....

it, along with Hickory, is the hottest burning of U.S. woods. We need it. Our cabin was built for Summer use. Boogie and I years ago climbed up through the attic hole in our ceiling and insulated under the roof; we put in some modern, double-paned windows, clear plastic covers on others. This old cabin, no matter how much jerry-rigged winterizing we might do, was never meant to shelter humans in near-zero weather. Comfy we are, however.

Jeanne arose at six AM and refueled each wood stove. When we finally dragged ourselves out of the warmth of the sack, the temperature in the living room was 52 but the stove was heated to an almost-normal 300. Slanting one of the stove doors open an inch or two sends a blow torch-like stream of air onto the coals, quickly kicking up the temp in the stove. More Locust was added, and now the stove is putting out 500 plus degrees, shoved into the room by a wide-open blower.

As I write in our bedroom, the antique stove has been refueled and the iron re-heated by throwing rumpled newspapers, one after the other, into the cauldron. Newspaper heat doesn't last long, but it is fast and hot.

I reached down into the newspaper carton this morning and came up with one two-and-a-half years old. During the dead of Summer our newspaper pile grows to such heights that I relent and dispose of some in the county dump (recycling center); other than summer inundation, all newspapers are husbanded for vital use from October through March.

City folks can burn down their homes by feeding newspapers into their fireplaces, it is said; their chimneys are flimsy, overheat and POOF, up goes the family homestead. It is different in our Jewell Hollow cabin: the chimneys are thick with boulders, rocks and concrete. Nary a day passes when we don't feed our stoves with newspapers to begin a fire or force-feed heat into the cabin.

Yesterday, Jeanne and I laboriously carried Locust wood from a two year old stack over a rocky trail behind the dog pen. We carried and carried and then went back for more. We had been warned both about the coming snow and unusually cold temps. We knew the wood had to be stacked in the cabin, under the slight roof overhang at the living room door or in the summer house. Jeanne has already shoveled the walk to the summer house; we'll have easy access to the stored wood.

Our mania about wood and fires would probably amuse others. After all, for normal persons, with central heating, our obsession with wood burning would appear strange. I sometimes chuckle to myself, as I spend the better part of an entire day tending wood fires, about the wonders of central heating: you turn a switch, set a dial, and there is heat. VOILA ! So simple: just pay the gas man, electric or fuel oil man, and it happens.

I have always taken too much pride in sawing, splitting and stacking our Winter-needed wood; sort of a macho, self-sufficiency thing which has gone too far. After this Winter I will be seeking a warm island to Winter-away my aging body and soul.

This snow storm will probably bring us a replay of the one which dumped forty two inches of powdery white-stuff on us. In a day or two I will dig out Jeanne's car, parked as before in the parking lot facing the state road; my old diesel will sit, its crank case warmed by the long yellow wire from the Summer House providing juice to its heater, until the snow melts or Hotshot finds time to plow us out; Jeanne and the dogs will play in the snow; V-DOT, which completely rebuilt the state road, virtually destroyed after the last post-storm flood, will free us within twenty four hours and we will be able to travel the two miles to Brookside Restaurant and acquire a Washington Post, a usual Sunday practice. We have stored around us enough wood to remain warm until the cold breaks. I will then begin sawing and splitting Locust again, for our wood stacks are dwindling and much Winter remains.

Tuesday

We have survived. The Monday morning temperatures dipped to ten below zero and we were not driven from Jewell Hollow, frozen inside and out. It was the Locust. The heavy, tightly-grained, brindle wood that drove the heat in the wood stoves to heights of oven-heat. It was glorious. Before going to bed Sunday evening it was zero out and sixty eight degrees in the cabin. I would have pledged my bond that it would have been impossible to keep the heat in the cabin that high with such bitter cold hammering us; providentally it happened.

One casualty of the deep freeze: the kitchen sink; it drains directly into the ground, through a pipe, plastic of one kind or another. The kitchen faucet drips, ever so slightly. During the below zero night, the slow drip, drip, drip, drip upon drip built into an ice mass somewhere in the pipe; I project at the first elbow. Jeanne had the first idea for melting it: pouring hot water on the pipe itself. No way, Jose'. With temperatures still below 15 degrees, the boiling water poured on the pipe had no impact on the ice within.

Next, I had the brilliant idea of the day to melt the ice blob, wherever it might be in the pipe: scoop out the water standing in the sink; heat it in the microwave; repour the hot water and repeat and repeat and repeat. My theory: the hot water will pass to the point of the obstructing ice and begin to melt it.

I stand by my theory, though I have spent too much time today (temperatures in the high twenties and low thirties) dipping water out of the sink, placing it in a ceramic bowl, heating for five or six minutes, pouring it back into the sink, watching it and waiting. Nothing. As the temperatures rise outside during the day, I know my hot-water-ice-melting-treatment will work, will free the kitchen sink for use again. "FREE THE KITCHEN SINK!" is the civil rights cry in the cabin.

Sunday, in blinding white-Winter sunshine, I unleashed the old diesel from its electric cord, started it easily (thanks to the block heater) and drove effortlessly through six inches of snow and out of the driveway. As I drove the byways of the county in search of a newspaper, I noticed that very few vehicles were about. It was as if persons were frozen in their homes. Vehicles on the road were gingerly progressing on the frozen surface; a slow-time Winter dance. At Bo's Belly Barn I nozzled out only one and three quarters gallons of fuel into a near-full tank, just for the few extra pounds they added over the rear power wheels.

Yesterday I trudged through the snow on paths, and not, to the newest Locust tree I am attempting to dissemble. I stepped carefully, laboriously, knowing that the rock or small boulder which would trip me would be the one hidden by the six inches of still-fresh snow. Slowly making my way, fuel can in one hand and the chain saw in the other, I found the Locust where I left it a few days ago, now covered with snow.

I kicked the snow off the log with my foot. I jammed a small limb under the trunk to protect the saw. I had, with much forethought, jerked the chain saw cord into noisy ignition while still in the Summer House. I wasn't going to make the cold walk to the tree and not be able to start the saw. I sawed three rounds and the chain jammed. I clicked off the starter button. Disappointed, because we need fresh, burnable Locust, I retraced my steps in the snow. When I loosened the nuts on the side of the machine and removed the metal housing, I found that the chain oil had gummed up in the ten degree temp and stopped the chain from whirling smoothly on the chain bar. I'll try again on a warmer day.

For the last couple of days, the sub-fifteen degree days, I have been wearing my black, Chinese, fur hat with the flaps down over my ears. I bought the hat from a stall-vender at the Ming Tombs, not far from Beijing. I thought at the time that I would probably never seriously-wear the hat for warmth. I knew I would never wear it with the flaps down over my ears. After all, I live in Virginia, the South, the cradle of the Confederacy and all the other folk-tale-balderdash designed to evoke sunshine and warmth ripe tomatoes, linen suits and Panama hats.

Monday

No Panama hats, but two glorious days with the temperatures nearing fifty degrees. Each day I carried the chainsaw and fuel can over the back stream and sawed and split Locust and oak on the ridge. I left the wedge and sledge hammer on the ridge overnight Saturday, knowing I would return yesterday.

We are low on wood. Attempting to remain reasonably warm during this harshest of Southern Winters has forced us to deplete all the wood stacks, piled about our rocky three acres.

Yesterday I finished sawing and splitting the last ten rounds of the larger Locust I had half-sawed before we were set upon by the forty eight inches of snow. Saturday I split the rounds sawed pre-snow and scouted for more immediately-fireable wood; it is everywhere on that ridge. Among the tree blights we have been struck with in this forest must have been one which made ill the locusts. Across the broad floor of the forest on the ridge are varying sizes of Locusts, fallen from their roots, dead for years and ready to be burned. There are also oaks and Hemlocks strewn about as if spilled from a match box at the hands of a giant, clumsy cigar smoker.

"Jeanne, There is enough wood within fifty yards of where I'm standing to provide us for a year," I said as she reappeared on the ridge for yet another two wood carriers of heavy Locust to be lugged down the sharply falling ridge path, across the flood-widened stream on rocks jutting from the water, up the bank and on to the end of our path; there, dead fatigued from carrying the wood down the mud-slicked slope and ballet-stepping on the stream rocks, she stacked. A new wood pile begins.

The joy I feel when I saw and split firewood, and watch it grow in volume, is enormous, on two counts. First, I am squirreling away wood, emotionally secure that the wood stoves will glow during what remains of this vicious Winter in the old South. Second is the quiet satisfaction of knowing I can still go into the forest, as I have done off and on for thirty years, and WORK: man the saw for as long as needed, swing the sledge hammers with enough force that even knotted rounds eventually split. If I didn't know better, I would absolutely proclaim that I can work in the forest as hard and as long as I could long ago, when I numbered my years in the thirties and forties.

After a couple of hours of wood-carrying yesterday morning, Jeanne sat down on the cabin couch with a "kurr-plunk" and said: "I want a double cheeseburger and a large fries," meaning mostly that after draining her body carrying wood she didn't want to cook brunch. "OK, get ready. We're off to Mickey D's for brunch."

Jeanne got her double cheeseburger, in fact she got something called a double-cheeseburger-super-meal, which included the largest box of Mickey D's French fries I have ever seen. As we ate, Jeanne said: "This is the guy who saved my life."

Then we reminisced about that March night, now almost a year past, when she had to abandon her BMW on the mountain. As if a special delivery gift from God, the owner of the village McDonald's almost-immediately happened by in his four wheel drive Suburban, plucked my wife from the raging snow storm and drove her safely to Jewell Hollow, and home.

Son Chris, the Baton Rouge newspaper man, called this morning. We talked about a vehicle he is considering buying and a travel piece I published on having dinner in a Chinese military compound only forty eight hours after first arriving in China. Then, casually, in reference to why he will buy a large utility vehicle rather than an extended-cab pickup, he said: "It would be too difficult to get two kids in and out of the back of a pickup."

Knowing that Chris and Emily now parent only Baby Helen, I caught on quickly to his point. God willing, we will have five grandchildren by year end. September is the scheduled time for the arrival of the newest Frink. For three weeks, till the end of the first trimester, I am sworn to secrecy; can't even tell Granny, though I probably will. With Geoff's Connie hopefully bringing forth a new little Frink in April, our family, and need for more room in our Jewell Hollow cabin, are moving forward.

Jeanne's eyes grew wide and bubbled with brightness as I told her the tentative news of a new baby in our family. "Oh Boy!" she exclaimed.

Saturday

Snow, more snow. The temperature was 15 degrees this morning, the ice in the pond extending out from the middle during this, yet another cold spell.

Yesterday Jeanne arose at 4 AM, ready to prepare her toilet and venture into the darkness for a lonely drive to the train station, BUT NO! Snow had fallen and accumulated; and it was still falling. She turned the rotary antenna toward Washington City to try and determine the weather conditions she would encounter if she should venture out of Jewell Hollow. The city was expecting up to nine inches of white. She flushed her plans for a day of work in the city. Instead she spent her time carrying Locust wood from the stack she had assembled near the back stream. I was in bed with a head cold.

Wood is again in short supply. The three days before the latest snow storm I spent on the ridge across the back stream sawing wood, mostly Locust. I would finish one log and go to saw another, dry and fire-ready; Jeanne carried, load after load. If I had known that it would seriously snow, I would have sawed less and carried more.

Sawed wood is strewn about on the small plain over the ridge. I went exploring this morning. I walked carefully on snow covered rocks and boulders down the back path to the stream. I intended to cross the stream on the usual rocks, but it was too dangerous. Walking over the stream during times of abundant and exuberant water is perilous enough when the rocks are only water covered. Slipping on snow covered rocks, onto other rocks and boulders, is a recipe for broken bones. We will burn the entire stack near the stream before taking the chance of injury to claim the sawed wood on the ridge.

It was late dusk, after five PM. I had my head down, the chainsaw biting through a Locust log. Instinctively I looked up. A van was approaching me. I stood, stilling the saw. I waited, apprehensively, for I am always alone in the forest.

"Hi, Mark." I finally said.

It was the young doctor, owner of the land on which I stood and sawed. We talked of trees blown over by the recent high winds, about the BTU values of various trees (he didn't know about the high-heat wonders of Locust), his ideas for turning his holdings into a tree farm and taxes. Doctors are always riveted on taxes.

"My dad bought this place in 1951. All the trees ahead of us are from that time. They clear cut to have a garden. There was a corn crib, a pig pen and the old cabin with no plumbing," he reminisced. "I was just a kid," he added.

Mark and I marveled at how the pre-national park mountain families could eke a living out of these rocks, with some pigs, a garden, and a little cash earned selling tree bark to the oak tannery in the village. I told him the story of young Jewell's great uncle who was nearly done-in by a once-penned family pig, transformed into a wild boar.

"If it weren't for you letting me gather wood on your land, I couldn't stay here. To survive I would have to saw down every tree on my three acres, denude the place. There wouldn't be anything to leave to my boys," said I.

Mark allowed as to how it would take years before the dead trees, laying scattered about in every direction, could be harvested. He doesn't come to his mountain holdings often, perhaps three or four times a year. One time I was sawing one of his dead Oaks fronting the state road; it was a good size tree and made a great clamor as it cut through lesser trees and underbrush and crashed to earth. Ten seconds later, there was Mark in his vehicle, unannounced and unexpected. It seems a bit eerie to meet my neighbor like that, but it is better than having him hanging about, watching me roam his land, reducing his dead and fallen trees to our firewood.

We parted as the sweat, soaking through my three levels of clothing, began to severely cool because of my sudden inactivity, working only my mouth. He refused my offer of a drink. With chain saw and fuel can dangling from my hands, I found my way home and to the incubation of a head cold. I didn't watch where he went.

An announcer on the local public radio station has informed me that we will be presented with more snow this evening, with temps in the low teens, more cold weather tomorrow, day and evening.

Geoff, Connie and the children arrived late this morning; by the time they got to Jewell Hollow, Jeanne and I had coaxed the cabin heat into the high sixties. I'm sure Geoff will be a helpful wood-hauler. He already has attached to the living room wall a CD holder he built; it is a gift for my birthday. The rack was welcome. Previously, CDs were stacked unceremoniously on top of the closed and unused record turntable. As previously noted, Geoff's gifts are always thoughtful and practical.

Tuesday

The snow men (large and small, the larger with cap and scarf) have wizened away in the drive, as if by deep-lining old age, or by a huge splash of lye, or other disfiguring terrible, toxic fluid. Made only yesterday by Geoff, Connie, Amy and Avery, their times have past. Soon their forms will run downhill as water, following the soaking rains upon us today.

Snow one day, rain and flood destruction almost the next; it seems a pattern this year. Yesterday though still fighting the symptoms of a cold that had dropped into my chest and a back grown stiff and sore from hours of bent-over sawing I again sawed wood across the creek.

Today, with the temperatures in the mid-forties and rain melting the snow, it seems somewhat foolish to have trudged through snow to again saw wood, but the need to stay ahead of the wood stoves' appetites is compelling. The Winter continues. We don't know when Canada will again send us another Alberta Clipper, with moisture rising from the Gulf of Mexico to bury us with snow. All we know is that there is wood to be sawed and without it we grow cold or give into the vileness of the Winter and buy pre-cut, pre-split and delivered wood. Purchasing wood would be such a wimp, selfworth-shattering end to our Jewell Hollow Winters that I can't contemplate it; only if I broke bones or was taken with a debilitating illness or was called away for something so important as not to be questioned, would I give in and buy wood. When the rain breaks I must saw more, for I am going away for a week, a week from now.

I want no more of Jewell Hollow in the Winter. I wish to live where I can be warm and active outdoors without gloves, hats and various coats and down vests. I lived in Puerto Rico one time, before entering law school, now over thirty years past. I shall return to Puerto Rico on a scouting mission: Can Jeanne and I enjoy living there, near the Caribbean without undue fear for our safety; can we earn a living there, enough to provide for our own needs--no status, no career--just a living? If the answer to one of the questions is no, then we will look elsewhere. We will seek the sun -- the Winter warmth -- for certain.

As the month of February tails away, with it this book winds down. One year of life in a cabin, in the forest, backed into the national park, from the beauty and incredible energy of Summer resident hummingbirds to the struggle forced upon us by the beauty and energy of a winter storm capable of leaving us with forty two inches of powdery snow; from floating on the yacht in the Bay of Frink to watching it frozen still, trapped by the ice of Winter; from Morel Mushroom gathering in the Spring forest to the fight to stay ahead with enough sawed, cured wood to feed the cold metal stoves of summer turned to pits of winter fire. The book began with a freak late-winter, early-spring storm, one which trapped Jeanne in her car and forced her to abandon it; given the wildness of this Winter, it could end in much the same way.

Jeanne is the hero of our five Winters in Jewell Hollow. She regularly commutes a total of six hours a day to work in Washington City. My work is sporadic taking me out of the Hollow sometimes for prolonged periods; it is so much easier than her drives to the train, an hour on the train, and more time on the Metro before a walk to her office. When home, she hauls wood, shops and prepares delicious meals. She works nonstop when Geoff and family are here, and other guests as well. She is my heroine and this is my Valentines (albeit late) card to her.

"Dad, maybe the new baby will be the last mention in your book," said Connie during the long weekend Geoff-family-stay just ended; and perhaps it will.

Regardless, this little book stands as a monument to our grandchildren and great grandchildren of three lives (don't forget Granny) partially lived in a place natural and beautiful; a place that is as raw and crude as the rocks and boulders jutting everywhere on this puny acreage. Jewell Hollow for us has been a real place, with none of the social slickness provided in ample amount during our many years in Washington City. Our lives in Jewell Hollow have been lived with as much authenticity as I would find possible anywhere on earth. For that reason family, friends and gentle readers, it has been worth recording; and the beat goes on.

Sunday

Nature is fickle, if not outright deceitful. Could this be Spring? Today I was outdoors sitting on my Summer chair at the edge of the pond. Yesterday I raked algae from the pond. I admired the leaf buds on the hardwoods. Spring quite clearly is attempting to push through sometime before July.

Only five or six days ago I was brushing four or five inches of snow off Locust logs so that I could saw them: saw them not for sport or exercise, but because it was very cold -- still in the grip of Winter -- and we were desperate for more wood. A week ago today Geoff, Connie and the children built two handsome snow persons in the driveway. Today we have been killing flies in the cabin. It is as if we have gone from the depths of a hardened Winter to the edge of summer -- IN LESS THAN A WEEK?

We are grateful for the spring-like weather. Yesterday, Jeanne and I hauled and carried great quantities of sawed wood to the edge of the cabin living room door. We are pleased to at last be in the out of doors without heavy garments, slogging through snow, but the switch was so sudden, so disorienting.

If the weather continues to build toward spring, our wood consumption will drop dramatically, but if it does not we will be prepared. We have three stacks of sawed Locust, Oak and Hemlock ready for use. There are still large chunks of various woods strewn about the Summer House. For the last three years we have been forced to accept violent March blizzards. When the March blizzard of '96 arrives we will have enough wood to survive it, as we have survived the storms already thrown at us.

While prowling around the stream for branches dry enough for immediate sawing and use, I began thinking about the Morel Mushrooms I would soon be looking for, where I was standing at that moment. Today when I walked past the cabin window where the hummingbird feeder will hang, I fantasized about the return of the gorgeous little miracles of color, energy and speed. In fact, I longed to see them again. I have walked by that window dozens of times this Winter with never a thought of the little birds, but today, with the sun bright and warm, with the trees beginning to bud, I thought of the hummingbirds. And only last Sunday snow persons were being built in Jewell Hollow.

As I sat on the edge of the pond, walked near it, raked debris from it, I grew nostalgic. I would never leave Jewell Hollow. This place is where I wish to be, where my soul resides. I could never leave our cabin and patch of ground; yet, tomorrow I will go.

For, though Spring is making battle with the Winter of all Jewell Hollow winters, I remember the battle to stay warm, the dangerous forced marches onto snow-covered rocks and boulders to the wood piles for the raw material of a warm cabin. I remember, and I am off to seek a place to be warm in the winters forward. I go to Puerto Rico, my once-happy home. I go as a scout. I shall return in one week with my scouting report to present Jeanne. I will return, but not to this book; it is at an end.

I feel the sadness as I write "end'. Twelve months ago I set out to record the unique joys of living in a cabin in the forest with the woman I love; that task is now complete. All of the stories have been recorded for our grandchildren, and all of those interested in lives lived among the purest and most authentic of settings in our Jewell Hollow mountain-forest-rocks, boulders and tiny pond. Whomever should read this little book, I hope that I have had the ability to convey the joy, warmth and excitement that Jewell Hollow, cabin and environs, produces for us each month, year after year.