One man’s wilderness (44 page)

Big window with a desk before it. A large storage shelf. Dick’s sister had sent the curtains. Dick provided the rustic curtain rod and the driftwood sculpture
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Best dressed man in the frost
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A jumble of ice from the aftermath of breakup
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Most of the lake white with ice. Allen’s Mountain and Spike’s Peak admire themselves in the lead of open water
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Looking down from Cowgill’s bench on Dick’s complex. The spruces screen the lake. Beyond loom the snow-crowned peaks
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Dick had assembled this cache on the beach first. Then he took it apart and erected it piece by piece on the platform atop the stilts—an experiment with prefabrication. Notice his scaffold and ladder. Quite an aerial feat
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Babe came on schedule. It was time to leave for the winter. Everything stored. One last look until spring
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As I rounded a brushy point there was a cow moose at the foot of a gravel bank. For a few minutes she stood and watched me, ears funneled. I sat motionless, my paddle blade dripping silver. She was the second cow I had seen without a calf. She scrambled awkwardly up the loose stones into the buckbrush, and headed in the direction of the big cottonwood park. Homely, ungainly, none of the majesty of the bull at all.