Slurry Incineration Facility

Slurry Incineration Facility

Writing has a frustrating dialectical relationship with lived experience. Writing, of course, is a way of processing experience, of refining it into vignettes, categories, stories, metaphors. Writing is a testament to the mind's reflective and analytic ability to make some sense of the phenomenal torrent. All writing, whether fictional or functional, bases in varying degrees of directness on lived experience, and would not exist without that experience, the feedstock of creativity. On the other hand, if one makes of writing an end unto itself--as scribblers do--writing also enters into an antagonistic relationship with the very lived experience it seeks to mine for meaning. When driven to write I resent the intrusions of reality and exigency (errands, chores, obligations, emergencies) into the time and space where writing occurs. In some sense the writer's experience of life is the poorer as a result of this drive to disconnect from the real in order to manufacture meaning. At other times, when seeking inspiration or understanding, the writer elevates the real (either in 'real time' or from memory) to the altar of sanctity, convinced that his marginal participation in such slivers of time is sufficient to generate a general, viz. infinite, understanding of whatever type of experience it happens to be, on the order of a principle. It does not matter that the writer does not consciously acknowledge the effort: For proof of his arrogation of universality, it is enough that he should write and seek to be read. To formulate it a bit differently, the writer's relationship with reality/lived experience is a paradoxical one whereby he seeks not only to attenuate and amplify experience so that it can be surveyed, simplified, distilled, etc., and then put down on paper, but also to deflect and occlude reality precisely while engaging with it (or its memory) in his effort to translate it into accessible linguistic testimony. To take the next step in the description of the writer's reality paradox, he seeks a) to expand his subjectivity/participation in reality to the point where it is elevated into a universal principle that can be understood by all--consciously so, and with the end of writing in mind; and b) to exclude himself from participation in reality while writing--to eliminate himself as a singular subject of that reality. This is a dangerous game, and it accounts for the classic trope of the writer flying into a rage when he hears a knock at his door.

The past few days have been heavy on reality, initially at the expense of writing, but the mind loves nothing more than carrying a remainder. I aim to offer you the residuum of that experience here. Just don't come knocking while I'm scribbling.

On Thursday I worked hard again. No counterpoints to the tedious experience of being a debt-peon to report. Maybe one thing: My translation that day contained several instances of the term 'slurry incineration facility,' which tickled me. I did go check my snares, but the forest critters were still cowering from the report of my shot the day before. I watched some early episodes of Seinfeld and went to bed feeling like the incompetent antiquarian of my own adolescence.

On Friday morning I piloted Nystrom's Pride to Missoula, about 2 hours away, in what was the first step toward resolving the problem of heat, specifically wood heat. I mentioned in my first Montana post that the cabin has a large wood-burning stove. Such a stove does little good without a supply of good firewood, of course, and that's what was lacking. During our scarcely overlapping tenures at the cabin, Darren and I had managed to burn all the dry firewood. By early last week, I was down to a little supply of green, ice-bound Ponderosa pine that had been cut in late 2007 and had not seasoned long enough to burn well--something I learned over successive evenings of sooty-faced frustration. Rather than serve another day as bellows to a paltry fire, I drove to Missoula to borrow a chainsaw from the folks who own the Bird's Nest, taking Tipper with me. The road was clear and I was at the owners' home by 11. Mark gave me a brief tutorial on how to operate the saw (made by Husqvarna, a Swedish heavy equipment company), as well as a parting gift of several pounds of frozen elk steak. On my way back through town I ran another couple errands. First I stopped off at an 'outdoor store' to buy some more refined snaring equipment. As often happens at these modern mega-emporia, I left lugging a bit more than I went in for. In addition to a set of spring-locking wire snares, I bought 2 steel-jawed traps, a book on trapping, and a bottle of synthetic coyote urine. Considering the smorgasbord of recondite trapper's outfit, I thought my purchase rather modest. Next I stalked the aisles of Wal-Mart's cavernous food section--I fear my trapping materiel will only go so far in the way of calories.

By four o'clock, I was back at the cabin sawing logs. The going was tough. I really had to lay into them, and would later find out that the chain was as dull as the lesson on Voodoo Economics in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Because Tipper had spent the entire day confined to the car, I pitied her case and gave her free rein in the yard before starting up the saw. As I began leaning into the logs and bracing myself against the machine's howl and yowl, I noticed the little old mongrel plodding up the road away from the house. I thought she must not have liked the noise and would return, having explored her environs, when the sawing was done. After sawing and splitting for about an hour, I looked up and saw that the light had begun to fail. I called out for Tipper. No response--her rheumatic form was nowhere in sight. It was then that I began to worry. There wasn't an hour left until dark, and the temperature was tailing off toward a cold night. I walked up the road the way I'd seen her go and noted with some dismay that she hadn't been heavy enough to make any prints in the icy snow. Before setting off on a search I called up Darren to see if he had any pointers. The only information he offered was that I shouldn't underestimate the poverty of her vision and her hearing, and that I had better get going.

I'll try to be brief here, and dispense with every particular in favor of the doghunt's flavor. My first move was to drive up and down the icy road a couple of times in Nystrom's Pride. Nothing availed, I went to introduce myself to my closest neighbor, just up the way. A knock on the door revealed old gaptoothed man with one arm. He introduced himself as Lefty. In response to my inquiry about Tipper, he launched into what promised to be a lengthy discourse on life, neighborliness, and a dog's unknowable ways. I'd scarcely sat down before he began flourishing the mementos of his years and enlivening the atmosphere of his home with fond anecdotes and seasoned speculations. Excusing myself before I could be transfixed by the spell of his broken solitude, I told him I'd call another day. Once outside, I felt the day fading almost palpably into the blackness of space. While scuttling back down the icy road I wiped out and slammed into the ice wrist-first. It smarted some. My next move was to strap on snowshoes and circle the homes in the direction Tipper had trotted. I called her name over and over and heard nothing. At one point I thought I saw her tracks by the front gate of a house shuttered for the winter. They faded just a few steps in. A feeling in the pit of my stomach signaled that I may have seen Tipper for the last time. It seemed so arbitrary that she should go out like this after 15-17 years of keeping doggy death at bay.

Out of ideas, I hustled down toward the neighbors below, Steve and Terry. They own an old collie who I thought might be of use in tracking Tipper down. They were very sympathetic, and it wasn't long before all of us were poking through the woods calling Tipper's name in voices more and more forlorn. The collie picked up no scent, or didn't bother to follow it. My searching assumed a more desperate character. I tore through the woods heedlessly, and it wasn't long before I could no longer see where I was going. Tipper was gone, and I gave her long odds of making it through the night. Dark had well and truly fallen. Terry tried to offer some comfort by saying that old dogs sometimes just wander off when they sense their time is up. I thanked them and made a couple of final rounds of the neighborhood in my truck before going inside to call Darren. The sadness of Tipper's probable demise coupled with the guilt of complicity in her flight weighed heavily. In spite of myself, I'd grown quite fond of her. I larded the call with shoulds and why didn't I's. Darren was not reproachful, but I couldn't help thinking that her disappearance would alter the character of our friendship. I tried lighting a fire with the wood I'd split as Tipper trotted off to her frozen grave. Appropriately, it wouldn't burn, and I spent a relatively cold night with the propane-fueled furnace turned all the way down.

The next day I got up early to saw and to chop the green pine, both as an act of penance and because the chopped stuff could season inside as I burned some putative dry wood. Around noon I heard a voice and looked up to see neighbor Steve. Do you want to take a ride, he asked.
You mean to go look for Tipper?
No, to pick her up. She showed up at that house waaaay up the hill this morning.
Should I bring a bag to put her in?
A bag?
I mean for the body.
No, man, she's alive!
And so she was. Other than a visible brittleness from a tiring slog and a brutally cold night, Tipper seemed quite content. She was lounging around on a Persian rug in the capacious and well-heated living room of a beautiful house owned by an older and by all indications highly successful gentleman. An indebted canine caretaker could be forgiven for suspecting that Tipper had gone off not in search of her eternal sleep, but for a more properly 'executive' lifestyle. She seemed indifferent to her rescue.