Home > Trip > Dispatches > Daily Dispatches 2013 > Daily Dispatch #110

April 20, 2013: The Most Boring Dispatch of all Time

I don’t know what it is about people (okay, us humans) that prompts them (us) to do spring cleaning. Maybe warmer, sunnier weather is a motivator. Or perhaps we’re programmed to clean our fouled nests.

Reason notwithstanding, the impulse is a post-winter purge. Out with the old air, in with the new. Giddy up. Giddy up, indeed. Beautiful, sunny weather here, the best of all possible days to commune with livestock. I’ll get out later, when it’s cooler, and ride. All the horses are still wearing their winter coats. This year they’re slow to shed. In fact, they stopped shedding completely when we



had our late winter/early spring storm. It’s like they said “oh fuck it. Coat’s staying on.” Working them later, this way, they’ll stay cooler.

I did a very good job enclosure cleaning this morning. It’s taking longer these days because I both haul out the manure and the frozen ice/urine. This takes more time, but is easier in that it’s no longer hand-chilling cold. In fact, this morning, as I was working, I felt the temperature rise and saw the day’s first puddles come into being. (Each puddle has a life of its own). It was 23 degrees F when I went out at 9 a.m. And it was 32 degrees F when I came back in at 10:30 a.m. I started out wearing my Refrigerware suit, but I soon took it off. Like shedding a snake skin.

I obviously prefer outside to inside spring cleaning. (See how long it took me, in this dispatch, to even broach this subject?) It’s such a mundane subject that I don’t think that my three readers will even get this far.

But I’m going to momentarily commence spring cleaning because otherwise Pete will have to do this himself, and that would be no fun at all. We are both pulling the horse cart, even though I’m the slacker. I’ll begin my endeavors by ripping the the plastic and red tape off the upstairs windows, and flinging the windows open. Then I’ll open the windows—old air out, new air in, a good thing. After, I’ll take a break for a bit, and continue reading Life of Pi. This is a very good book – I’m enjoying it a great deal. I might then vacuum, sweep, put things away. And after I finish up here, I’ll go downstairs and assist Pete in preparing lunch. And after that, I’ll put some stuff away.

It’s good that the future is a fiction because, quite obviously, I’m not wanting to spring clean. There’s good reason for this. It’s that my past is also a fiction. As a child, inside cleaning was used as a form of punishment. If I did something wrong, I’d have to clean the kitchen, I could, on the days in which the windows were open, hear other kids outside, playing. It was agonizing. So here we go ahead. The past and future, which manifest themselves as here and now, can be difficult to deal with. I wish we could hire someone to do our dirty work, for that is someone who really enjoys spring cleaning. I think it would be hard to find someone because that someone is probably cleaning their own fouled nest.

What I most like about spring cleaning is having it done. Being in clean environs, mine or anyone else’s, makes me feel good. It seldom lasts long, but for a few minutes at least, the spirits are uplifted.

If time permits, I’ll begin moving trip gear into my writing cabin. This way, we’ll be able to do an inventory, and see what we do and don’t have on hand. It seems like the trip is still a long ways off – two months now, plus or minus a few days. But it will go by fast.

It’s easy to digress mentally and physically, when what’s ahead on the day’s docket is indoor spring cleaning. Cheep, cheep, cheep.

Next: 111: 4/21/13: Giddyup Heather