Getting More Salt

Looking outside his window, Richard sighs. It just comes out. He can’t help it. The landscape outside his small home is beautiful. It reminds him every morning how lucky he is, by simply existing. By being before his eyes. Slowly, Richards turns around. As wonderful as the view is, he needs to start his day proper. Heading to his refrigerator, he pulls out three eggs for breakfast. There’s one day left in there. Good enough, he thinks with a smile as he breaks the three eggs into a mixing bowl. Taking up a fork, he whisks the eggs together, adding some salt as he whisked. He notes he’s running low in salt. He sighs again, though this time in disappointment rather than contentment. He’d been hoping today could be a nice, relaxing day. He needs to get more salt, though. That’ll cut heavily into his relaxing and painting time. But first, breakfast.

Turning on his electric stovetop, Richard grabs a no-longer non-stick pan from the shelf behind him in the kitchen and lays it down on the stovetop as it heats up. Grabbing the large container of sunflower oil, he drizzles a small amount across the pan. That, at least, was more than full. One task he doesn’t have to worry about today. Pouring the whisked eggs onto the pan, Richard leaves it to cook a bit.

In the meantime, he heads outside. Walking around to the side of his home, he checks the dials, making sure everything’s running proper. Content that everything is in order, he grabs a bag of his homemade feed. Seeds, leaves, and (mostly) living bugs and continues around to the back of his small house. Getting to his pair of coops, one large, one smaller. He fills both feed troughs back up. He’ll let them out in the late afternoon to early evening. Peering into the larger coop, he sees one of his hens laid an egg over night. He reaches in and collects it, then heads back inside his home, dropping off the bag of feed with the others at the side of the house as he passes by.

Back inside, Richard flips the egg onto itself, making a mental checklist of what he needs to do for the rest of the day. He’s got to get salt. Make dinner. He hopes he will have time for some painting in between the two. He lets out a deep sigh of resignation. He hates salt days, but they’re important. Necessary, even. He puts the new egg into the fridge behind the others, then heads back to the stovetop. Turning off the burner, he slides the egg off of the pan and onto a plate. Taking it outside to his table, he eats his breakfast omelette.

After finishing his meal, Richard returns his plate inside, into his closet-area for washing and grabs his coat. Best to be prepared in case the temperature drops, he figures. He heads out to get salt. As he walks past his outhouse towards the woods, he picks up a pair of buckets he keeps out in the open, normally to gather rainwater. Emptying these two into the field, he continues on his way, deeper into the woods.

Ten minutes later, in the woods, he arrives at a not tiny but still insignificant river. Beside the river, upside down, is a small canoe. Richard flips the boat over and, after loading the pair of buckets inside, one in the front, the other in the rear, he pushes the boat into the water. Before it’s taken away by the current, he hops in. Knowing how much effort is going to be needed for getting back home, he lets the river do most of the work getting downriver. It’s not a fast process, but it is relaxing. Sitting in a boat, drifting down river, only paddling to keep him on course. If it isn’t for what comes after he gets downriver, this would be the sort of morning activity he might enjoy. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. And so it felt more like an eternal wait than a relaxing trip. Not stressful in the slightest, simply long.

After a few hours of drifting, the river opens up into the straight. Gathering here, while possible, isn’t ideal. Instead, he takes to his paddles in earnest. It’s better to head out into open water a bit further, where the water should be heavier. But, he doesn’t want to go out too far, as the further he goes into the open water, the more work it will be getting back home. He’s well aware of that, holding it in the back of his mind as he paddles closer to the ocean.

After a few minutes, he stopped rowing and tied a rope to the buckets. First, he slowly lowers the front bucket down into the water a few meters deep. Pausing a moment to set his feet, he begins pulling it, hand over hand, back up to the boat. With the first five gallon bucket back in the canoe, weighing down the front, it was the back bucket’s turn. Lowering it down and pulling it back up is just as easy for Richard as the first was. That isn’t the part he doesn’t like about these trips. The hoisting is easy enough. Once the second bucket gets back on the canoe comes the part of the journey he dreads. Rowing back up river.

The current is stronger than he likes, especially with his canoe sitting as deep in the water as it is after gathering ten gallons of water aboard. Each stroke is hard work, and he can’t pause even a moment of the several hours it takes, else he would lose ground in his occasional fight against nature. Thrice on one side, thrice on the other. The speed moving the paddle between strokes is as important as power in each stroke. And, as Richard knew it would be from the beginning of the day, it is the most exhausting time of his life. As the sun is starting to get lower in the sky, he arrives back at the flat ground where he keeps his canoe. Getting out, he pulls it onto shore. He unties the rope from both buckets, wrapping it around the central seat again. One at a time, he lifts the buckets out of the boat, setting them down on the ground nearby. That done, he flips the canoe over, so it doesn’t slip around. Hefting both buckets up, one in either hand, he starts the walk back to the cabin.

Once he arrives at his home, he puts the pair of buckets down in the open air. He heads inside for firewood. In case he didn’t have enough, he wants it to still be light out for gathering. Just in case. Heading down the ladder into his basement, he heads over to the firewood corner, and there sits wood. “Thank goodness,” Richard mutters to himself. He really doesn’t want to do more manual labor today. Picking up several logs, he heads back up and out to the fire pit. Putting the logs into the pit then adding twigs and sticks over top, he opens the other side of the tunnel. Taking a moment to breathe, he sets it ablaze. Putting the large, fifteen gallon ceramic pot on the grate at the top of the fire pit, Richard pours all of the saltwater in, one bucket at a time.

With the water finally no longer requiring attention for the moment, he heads around to the chickens, letting them out to wander and checking for more eggs. There is one more laying there. Waiting for the hens to wander some, he reaches in and picks it up. Egg in hand, he heads back into his house. First, he puts the egg in the fridge with the others. Next, he heads back down into the basement. Opening the hole in the dirt, he checks his meat reserve. Plenty. Pulling out some salted meat for his evening meal, he closed the hole back up for dry, cool storage. Climbing up the ladder, he heads into his main room. Gathering up his easel, paints, and a piece of wood, he walks back outside to watch the sun set beneath the trees. He has plenty of flat, sanded wood to paint on. Setting up his easel, he starts painting the sunset. Not from here, but as it would be, out on his canoe in the water. Watching the sun falling below the flat horizon from out on the water. Every few minutes, he takes a bite of the meat. Every ten minutes, he gets up to add another log to the fire, using his fire-resistant gloves to tilt the pot slightly and place the log into the bottom of the fire.

His painting starts with the sky, fires of purple, reds, and orange. Realism isn’t as important as the feelings it evokes. After the sky, he moves down to the water below, the rough waves of the dangerous straight he visits whenever he needs salt. Atop the waves, he sets a small canoe, with two buckets and a silhouetted figure inside. Then, he adds the vague impression of land in the distance, to the side. Some light shades in the trees.

A little under an hour later, the sun finishes it’s descent below the horizon. Richard’s painting isn’t finished, but that doesn’t matter. It’s about finishing a painting. It’s about the act itself. Taking the wood off the easel, he lays it down on the ground. Nature would take care of the next part. He heads back to gather up the chickens. One at a time, he picks them up slowly and returns them to their coop from the pen. The five hens in the larger one, the rooster in the smaller. It takes a little time, though not much. Next, he closes the vent. He will likely have to restart it in the morning, but for now, the fire will dwindle. It’s better that way, keeps things less risky. He walks back over to his easel and paints and carries them into the main room of his home. Carefully, he places them in their proper storage locale, beside the weights and mats with the other frequently used equipment. Next he heads back outside to deal with the brine. Looking down into the pot, it looks partly boiled. Popping back inside to put on his fire-resistant gloves, he hefts the pot into the insulated house, to be certain it won’t fall over during the night. He doesn’t want to have to make that journey again tomorrow. Especially since he knows every muscle in his body will be actively killing him when he wakes up in the morning. Leaving it in the entrance, along with the gloves, he walks back outside. Heading around to the side of the house, he checks once again on the dials. Everything seems to be in order with his electricity, so he hurries over to the open area around the outhouse. One at a time, he ferries five of the now twelve filled buckets of water down to his basement, pouring the rainwater and glacial runoff into the bathtub. Once finished, he carries the buckets back up to the clearing. Then, heading back down to the tub, he takes a nice, soothing bath in the cold water.

After his bath, he heads back up the ladder, through the kitchen, and into the main room. Seating himself on his meditation cushion, one of several mats in the room, he takes a moment to empty his mind and relax. Closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing, in and out, he tunes out the world around him. By the time he opens his eyes back up, the sky has become too dark to impact his ability to get to sleep. Heading back into his bedroom, he pulls on his sleeping outfit and climbs into his bed, which is larger than the room can really hold. Enveloped by the warm embrace of the bed, blankets, and covers, Richard drifts off to sleep, relaxed and ready for whatever may come of tomorrow.