Puttering Days

The seasons were over, the lakes and rivers frozen solid, the ducks far on their way to the south. The pheasants, the quail, the hungarians and all upland game were feeding on the sunny sides of windrows and in the swales. Rabbit hunting, deer hunting, everything was over, just nothing to do but get out and move around and remember.

But this time of the year has its compensations, too--these days when there is nothing much to do in the way of fishing and hunting are the days when you can do the thousand and one things that before you were entirely too busy to even think about.

And so I found myself at the old duck hunting cabin in mid-January, a day when snow was piling up against the windward side and the temperature well down. And even though there was nothing much to do, I looked forward to just puttering around, straightening things out that had long been neglected.

I found the decoys in a sack underneath the eaves. They were frozen solid with ice and lay just where we had thrown them that last wild night before the freezeup.

I took the old blocks inside, started a big fire and began to thaw them out, untangled the strings that were frozen and heavy with ice when we had last taken them up, checked the weights, and when they were dry I rewound them and set them on their shelf where they could look down on us the rest of the year.

It was sort of fun handling those old decoys and remembering where they had been and the shooting we had seen over them, and it seemed good to be able to put them away for another year.

The squirrels, I noticed, had discovered a way into the cabin, a little hole under the southwest corner of the eaves. They had worked their way in a good many times and had a good trail running over from a bunch of jackpine. They had been in the bread box and other places and had sampled everything, including a bit of Ivory Soap. The deer mice had also come in and had a nest under the bunk.

I liked to see them, to know that they too had been enjoying the old cabin. During the hunting seasons we didn't have time to visit with them or pay them any attention, but now they seemed important, were a part of the sensation of rest and relaxation of the months ahead.

I went out behind the cabin and found a big log there that we hadn't had time to touch, but now I sawed away slowly and soon had it cut into convenient stove lengths. Soon the box inside was full as well as the space under the south eaves. It was fun working away with nothing more important to do than just that, no deadline of darkness or shooting time to drive me on.

When I was through with the log and had the last chunk split up the way I wanted it, I went inside and cooked dinner, cooked it leisurely and ate it the same way, then settled down on the bunk to read for an hour before going outside, and as I lay there reading slowly and leisurely in the warmth of the barrel stove I wondered if this after all wasn't a sort of dessert to the main course of the seasons just past, if by neglecting these puttering days I had not actually lost more than I knew.