I worked so hard over the weekend. The weekend prior, I had been under instructions to not use my sutured left arm. Surgery was the previous Monday. Going back to the ill-fated Amsterdam trip in mid-October, my life had been occupied with doctor visits and contemplating my damaged arm and its likely future.

By dinnertime Sunday, I had created so many boxes for the stores, carts of off-the-cuff priced “better” books, tubs of books for Annika and Madeline to research, many carts to Books by the Foot, individually priced books for the glass cases at the three stores and…

I think that must be a record for the number of store boxes created in that way.

…and I was exhausted. Dazed. We went to dinner at J&P Pizza—more an Italian restaurant than a pizza joint. Two Stellas. Wings. Paparadelle Buratta with sausage and meatballs. Football games were on the televisions behind the bar.

Back to the warehouse where there were four dogs. Mitch, my older son’s dog, was going to Pennsylvania for babysitting. Merry, Pip and Giles were excited to be going home.

When I got home—exhausted—I put on DVDs of The Rings of Power Season 2, and that confusion soon had me dozing on the reclining section of the couch. I need to watch it at least two times to keep track of all the populations and locales of hobbits, men, elves, dwarves, elves, orcs (who are treated sympathetically in this era—several thousand years before Bilbo and Frodo enter the story), wizards and some creatures I’m not quite who or what they are.

I awoke disoriented as to time and place.

The dogs are always sprawled on floor pillows by this point in the evening. I summoned the three. Only two responded.

“Pip.”

He sometime wanders off to his pillow in the other room.

“Pip!”

I was ready for bed. Impatient.

“PIP!”

He’s a bit deaf and a bit blind at 13 but hasn’t lost the Jack Russell indomitable spirit.

“PIP!!”

Did I leave him outside?

I stepped out onto the side porch and called. And called. I began yelling louder in order to pierce his deafness.

The porch lights’ pool of illumination forms an arc from the house. Beyond the arc of light, it is the blackness of nighttime forest in every direction.

It was cool. In the low 50s.

I walked around the house perimeter yelling for him.

Was this a dream? Nightmare?

The poor old guy. Not quite helpless, but not the killer he once was. Where could he be?

The warehouse? Had I left him there in the confusion?

There was nothing to do but to go and check. One of the dogs occasionally gets trapped behind a door automatically closing. It is always a bit of a scramble to get all three to jump in and not wander off to visit a bush or something. Plus, I’m always taking something home. Work mostly. Making sure the lights are out and the doors are locked and all my labors are labeled and there are no loose ends lying around.

I got back to the warehouse about 10 and went inside. I was wearing my bedtime hoodie and sweatpants.

He wasn’t waiting at the door.

“Pip!”

I wandered through the vast warehouse, calling his name.

Nothing.

Stepping out into the dockyard, the gate was open.

“PIP!”

Distraught. Dazed. Am I dreaming? Drained. Surreal. Is any of this real?

I patted my pockets.

“Where’s my phone?”

Fresh panic.

Restaurant? The car I rode in? Set down somewhere in the vast building that suddenly seems so foreboding.

I went to one of the office phones and called myself.

“You have reached…” my own voice spoke to me.

Where’s my laptop? I went to the area where I’d been listening to the football game while I worked. Nowhere in sight.

Someone will find it tomorrow.

I hope.

Nothing to do at this hour but go home.

The 20-minute ride was depressing. Irresponsible. Am I losing my sanity? How could I have failed the poor old guy? Had he been taken by coyotes? Is any of this real, or will I awaken in bed and feel him pressed against me?

Failure.

The truck climbed up the mountain and was parked in one of the slots in the top landing zone.

I clambered out and was dragging my feet to the door when Pip emerged, limping and hobbling—his current gait—from the forest.

“Pip!”

I couldn’t be angry at the old fella. How could he not have heard my yells?

“C’mon, boy.”

He scrambled up the three porch steps and followed me inside.

The phone was in the charger on the sink. Must have been the first thing I did when I got home and before I awoke from a doze to the nightmare. The laptop was atop a box of Christmas toys for the grandchild that I’d left in the Jeep.

I crawled into bed and went to the place where dreams—and nightmares—belong.

---

Tuesday

Clif is driving me to the Gaithersburg store. I was there yesterday with Clark and Joey—my younger son. We met with the landlord.

Could be some exciting news. Fingers crossed. But I’ve had other deals fall through before.

Last week, for instance…

Today, I’ll do some quick culling.

All the stores are gearing up for the holidays. They are hammering out the details on the Black Friday specials—which I think are far too generous. If you want advance notice of the final version (as well as the December sales), you can subscribe to our newsletter here. We don’t send a lot of bothersome notices (except the monthly sales and this weekly blog) so you won’t get spammed. It is easy to unsubscribe as well—one click.

For some reason, I’ve been journaling a great deal lately. I suppose my left arm had something to do with it.

And the excitement of new opportunities. A greatly expanded store. A new store in the big city.

The stuff dreams are made of.

At least my kind of dreams.

Why so much more work?

We have five sorting stations. The two for Ernest and Caryn are dedicated to just them. The other three, though, can be used by anyone. I pushed to hire enough people to have them used 7 days a week. My push was successful. More sorters means more boxes of books get gone through. The process, the secret formula, creates carts of books that need to be reviewed by someone with an eye for better books. I’m at the top of that pyramid.

Thus, my decisions—my wishes—creates more work for me.

---

Thursday

The weather went through a sea change overnight. It was forecasted. I prepared by bringing one of the cast iron wood rings from the barn and setting it up on the side porch. I loaded a cartload of seasoned wood on it. Though it was 65 out, I stoked the woodstove. In the morning, it would be in the 30s.

I was watching the second season of The Rings of Power. It is an Amazon series based (with plenty of inventions and distractions) on The Silmarillion. It is beyond criticism. It is what it is—a bit “woke.” I simply ignore the “non-Tolkien” parts that are clearly put in for ratings or to stretch the series out. Fortunately, it is not the “cartoon” that much of The Hobbit movies were.

Then there was a muffled roaring outside, which competed with the raised volume on the big flatscreen. The outdoor security lights blinked on with all the motion in the forest, and I could see trees swaying and the last of the fall leaves stripped and whirling in the air. Then the rains came, and all was swirling silver outside my warm home. It lasted a couple of hours, and then the power went out.

The storm brought much needed rain and behind it winter followed. There will be chilly days and near freezing nights for the foreseeable future here.

It is morning now. Clear. Quiet and cold. I put a large “all day” log in the stove and closed the dampers most of the way. It will be warm when I get home this evening.

Looking out, I don’t see any trees down. The neighbors haven’t sent a group text out saying the lane is blocked. There are some branches on the driveway I’ll need to pick up to get out.

The log splitter and snowblower are going to be picked up today for service. The splitter weighs a couple hundred pounds, and its tires were flat. I pumped up the tires, but even then it was a major strain to drag the thing over the gravel to the barn entrance. I worried I might pull the stitches in my arm out, but all I got was some stiffness and aches.

Yesterday, I bought 25 bags of soil. The 2-cubic foot bags were wet and heavy. I want to top dress a trashy-looking bed full of invasive ginger next to the lower driveway. It was much easier getting them down on the ground than up into the pickup truck.

A couple of friends are coming up tonight for drinks. I did some quick picking up and putting away, but the place generally looks good. Guests are rare. Retired doctors and booklovers. I’ll show them around, and then I think we will head down to the valley for dinner.

Food… I bought a big turkey this week. Potatoes and onions. Other seasonal things as well. I think there will be three family dinners over Thanksgiving weekend. One at each son’s home and one—maybe the last—at the old manse in Pennsylvania. I will have a fourth private one here on the mountain. An 18-pound turkey is not too much for me and my family. The three dogs will have happy days of scrap joy.

Pip gets his cough meds twice a day. Codeine and an allergy pill. It still doesn’t stifle his chronic cough all the time though. I’ll take him for a fourth opinion soon. He knows it is medicine time in the morning and when I get home from work. I’m not sure if it is the dollop of liverwurst I embed the pills in or the relief he knows will follow that has him looking up expectantly at me twice a day. His spirits are much better on this regimen. He runs happily. He’s my favorite. (Don’t tell Merry and Giles.) I’ll be devastated should anything happen to him. He’s 13—going on 14. I was hoping he’d last til 20. Poor little trooper. He won’t be killing any more groundhogs or launching 6-hour forest expeditions (much to my worry and dismay.)

Now I need to shower and get down to the warehouse. So much going on.

The new Queen of Lorien is stopping by to pick up some of the Alice in Wonderland book collection that I’ve been holding back.

She also wants all the Vicky Bliss books by Elizabeth Peters (pseudonym for Barbara Mertz.) Her name happens to be Vicky! We have them in the Barbara Mertz archive. {https://www.wonderbk.com/shop/collectors-corner/barbara-mertz-collection} It is fitting that some return to the estate Barbara so loved and made into a wondrous place.

---

Friday

I stepped outside to bring some firewood in and noticed I’d left the big Winter Wonderland mug atop the waist high stump next to the driveway. I went over to dump yesterday’s morning tea into the garden and discovered it was frozen.

Winter…

After the mildest of falls, the cold has blown in. It continues blowing this morning. The treetops are swaying like possessed wraiths. I don’t know how they keep from falling.

Dawn came with dark gray foreboding clouds filling much of the sky.

The wind roared all night as well. The rushing sound chased sleep away. A poem I started a couple of days ago that I felt was finished in one stanza expanded to cover a full page of yellow legal pad including the margins on either side of the main body covering the center of the page.

I’ll append the sprawling thing at the end of this story.

Looking back at the week, I wonder at this whirlwind to which I’ve lashed myself. It is really a small business in the scheme of things. And I lead a small life alone atop a mountain in a forest. But I can’t imagine doing anything else that would be preferable.

(Now it is snowing?! It’s not sticking on the drive. The Jack Russells have left the bed and are curled up in front of the woodstove. They really like it hot.)

Last night, one of my friends canceled the visit. Instead, I just met Cap at Modern Asia, which is in the same shopping center as the Frederick Wonder Book. He’s my (retired) doctor and good friend and confidant beyond things medical. We were just having drinks and getting carryout to take to our respective homes. The bar was closed, so we were seated in a kind of garish booth.

It was then and there I remembered the dream from a couple of nights before. I was seated in a booth across from our mutual friend John Adams. John passed away unexpectedly in August 2020. I remember the dream vividly. I asked John, “What’s it like?” (The subject was death.) He replied, “Not so great.” I asked more questions, and he gave more answers, but I can’t remember anything about those.

Maybe I am not supposed to.

It’s 9 Friday morning.

I washed the dishes and made tea. A friend may be coming up for dinner tonight. We might have caviar (actually flying fish roe.) I’ve got miniature blinis and creme fraiche and capers and sweet onions to chop. What else do I need?

Oddly, I just spotted the first junko of the season at the bay window feeder. Dark gray on top. Light gray beneath. They come down to winter from the Arctic. It was puffed up against the cold. The bird knows it is winter too.

---

The funniest find of the week was this 1973 poster for a hash bar in Katmandu. I wonder what the place was like and if the visitors were all young westerners wearing the garb of the times.

(It sold to someone who works here!)

Since the holiday season is upon us, I can suggest these one-of-a-kind beautiful bindings in our “Boutique.”

The Boutique was featured in the latest Books by the Foot newsletter.

If you can get to our stores, there are great gifts in all of them. These leather-bound fairy books can be found in the Frederick store’s glass cases—if they haven’t sold!

Of course, if you have someone impossible to shop for, we offer gift cards. All the stores not only have hundreds of thousands of books, but they also offer LPs, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays. The Frederick store has collectible comics. And all the stores have thousands of prints and ephemera.

Consider giving small denomination gift cards to people you’d like to “discover the wonder.”

And what is Christmas without The Christmas Carol?

This beauty is gone, but all the stores should have collectible or vintage editions of the classic.

Kids’ books. Frederick and Hagerstown have especially large selections of 5 for $5 kids sections. All three stores have huge children’s sections. Consider giving back by donating kids’ books to under-funded schools and other deserving organizations. Every kid should get a book in their hands. It is like planting a seed for a lifetime of being a booklover.

We also offer kids books “by the box”—when we are not sold out.

---

The worry and fear of losing some abilities has been mitigated some by the successful surgery. But I’ve learned (and have always known) things can change in an instant.

Could I continue living the mountain hermit lifestyle I enjoy so much?

Looks like I can.

But a friend has told me he is “seniorizing” his home.

Sigh… I’ll just keep running as fast as I can so Scratch can’t catch me. Well, as long as I can.

So, do what you can while you can.

I’m wondering where to travel next?

And what books will be in the coming week’s discoveries…

Sigh… it can be so much fun—when it is not so daunting.

---

Poem below:

Winter’s Daily Progress

The last leaves fall
They flutter to the forest floor
and join their kith and kin
A thick brown carpet of dead dry crunchiness
It is the season of dying
Winter will end most things
But this day the memory of summer
clings on branches high above
There. Another breaks free
and floats to earth

The winds rose
The cold pales the warmth
Winter comes from the west
over the mountain crest
and down the slope
The last leaves are being stripped
and swept away
Impatient cold rushes in
Autumn is sent flying
to the east and over the sea

I stepped outside
and felt winter’s bite
Icy penetrating
Better to feel
the to be numb
Dead to cold
and hunger warmth desire
but the flame within is dim
Dull coals coated in ash
soon to be extinguished

Memories of youth
long, long ago
Older man the hair upon my head
or the nails upon my fingertips
Younger than my digits

The winds pour over the mountain house
Like a waterfall constant consistent
a rushing roar
I know the trees are swaying
out in the blackness
and the thick carpet of dead brown leaves
flutter and flow over the forest floor
like rippling waves upon a wind tossed lake
I know this storm will end
as surely as dawn will begin
but here in my bed
between cotton sheets
and below a feather filled counterpane
eternity lies with me
lit by a single lamp behind my shoulders
It is forever and a day
The walls of brick and wood and iron protect me
I cannot be swept away
this night by this storm
this time