‘I fell asleep a little after ten reading a software manual, and now I’m up and waiting for the train whistle. The fire today is made partly of half-charred loggage from yesterday, but mostly from thin apple branches that I sawed up when I got home from work. I tried the ax first and had a heck of a time. But a handsaw will slide right through with wondrous ease, sprinkling handfuls of sawdust out of either side of the cut, like—I can’t think of what—like a sower sowing seeds, perhaps. Anyway the fire took to burning so readily that I’ve had to move my chair back a little so that my legs aren’t I pain through the flannel.’were it not for the software manual, this paragraph could have been attributed to henry david thoreau. the meditative quality is achieved by arising early every morning, between four and five a.m. and starting a fire in a fireplace built in 1789 and preparing coffee. the writer’s observations are daily, perhaps written in a journal or on a computer. his reflections often turn speculative, productive of homespun wisdom of the marvels of the mundane, the falling of leaves from trees when there is no wind, how the brain uses nightmares as a way of awakening as a summoning to urinate. unlike thoreau, he is no solitary, a medical textbook editor, he is married to claire, and they have a fourteen year old daughter, phobe and an eight year old son, henry.and for such familial reasons, his reflections over his daily risings in robert frost’s dark wintry vermont in the month of january become less, for lack of a better word, profound. his mind meanders to memories and observations of his family life and the family pets, a cat and a duck. not the stalwart companions for adventures of a man in the cold north.in TO BUILD A FIRE, a short story by jack london, the protagonist, with his dog, trapped in the yukon has three matches standing between himself and death. emmet has the luxury of an entire box. comparatively, it’s an easy enough metaphor. a neat novel for use in high school english classes. would it be trite of me to leave the potential reader wondering, if the family ate the duck?