Ten Things I’ll Miss About Winter and Seven Things I Won’t

17 Friday Feb 2012

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“Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes” aren’t nearly as lovely as the ones that hide yellow snow. And you won’t find me singing about warm woolen mittens, which are just straitjackets for hands; if they didn’t rhyme with “kittens,” I truly doubt Julie Andrews would have sung about them either.

“Winter solstice marks the death of winter,” Gary wrote me years ago.

Early evening colors

I feel the truth of it. Daily life now reflects the tone and tempo of longer, warmer days. We don’t rise early, but we do rise earlier, usually before 8:30; we still fix dinner shortly after dark. A surprising number of hours intervene, temperate and bright, perfect for wood gathering, skiing, snowshoeing, all sorts of outdoor work and play. We’ve rediscovered lunch, irrelevant since sometime in November. When I moved here, I had no idea there would be so much to love about winter, or that I would actually worry about its passing. Here’s what I’ll miss most:

Our resident moose calf is about eight months old and has lost his (or her) mama.

1)      A constant fire in the wood stove, which can be a great slow cooker or hot fire for baking, as well as a hot water heater; it keeps us warm and its dancing flames are a joy to behold.

2)      Long underwear. It may not be a joy to behold, but it’s no worse than sweats or yoga pants when company comes unexpectedly, and it’s incredibly comfortable.

3)      Slow mornings and long evenings spent in front of the fire in our long underwear.

Sundog at sunset

4)  Sunrise and sunset extending through most of the short day, with occasional sundogs in between.

5)      Animal tracks in the snow. We follow the comings and goings of caribou, fox, wolverine, martens, voles and mice, and the snowshoe hare whose presence has brought a lynx to the neighborhood. We have a resident moose calf whose mom disappeared a week or so ago, and see him (or her) most days, but still count on tracks in the snow to see where he’s been and where he’s made his bed.

View under river's surface at my water hole

6)      The changing beauty of ice and snow.

7)      Snow travel: skis, snowshoes and sleds for hauling, sleds for riding, and mushers on sleds.

8)      Northern Lights. A Valentine’s Day aurora started around 9:00 at night and was still going strong when we gave up and went to bed at 5:30.

Valentine's Day aurora

9)      The frozen river, an ever-changing highway through a landscape shared only by the animals.

10)   Room in the refrigerator (which we turn off in winter) to store empty pots and pans.

I could only come up with seven things I won’t miss about winter:

I dropped this glove on my daily walk and found it the next day. A raven or fox or something thought it might be tasty!

1)  Without opposable thumbs, what am I? That’s how I feel bundled up in gloves and mittens, which fail to protect me anyway because I have to take them off to do anything requiring fine motor skills (like putting on skis or snowshoes); once I do, they disappear or fall in the snow and turn icy and cold.

2)      Yellow snow. Also, snow and ice on the outhouse seat in a layer so thin as to be indiscernible until it’s too late.

3)      Traveling to town and beyond: it makes going to the airport the day before Thanksgiving look pleasant. www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/12/16/three-days-to-thanksgiving/

4)      Congealed shampoo and cooking oil. Peanut oil stays liquid at lower temperatures than olive oil, but there are times when even it won’t pour out of the bottle.

5)      The way the icy door refuses to latch shut, blowing open when we least expect it.

They look awful, but if you trim the tops off the green bananas and store them in a cool dark place, the fruit will not get overripe for several weeks. These bananas were six weeks old.

6)      Trying to keep produce useable for months on end. Only carrots, onions, apples and bananas last more than a few weeks, but now — after nearly two months since we resupplied in Anchorage — the carrots don’t look great, I wash mold off the apples each morning before slicing them onto our oatmeal, and we’ve run out of onions and bananas.

7)      Stepping in my stocking feet on snow tracked into the house.

We could still have a cold snap, but change is in the air. The chickadees returned three weeks ago; temperatures have been hovering in the twenties and low thirties for two weeks now, with only quick dips below zero. Spring here is a season of snow and sun, and I’m sure it will be lovely. I’m just not quite ready to give up my winter pleasures.

Valentine's Day aurora view past the wind tower

Sunrise:  8:47 a.m.
Sunset:   5:32 p.m.
Weather:  High 26°, low 18°, mostly cloudy and calm.

Small Victories

10 Friday Feb 2012

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I once read that happiness in life is most often found among those who continually take on challenges, challenges small enough to make success achievable but not so small as to ensure it. Researchers found that happy people stretch themselves, maybe just a little, but often. Meeting the tests successfully more often than not, their sense of achievement, self-determination and self-assurance grows, and this seems to lead to happiness.

Work of any definition can be fertile ground for pursuing happiness through challenge. I was lucky to have mentors in my career who fed me a steady diet of challenges I could (with their support) manage successfully often enough to get beyond my failings and not infrequent failures. My challenges now are, arguably, much smaller; they are surer of success, and in success or failure negligible in their impact on others. In a recent post (www.indeep-alaska.com/2012/01/30/division-of-labor-2) I mentioned a few: learning to build a fire, drive a snowmachine, stack wood, and can berries.

My second attempt at woodstove yeast bread, a little oddly shaped as I had to flip it over to brown the top.

I’ve been learning to bake atop our wood stove. With varying degrees of success I’ve made pumpkin and cranberry-orange quickbreads, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, sweet potato biscuits and lasagna. I finally conquered my long-standing fear of baking with yeast by attempting French bread. The first loaf was heavy and dense, successful mainly as a butter-delivery system and because it had been ever so long since we’d had bread. But the second loaf and all that followed were really good, excellent even. The big surprise was how easy it is, yet it took so long for me to try. (It’s so easy, in fact, I was making a loaf a day in hopes of freezing a supply, but had to stop. We were eating most of it hot off the stove, a daily feast of refined grain slathered in butter.)

Homeward bound, looking upriver as we return from logging

This week I’ve been learning to tie knots, and was pleased with myself all out of proportion when I used a bowline knot to secure my snowshoes (I wasn’t wearing them!) to the sled I was hauling behind the snowmachine. That was another first: as Gary led the way downriver to the woods to do some logging, I followed in his old snowmachine, smaller and less stable than our new one. I’d never driven it before — never driven on river ice either, for that matter — and Gary had warned me the machine tips easily. So I declined to try when he suggested it last week. When he mentioned it again yesterday, I felt ready. Snowmachines have seats; at least they look like seats and feel like seats, but God forbid you actually sit down. I had to stand or put one knee on the seat in order to shift my weight quickly enough to stay upright through uneven snowdrifts and curves. On the return trip I carried a sled full of skinny logs we’ll use as poles, which Gary had carefully tied down. Good thing he did: I was so focused on the path ahead, the whole load could have slipped off and I wouldn’t have noticed. It didn’t, of course, and we all got home without incident. It’s a victory of modest measure, but satisfying still.

Home from logging with both snowmachines

In my past life, when free time was in short supply and home life unhappy, I found it difficult to extend myself. Baking a loaf of bread seemed too much to attempt. I did take up running, a fair challenge. But that was nearly twenty years ago, and it’s no coincidence I wasn’t working at the time.

I’m proud of friends and family whose work touches lives, directly or indirectly, and in so doing contributes importantly to the larger world. It isn’t only by comparison that my victories here are small, their impact isolated. But these little victories change me. One at a time they broaden my understanding of the possible, bring me joy and renewal, and ready me for challenges — great and small — that lie ahead.

Spruce grouse in a spruce tree in our yard

Sunrise:  9:06 a.m.
Sunset:  5:14 p.m.
Weather: High 32°, low 24°, breezy with occasional snow.

NOTE: I’ve added a glossary of Alaskan terms to the website as a separate page at www.indeep-alaska.com/glossary-of-alaskan-terms/. Enjoy!

Return of the Sun and Making the Grade

02 Thursday Feb 2012

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Return of the Sun

On Tuesday, January 24th, I used my red pen to record one of the year’s highlights: for the first time in months, sunlight streamed through the kitchen window.

Winter solstice is a tease. It took four days after the solstice to gain one minute of daylight. But now, more than a month later, each day is about six minutes longer than its predecessor. That may not seem like much but it adds up quickly, and the shifting rhythm of the day keeps me off balance. I find myself ready to settle in for the evening with an hour of daylight to spare, or I forget to start dinner until dark, not soon enough when the freezer’s operating at thirty below. Our shortest days were four hours and thirty-two minutes long, and today we have seven hours and eighteen minutes of daylight.

Sun on the riverbed at 3:37 p.m. on January 23rd, the day before it finally streamed through our window

We’d been watching, wondering when the sun’s arc would rise over our hill high enough to hit the window. We’d seen sun hit the trees and riverbed, but we’d had no direct sun since November and no wind for weeks.  That left us dependent on our gas generator to charge the large (128-lb.) batteries we draw from when we use electricity. But when the batteries wouldn’t hold a charge, Gary discovered one was dead. The end result — which is all I fully understand — is that we can use as much electricity as we want for the six hours it takes the generator to run out of gas (it holds a gallon and a half), but without the generator we’re limited to the radio and maybe a quick check of email or brief use of an electric light. That is, unless we get sun on the solar panels or a good sustained wind. We’re comfortable working in the dimmer light of our propane lamps and staying offline for a couple of days at a time, but eventually our tools, computers and cameras need charging. The generator is noisy and keeps us glued to our computers as we work to take full advantage of it, so we’d rather not use it. With the return of the sun, Gary focused on putting up the additional solar panels he’d bought last fall. On the 24th we began work in earnest.

“Do you want to stay on the ground or work up on the platform?” Gary asked as we prepared to hoist the set of eight panels onto the twelve-foot high platform.

We got the panels up! Gary is fixing them to the platform before connecting them.

“I can guide them, but I can’t lift them,” I answered, assuming that would mean staying on the ground.

“OK, climb up then,” Gary replied.

Oh, well. He pushed as he climbed, I guided and supported the panels with a rope, and Ella looked on, emitting worried whimpers.

Tools freeze to the platform, hands stiffen in the extreme cold. It was about 38 below here.

Gary’s work was slowed by the weather, which stayed between twenty below and forty-five below the days he was outside. When I went up the ladder to help him mark a metal brace for cutting, the felt pen tip iced up. Wire becomes inflexible and brittle, tools freeze to the platform, and metal is so cold to the touch that it burns. Gary was in and out of the cabin every few minutes to warm up or cut a piece of metal or wiring, or to do small tasks that in any other weather he would have done on the platform as he worked, like finding the right bolt from his bucket of nuts, bolts and screws. We didn’t know we’d see temperatures rise nearly eighty degrees this week, so he pressed on. He finished the wiring around midnight a week ago Friday, and the next day we woke to clear skies and eight new (used) solar panels feeding the batteries.

Making the Grade

Heavy equipment crosses the bridge

Months ago we heard a rumor in town that the military, or possibly a mining company, was planning to have our road plowed this winter. We weren’t sure what this would mean to us. If it were actually plowed, we might have trouble getting to town by snowmachine, riding on the less stable shoulder. We have Gary’s diesel truck here, but it doesn’t like the cold.

Gary took Ella up the road Tuesday morning last week, and when he returned he simply said “Go check out the road.”

The grader followed the heavy equipment out, leaving the road smooth again.

The machine had come and gone, leaving a hard-packed surface so smooth I could almost skate on it in my mukluks. A grader normally pushes, whereas this machine was like a Sno-Cat dragging behind, but for lack of a better term, I’ll call it a grader. It was preparing the road for the military or mining equipment.

A few days later, once the smooth road had set up, we saw the grader heading east, followed by huge semis with tracks replacing the tires, which made a mess of the grader’s work. The crew has been back and forth a few times since then, even carving a graded path to our snow shelter outside the campground as it made a U-turn. The other day the equipment haulers carried a load west, toward town, with the grader (mercifully) following. Today they headed east, apparently headed back for another load.

Sunrise:  9:30 a.m.
Sunset:   4:38 p.m.
Weather: High 28°, low 26°, high winds, light and blowing snow. This is 76 degrees higher than it was at -48°, where we stood most of the day Sunday.

Ella checks out the smooth road.

Division of Labor

30 Monday Jan 2012

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When I arrived here last August I watched Gary, guest-like, for a few days and then took on the simplest, most familiar tasks. I could do dishes, get water, and sweep with minimal instruction, but that was about it. While I can build and stoke the fire now, it took some practice.  Gary taught me how to clean and can the berries we picked, dig post holes and provide a second set of hands for raising the wind tower and solar platform. I gather brush and use it to build small bonfires for burning garbage. I learned to stack wood the hard way. I tried splitting wood, but had trouble controlling the heavy axe and abandoned the effort while I still had all my toes. Everyone I’ve met here can split wood — unless they’re at least forty-five years older or younger than I am — so I know I’ll have to master it eventually.

I learned how to stack wood the hard way! (see www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/09/ Sights and Surprises)

As things have settled out this winter I usually make coffee and breakfast.  Dinnertime comes too early to make lunch worthwhile, but as days grow longer that will change. Either one of us might make dinner, with a goal of having leftovers to reheat for a future meal or two. Gary sharpens the knives and I keep the kitchen supplies filled from the upstairs pantry (bedroom) where our fifty-pound sack of oatmeal and ten- and twenty-five pound sacks of various types of flour, lentils, pasta and grains reside.

I never learned the skilled trades that make up much of Gary’s work — logging, milling, construction and setting up alternative energy systems — so I’ve gratefully retained many of the minimum-wage jobs. I missed having a dishwasher when I first arrived, but a month or two later found myself telling Aunt Vee I was surprised to find I actually didn’t mind doing dishes.

“Warm water,” she replied knowingly.

Yes, that might explain it.

Fire in the hole!

I do miss having a sink that drains properly; we’re not sure whether the underground tank is full, clogged or frozen, but the sink now drains into a bucket. As often as not, Gary carries the bucket out to the compost pile. This saves me some laundry, as I frequently manage to slop the contents on my pants leg. Since we do laundry by hand between trips to town, we each do our own; as you might imagine, nothing gets washed before its time.  We don’t have a bathroom to clean, but the outhouse isn’t entirely maintenance-free. We have a problem common to outhouses in the frozen north, a stalagmite of sorts, so Gary gamely doused it with diesel fuel and lit a match. I hope that will be the end of that.

At least the ice chisel wasn't buried! The shovel is just to the left -- see it? Me neither. For more on the water hole, see http://www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/12/03/Riverdance/

One of my favorite jobs has been getting water. In this weather, though, it’s a much harder task, so I try to get enough for two days when I go. A couple of weeks ago I found snowdrifts encroaching on my view of the icescape under the river’s surface. Snow is stealing my room; as I shovel a space for myself around the water, I’m at a loss to know where to put it all. Shoveling it up to the surface is tiring. I did push some into the hole, but the ice on the river bottom is thickening, and I worry that dumping large quantities might hasten the day when the hole is too shallow.

It was thirty-eight below when I went to get water the other day. My gloves iced up, so I switched them out for the mittens in my pocket. The plastic dipping bucket grew impossibly heavy with ice; I removed the worst of the buildup with the ice chisel, careful not to break the plastic, brittle in the cold. Ice on the buckets’ rims and lids frustrated my efforts to seal them. As my water spilled, new ice formed an imperfect seal, so I tried to coax the buckets into staying upright as I pulled the sled home. One refused, so I knocked ice from the buckets and sled and made a second trip.

Gary reopening the water hole in -48 degree weather

I looked downriver to the sunset-pink Alaska Range; in the bitter cold I could see ice fog steaming from an open lead of water a hundred yards away. I’ll have to check it out; it might just be my next watering hole. Yesterday Gary and I went together to get water; it was forty-eight below. The hole, vigilantly protected with spruce boughs and snow, had nevertheless frozen over, and Gary had to reopen it with the ice chisel.

I want to be learning and doing more, particularly outdoors. Gary usually maintains the paths around our little campus, packing them every few days with the snowmachine. Recently he suggested I take over occasionally as a way of getting more comfortable with driving the thing. It may not have been wise to take him up on it on Friday the thirteenth, the day after our biggest snowfall and windstorm.

I started down the main drive toward the gate, circled past Gary’s truck and the logs we’d had delivered last summer — well, past the truck, certainly, but quite possibly over the logs. Gary breaks trail around the nearby campground so mushers and others can access the outhouses there. I was feeling confident, so rode out the gate to the campground. The snow was deep, his path completely obliterated, but how hard could it be?

Instead of a picture of another tipped snowmachine, I'll show you the view from the solar platform as we were working to set up the new panels.

I tipped over just past the first picnic table. I walked home for the shovel, but after shoveling long and hard the snowmachine still wouldn’t budge. I looked up when Ella whimpered to see Gary skiing toward us. Once we had the snow shoveled out of the way, he grabbed a handlebar and put all his weight on the skyward-facing running board of the machine to right it.

“Will you be able to finish the loop?” he asked.

The only thing I was confident of now was that I would not be able to steer through the turn, so Gary rode the full loop. He explained that I should never sit down while breaking trail and gave me other tips on how to avoid tipping, then left it to me to reinforce the path and continue my work. I made it back home and began reinforcing paths around the cabin and outbuildings. You could say I got stuck once again, or many more times, depending on how you count; I tipped, shoveled, inched forward and back, got stuck, shoveled, inched forward and back…you get the idea. At one point I got going and had to floor it to keep moving. I was heading directly, and rapidly, for the tool shed. A vole heard me coming and got out of there in a big hurry.

I missed the shed but thoroughly demolished what had once been a path; Gary shoveled for quite awhile to level things out.

“Can you drive the path now?” he asked when he’d finished.

No.

“I’m not sure I can either,” he sighed, but mercifully took over to repair the damage.

Gary rode over the scarred path, and then I rode it myself as reinforcement, for the path and for myself. I learned some good lessons that day: be prepared; don’t sit on your butt; use your weight judiciously; if you feel yourself losing balance, stop and take stock; if you can’t move forward, go back and try again; and don’t be chicken.

We have more hungry moose browsing in the extreme cold. This moose on our drive surprised me as much as I surprised her!

Sunrise:  9:39 a.m.
Sunset:   4:39 p.m.
Weather: High, -8°; low, -21°, calm and partly cloudy. Yesterday it was -48°. Go figure!

Easily Amused

22 Sunday Jan 2012

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We spend our free time much as you might: we read, cook, work puzzles, enjoy a movie and popcorn most Saturday nights, walk, hike and ski. We have plenty of free time now, particularly when it gets too cold to stay outside long, and are always looking for new ways to amuse ourselves. Here’s what we’ve been up to lately:

Gimme Shelter

Ella's making a U-turn, heading back to me full speed in a game of Chicken

One of our favorite pastimes is to walk down the road, checking for signs of wildlife, snowmachine traffic or dog teams. Ella bounces ahead, turning to take a bite of snow before racing back to us in a game of chicken, then falls behind as she finds something good to sniff, taste or roll in. As Ella and I neared the end of our walk the other day, we found Gary in front of the campground entrance, shoveling snow into a pile. He couldn’t have been at it long, but already it was as tall as he is. I knew what it was — he’d been talking of building a snow shelter there. Just for fun, mainly, but it could serve a traveler stranded by weather, or by recalcitrant machines or dogs.

By the time we got back from our walk, Gary had piled most of the snow for the shelter

We let it set up for a couple of days. After Gary shoveled out the arched entrance, we took turns: one of us would get on our belly or back, carving snow from the interior while the other scraped and shoveled the resulting snow-debris out. It didn’t take long before we could kneel inside, making the work quicker and a lot more fun. Within an hour or two, the shelter was in move-in condition. Now as we walk by, we check to see if we’ve had any visitors.

It's plenty roomy in there!

A long tunnel entrance, like those in igloo cartoons, would make the shelter warmer, but getting the snow out through the narrow opening would not have been fun. It’s not too late; enough snow is piled up to the side of the entrance, we could add the tunnel and close off the existing entrance. The urge to remodel — it must be universal.

Secret Lives of Dogs

Like any family member, Ella has certain responsibilities. She’s a shepherd, so she keeps her flock of two together if she can and, failing that, keeps a protective eye on the one she’s with. She cleans the floor of crumbs and spills, and tells us when it’s time for dinner. Her ears are on constant alert, and she’ll give a little “woof” for something just interesting enough to comment on, a sharp bark if it’s noteworthy, and a growl if she perceives a threat.

Ella gets a biscuit for accompanying us to the outhouse. When she hears the words “who wants to go poop?” she’s at the ready. We feed her the biscuit slowly, in pieces, and then she wanders out of sight. Gary told me early on if Ella growls it’s wise to get up, ready or not, to check out the threat. Not long ago I rushed out to see a moose disappearing toward the creek. But usually she waits silently, and when I emerge she is consistently sitting just a few feet away on the drive, positioned with a good view of the area.

Ella alerts us to moose; these took one look at us and crossed the river

I was in the cabin the other day when Ella went with Gary to the outhouse. She devoured her biscuit and went to sit at her post. I stopped to watch from the window. After a moment she stretched, as she so often does, the “downward dog” followed by a “salute to the sun.” Then, without warning or apparent provocation she raced to the cabin and back. As though conjuring an imaginary playmate she bowed in invitation to play, bounced in a 180-degree turn and bowed again. After a half-dozen repetitions, she raced to the cabin again, on the way performing a single lutz – a mid-air 360-degree turn – without breaking stride. She ran back to her spot, then toward the creek. She tore back past the outhouse and circled the cabin at full speed before returning to her post.

There she sat, sedately, when Gary emerged.

Birdbrain

Once the snows settled in for good, we began feeding the birds. Canadian Jays are not shy – hence their other name, Camp Robbers. I noticed one flitting and flirting about the front of the cabin as I went in and out with morning chores.

“You could put a few pieces of Ella’s food on the windowsill,” Gary suggested.

Canadian Jay begging at the kitchen window

The next morning when the Jay saw me and started his song, I stepped back inside to grab a handful of dog food. I placed it on the kitchen’s outer sills. I was barely inside when the Jay landed, picking up at least three pieces before flying off. His friends have joined in, and I wait for them to make themselves known each morning before I put food out.

As I was carrying a bucket of dirty dishwater to the compost pile recently, I saw a piece of dog food in the snow. Some greedy bird must have dropped it on the way to his cache. Ella was uncharacteristically slow to notice.

“Ella!” I called and pointed. “Git it!”

Ella looked twice as if unsure of my meaning, but she ate it, and then a second piece I found nearby. The next day I found more pieces near the outhouse.

“Git it!” I pointed, and this time she didn’t hesitate.

“I’m thinking of cutting back on the Jays’ food,” I told Gary as we walked toward the river. “They’re dropping pieces and not coming back for them,” I said, pointing to a spot where several pieces lay.

Gary laughed. And laughed. He almost fell over laughing, but finessed it so I was the one who landed in the snow.

“That’s rabbit poop!” he gasped, pointing to the “dog food.”

Ella looked, too. Without waiting to be told, she gobbled it up.

Sunrise: 10:00 a.m.
Sunset:  4:14 p.m.

Another beautiful sunset

Weather:  High 0°, Low -6°, much warmer than the -30′s we’ve been seeing (down to -42° Friday). Light, steady snow.

Breaking the Ice

18 Wednesday Jan 2012

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Trailblazing. The word speaks of adventure, even danger. Here it’s part housekeeping, too: something that, once done, refuses to stay done.

Home from harvesting firewood along the river

Our snowmachine is a workhorse. We ride it to town and back, attach a sled to haul luggage, logs, lumber — anything that needs hauling — and we pack trails. Every few days Gary rides out to pack the paths we want to travel, creating a solid base and literally smoothing our way, building a network of trails on the river and on nearby ATV roads. Walking, skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmachining is more difficult on soft snow. Our large, stable snowmachine has a wide track allowing it to float where others might founder. Still, it can get pulled in toward deep, soft drifts, and at 650 pounds it’s a heavy machine.

As many afternoons as time and weather permit, Gary and I ski the river. More private and scenic than the road, it’s a veritable highway compared to the hummocky, spruce-covered tundra. More than two feet of snow covers the ice in most places now; our skis sink and we trudge more than glide without a groomed trail. We also need a path into the woods to harvest dead trees for firewood. So Gary uses the snowmachine to break new trail and reinforce existing trail weakened by snow or wind-drifts.

Ella and I stand by as Gary breaks trail on the river, avoiding fissures

Obstacles and fissures in the river’s icy shell hide under snow, so breaking trail can be tricky. That’s why Ella and I generally stay home when Gary is trailblazing. He goes prepared, knowing he could crash through the ice or get stuck. Two weeks ago he headed out to extend the downstream trail.

“When should I start worrying?” I asked.

“I should be back in a couple of hours, but don’t worry if I don’t make it home tonight. If I run into trouble and feel I have to get back here, that’s where the real danger lies. I might try to come home when instead I should stop and start a fire to dry myself,” he explained.

“When should we start looking for you?”

“Five days,” he replied. A kiss and he was gone.

A couple of hours later Ella and I heard the hum of the snowmachine. The trip was a success, and since then we have been enjoying new scenery on the longer trail. Skiing along, we circumvent a snowmachine-sized section of ice that has collapsed three feet onto a lower layer.

Gary and Ella circumvent the site of the snowmachine water landing

“The tail of the machine had just passed over when the ice fell in,” Gary explained.

A few days later he decided to break trail upstream. I was looking forward to skiing upriver, both for a different view and because the gentle downstream slope is a big help when I turn home tired. Gary came back before I even thought about worrying. But I should have worried.

He had only gone a half mile upstream when he crashed through the ice. Our shiny new snowmachine stood on its tail in the deep water, fast-flowing about three feet under the surface ice.

“I’m glad I wasn’t there to see it,” I said.

“If you’d been with me, you’d have gone in,” he replied, laughing but serious.

Gary rescued the snowmachine with a come-along – a hand-held winch. With no trees near, he tied it to a dwarf birch, a leafless bush about the size of a large bouquet. The surface ice held as the winch shortened the cable, notch by notch, pulling the machine up and out, no worse for the wear.

I would have called it a day, but Gary finished breaking the trail as planned. The next day we skied past the site of the accident and even saw snow-white ptarmigan take flight just where he’d seen them the day before.

A week ago Friday Gary invited me to join him re-packing the downstream river trail. He had just run it the day before, but after the night’s snowfall wanted to extend it into the woods where he’d seen a stand of dead spruce. We’d harvested some a few weeks ago, but as Gary says, firewood is like money in the bank. We have three woodsheds partially filled with spruce and birch, but much of it is green. If we hit a long cold snap we’ll burn wood quickly with no way to replenish — the chain saw works haltingly if at all once it gets much below zero.

Gary uses the come-along to pull the snowmachine into an upright position

We rode together on the river, Ella running behind, but I got off just before Gary started up the steep riverbank into the woods. I was going to follow in my snowshoes, a gift from my former colleagues. The snowshoes are fantastic – once on, they stay on, but getting them on and off isn’t easy. I struggled with the clasps as he drove off. I was putting on the second snowshoe when Ella began to whimper. I looked up to see the snowmachine tipped on its side about thirty feet away. Gary pushed and I pulled, but in the end he used the come-along to right the machine. That done, he rode into the woods while I shoveled snow in the hole where the machine had rested, to prevent another mishap.

We followed the beautiful lights at sunset

We rode home toward a prism of color, blowing snow caught by the setting sun. We took a detour down the road, with the nearly-full January moon floating over the Alaska range in a pink sky to the north, and a setting sun with sundogs left and right to the south.

The moon over the Alaska Range, taken at the same time as the sunset picture above

When we got up Saturday it was just below zero, a bit cold for the chain saw but worth a try. I set out first on my “bushwhackers,” short, fat skis for rough terrain. Gary soon passed me, and more than once I found myself detouring around breaks in the ice caused by the snowmachine. I arrived as Gary was cutting the first tree, and was just out of my skis when another snowmachine arrived. We hadn’t seen another soul since Christmas Eve. It was Jim, the local state trooper (see “Snowed In?,” October, 2011). He had promised to check on us this winter, but we were always away from the cabin when he stopped by.

“It looks like the ice broke under you in a few places,” Jim observed.

Gary told Jim how he’d fallen through the ice upstream; Jim’s story was more dramatic. We’d already heard about a solo hiker gone missing in a cold snap, and Jim was one of the two troopers who had made the rescue.

“My machine went through the ice, and I was wet up to my waist. It was thirty-five below. But we got the guy out alive,” Jim said, “and I got a new snowmachine.”

Jim left and Gary began cutting the downed trees into eighteen-inch segments to fit our stove. I stacked them in the sled and dragged branches to a small bonfire. Dusk was falling when Gary set down his chainsaw and finished securing the wood with ropes. I put away my skis and rode home. Our headlight broke the darkness as we returned on the river, Ella running behind the sled. I held my breath, but the ride was uneventful. Before setting out from home I’d pulled a pot of turkey noodle soup from the porch; cold and hungry, we were happy to find it hot atop our wood stove.

Sunrise: 10:10 a.m.
Sunset:  4:02 p.m.
Weather: High -28°, low -42°, calm, sunny day, starry night. We did get four to six inches of snow on January 12th, but nothing like they’re seeing closer to the coast!

Tonight Will Be a Stormy Night

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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To-night will be a stormy night
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern with you, dear,
To light you through the snow
—Adapted from “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth

These words come to me as I step outdoors. My mother had memorized “Lucy Gray” as a schoolgirl and my siblings will remember how she used these lines — just a bit changed from the original — to tell us to take care as we headed out in bad weather. We were in Southern California; bad weather meant rain.

It’s snowing. The wind has been howling for the last twenty-four hours. We had thirty-degree weather last night; the mercury is plummeting and we expect to wake up to thirty below tomorrow. The bang of shutters against the wall unnerves Ella when she’s alone at night, and she tries to climb the loft stairs to join us.

Red sky at morning, mushers take warning

Cordova, on the coast, has fifteen feet of snow with no sign of relief. Once they dig out the town they’ll start digging out the ski lifts. We hear coastal forecasts calling for “frozen spray,” so bad this year that eagles with ice-laden wings have been seen, unable to fly. Our local NPR station is based at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks; weather reports include a listing of which campus parking lots have lost power to the headbolts, outlets to plug in the essential engine blankets.

We’ve been lucky so far. The snow has come in polite little batches, an inch or two at a time just when it was wanted for skiing or to provide a fresh slate for viewing animal tracks or, well, to cover up the yellow snow. But we’ve had several inches of snow today, and it’s still going strong.

The river is changing as the ice buckles and the snow drifts

So far it hasn’t caused us any real inconvenience. I did have to dig about four feet of it off my watering hole, which was so filled with drifted snow that I had to be careful not to step anywhere near the hole itself as I shoveled out, in case I guessed wrong about its exact placement. As it turns out, I wouldn’t have gone far: ice on the river bottom is so thick that the water is barely deep enough to accommodate my bucket.

But even without huge amounts of snow, drifts can become dangerous. Sunday was windy, too, so we stayed indoors and took the opportunity to go online while our wind turbine hummed busily. An email from our friend Jayne put us on alert — friends of hers were stranded on the road twenty miles from us. The couple was traveling by dog team and snowmachine when the snowmachine got stuck in drifting snow. Late in the day a second email arrived, letting us know they were safely settled for the night under a tarp. By then the wind had died down and the sky was clear. The temperature fell steadily as Gary split wood late that afternoon.

We checked email Monday morning, getting word that some folks from town were heading out. By then it was thirty-two below, and we were thirty miles closer to the stranded travelers. I hurried breakfast and filled a thermos with coffee for Gary to take, along with some food and a week’s supply of Ella’s dog food, a mere snack for a team of fourteen dogs. Gary packed snowshoes, a shovel and axe, the come-along, a sleeping bag, fire starter, extra warm clothes, and packages of handwarmers.

He was gone two or three hours before Ella heard our snowmachine and trotted out to meet him and Mark, who followed right behind. Mark was exhausted, his cheeks red and his hands cold and cramped. I quickly made coffee. While we sat around the fire, Gary told how he had gotten stuck twice on the way, once within 100 yards of reaching Mark.

“I got stuck because I slowed down when I saw him,” Gary said.
—It’s easy to get stuck

“I was so happy to see someone else get stuck too,” Mark laughed. “It wasn’t just me! I am so tired of shoveling.”

Lawrence and Will, the folks who’d come in from town, soon joined us; they had reached Mark and Gary just as they had finished shoveling out. I made more coffee.

Gary had come upon Debbie, Mark’s wife, before he reached Mark. Her dog team was in a tangle, so Gary helped sort them out. Drifts can leave dogs — not to mention people — up to their eyeballs, or worse. Without a trail packed by snowmachine, mushers sometimes resort to snowshoeing in front of their dogs. As we talked, we heard Debbie’s dogs; she wouldn’t stop in but did take a break to feed the dogs nearby, comforted perhaps to be near people. Her day would be a long one, so Mark stayed on awhile, knowing he would pass her on the way to town.

Jayne looks on as Anitra gets ready to go.

Mark and Debbie got home safely Monday. By Tuesday the weather had warmed above zero, and Jayne came up by snowmachine. Her dog team followed shortly, run by her young friend Anitra, who was enjoying the last day of her winter break from college. Wednesday, yesterday, was lovely, with dramatic skies and temperatures heading up toward freezing. After a sunrise walk down the river with the dogs, they wisely hurried home. The storm blew in only after the day was done.

Ella entertains her friends

Usually Ella and I take a detour on our way to get water, walking or trotting up the road a piece to see (and, in Ella’s case, smell) who’s been out there. We look for tracks of snowmachines, sled dogs, and wildlife. We didn’t go today; tracks don’t last in this weather. But the snow will stop, and in the next day or two we will be walking in the winter sun, bundled up not against wind and snow, but against cold and clear.

Sunrise: 10:24 a.m.
Sunset:  3:43 p.m.
Weather: High, 10°, Low -4°, howling wind. Snow decreasing; had a few inches of accumulation today.

Mush! The team heads home in a window of good weather.

A Time for Everything

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Gary working on the spring moon panel in his new workspace

We were happy the day we loaded Gary’s workbench—a table, really—onto the sled and brought it out from storage to the cabin. The addition is largely complete: the new closet and shelving have been in use for weeks, and the shower stands in its corner awaiting plumbing. That leaves just enough room for the workbench under the larger of two windows. It pleases me to see Gary reunited with his carving tools, coaxing a playful spring moon from a plank of Alaskan yellow cedar. Sometimes I stand quietly at his elbow as he redefines a shape or a shadow, his focus unwavering. When he comes away from his work I smell the wood’s sweet must clinging to his beard.

Gary at Art Explosion during Open Studios 2010. One of his earlier moon panels is hanging behind him. Credit: David Gartner Photography, www.versusgoliath.com

This is by no means the best workspace he’s had, but it’s not the worst. Gary started the spring moon panel—the fourth in a series—in San Francisco, where he carved full-time. When he first moved to the City he did his carving in a bland space at Art Explosion, a studio rental business on the outskirts of the Mission District. The place was as quiet as a library but, in general, not as friendly. Another artist working in wood tipped Gary off to better, cheaper space by Highway 101 at Cesar Chavez. It was one of a number of Connex units, a tin can quick to overheat in the sun and offering no relief from the din of the freeway, but more functional for practitioners of the noisier, dustier arts, inventors and artists working in wood and metal.

Box in Alaskan Yellow Cedar

Gary is a carver, not a craftsman or furniture maker. He can make lovely furniture, more rustic than refined, as well as other functional pieces, but when he does it’s often a platform for his love of carving. Gary’s first gift to me from his own hand was a large box, whose lid of Alaskan yellow cedar depicts a horse running free under the moon.

Gary and his ponies heading to grazing ground

He’d known from my first summer visit to Alaska that I loved horses. Gary had Swiss Haflingers then, beautiful palomino ponies, and we took them to graze at a pastoral swath of tundra. It wasn’t too far to walk, but we had horses! So we rode. I couldn’t mount even a pony bareback, though, so first Gary leaned low and offered his back as a footstool. We’d just met, really—this was in 2004—and I was horrified, self-conscious, and sure I would hurt him. He was sure I wouldn’t. I gingerly put my foot on my human step stool and settled myself as lightly as possible. I remember when we got to the pasture we staked only one of the four ponies; Gary explained that the small herd would stay together, safer with three unfettered horses free to respond to any threat by predators.

So Gary knew I loved horses, but he didn’t know I’m also drawn to beautiful boxes. He made the cedar box for me when he got back to Alaska after his cancer surgery in Portland.

One of Gary's Merangels

When I brought the box from San Francisco, inside I placed two “merangels” Gary had made, mermaid angels I bought from Gary a few years ago. They fly as gracefully over our table here as they did over our dining table in the City. When he was living in San Francisco, Gary was making a similar pair on commission. I came across a note he had written as a reminder to order “ruby nipples.” I was relieved to find out they were intended for the merangels.

Nesting ptarmigan bowl in birch burl

The winged mermaids came to Gary in a dream. Other ideas come from nature, such as an oblong “marriage bowl” with the head of a raven on one side and the head of a wolf on the other. Out here, we see from the presence of ravens where there might be a kill; ravens once led me to the backbone of a caribou, which we hung as a bird feeder in our yard. Wolves watch the ravens, too, and provide meat for the birds that help them hunt. A bowl Gary made from birch burl, a nesting ptarmigan, went to my cousin Glenn and his bride, Terri, who got married last month. Glenn’s sister, Joan, asked Gary to make her a remembrance using part of the mane of her beloved horse, Kenai, and he made a dance stick. The dance stick, masks, and moon series illustrate how much of Gary’s work is influenced by the art of aboriginal peoples along the Pacific “rim of fire.”

Masks and decorative lintel at Open Studios 2010

Though his workspace is less than ideal, cramped as it is between the closet and the shelving with only a smallish window, Gary once again has a workspace. I can’t wait to see what inspires him next and watch it emerge.

Note: More of Gary’s work can be seen at his Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/GaryPinard

Sunrise: 10:26 a.m.
Sunset:  3:40 p.m.
Weather: Snow and wind, low 5°, high 20°, snow and wind. A big change from -33° yesterday!

A Solstice Wedding

02 Monday Jan 2012

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We knew my cousin Glenn was getting married, but he had talked of a courthouse ceremony. His seventeen-year-old daughter, Danielle, was having none of it and began planning a small but lovely event in Anchorage’s Hotel Captain Cook on the winter solstice. Glenn sent us an email not quite two weeks in advance, asking if we could come. Then, a week later, another email came from Glenn and his lovely bride, Terri, asking Gary to be the best man. We consulted Danielle about the dress code, via Glenn’s sister Joan, since we don’t text.

“Gary should wear a suit, and Barbara should wear a dress,” the answer came back.

This triggered a frantic search through the cabin, outbuildings, and even Glenn’s cabin next door—anywhere we might have stored clothes.

“Don’t laugh,” Gary said, coming down from the loft in one of his father’s old suits.

His arms dangled from the sleeves, but the pants looked hot—and very likely to rip. He modeled two more suits, of unknown origin, each worse in its own way. The final option was an “Alaskan Tuxedo,” a sort of arctic safari suit made of good, heavy wool in Austrian green. Gary had bought it for his oral exam to become a licensed game guide, circa 1986. The Alaskan Tuxedo (not this particular one) dates back to the 1920’s, and it does have a strong, authentic look. Sadly, the style appears to have inspired the leisure suit. Another no-go.

I had it easy, or so I thought. My brother, Richard, and I had attended a party the night before we set out on our drive to Alaska (see “Driving Miss Lazy,” September, 2011). I wore a simple black dress with a turquoise-and-gold scarf my friend Savi had brought me from India. An extensive search turned up only the scarf. No dress, no hose, no shoes. The only other dress I had was sleeveless and on the slinky side. I’d brought it in case Gary and I wanted to dance all alone in our cabin, not realizing our only potential dance floor is a three-foot by five-foot space dangerously close to the wood stove.

Clearly we would need enough time in Anchorage to shop before the wedding.

When we went to Anchorage in mid-October to pick up our snowmachine, we didn’t know when we would next be in that shopping mecca. Anchorage is no San Francisco, but it is home to some 300,000 people, two Costcos, a natural food store, a cheese shop, and an upscale deli/grocery offering a surprising assortment of ethnic cuisines and ingredients. It has the usual big box stores, too, Nordstrom, gun shops that aren’t even in bad neighborhoods, and some eccentric specialty shops with clothing, hardware, and sundries for people who live, work, or vacation on boats or in the bush. We shopped at many of these stores on our last trip, doing our best to bring back everything we thought we might need if we didn’t leave home again for months. As it happens, we’ve been back twice since, once to spend Thanksgiving with Gary’s sister and her family, and this time for Glenn’s wedding.

But first, Gary and I spent the weekend before the Wednesday ceremony preparing for the freeze-up of the cabin, much as we had at Thanksgiving. As soon as we heard about the wedding, we worked to eat as much as we could of the fresh produce that we didn’t want to freeze.  We incorporated fresh carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions into our daily diet, and we each got a whole banana on our daily oatmeal instead of half. Oranges became more than a snack: we dried the peel atop the wood stove for kindling. I cooked up some onions for future French onion soup, but the remaining produce—apples, garlic, and more carrots than I wanted to cook—would travel with us to Anchorage and back in a cooler wrapped in a sleeping bag within a cooler to prevent it from freezing on the snowmachine leg of the trip.

Instead of putting an inch or two of water in our various pots and pans (see “Three Days to Thanksgiving,” December, 2011), this time we made ice in cake pans all weekend, thinking it might be easier to thaw. Good idea; bad timing. The day before we left, a Chinook wind warmed temperatures so close to freezing we almost couldn’t make ice. But I managed to fill a bucket and a couple of stock pots, and it was, in the end, more convenient when we got home.

Gary finishes packing the sled; Ella is dressed and ready to go

We left the cabin Monday just before sunrise—which is to say, a little after 10:00. The warmer temperatures inspired another innovation: instead of riding backward on the snowmachine as I had been doing, facing Ella in her box with my back to the wind, I rode facing forward, reaching back to put my arm around Ella’s neck. Ella seemed calmer, and it was much more comfortable for me. I loved being able to see the Mountain, the moose, and the mileposts. I tried the driver’s seat briefly, but carrying two passengers and a sled made me too nervous to enjoy it.

The car battery was dead when we arrived at our friend Diane’s, where it’s parked, but we were expecting that. From Diane’s, travel was easy, and we made it to Glenn’s in time for dinner at 6:30.

We devoted Tuesday to clothes shopping. (I’d brought my one dress, and Gary had brought his Alaskan Tuxedo, just in case.) We had no luck as Gary dragged me around Value Village and Saly’s (Salvation Army), his preferred clothing recyclers, so we enlisted Terri and Joan, who made short work of the problem. No one had ever seen Gary in a suit but he often wears a vest, so Joan suggested one now. For me they thought a wrap would ameliorate the defects of the sleeveless slinky dress, and Gary quickly spotted an earth-tone knit shrug as we headed out of Penney’s on our way to Nordstrom. Making our way through the mall we ran into Payless Shoes where I found something for ten percent of what I was willing to pay if only I could see the inside of the Nordstrom. But once I bought the shoes we were fully outfitted, so I never got there. My idea of a bargain used to be forty percent off at the semi-annual Armani sale. I’m learning skills now that go way beyond the wilderness.

Gary in his three-piece suit and me in my slinky sleeveless dress, disguised.

I’m old enough to feel a sort of surprised relief when reuniting with friends and family is an occasion of joy and not sorrow. Gary is like a brother to Glenn and Joan, and this gathering gave me a chance to meet a few of their childhood friends. I listened to stories from long before I had met Gary or my Alaskan cousins, and got to see for myself how well-loved Gary is by those who have known him longest. The wedding was intimate and low-key, a delight. And there is no truth to the rumor that I made a flying leap to catch the bouquet. It fell right into my hands.

The wedding party. From left, Joan, Gary, Michael (Glenn's son), Terri, Glenn and Danielle. Terri still has the bouquet!

We relaxed with friends and family the day after the wedding, and on Friday we did laundry at the laundromat (running four washers at a time makes quick work of it, even when you have several weeks of dirty clothes) and shopped for provisions. Circling the Costco parking lot and sitting through green lights while young men pushed cars out of icy, snowy intersections made us even more eager to get home. It had snowed eight inches overnight, but later in the day the skies cleared. We left at 7:30 on Christmas Eve morning and got home by 2:30. The return trip was quicker since we didn’t have a dead car battery to contend with.

Once we were home, Gary put the kindling he’d prepared to good use. I put one of my stock pots of filtered ice on the stove and began moving frozen food we wanted to keep frozen out onto the porch. Well-traveled Subway sandwiches don’t sound like a great Christmas Eve dinner, but they were easy. It would still take a good day to unpack everything else, put away weeks of laundry, and restock our water supply. But what did the calendar mean to us now, home alone together in our little cabin?

Sunrise: 10:36 a.m.
Sunset: 3:23 p.m.
Weather: High 4°, low -25°, with most of the day hovering around the low; yesterday, too. But sunny and beautiful, the mountains brilliant and the sun’s higher arc in evidence as sun starts to hit Glenn’s cabin.

Sights and Surprises December 28, 2011

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

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Signs of Life

Every day we see the tracks of neighboring wildlife, but they appear in sharpest relief when snow has obscured our own footprints. A snowshoe hare seems to live in our yard, perhaps attracting the fox who visits occasionally. Moose browse the riverbanks, and caribou sometimes pass not far from the wind turbine. Smaller tracks suggest martens, voles and birds – Canadian jays, magpies, chickadees, ravens, spruce grouse and ptarmigan. The birds sometimes leave wing marks in the snow, perfect snow angels.

The single track belongs to the fox; a snowshoe hare has visited, too. The fox may have been hunting birds, which seek out open water.

We don’t see the animals themselves as often as we’d like, but on Saturday as we made our way home on the snowmachine leg of our trip back from Anchorage we saw seven moose. New snow fell in our absence, and as snow deepens moose increasingly use the road.

The day after Christmas as I was filling my water buckets I looked up from the watering hole to see Ella standing stock still, attention focused, paw pointing. I turned to see a large cow moose browsing the opposite riverbank.

I didn’t have my camera with me, so I told Ella to stay with me as I crawled up out of the watering hole’s ice room on my belly, not rising until I was well  under the cover of the woods. I ran to the cabin and came back quietly, Ella on my heels. I went out onto the river; the moose saw us, but didn’t startle. Ella looked at me and then toward the cabin as I shot photos; she seemed to be offering to go get Gary. She could see I was wasting a perfectly good shot, using a camera instead of a rifle.

Bonfire

When Gary cut down the trees blocking the sun from our solar panels and the wind from our turbine (see “Men in Trees,” October 2011), we filled our big red sled several times with the debris. The resulting pile had a purpose: it formed the base of our solstice bonfire. Gary added branches from the dead spruce we recently harvested for firewood, and the mound grew. As it turned out, we were away at the solstice—my cousin Glenn’s wedding day—and snow had covered our woodpile. So Gary set about trimming dead branches from trees in our yard this week, and once that was done it was time for the bonfire, before any more snow could fall.

Gary lighting the bonfire

The bonfire stood over six feet tall, not counting a foot or two completely covered by ground snow. Gary lit the fire in three or four places. As it began to take hold, sparks rose high, red lights swirling against black sky. After some time the sparks diminished, and soft gold flames rose from iris blue heat.

Ella chews a stick while Gary watches the bonfire

Ella brought a stick with her, and sat chewing it nervously as she witnessed the destruction of so many potentially fine sticks. Gary and I watched the fire, lost in thought. Ella interrupted us frequently, at times to woof at an unseen animal outside the perimeter of light, but mostly she was talking, wanting to be petted or entertained, or maybe complaining about the pointless waste of sticks. Ella doesn’t often talk, but when she does she’s usually complaining, and it sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher in the “Peanuts” specials.

“Wuh?” she asked, pointing with her nose for permission to redeem some sticks that had fallen out of the fire’s reach.

A wall of orange-hot branches remained. Gary pulled green boughs from under the snow, working until all the branches were in the fire’s path. I wondered aloud how far our fire might be seen.

A wall of burnt-orange branches glowed as the bonfire began to wane

“When man first orbited the earth, the Bushmen of Australia lit bonfires, and the astronauts saw the Bush ablaze with them,” Gary told me.

We watched awhile longer, and when the blaze was not much bigger than a good campfire we turned home.

Sunrise: 10:39 a.m.
Sunset:  3:15 p.m.
Weather: High 12°, low -4°, calm with light snow.

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