Staring Down a New Year

or: For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her

It’s 2025 now, and I wish I thought the new year is going to be better than the last. It’s 2025 now, and there’s a storm on the horizon.

There’s a darkness in these woods, too. There’s an inescapable beauty to Appalachia, but it’s a haunted and haunting beauty. The family plot across the street has more graves than it did when I first moved in, thanks to the horrors of generational poverty.

Marx talks about communism as the specter that haunted Europe, but it’s capitalism that haunts and hunts in these hills, taking people out, one by one.

Last night, though, my dog Rintrah introduced me to the cats that might be living in my barn. He was barking in the yard, which isn’t anything new, but his barking was more sustained than usual, so I set down the dishes and went outside with a flashlight. There was a kitten trapped on a tree branch about ten or twelve feet up, staring into the yard, staring into the light of my flashlight with its photoreflective eyes, just outside the fence. Rintrah was quite concerned.

I went for a ladder, but there was an overturned stock tank nearer at hand, so I started to drag it towards the tree. The kitten considered its options and decided jumping down was likely safer than a rescue, so it did so. It took off through the field. I looked around, and another set of eyes looked back–another cat, which waited for the kitten. Then the two took off towards my barn.

I don’t know if they’re strays or if they’re somebody’s outdoor cats. I was too busy to look for collars. I’ve suspected—or rather, Rintrah has suspected—that there were cats living in the barn for some time now.

If you live in the woods, everything is a sort of omen, a story that ties into the grander story. If you’re a writer, everything is sort of an omen, a story that ties into the grander story. I’m a writer who lives in the woods.

I’ve been that kitten, caught in that tree, with a friend waiting to run away with me towards shelter once I work up the courage to act.

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I need to listen to my dog more. If I have a new year’s resolution, it’s to listen to Rintrah more often. He tells me when it’s time to get up, when it’s time to go to bed. He tells me when it’s time to get out of my chair and pay attention to him, pay attention to life, for a while. He lets me linger in bed in the morning, which is polite of him since routine demands that after I get up and exercise and eat breakfast, he gets to go on his walk.

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