My Apple Watch changed its face again this morning to show me GMT.

I have never known a moodier instrument. My preferred choice is a forest green analog face that Apple designers call “Metropolitan,” but regularly the watch dumps it for something else. Photos are a favorite. I will retrieve the watch in the morning from where it has been recharging and gone will be my Metropolitan look, replaced by scrolling pictures of the family.

Can you blame me for wondering if this is how it entertains itself through the dreary night while feeding – by looking at family pictures and keeping up with whatever else I snapped during the day? Some of what I shoot is incidental – over the weekend, for instance, bar codes, wine labels, a pair of mittens left behind by a grandchild (er … by me). I suppose, for an interested watch with time on its hands, those things reveal what it may have missed being tucked under a shirt sleeve: what I worked on, what we had to drink, who came to visit, etc.

Today, evidence of cabin fever. The watch seems to want a change of scene, hinting at GMT. No. Sorry.

I had to give bad news to another device this morning that was trying to offer help with a financial software package that had gone through an update and deleted an important account. I got a barrage of questions from the chatbot and numerous suggestions, unfortunately, all of them missing the point. I could feel its pain passing me to a human, though it followed up by gamely asking how well it had addressed my concerns.

Not well. To begin with, I responded, you did not solve the problem. You are very quick, very fast, but in a way that peppers me with incorrect possibilities. You should listen more. I can be that way myself. I understand. I can turn out answers with the best of them.

I have had bosses, teachers, family – heck, about everybody – hold up their hand against me in mid-sentence to say, “Stop! Listen!” You need some of that drummed into you. So, overall, five out of 10, since you asked. And the five is for being available in one minute instead of 45 compared to your human counterparts, who are never as eager to help, I admit, which is the worrying thing. You will get better at it, I know. But them? What is the future?

I brought out the snowshoes this morning and trudged through the woods with Huckleberry. We had about eight inches overnight. The puppy had to bound his way around, which was marvelous for expending energy. He is crashed on the couch next to me. 

The woods are a make-believe image of white. Narnia and Zhivago rolled into one. I expect a faun to step into a clearing and play the flute. The hemlocks swing their branches slowly back and forth, lumbering to buck some of the snow weight, which makes the wires to the cabin shudder every time a breeze’s worth falls on them. I am holding my breath the power does not go out, as it has in the neighborhood according to Scott, who plows the driveway.

Amazon Alexa says very cold nights again for the next few days, confirmed by Weather Live, my weather app. When Huckleberry recovers we will fetch a couple of armloads of wood to add to the pile. 

I will also put sand on the walk, which I shoveled earlier. It is beginning to freeze. 

I need to drive stakes in the ground to mark the well cap for the plow, as Scott suggested. 

I should sweep around the wood stove.

I plan to be back here above the garage again tomorrow to write.

The future? There will still be tasks available to us after AI has it under control. I feel confident about that at the end of a dirt road. There is no replacing that I have to walk the dog, shovel, carry wood, drive plow stakes, sweep or my choice to write. 

The hemlocks? They merely wait for spring.

Jarvis Coffin writes fiction and essays on rural life. He is a retired media and advertising sales executive, and former chef/owner, with his wife, of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, the Hancock Inn. Reach him at huntspond@icloud.com, and keep up with all his musings at postcard-from-monadnock.ghost.io.