Finally!
After putting the stores away, which needed repeated trips from the car, and opening every window to air the cabin, Deborah saw the prospect of her own time looming. To forget the long year of teaching and Covid and stress, to forget the immediacy of cooking and cleaning, to forget Paul for a while. They had two weeks at the cabin in high summer, and Deborah wanted the great outdoors. The air of freedom, summer joy, night rain. She'd been too pale for far too long. Finally!
Her heart yearned, but she knew not, what for. But she knew she was restless, seeking something more.
"I might go up The Beyonds," she said to Paul, who was down by the lake, content with his easel and brushes. "I think I saw a rise of smoke last night, when we got here. Perhaps someone is renting the Logan Place."
He looked up at his beautiful wife, her eyes bright, her great mane of hair pulled through the opening at the back of her cap. "Yes, love, do that. I wish I could come too, but I couldn't manage the climb." He touched her hand, regretfully.
She leaned down around his neck with a warm embrace, breathing in the smell of him, remembering those days when his hair would smell of smoke from their camp fires. She kissed him tenderly on the lips, her hand on his cheek.
"Don't let the bears getcha," he said, their old refrain.
"I won't," she said, her old reply. "I can run faster than you!"
They both laughed, to hear them both say it.
Deborah turned back to the cabin, where she loaded up a small back pack with two bottles of water, the first aid kit, binoculars, the bits and bobs a well prepared girl always carries. She made up a pack of sandwiches for both of them for lunch, left Paul's on a plate and put hers in the pack. She took the first apple. This was Eden.
By the door, she found her trusty hiking stick, worn smooth from years in the woods.
"I'm off, love," she called down to Paul, who raised a brush in reply. "Back well before dark," she added.
"Run faster," he shouted back, and turned back to an immaculate detail in the painting.
Deborah set off up the little used back path that would take her up to the top of the ridge that separated this valley from the next. It wasn't marked as such on any map, but it had always been The Beyonds. She knew the back of it well.
The first climb was long and steady, putting a stretch in her thighs and back, and she felt the burn of worked muscles. When she got to the top of the ridge the walk was easier, with magnificent views out over the twin valleys below. Even so, as she walked she took off her shirt and tied it about her waist, leaving her arms and shoulders bare in a black tank top.
When she stopped for a breather, she lathered her bare skin with sun-cream, spreading it on her thighs and calves, long legs bare under her shorts. The temperature was idyllic, not cold, not hot, but the sun had a burn. Such a perfect day, it could only get better. Deborah smiled, and went on, her heart pumping from the exertion.
As she walked, easier now that she was on the ridge-way, she found herself softly singing favourite songs.
After a long while, she stopped, turned her head and listened. Yes, it was the crack of an axe she'd heard, and she realised she'd come on near to the Logan Place, walking further than she'd thought. She looked at her watch, she'd been walking for just over an hour.
She changed direction slightly, moving down along a spur from the ridge, to where a clear place looked down over the Logan property. There below her, fifty yards or so away, was a man, a tall man, chopping wood.
Deborah, suddenly shy at meeting someone here, stopped, and went back a little, in under a tree, out of sight in the shadows. But she could still see the man below her, quite clearly.
She slipped her shirt back on, to stay warm now she'd stopped walking, and to protect her back from the bark of the tree. She sat with her back against the trunk and her feet planted on the ground in front of her. She rubbed a thigh where a muscle burned, feeling a tight stretch right up inside her, right up inside her pussy. She arched her back against the tree, stretching like a cat, and watched the man
as he methodically, precisely, swung the axe down onto the wood with a crack, neatly splitting the timber. He was bare chested, beautifully tanned from the sun. Deborah thought he might be older than her by a decade or so, with short greying hair and a silvery shadow on his cheeks
and firm muscles that tightened and flexed as he worked.
She watched, spellbound, as he worked his way through another ten blocks of wood. Then he stopped, swung the axe with a final crack into the stump, and kicked some loose logs together with his foot. He walked over to another stump nearby, where Deborah saw a pack, his shirt, and a wheelbarrow. For the wood - she couldn't be far from the cottage, but she couldn't see it from where she sat.
He sat on the stump and ran a hand up through his hair. Then Deborah watched as he ran both hands over his chest, rubbing over his nipples, then down his sides, as if he were giving himself a massage.
Deborah's nipples instantly thickened, and now she was aware of her body.
Then he reached back to his pack and pulled out a Thermos. She watched as he poured a steaming liquid into the cup, placed the cup on the ground, and reached into the pack again to pull something else out. Deborah smiled as she recognised the characteristic tearing motion of a sugar sachet being torn. She smiled again as he looked around for a stick to swizzle the sugar into the drink. She kept watching as he took the first sip, closing his eyes for that first luxurious taste.
Deborah knew that life giving feeling well, depended on it herself, and wished she'd brought some coffee, not just water. But to treat herself, she found her sandwiches, and began to eat, captured now with this distant intimacy. It was as if she was in some huge café, but instead of the buzz of conversation and traffic outside, her world was defined by the soft swirl of wind in the trees around her, and as she sat and the world came to her, the multiple songs of birds.
The dee dee, dee dee of a little chickadee sounded from nearby, and she looked for it, knowing they were inquisitive birds, and might come closer. She broke some crumbs from the bread, and scattered them down by her feet, to entice one.
Ah look, there he was, a little flittering male with his black head and flickering tail, in a tree some ten feet away. She watched the sweet little bird; her man down in the glade, safe, drinking coffee or tea. The tiny thing came closer, quite fearless, and dropped to the ground by the crumbs. He looked this way and that, then stole a crumb, flying back to the branch with it, to sing his song again.
He danced down once more, coming a little closer, his tail, flick, flick. Deborah smiled with the joy of this little bird who seemed, really, to be flirting. Dee dee, dee dee, he called, then suddenly darted away. She watched him swoop and soar, and lost sight of him in the distance, but still heard his insistent call.
Deborah saw the man look up, look around. Had he heard the little bird too? It made sense, the glade below was obviously part of the bird's range. Had he flown there?
Her eyes drawn back to the man, she kept watching; a little ashamed to be spying, but she couldn't take her eyes off him, this man obviously so content on his own. Deborah craved solitude herself, sometimes, but at heart she was a sociable woman, and perhaps was afraid of herself all alone, when it really came down to it.
She continued to study the man, saw even from the distance his long fingers and the sculpted muscles on his shoulders. He was broad shouldered and slim waisted; and when he stood up and stretched, she could make out tight jeans and a pair of sturdy boots on his feet.
With a start, Deborah saw him stand up and move towards her, but then he turned away after a few steps and faced a nearby tree. She studied his profile, and at first completely missed that he'd stopped by the tree to take a piss. She gasped with a quick realisation, and knew she should look away.
But she didn't. Instead, she watched, open-eyed and shocked with herself, but unable to turn away, as he took a good sized penis from his pants, long and thick, and let go a long stream of urine, arcing patterns on the trunk of the tree like a boy does, on a wall.
Deborah quivered, and finally tore her eyes away, feeling a blush rising on her cheeks.
And a hot, heavy feeling in the base of her belly.
She should get up and stop this blatant looking, she should move away. But she didn't. Instead, her fingers crept inside the the neck of her top, found a nipple. And she pulled it up to a thick, hard nub.
She watched him as he tucked his cock away and zipped up. Then, curious now, she saw him collect long strands of grass from around the glade, until he had a good sized bundle. She watched him as he returned to his stump, sat, took a last drink from the cup. She watched him as he started to weave the strands, but couldn't make out what he made.
She watched the man, down in the glade, and felt peaceful, watching over him.