The First Bird After

I was returning from town with groceries when I saw the spiral of smoke from five miles away.

- Alan Liere

It had been a lazy but satisfying Indian summer until my house burned down.

Watermelons and tomatoes were ripening, the freezer was full of salmon and walleye, and with the consistently pleasant weather, the hammock on the deck had beckoned often. Gone from that lazy respite where but two hours earlier I had been relaxing with the dogs as I reread Spiller’s Grouse Feathers, I was returning from town with groceries when I saw the spiral of smoke from five miles away.

That looks pretty close to Pease Mountain, I remember thinking. The little valley below was where my two-story log home had stood for 27 years on 11 acres of mixed forest and grassland — the dream home my late wife Marie, four kids and I had built with trees cut from her mother’s land — two years of cutting, hauling, peeling and milling. Lots of sweat, lots of laughter, lots of love and even a few memorable “disasters” as we built a home and a future for a young family and a widowed mother-in-law.

There had been much joy but also much sorrow at that house to be sure. Both Marie and her mother had passed away many years before their time, and I had buried three good hunting dogs on a sandy knoll near the house. More recently, though, life had treated me well. Although the now-grown kids had moved on, they were usually available to lend a hand, and the boys, Evan and Matt, had purchased land within sight of mine. Evan had been remodeling an old house on his acreage.