redpinemountain.com

A Bronte Kind of Day

Do you love to read books from long ago? When lovers never came to a good end? Well, here is the Red Pine Mountain version.

Morning is here or is it? The skies are bleak. An icy drizzle falls. Oh, perfect for the Gothic novel lover in me. I sigh contentedly as the wind whips through the trees and echoes down our chimney, “We could be on the lonely moors. Just like Wuthering Heights.” I said to Mountain Man.

Mountain Man, not a fan of the Gothic genre, grunted and said, “Looks like darn miserable weather to me.” And while I gazed out the windows at the low lying clouds and dreamed I was Catherine wandering the moors, my Heathcliff abandoned me to do chores.

Of course, he had help.

And while he toiled away under the cold skies, I dreamed of windswept moors, lonely and deserted.

I sat down at the computer and tried to write a great romantic novel but not being Emily Bronte, I got stuck on the first paragraph. “Oh, well, always chores to do.” and I wrap myself up in garb suitable for the cleaning of stalls and the shoveling of poop. Not the gauzy, filmy gowns Catherine would wear but then again I’m not willing to succumb to a fatal chill. And of course, I had help.

As fast as I could shovel messy bedding out of the stalls, the guineas sifted through it looking for pieces of grain in the poop. Hmm, I bet Catherine never thought about poop as she gazed out her window fixed on her beloved’s unseen image in the mist.

The turkeys, being infinitely more practical, got to the poop before I even had a chance to remove it from the stalls.

And when I told them to get out of my way, they, in keeping with the Gothic spirit of the day, gave me the evil eye.

The chickens tried their darnedest to participate but taking after the more refined Edgar Linton, they limited their foraging to clean pieces of poop free bedding.

And when the sun began to set and the moon started to rise, nature beckoned to me and I responded running outside in my shirt sleeves paying scant heed to the winds whipping mercilessly through my body.

It’s magical.

And mysterious.

And the moon is so clear.

I look the other way and see a bank of low lying clouds.

The wind blows harder. My eyes fill with stinging tears that turn quickly to ice. I hear the sound of star crossed lovers whispering on the lonely moors. And at that exact moment, a shadow passes over the moon.

I shiver and think of Catherine and Heathcliff buried side by side and I hasten into the house. Goodbye to Wuthering Heights, goodbye to the Gothic romance filled with pain and revenge. And sleeping in his chair by the wood stove is my very own Mountain Man and I let his not so gentle snores take me away from the moors of long ago and back to our farm in the mountains of Vermont where beautiful pink clouds stand not for love gone awry but a tender, sweet moment in time.

The End!