Dick's Hideaway:

Rasslin' with the devil

Dick MacKenzie - www.dickshideaway.com

The day began, sunny and bright, with pleasant winter temperatures forecast, a weekend at camp on the agenda.
My mood, though, was gloomy.
After a wonderful, warm week of Cuban sunshine, cigars, sandals, mojitos, and reunions with treasured friends, I returned home burdened with some anger and sadness, a personal decision awaiting resolution. It was agonizing. I was wrestling with a monster.
Loosing snowmobiles, underneath three weeks of snow and frigid temperatures, was a project of frozen fingers and red face, cold lungs and dry coughs, jumper cables, hernia inducing lunges. As always, though, the machines were eventually raring to go.
One more long trip, empty, with no sleigh to tow, broke trail into camp.
By early afternoon we arrived at the cabin, stoked the stove, unpacked, and settled in for a few hours of freezing temperatures as the fiery logs defrosted our hideaway.
Through the afternoon, clouds crowded the once bright sky and I brooded over my concern. The darker the sky, the darker my mood became.
Sometime after the sunset hour, still wrestling with my mind, I noticed out the window a slice of illumination in the western sky. At the same time I was reminiscing about a very special friend who died more than 40 years ago.
In that moment of gloom and confusion and surprise, lost for a few minutes between dream and reality, my answer entered. Between the brilliant sliver of light at sundown and the beautiful spirit of a love lost years ago, came the solution.