Outback-- Solo

I avoided the dark brown hardwood; the bark was coated in a filmy dust that dirtied the tips of my neon, tie-die liner gloves—a prized pop of saturated color amid the unvarying grey.  My little corner of forest was drenched in dreary, unchanging ashen light—so perpetually consistent that I had no way of telling if it’d been days, hours or minutes since I last left my measly tarp.  Starkly ungraceful compared to my setting of new fallen, fluttering flakes, I haphazardly tromped through my front lawn of thin hardwood forest, snapping off what few twigs I hadn’t collected yet for my waning firewood collection.  Deciding I’d rather just make do with what I had left, I meandered back to my quaint shelter.
If anything else, I had a lovely piece of real estate.  My plastic-tarp home was rickety and poorly made, but it was cozy enough; the denser pine forest sheltered the wind-facing side, while the open end of my triangular shelter looked out onto the plateau of flatwood, where the morning light would shine brightly through the leafless branches—if there was morning light. Any current hint of the sun was shrouded.  I strung prayer flags across the branches just above my temporary shelter for a reason still somewhat undetermined—to bring good vibes, ward off bad ones, to give me some feeling of legitimacy trekking through the mountains, for a sense of other worldly homeliness. I don’t know.  But they were there, they brought color, they gave some personal flair.  Downward of my tarp and facing the ‘front lawn,’ I had set up a wonderful lounge.  Hunkered into a sunken tree well, my crazy creek was built into the snow around it.  To the immediate left, I’d built snow-shelves for my bundle of firewood and for my nalgenes and daily ration of peanut butter; to the immediate right, the a smaller ledge for plastic baggie containing my journal, letters, pencil and lighter.  I’d placed a wonderful wood-burning fireplace (a dingy trashcan lid covered in half-burnt twigs) just in front of my seat.  Just as good as any other fireside living room.  

I considered starting a fire, but after my failed efforts to do so much as get more wood, I figured I may as well give up on the endeavor.  I decided when I got too cold I’d just make the five-yard migration from my crazy creek to my sleeping bag until I’d warm up, get bored, and return to writing by my fire-less, fireside living room.