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They hated their booties. But it was a long trek in the cold, and I didn’t know what was on the ground in the woods. I constantly felt my own boot crunching into old, discarded glass or aluminum beer bottles and cans.
I kept telling myself I would get out there, clean it all up, let the girls run free like they never really got to do at home. But it never failed. I was always too preoccupied with getting back to work, with figuring out whatever issue had been plaguing me for weeks or months or even years.
Always tinkering, was what my father had said when I was a girl, sitting with him in his repair shop, fiddling with his tools and scrap metal.
My father had been an avid collector of crap. Anytime he saw a pile of discarded junk on the side of the road, he was picking it up and bringing it back to the little two-car garage that served as his work and his hobby spot.
He tinkered too.
With the cars, sure.
That was mostly because that brought us money home.
But he liked to just make stuff out of the old junk. A giant windmill out of scrap metal. A table from old beer bottle tops. A hammerhead shark made out of actual hammerheads. A dollhouse for me from little scraps of wood, even though we both knew I’d never been a dollhouse kind of kid.
That childhood tinkering had made a pretty good career for me.
I had my father to thank for that.
But he’d passed before I’d gotten my shit together.
“Geez, it’s still cold in here, huh?” I asked, pulling off my gloves, then making my way over toward the wood-burning stove.
It was a fat little thing with a flat top that served as the only actual cooking surface in the cabin. I’d gotten good at tossing random crap into the pot and making something somewhat edible.
I tossed some more logs onto the fire, standing there for a minute to warm my hands, then turning back to the cabin as a whole.
When I’d moved in, it was all bare walls. Nothing on the windows to help fight off the chill. And maybe to the previous owner, the idea of the forest all around and a complete lack of privacy felt sort of liberating. To me, it felt like a tactical nightmare. If someone was out there, they could see exactly where I was in the small space.
So the first thing I’d done was put up shades, then some heavy drapes that I could pull in the winter to keep the heat, and in the summer to try to keep it out, since this place didn’t have enough solar energy to power any sort of air conditioning.
Then I’d put some rugs down on the floor. Again, as a source of insulation. And because the dogs sometimes got frustrated trying to get enough room on the bed with me, and would choose to spread out down there instead.
The bed itself was only a full, and I had it wedged somewhat awkwardly on the shortest wall next to the back door. For a quick exit, should I need one. It was currently covered with about eight different quilts. I always ended up bringing a couple more each time I visited, remembering that first frigid winter, shivering under the only blanket I’d brought, then having to make a makeshift second one using my towels and all the clothes I’d brought with me.
“You guys can go in the back run if you want,” I told my girls—Miranda and Samantha—as they kept giving me the look.
I took them on several long, leashed walks a day, but they were high-energy dogs who liked to run around and rough-house with each other, so I’d once brought up some rolls of five-foot metal fencing and stakes, and made them their own little playground out there.
To that, Samantha let out a sneeze that wasn’t a sneeze, but rather just her showing me her frustration.
We wanted to go with you, Mom.
“I’ll bring you next time,” I told them, rummaging into their box of treats, and tossing them each one.
Miranda was easily placated with food of any sort. Samantha, not so much. So Miranda ate her treat, then snuck the one out from in front of her sister who just kept giving me a hard look.
“I was just trying to get a couple of bars of service!” I told her, waving my phone as proof.
Now, this is probably the part where people would start to question if my time tucked away in the cabin with no other human beings to talk to was getting to me.
Nope.
I always had full on conversations and even arguments with my dogs.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I told her, walking over to rub her ears until I got her leg tapping the floor.
