It's Convenient

The North Shore's aromatic smell of spruce-fir-pine and water is particularly sweet this morning.  It's been raining for a couple of days now.  The small local streams are flowing.  Some of the larger rivers are near flood stage.  A root beer plume of sediment clouds Lake Superior.  The turbulent waters of the rain-engorged rivers hasten the transportation of denuded bedrock and soil to the basin below.

12 hours later...

I must admit that I have been fairly sloth this week.  At this point I'd rather lie around holding a snoozing baby in front of the wood stove while a strong coffee brews and the pages of John McPhee paddle on by than to get up and accomplish another check off the ol' list.  To my defense, once and a while I'll get up to go outside and split some fresh faces of birch for the fire.  The sad thing is that all the while I'm still sporting the same long underwear bottoms and slippers that went on at the wee hours of the morning.  It's got to be a sight to see: a skinny white boy in the middle of the woods swinging an eight pound maul doting a stocking hat, tee shirt, wool vest, long underwear pants and slippers.  But heck, that's why I live in the woods.  Nobody is there to see "the sight".  Besides, there's no shame in splitting wood in my underwear.  I'm not the first person to chop wood in my skimpies.  It's convenient. 

We just turned a major page in our story.  Now, if any, is the time to be sloth, rest, and do the bare minimum of routine chores in order to enjoy the finer points of life.