Winter Heart

Her departure had turned his heart to winter, leaving him in the cold fall of gray snow, isolated in the confines of the cabin. He would pass time with the Murphy blade his father had given him, whittling the features of forest mammals, believing that some part of his soul would identify. The hemlocks that surrounded the cabin also provided him distraction, for in the early light he would immerse himself in cutting those trees that had the diseased ends of blight and curled twigs. Brief moments of solace were found during such projects, as his mind would carry in to other stretches of his being, happily lost in the swinging of an axe or the sharpening of a blade. He kept a low fire in the furnace throughout the day, only to strengthen the blue of the flame when the night frost would blanket the frigid valley. The apex of the furnace was four feet from floor level, wafting out the hard smell of wintry timbers across the floor to the quilted crate where he slept. On the coldest of evenings, he would slide under an extra sheepskin and into wool socks, with hopes of passing the night through without chilly interruption. But it was the mornings that were the hardest, feeling stiff and alone without her. He didn’t know how to rejuvenate his sense of self or purpose, dwindling more and more with the passing of the season until he had become a man immersed in bearded delusion and confinement. He would often take the bolt action Winchester on foot in to the heart of the deep pine country, muttering vulgarly while blasting the weapon in to the trees as if to exact revenge on someone or something. The bleak days and iced nights of the winter froze together, as he sank further and further in to the cold. Yet his sadness wasn't eternally bound to him. While tending to the furnace one night, his wool coat caught as it scraped the volcanic coals nestled in the chimney, immediately ripping with a vibrant spark of ocher. He shed the coat quickly from his shoulders, turning swiftly to stomp it out with his boots. He found no joy, as he ran to retrieve buckets of snow from the porch that had been left there to melt during the day for morning tea. But it was too late, as the old cabin caught fire, its wooden structure falling in upon its aged build, corner by corner, the northwest patch of roof caving first. He ran out in to the night, turning in the foreground to stare wide-eyed at the cabin as it poured thousands of embers in to the black sky. And there he was, standing under the elms and hemlocks, watching it burn until it was nothing but a smoky ashen crush of blackened timbers. There was nothing he could do, but listen to the pops of heat and the passing cry of the Bozeman train, that called miles from his smoldering cabin, as dawn seeped quietly into the valley. He took a seat upon the stump of a birch and watched the morning sun rise as it beckoned down upon him. He'd been in the valley too long, bereaving her absence, he thought. But the fall of his recluse meant only one thing to him: time to move on. He rose from the stump, dusted the ash from the frayed sleeves of his wool-night shirt and began walking out of the valley toward the sun, where the pulse of the rail bellowed not too far in the distance.

Bon Iver - Calgary (Cillo Remix) 

S. Carey - In The Dirt 

Hans Zimmer - Now We Are Free (Juba's Version)

My Morning Jacket - Dondante