Belly of the Whale

A Winter's Day

I’m sitting, surrounded by snow and sun, in a cabin northeast of Missoula. The cabin is owned by my friends Trudy and Larry Chamberlain who are gone to Las Vegas for a week, so I am housesitting for them. Sharing the house with me are four dogs, three cats, three turtles, a couple dozen piranhas, with two cows and a horse in the yard. A big family. But the cabin is big and isolated, a long dirt road in, a couple of pastures surrounding it with sparse Ponderosas and Doug firs. There are a couple of sheds, an empty chicken coup, a tack barn, hay stacks and a trampoline.

It isn’t quite as relaxing as I thought it might be though. Two of the dogs, Daisy and Hailey, are only two years old. Daisy. a basset hound, is the most mischievous dog I have ever met. Truly, everything this dog enjoys is bad–and she is ashamed of none of it and doesn’t respond to discipline. My first day here she ate my toothpaste, slippers, and my beard trimmer. The second day she tore some pages out of my Mann book which is fifty years old.

However, the amenities are great. I have a great hot tub which I plan on utilizing every night, a very big screen tv with surround sound and a plethora of videos and dvds (consider I have never had a tv in my house), a freezer full of steak and hamburger from the former “third” cow of the yard, a jeep to take to town, and free internet and computer usage. Work and relax; work and relax.

Yesterday I got up at six to do my chores, put the dogs in the mud room and drove to town to meet my good friend, Jon, Trudy’s son. We used to work at Opportunity together and this Sunday morning he asked me to volunteer with him for the Special Olympics. At 7:45 we all loaded up a YMCA van and headed out to Lost Trail for a day of skiing. The weather was perfect and warm. The athletes were cheerful and excited. The whole day whizzed by. In the morning I skied with some clients that were perfectly capable and we enjoyed fast comfortable runs, going where ever they pleased. In the afternoon I skied with a couple of clients that were beginners and needed considerable assistance. Tyler, Jon’s eleven year old son, came with us as well and he behaved admirably, helping me with some new skiers and boarding with a few more advanced athletes.

Through a thick fog I drove back north toward Potomic. I had taken Widge to town with me and left him in my house there so he could be away from the pups and mess and also enjoy a nice long car ride. As I expected, the mud room was trashed, shit and piss, bedding strewn all over the floor. A total disaster, but I managed it, let the dogs out, got my leftover spaghetti w/ meatsauce out of the frig, drank a celebration coke-cola for such a fine day, put a little Sly and the Family Stone on the radio, ate, and then headed for a hot tub.

It is indoors, a small room surrounded mostly by glass. I opened the outside door and lit a candle. The room filled with thick steam. Before moving up to Potomic, I stopped in and bought a new pouch of tobacco, chocolate flavored Danish, I think. This would be a great day to try it out.