The Book of Yaak Read Online Free Page B

supper, or else I catch them for fun and throw them back. In winter, otters play on the ice, and dive through holes in the ice, are gone for a minute, and then come back up with a fish, which they share with their whole family, not seeming to mind the twenty-below weather. One winter a deer fell through the ice, and I had to creep out and lasso her to help pull her out.
    In the spring, when the geese and ducks come sailing in, their wings spread and feet dropped for landing, set on a long glide, it seems they are going to come sailing right on in through that big window. And in long summer twilight bats swarm the pond dipping insects from the water's surface.
    It's a window to the world—or to the one we know and love. We used to live in cities, and then moved to small towns, but now finally I think we have found our level, somewhere way down near the bottom of things. About a hundred people live in this valley. A hundred people probably doesn't sound like a lot of people to someone who lives in a city of five or six million, but it seems like a lot of people to me. Think of what it would be like if you had them all over for dinner at once. One family up here has a pig roast every Fourth of July, and we all gather at their place, but they've got a big yard. There are two churches and two bars in the valley. We play cards in the winter—pinochle—with each other, if the loneliness gets too bad. But it hardly ever does.

    We're ecstatic, where we are. Solitude is a thing we crave. We're clumsy, in cities—when we get in a rush; when we find our hearts racing to make a deadline, to get to some place before the jam occurs. Mistakes get made.
    But out here—it feels like we fit the cycles of things better. As if the world still makes sense—as if it is still intact, in places. It feels like less wear and tear, less heart-tattering adrenaline. Except for the paper struggle to try and protect the valley—to keep the last few uncut mountains up here uncut—I hardly ever get upset any more. I practice going slow, at a pace that can be sustained. I practice looking around at things.
    You can see cycles in almost everything, out here. New things make sense and strange logic. We're learning things we never dreamed we'd learn—things we never dreamed we'd notice: the way snow covering a rotting log is the last to melt, which means it's well insulated, a good place for creatures to hibernate or stay warm; the way deer drop their fawns around the second week of June when the grass is lush and at its absolute highest, giving the fawns maximum concealment.
    It feels like some weight of humanity has been lightened, if not actually jettisoned. No—definitely not jettisoned. Just put way out there, at arm's length. We don't get any radio stations -—the mountain walls ringing the valley are too high—and there's no television reception, either. A few people, the two bars included, have satellite dishes that they can run off of gas generators, but we choose not to have one; if there's a football or basketball game we want to see, we'll drive the seven miles to the bar.
    There's no telephone in our homes—just one pay phone outside the mercantile, also seven miles away—the world's coldest pay phone, with a stump for a seat.
    The only thing that really keeps us connected whatsoever to the world we left—the only thing, the invisible thread, thinner than spider's silk—is the mail.

    I've made it sound pretty, and it
is
pretty—it's breathtaking, with a new sight every day—but in winter, even for those of us who love solitude, we're glad to see the mail. It's how we shop, how we speak, and how we listen to the outside world. And in winter, that which we have previously turned our back upon becomes once more appealing, even vital. Like sailors who would take along a supply of limes and other citrus fruits on a long ocean journey, the mail in winter becomes a thing that comes