I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon working on firewood: tossing logs from the outside stack into the wheelbarrow, tossing the wheelbarrow load through the basement hatch, fitting the logs into a neat stack in the gap under the stairs. In the modest autumn sunshine, under the flickering stained-glass light of the leaves, I felt briefly as if I were back in Harmony, trudging across the clearing with my barrow, shoulders and thighs taut with wood-weight. My task here in Portland is tiny in comparison with what I used to do, but it still exacts a sturdy patience.

I'll finish filling up the basement stacks today, and Paul and I are also considering a jaunt to an orchard. First, though,  I'll do some editing, and read some Byron, and continue on with a poem draft. The World Series starts tonight. I've almost finished reading Treuer's The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee. I've got a pork roast to braise, poems I ought to submit to a journal but probably won't, laundry to fold, an upcoming weekend workshop to plan, Frost Place ideas to cogitate, a new walkway to skip up and down . . .

I've been looking at the photo I posted yesterday--the one of Tom laying paving stones--and thinking: Look at all that green! None of it existed when we moved here. The Hill Country and the Lane were nothing but sunburnt weeds and tree roots and rocks, and piles of wet trash, and dog shit. There's so much left to fix, but sometimes I forget how much we've already repaired.