{my topography}

A weasel found it’s way into the coop, the way only weasels can. Murderous and thrilling at the kill, it went after every hen, the sick rooster (who was getting better!) first, taking their heads, leaving blood splattered across the glass panes on the door. When I came home DH was in the coop gathering up the decapitated bodies, already frozen. We’re not sure when it came, how long it stayed, how it got in even. Flatlanders, the two of us. We should have known the signs broadcast all over last night: the scent of musk; the skipity tracks in the snow, not a squirrels, and too small for a drowsy skunk or hibernating raccoon.

Two hens, that’s all that’s left, of six, total, including the ailing rooster. It’s what happens, here, anywhere, the food chain and so forth, but it still sucks. I pulled on rubber boots (new ones, pretty with black and red and white flowers) and old fleece gloves and raked out loads of blood flecked hay and scat. We almost had it cornered (I keep wanting to call it a him, but who knows? And it gives me the shivers to think how naturally I assume the gender of a killer, even animal, and small with a mink black coat and a rust colored underbelly.) Both of us feeling fierce enough to kill it, and I grazed it with my boot, but it made a get-away out the door, and when we followed it’s tracks, we found it’s likely living under the shed on the other side. Vermin.

I knew it could happen, even when we got the half-dozen of them, itty-bitty and peeping, just a day old in the mail. We picked them up at the post office, and I kept saying maybe we should get more, in case. Now there are two, and while I cleaned the coop they sat on the roost above my head, the one shoving it’s head into the soft feathered underbelly of the other, twittering in that low, purring way hens do.

This is what we picked, choosing rural life. The likelihood of weasels, tracks zig-zagging the snow. Now that the January cold has set in, this is the season of hunger for small warm blooded things that do not sleep in the ground or in nests or burrows until spring. We wanted to feel closer to the land, and I keep an animal tracking guide on my desk. But I’ve grown lazy and fat and distracted in the warmth of my house, writing heaps of paragraphs furiously (for a deadline: this Saturday) and eating pineapple upside down cake (for my birthday.) I grew up on the stories of Sterling North, and when I am outdoors, the land sings and I feel it in my bones. I love the barren maples and the way the ice is dark and slick over the places where water and mud used to bisect the trail.

So even as I’m feeling like punching the wall and I’m googling weasel traps, I’m already planning for more: hens, chicks, beehives, lamas, a garden. Maybe not all this spring, or even this year, but over the course of the years here. Because even when I’m dizzy and distracted, as I am right now: balancing on the very tiniest rung of the tall ladder reaching up towards the sickle moon of my dreams, these things pull me back. Nothing like chicken manure and a mess of bloodied feathers to pull you back into the right-here-now of life.

These things are my Polaris, giving the twirling compass of my heart a north to true towards in the dark winter days when I’m crazy with words and to-do lists and hectic schedules and friends I haven’t kept in touch with; or in summer when the evening sun hangs in the sky until almost ten and I’m drowsy and sun drunk and undirected. Still. I’m sad tonight.

* My laptop is in for repairs (the screen split down the side for no apparent reason) and I’m going through withdrawal trying to write on my old, slow HP.

* My rooster, who was attacked by a neighbor’s boyfriend’s dog, is dying. I am so sad, and feel so guilty and awful, not quite knowing what to do to help. He’s more severely injured than he let on the day after–and I think I’m going to have my father in law shoot him. He might have crushed ribs–and certainly a broken leg. He won’t eat, or drink. This is the part I hate about loving animals.

* I have another writing deadline (the first of next month) and am tangling deep in the middle of a manuscript. Hence, I have no time to do anything else. Including art. Feeling guilty about that.

* I can’t seem to shake the feeling of guilt hanging over me lately—can’t seem to ever feel like I’m getting everything done well enough, fast enough, etc–yet I can’t seem to figure out what to cut back on.

* I’m turning 30 at the end of the week, and am feeling nervous. Shouldn’t I have accomplished more by now? Please tell me, what is the best thing about turning 30?

Another really long day.

And then, the best thing ever. We started our climbing class tonight, and as an early birthday present DH got me a new harness and shoes. In between trying on pairs of shoes–and while waiting for the sales guy to dig through his inventory for my size–I picked up a climbing magazine and leafed through it. Then, while reaching to put it back, this little gift was sitting right there–where the magazine had been.

I’ve always adored Rosa for doing this kind of thing and have secretly wished I’d someday be the recipient of a little random bit of whimsy. But to find it today was simply perfect.

I was so exhausted, bummed out, and feeling defeated in general. Let’s just say it was a looong day.

So we went climbing and it was glorious, and now I have a little magical bag of glittery gold fairy dust and I can’t stop smiling.

Friday night my heart felt like a hundred rain splattered puddles: each one reflecting a different small circle of cloud covered sky; so many different things to do all in exactly the same few moments.

Friday I was a flood of hormonal mood swings before I start to bleed, and I felt anxious and sad and utterly overwhelmed. Also nearly sick again. Then Saturday came, and the sun was shining through tatters of clouds and I went for a run for the first time in a month, and dear god, why can’t I remember this?

I need to exercise.

Every day I need to feel my body move, outside, among trees and open spaces, side stepping puddles, feeling my lungs suck in cold air. I need to exercise not because I want to look a certain way, but because I need to feel a certain way. It’s the only variable I can think of that genuinely affects how I manage stress. It’s the only thing that really makes a difference: being outdoors, feeling my blood hot in my cheeks, feeling my muscles sore afterwards.

Exercise brings balance to my life, yet regularly in the winter I let it slip by. Day after day I come home, to the sun staining the west a meek orange, and the shadows already those of dusk. I feel selfish then, setting out on a run, having not spent time with my small boy.

Yet without exercise I start to become irrational. Guilt becomes an entire harbor in my heart, sheltering a whole fleet of inadequacies: I do not spend enough time with my son; I don’t cook enough or clean enough or see my husband enough; I am not a good enough teacher or writer or reader.

The only difference between days like this, and days where I feel like I’m on top of the world is that on the days where I’m kicking ass, I’ve also gotten outdoors and moved.

Seriously. It’s that easy. And that incredibly difficult. Does anyone else experience this?