Day at the Auction

Snow falls the size of corn flakes, I wonder if this is where the cereal got its name? Being from Southern California this thought previously never occurred to me. If I were in S. Ca. I would find the hills covered in grass a foot tall, flowers abundantly coloring the earth, due to a winter of plentiful rain. Yet here in my wee cabin in the woods and meadows of Montana I have over a foot of snow. There is a little bird with a black head at the feeder on my porch. It stays perched on a post nibbling seeds, I swear it is taking in the fall of snow. Though more likely it is looking about for the next bird that will swoop in for food. My ponds are more liquid than frozen now, a sign of spring as well as the enormous call of Canada geese flying overhead. My California heart and memory is ready for green and flowers.

Regularly I wander through meadows and woods, earth covered in a blanket of snow, finding tracks and trails of creatures who have walked by, peaking my curiosity, wishing I could watch their passing. For the most part these tracks are single file, heading somewhere.

I spent yesterday with Dick at the outdoor Creston Auction. It snowed lightly on all the treasures, junk and people. There were three legged apple ladders a Hutterite man bought, a box of odds that a young man bought that had an old fashioned nail puller in it, something I had never seen the likes of. He bought it "because my grandfather had one like that". I saw snow shoes framed in wood and laced with sinew, antique tea pots, boxes of antlers, books getting soaked, building materials, antique tables. This list could go on and on. Dick spied a shelf that my computer could sit on, a man who had just bought it over heard us considering its perfect use, he handed it to me as a gift, kindness from an unknown man goes a long way.

We left for a wonderful lunch in Bigfork, mine was French pressed coffee and grilled salmon on a bed of baby greens, Dick had meat loaf wrapped in bacon with smashed potatoes. Driving by the auction again, we stopped and had our try bidding for more things. There is an art to auctions, hearing the speedy talk of the auctioneer an art I don’t quite have, yet. Upon arriving home I found tracks that ran all over my yard of snow, this snow that had a virgin surface for an entire winter season now has tracks crossing this way and that, running in circles. Tracks made by dogs, so different from tracks I have found in the wild. Makes me wonder what went on about my cabin while I had my day at a country auction?