. For off-road use, this has proved a good anticipation.
On the other hand, at one point I noted that a higher trailer increases sway. So do consider a sway bar as needful, if considering such adventures you are.
Camper is a better word than caravan for a tiny home. A caravan designates multiplicity. A caravan of camels at a caravanserai. A caravan of red blood cells from a burst artery. A camper sounds petite, smoller.
The wind has turned slightly chill, puffing from the netted doorway through my similarly netted skylight. I am most glad of this brisk air. Chill is clean; it tightens skin and mind.
There is an Indian guitar, flute, and sitar piece playing on the satellite radio. Indoor days foster drowsy apparitions.
I’m thinking of Uncle Vanya. We all get to be Vanya sometimes. We might be sad to see Vanya sort of times. But as a play, Vanya is really about possibility and questioning the worth in what is left to lose. Vanya might have eventually walked off into the steppes. Or he might have become a better shot… Regardless, I believe in Vanya all the more now.
If I were to eat meat again, I think it should be duck. Or somesuch fowl. And in Fremontia somesuch fowls visit often. I haven’t the heart to shoot them, nor am especially tempted. But I do wonder after them, wonder that I’ve eaten them. Flying birds, most noble of Earth’s niches, become idle fodder. It is an odd paradox of things.
I made a rocket stove. It is a can inside another large can, both so cut as to allow fuel of small branches piped in the bottom to most efficiently provide a fire to cook a pot or pan above. I must use it for my next dinner, as my trusty old propane burner valve finally crusted shut. I shall not cook duck.
Were I to cook duck, hims would be slow baked in an earth oven. I’d stuff wild grasses and pine fronds in hims for flavour. I eat such grass seeds occasionally. Like as naught, they would serve well to stuff a bird. I have never sensorially enjoyed eating fat, save perhaps for duck. A roast duck’s crackling skin does well with its fat in compliment. And withal, the flesh hasn’t the musty, dingy quality of chicken.
I have a shotgun for which I might shoot fowl. I keep it to shoot men, should I be so driven. I am not sure if I would eat a man. I doubt they are very tasty. Long pig, they say, is best tendered as such, in a barbecue. But nobody should risk catching the kuru without dire need. Oddly, I’d have few qualms eating man in such need, I think. But I’d hope to stir fry the chap with some cumin and curry powder.
Little camouflage crickets look at me. They might be tasty, so it is said. The rich people want us to eat bugs as a staple. After that comes Soylent Green, natch. I’d say the “o word” here, but humans don’t want to hear about that these days, never mind care about it. Humans will do anything to avoid facing that there are too many of us these days. I would have trouble eating the lil cricket. They aren’t cute, but they look at me with such fear, and slowly hide behind little rocks to avoid my lumbering giant approach. I feel tenderly toward them.
I enjoy rabbit meat. And I adore their soft hides, and wish to make more things with them. But I also adore lil rabbits for themselves, in their dignity and own liveliness most of all. I have tried to practice shooting and archery with an eye to shooting rabbits. I would not well serve doing so. Rabbits are too precious.
Thus does one’s heart war with one’s flesh. One cannot really choose until one must.
I’m nearly nude on my bed, lying back and thinking of England. I see a garden gate. Surrey, I think it may have been. And the garden is refreshed with the flavour of air only west of London can offer.
London is empire. London takes hold of the long ears of that air and stops its heart with coal and oil. Im not saying we should turn Demon Barber of Fleet Street about it. But we ought understand how he was so turned.
So I’m thinking of a garden gate, trellised with ivy. Maybe up the Isis, but not at Oxford. It is at no Brideshead, but joins with a neat and modest cottage. The gate is not so very old. It is delicate, round whitewashed wood atop green. Daylight wanes toward evening to darken the hedges to mystery. The gate stands quietly. It is a small thing, and very precious.
Men have died for fey memories of this Little England. They have died by the generations, justly or not. They have died for empire and to save from empire. They have died of the consumption as exiles in Paris. They have died alone. They have died in friends’ arms. Scoundrels and heroes they died. They died eating long pig, refusing to eat long pig, and being the long pig. And they may have but thought of exactly that gate as they did so die. It was all they could see. I must confess to finding the English as a nation eaten to rot by empire. Of course, no one understands the English as well as the Irish. But I still sometimes love England; I have some inkling why the English may habitually keep cards of passion close to chest. The splatter of rain. The garden gate. The gate. The garden is unseen.
Do it, England.
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