Stillness. Not an absolute, closed quiet, but an awesome vastness - a solitary absence of the hum and tinker of humanity. The caw of the Canada Jay, and the tuneless bonging of the horses’ bells break the silence without cluttering its huge dimensions.
The grass is working against odds here, hindered by dying drifts of rotten snow, and sharp chilly wind. Peer around the bank, however, and discover a knot of juicy marsh marigolds, and further still, a spectrum of bluebells, butter-and-eggs, lupine and paintbrush.
Cabin Creek runs icy into the lake, chilling over every rock and digging under the bank to pick at the roots of the willows. In the morning, a cellophane-thin crisp of ice rims the lake near the shore, and dark grass is stiff with frost. You can see your breath. Short hugs of human steam escape as you chug, a bucket in each hand, back from drawing water.
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Just as the sun touches Square Top, and warms the tips of the pine outside the kitchen, the horses stir and jostle each other in their rock corral, beseechingly whinnying for freedom to trot to pasture for breakfast. Their bells bang louder, and simple unpatterned dissonance strikes up between the whistle of the cowboy, the soft sizzle of bacon, urgent nickering, and the clatter of iron on rock as the horses splash across the creek.
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Sitting on the rock stoop of the dining room door, you can peek through the trees at the deep blue lake. The stars have all disappeared, but a finger-nail of moon hangs translucent above the snowfields at timberline. Train your binoculars way down the lake to see the russet specks of the horses as they fan out and begin feeding hungrily on the big, wet delta. Now you can pick out the whine of flies, the water lapping rhythmically and the whispered roar of a waterfall, far away and out of site.
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It is dark inside, but a hair too light to justify the lantern. The old wood cookstove, the one they packed up on a mare named Hot Rod in the thirties, shows yellow between each seam and crack. Wafts of frying bacon, and the acrid sweet aroma of almost-boiling coffee mingle with a pitchy, smoky smell. Another half hour must pass before the stove is hot enough for pancakes and eggs, and it is too early for pushing the discolored enamel plates into formation on the big table. It is time to coax the huddle of coals remaining in the massive stone fireplace and banish the chill from the dining room.
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The flowers sit amusingly forlorn on the table which is hewn from two tremendous halves of trees. The once-red gingham valances, pale eyebrows over mismatched windows and bubbled, warped panes, have faded to peach from repeated washings and the hot, white sun. Through every fifth log where the chinking has eroded from the push and melt of snow, a green and blue outdoors peers in, complementing the orange flow of the smoking fire.
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There on the walls is an old fishing vest, the netting a pocket flaps riddled with mouse munchings, and beside it on a rusty ten-cent spike, a collection of broken reins, bent and cracked. Near the woodbox is a tangle of baling wire, a poker, and an empty can of Copenhagen. Over there, a big broadaxe, a eulogistic artifact of each drop of sweat, each broken blister, and each aching pair of arms that contributed to the building of the cabin.
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Upon the irregular surface of the mantle where the soot begins to edge over, rests a deck of dog-eared blue playing cards, a cheap candle stick, half a Louis L’Amour paperback, and several dried sheep horns, collecting dust and ash. Clearing the table, you remove a pair-within-a-pair socks, place the .22 against the bench by the door, toss the gloves onto the hearth, and swipe away another immense ash. Slap, slap, slap as each white napkin goes down, waiting for a fork and knife. The noise seems huge in the quietness.
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Back in the kitchen, you are reminded of the bears. They startle you wide awake, those hungry brown bears, with the loudest breathing and sniffling imaginable. Dawn finds you with jangled nerves, short on sleep, and again, without fish for breakfast. Those bears wreak havoc on the meat house, and mark each windowpane with huge smeary pawprints, created by carefully dipping each foot in syrup. Their nose prints show wet dribbles at the bottom, containing tiny tokens, coffee grounds, bits of bark, and miniature eggshells, illustrating their owners’ uninhibited appetites. Hence, a somewhat marred view out the kitchen window.
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The old cabin is heavy with history. Here it has stood for many decades, serving as a harbor in the brief warm weather for packers, hunters and cowboys caught out while riding a big circle for their strays.
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In the late fall, after sheep and elk season, two riders from the ranch, 18 miles below, arrive with a string of mules carrying empty pack saddles and panniers, to remove all the portable vestiges of people and summer. If the cowboys work fast, tie their hitches with dexterity and speed, there is just enough time before their snowy, slow ride home to build their last fire of autumn, and warm themselves with a few nips from the bottle. When they have gone, the big, wide silence pervades again, and for the months of cold and ice and gloom, the sturdy, weathered cabin stands rooted in the earth: patient, timeliness and powerful in its neglect, in the snow by the edge of the giant lake.
