Surthrival on Duck Pond

Even though I don’t want to think I really do this, tonight I spun each wine bottle on the very bottom shelf of the store until I could see the alcohol percent. I settled on a bottle of Duck Pond, which weighed in at a hefty 15.5%. I hope it doesn’t taste like the duck pond the cadets use to have to swim through in Texas on those hot early fall days when they were freshman. My friend Teresa, who was a cadet, told me everyone who swam would end up with an ear infection or the like. I think we called it Duck Shit Pond. It was clearly man-made. One afternoon, while I resided with anxiety on it’s banks, my neighbor Dan stripped down to his underwear and jumped in to rescue all the frisbees that amateur frisbee golfers bought and sailed into the pond in one afternoon. As I remember it, he sifted around in chest high muck pressing his bare feet to the bottom in search of the discs.

This is the close of my second week in the country. I live in the country now. Each morning I wander out the front door straight into the drive way and up it I walk staring into the starry sky taking deep breaths of air filled with the smell of cottonwood buds.