Winter is coming, bish: Why things are about to get very, very real in your new country escape.
The other night, I left my house to find our cat before the coyotes did and found my brand new neighbor standing in our driveway, instead. Without any preamble, she gestured to the three cords of wood we had meticulously split, seasoned, and stacked throughout the summer. Could she have some wood?
I blinked dumbly at my neighbor, waiting for the punchline. It is an unspoken pact in these here hills: eggs, milk, and sugar’s for the taking, but you don’t touch someone’s wood. The kind of firewood you order in the country, when you order it, how you stack it, how you keep it dry, it’s a form of parenting; it is holy ground. I felt like a jerk for thinking these things in front of my new neighbor. After all, there’s no manual for country living — you have to know things to know them, which is another way of saying that you have to mess up to understand what you should know — and my neighbor, like so many people who have moved to rural areas from large cities during Covid, did not know a lot. But the great leveler was approaching, the season that separates the wearers of long underwear from those who think that leggings work just fine. Winter is coming! I wanted to cry into the six feet of night separating me from my dear neighbor. And there is much to learn!
