The Book of Yaak Read Online Free PDF Page A

back into our lives, and which we want, once again:
human contact.
After going to so much trouble to distance ourselves from the bulk of it, it seems strange to now have this December-January-February hunger for contact: not a lot, but definitely some, and every day. Just a little; like a pinch of cinnamon, but without which the rest of the day would grow darker and colder.

    The mail run comes only five days a week, Monday through Friday, around one in the afternoon; and in the winter, especially near the middle and end of it, that three-day stretch—from Friday's last mail till Monday's next haul—gets kind of long.
    In the winter, you can hear the mail coming long before you can see the mail lady. There's something different in the stillness of the air: something that, having spurned, in spring and summer and on through the fall, we're now suddenly hungry for. Elizabeth stands on one side of the wood-stove warming her hands, and I stand on the other side. We look out the window, across the great field of white. Mary Katherine may be reading a book. She'll come to the window, too, and watch the mail lady take our letters-to-protect-the-wilderness, our Congress letters, out of the snow-covered mailbox, and slide new ones in. Some days we can barely see her through the thick-falling snow. Even the dogs sit up, sensing her approach: though they, too, do not venture far from the fireplace.
    "Do you want to go get it, or shall I?" Elizabeth asks. We've got a set of binoculars by the window, and we'll watch and try to see just what the mail lady is putting in the box. If it's a fat mail day, we'll be anxious to go check it out. But if it looks like just a few thin circulars, I'll say, "Let it rot"; though we never do.
    Always, there could be some small letter, or postcard—from Arizona, perhaps, or the Caribbean—tucked in among the hardware flyers that advertise snow chains.
    We'll trudge down to the mailbox, wading through all that snow, pulling a bundled-up Mary Katherine on the sled behind us. One day's like the next. It's wonderful.

    There's a thing in us that loves the winter, and a thing in us that is also made a bit uncomfortable by it. Even for hermits, there are limits. Still, we try to push those limits. We try to see how long we can go without having to go into town.
    When we do go, the chores are dreadfully mundane, staggeringly predictable, each time: laundry, grocery store, gas station. A cup of coffee from the Hav-A-Java. Always, something from the hardware store. Sometimes, a haircut. Once in a while, a visit to the chiropractor. Elizabeth might swim; I'll take the girls to the park. The same slides, the same swings, over and over. Actually, I love it—that stability. And then the long drive home, to true security. If we can avoid town, we generally do.

    You can get just about anything from a catalogue now, and in the winter, that's how we go about a lot of our shopping. It's luxurious, letting the goods come to us, rather than having to go out and get them. Skis, snowshoes, boot oil, gloves, sock liners, food, books—anything, everything. We've got a whole bookshelf of nothing but mail-order catalogues, like the reference books in a mechanic's garage.
    When we need something, we sit on the couch and thumb through those well-worn catalogues, comparing prices and trying to gauge, from the photographs alone, just how durable the goods they advertise really are.

    Once a choice is made, we have to decide how to get the merchandise delivered. The mail lady is petite, and carries neither chain saw nor ax. She drives a small red Subaru. If a tree splits from the cold or the wind and falls across the road, blocking her way from town to the valley, then no mail arrives that day, and the outside world stays silent. Occasionally, on days when she has not arrived by her usual time, I'll clear my throat and say, "I believe I'm going to run up to the mercantile for a cup of coffee"—and I'll check