Timothy Birdnow

It's been many weeks since my last Ozark Hilton visit, and so Monday I made the great trek.

Fortunately there isn't much to report; everything went pretty smoothly (with the exception of wasps picketing in front of the porch entrance to the cabin, forcing me to detour around a bunch of brush and debris and also keeping me from doing the work I had planned - putting the roof on the porch. I guess that won't happen any time soon.

Frankly, this was the most uneventful trip I've had there in ages. But it was pleasant nonetheless. The weather was beautiful, and I had no trouble getting down there (although I tried to make my usual stop at the Tim Birdnow Memorial Outhouse, but aborted it when I saw a giant gaggle/flock/herd of young children there; some sort of school picnic was in progress. But it didn't matter; I really didn't have to go anyway, at least not much. I just drove on.

And so, after the long journey, I finally came to the palatial mansion and had no trouble turning around. Well, not much; I did bump a tree in the process. It's sad; my Ford F150 was beautiful when I bought it but trips to the OH have dented up the passenger side something awful, and I did it no favors this trip. Ah, the heartbreak of entropy and driving a rig too big for the narrow confines of a hardwood forest...

So, after busting my hump to schlep my gear from the truck around the wasps and into the cabin, I settled on the porch. It was a beautiful day, and quickly slipped into a beautiful evening. A bit warm and humid; I was sweating quite a bit, but beautiful.

LOTS of tree frogs/toads somewhere. I could hear endless croaking. I was really surprised when, years ago, I first encountered a toad there. This land has no water, and it is about half way down from a ridge line into a valley. It's hardwood country, full of red and white oak. I was sitting in a lawn chair by my tent (this was well before I built the cabin) and a toad hopped right under me and through the campsite. I was shocked; I didn't expect to see such a critter!

Since then I have encountered very few, but this year it sounded like a swarm of them. I like it; i love the sound of croaking frogs/toads. It makes you feel like you are in the sticks (which most definitely I am down there.)

At any rate, I noticed a hole dug into the leaves that but up to the porch; something had dug a hole to get under the cabin. Possibly my old friends the armadillos? But I hadn't seen those two in ages. And I didn't hear them at dusk - their preferred feeding time. But later that night, well after dark, something moved about outside of my vision, in the velvety blackness outside the circle of light thrown by my lamps. It SOUNDED like an armadillo; they tend to be loud walkers, never having learned how to move about quietly in the woods, especially as long as there are still leaves on the ground. In fact they sound amazingly like a man tramping about. But no man would be walking in those woods in the utter blackness. It's a blackbody black, blacker than anything most people are likely to encounter when the skies are overcast. By this time it WAS overcast so I knew it had to be some sort of critter. But I never saw it. It could have been anything; a coyote, a bobcat, an opossum, an armadillo, a used car salesman...

It was getting late and I packed up my stuff (which included a cooler and my lamps) and went inside. Almost as soon as I went in it began to rain, then to storm. For a while it was really lively! Thunder and lightning and winds blowing; a classic spring storm. And I had just happened to get in before it struck.

I love being there in inclement weather; you can really hear it and feel you are in a pocket of safety and warmth while the storm rages just outside. Yes, that happens when you are at home too, but you don't usually hear it so much or FEEL it. At the Ozark Hilton, with it's tin roof and shoddy workmanship you know you are in it all. At home you are just observing it - here you are living it.

At any rate I put in the movie Interstellar into my portable DVD player and settled in to watch. I used to bring books and read, but my failing eyesight makes that impossible now, alas. I also used to put on the radio, and I only picked up country/western stations or one pop station that on Saturdays played music from the '70's, primarily soul and disco. So I would sit there on Saturday nights discoing out and reading whatever book I had brought. All I needed was a disco ball hanging from the rafters!

One time I had a pet wasp too. I was sitting there reading and getting funky with the disco when a wasp buzzed around my head. That was most disturbing! It landed next to me and I started looking for something with which to bash it. But it made no hostile moves towards me and I am of a "live and let live" mindset, particularly down there. So I continued reading. My wasp friend simply sat next to me on the futon, content with some company. It occasionally buzzed and I reassured it I was there, speaking gently to the Apocrita Hymenoptera (yes, that's the technical term for their suborder, but in the end they are just insects.) My little friend spent much of the night just sitting there soaking up my company. Me and my pet wasp! Eventually he grew sleepy (I suppose) and flew away. I don't know if he liked the disco or the light but he certainly was an odd wasp. I guess he may have been a sentry who was there to make sure I made no hostile moves toward his nest, which I never found.

At any rate, I rarely get wasps in the cabin because my state of the art HVAC system smokes like, well, Johnny Carson was alleged to have and they don't like it.

At any rate, I watched Interstellar and was struck by the mistakes and ridiculous assumptions in the movie, as usual. Why were they seeking a new home for humanity in interstellar space? There was no good reason for that; they could have settled anywhere in the solar system far more easily. If the planets didn't work they could have settled inside asteroids and rotated them for gravity, or actually built space colonies. But instead they were using a wormhole to go to planets that would require massive amounts of terraforming or artificial environments anyway.

Another problem with the movie is the rather ridiculous business of them spending just a few short minutes on a planet around a black hole and the guy in orbit experiencing over twenty years. That theoretically could happen ,but not that close to the planet. Also, such a planet would not form at all; it would be torn to shreds by roach tides.

And then we find that the protagonists caused the effect that motivated them to go on this mission to begin with; a horrible violation of causality as a result of time travel that is flatly impossible.

Furthermore the little girl is brilliant far beyond anything anyone has seen. She figured a bunch of dust was binary code sending a message. Ri-ight!

So I watched the movie. Unfortunately a huge number of moths had gotten in while I was sitting outside, and I had moths buzzing all over me for a while. But the hot lamps eventually polished them all off. I don't know why moths are attracted to flames but they are, and they happily fly to their deaths. I would hear sizzles every few minutes as my pesky flying friends made their final suicide runs. Little kamikaze pilots driving for glory! I don't know if moths have a concept of bushido but I hope they got SOMETHING for their troubles! It's kind of sad they kill themselves for one second of bright light.

At any rate, I slept in the outer cabin - which had once been a big porch - and that in a chair. My back hurt pretty bad after it; not as young as I used to be.

I was up with the dawn and shlepped my stuff to the truck and got out of there before the wasps woke up and launched an offensive. I drove into town and stopped for gas, but the pumps were acting very screwy and wouldn't take my credit card. I took my insulin and went to McDonalds (as is my custom when I go down there) to get breakfast. (It's the only time I go for fast food.) Turns out McDonalds was closed due to a power outage. I guess the storm was worse than I thought.

Unfortunately I had taken my insulin. There wasn't a place to get food within thirty miles. I drove on a bit fearful, heading for Fredericktown, site of one of the larger Civil War battles in Missouri.

I made it with no problem and ate in the car on the way home.

Well, that's that. As I say, nothing major happened (which means no good stories to tell) but I had a wonderful time of it, soaking in nature and enjoying the weather. Granted, I'm getting a bit old for this; my body is pretty sore today despite the fact that I didn't do any work except lugging stuff around. I suppose I'll never finish the cabin. There are so many things I needed to do, but my health failed me years ago and the lost time meant I will never finish it. I need to put a roof on the porch. I have a partially-built screen porch attached to it that needs finishing. I want to build a big storage shed and move all the junk out of the cabin into it. I want to build an actual outhouse and not just use cinder blocks with a toilet seat in the yard (well, it IS self cleaning as animals do the work for me!) I need to finish the flooring in the cabin, as well as upgrade my heating system with a real wood stove. I need to take down the remains of the "storage wigwam" a tent built with a frame of small saplings. It collapsed long ago and lays there like a pile. If I take that down I could park there and turning around will be a lot easier. I also have a couple of trees that were small when I built the cabin but now hang precipitously over the place, widow makers imperiling my hard work.

It makes me sad to think that the cabin will never be done - and eventually will decay and rot away. But that is the way of life - our works are all as dust and eventually are absorbed back into the good Earth. My cabin was always a temporary thing anyway. I actually intended it as a temporary shelter until I could build something better, but it was so much work I didn't want to waste so I kept building. Now it's, well, not overbuilt but over trashed; I brought down way too much junk for construction purposes. I need to build a bonfire and burn a lot of the wood that is down there. It would be much nicer with less trash. I feel like Fat Albert in the clubhouse in the junk yard sometimes. Actually, if I keep gaining weight and get a nice suntan I'll LOOK like Fat Albert. I guess I should practice aying "hey, hey, hey!"

So anyway, I hope you all enjoyed my latest tale from the Ozark Hilton. It's always good to make the long trek. I'll keep going as long as I am able, but it's getting harder all the time. I know some day in the not-too-distant future it will come to an end. All good things.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:21 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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