I opened my eyes to pale blue light stealing into the room. The fire had gone out hours ago, and the tip of my nose was numb with cold. My first thought was, She won’t be coming today.

I sighed, and my breath turned into white smoke. The days when she was not due to come over had started to stretch like endless wastelands that I had to trudge across. I shut my eyes and thought of her in her home fast asleep, and felt a strange sense of peace.

I imagined her sightless eyes closed. Would she be dreaming now? How did people who had never had sight dream? I decided to ask her the next time I saw her. She was full of surprises. The other day she surprised me by saying she “watched” movies.

The thought of a blind person sitting in front of a screen filled with moving images, and trying to ‘get’ a movie purely by listening to the sounds coming from it was sort of outlandish. I would have thought nobody would since so much of the stories are told through images, little nuances of hand movements and facial expressions.

But Lara assured me that she did “watch” movies. The last two were The Hunger Games and The Twilight Series.

“What did you think of them?” I asked curiously.

“Well, the music scores were really good, the heroines kicked ass, but the heroes were complete wimps.”

That sure made me smile.

“My rating: 3 stars for Twilight and 4.5 for Hunger Games,” she said.

“When was the last movie you watched?” I asked.

“Two weeks ago.”

“What was it?”

“Spiderman.”

“What did you think of it?”

“I thought I was playing it on the wrong speed, or I was watching a rerun of Friends. Not only was it so slow moving, I only managed to squeeze one laugh out of it.”

I laughed. “I take it you don’t like Friends.”

“I think that is one of those programs better left to the sighted,” she chirped.

After she left I looked for a DVD I hadn’t watched yet, and put it into my player. Inception. I closed my eyes and tried to follow the story. Wow! I sure picked a bad movie to start with. I couldn’t follow a thing. The temptation to open my eyes was so great I ended up blindfolding myself.

As the movie went on I realized the music was incredible, and created an awesome background, but all the action scenes without pictures were just long unintelligible passages full of gunfire, screaming, grunts, and screeching cars. In the end though, it was all explained and I kinda got it, but it made me appreciate Lara’s world a whole lot more.

Instead of taking off the blindfold I walked around my house for a bit. After all, I knew the inside of my house like I knew the back of my hand. Fuck, was that a disaster or what? That night I learned I knew shit about the inside of my house. I banged my knee twice, nearly fell over a chair, and hurt my shoulder on the door frame when I turned too fast to close the kitchen cabinet. I desperately wanted to take the blindfold off, but I didn’t.

This was Lara’s world.

It made me appreciate the bravery of blind people. The level of trust they place in each step. When I finally took off my blindfold I went to sit on the porch. It was freezing cold and snow on the ground glittered like diamond dust. The pleasure I got from the wolves and the night was still there, but I missed her. I thought my life would stay on the same path, but ever since she came into my life nothing has been the same.

She was like a tornado, ripping up stuff that I thought was solid and cemented down forever, but damn if that slip of a girl didn’t turn my life into something beautiful. Full of life, laughter, joy, cake … and flowers. Yeah, flowers. Who’d have thought? Me and flowers!

She brought flowers with her the other day.

“I can’t see them, but I can smell them,” she said. “Besides, you can see them so you might as well enjoy them.”

I must have looked a right fool when I went into the grocery store and walked out clutching a bunch of flowers. I don’t know where she got hers from, but the ones that I got didn’t smell too good. I was a bit embarrassed about it, so I filled an old empty tin with water, stuck them in it, and thought it would be the end of that sorry story, but every time they caught my eye, they reminded me of sweet Lara.

That was Saturday night. Today was Monday. I pulled the blankets up around my neck. Well, she was not coming in today. Which was probably just as well, since I had a bunch of stuff to do.

I needed to get more wood chopped up. Since Lara came into my life I found myself using more wood to keep the place warmer. I don’t know why I kept the place so cold and inhospitable. I’d better sort the downstairs window out too. One of the frames was loose and there was talk of a big blizzard rolling in late tomorrow night. One really strong gust of wind and it could blow right off.

The blizzard would probably maroon me in for a couple of days, and the pipes will probably freeze again so I really should fill the bathtub with water, and get enough provisions in for the next couple of days.

I glanced at the alarm clock. It was not yet six. Just enough time to do a bit of hiking up the mountain before the sun came up. Been a couple of weeks since I went up. It was always beautiful at this time of the year. The thought cheered me up, so I pushed away the blankets and walked into a new day.

Only Chepi was around when I came down to the porch. I gave her a piece of bacon and she wolfed it down as quickly as she could. I crouched down and rubbed her gently behind her ear, while she licked my face and made a purring sound.

The air was crisp and sharp. She followed me part of the way, but once I crossed the small frozen lake, she whirled around and went back. I climbed steadily for half an hour while I followed the tracks of a chase. At least five wolves and their prey.

At a clearing I saw the old buck the wolves had pulled down. He had made his last stand with his back to the trees. Poor bastard must have been exhausted from the long winter and the wolves would have been ferocious with hunger. He wouldn’t have lasted long. His carcass bore the marks of his predators’ attack.

They had bitten into his hamstrings, slicing right through to make it impossible for him to run. His throat was mangled, a crimson river flowed away from his neck, and his eyes were glassy, but there was something valiant about him. He had died fighting an age old enemy.

The wolves had only eaten his entrails, but they would return to their kill later. It was man’s traps and poisons that made wolves not go back to finish their meal. There was deep satisfaction in knowing that on my land the wolves had learned to trust again. Here they could roam, hunt, go away and come back to feed without fear.

Wilderness was in balance. The way it should be.

It was a gruesome sight, but the truth was neither wolf nor deer can survive without the other. The deer if allowed to breed unchecked, would overgraze the land and die of starvation, and the wolves without the deer would perish in the winter when the heavy snows hid the small rodents, fish, snakes, grubs, birds, and berries that give them sustenance during the other seasons.

I made my way back down the mountain before the sun filtered through the trees.