I didn't get much accomplished here yesterday. I recorded my Patreon address, did some sit-ups, and drove to the top of the mountain where my Uncle Ali always claimed there was cellphone service. I'd never driven up there before myself, apparently. The road is a rocky, rutted, terribly un-level, un-stable winding thing, and I worried about my little car getting high-centered, or stuck in some of the grooves running water has made.
The road was so narrow that, had I encountered another vehicle coming down, there'd have been no room to scrape past each other, and when I finally found a cell signal, there was no place to pull off until I got to the top, where the road forked, and I just parked my car on the dirt road going still higher up the mountain (or to the other side, I'm not sure). There was indeed cell service, which is pretty amazing, and I exchanged texts with Big Anklevich, and sent one to my mom telling her the bad news.
I really do feel bad about this--not so much because this whole trip up here was for nothing (I did about twenty minutes of writing at about seven-thirty this morning that's more than I have in days), but because my mom will have to get new credit cards, a new ID, new checkbook, etc.. And you always wonder where the stuff actually is, if you'll stumble upon it at some point soon.
I went down the hill toward the sunset to take some pictures (didn't get much, just a couple of shots standing on a slope filled with yellow and purple wildflowers), and at one point a truck did come along, so I ran up to ask them if they were going where I had parked (they were going the other way). Up here is so remote, that no other vehicles did come along, though I could hear voices coming from somewhere, and I'm sure they heard me singing, and hopefully thought it was ghosts that happened to know Adele and Elton John songs.
As I often do, I thought it would've been pretty spectacular to come up here with a pretty girl, get some pictures of her with the golden light of sunset on her face and hair, maybe take a couple with the orange sky behind her. I wonder if that would ever get old. Probably for her, but you never know. But alas.
I took four pictures from this angle, and all of them had the red swath down the left side. I'm going to chalk it up to forest spirits.
By the time I went back down the hill, going as slow as I possibly could over the rocks and bumps, it had gotten dark. Virtually all of the beauty of this place disappears in the dark (which is, ironically, the opposite of me), and I worried about popping a tire or damaging the undercarriage of my car (neither of which happened). When I got back, there was little to do but make a fire and cook some soup (I have about four fires' worth of cardboard packaging from Marvel Legends figures which I brought up here for the specific purpose of taking them out of their boxes and using the rest to warm my Campbell's with (although I think last night's fare was Progresso).
While I was typing this, three deer walked by the window--two adults and a fawn. I went out back to see if I could see any, considered sitting out and reading,* but it's still too cold this early in the day (I checked, and it's fifty-six degrees out right now). I think I'll have a donut and read on the couch for a few minutes--but I better not fall asleep again, or I'll have wasted the gift the early morning gave me.
Heh, heh, I DID fall asleep again, and not only once, but twice more throughout the day. That's the bad news. The good news was, I did find my mom's stuff, just not where she said it was, and at the end of the day when I was packing up my own things. So, silver lining, I think.
Sit-ups Today: 500
Sit-ups In July: 4867
Words Today: 1128
Words In July: 28,544
*I brought a big R.A. Salvatore book of his Icewind Dale Trilogy, and have been enjoying it, though it sure cribs a great deal from Tolkien. I suppose a lot of 20th Century Fantasy does, but I've not read much of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment