Yesterday, our first day back after some travel, we weeded the garden of a surprising amount of green grass, and protected our little 4′ x 8′ raised bed with vole-defying plastic sheeting. We planted just a few of our vegetable seeds, in the hope that our mild weather will continue and allow the germinating seeds to take advantage of the long hours of sunshine we now enjoy. The night darkens not long before midnight now, and when I roused in morning’s light today, the clock read 4:28. When we finally got up it was snowing.

I left for a visit to San Francisco and Helena in mid-April, a final ride on the snow machine to my car. Returning, I found a new world emerging from under the snow. The new sounds are as striking as the sights: birdsong and mating calls from all sorts of birds I don’t recognize; even the ravens have a new call that sounds like a drop hitting a water-filled bucket. Muck slurps from my boots, buzzing flies swarm, and the outhouse sounds more, well, liquid. I was relieved to see the river still has its sheath of ice, so I haven’t missed the drama of break-up that I’ve heard so much about.

I’d like to stay and watch each day’s evolution, but we are headed to Anchorage soon on a journey we hadn’t planned. Gary’s recent CT scan, routine follow-up from the sarcoma he had a couple of years ago, showed a spot on his pancreas, a tumor. The tumor will be removed, together with his spleen, and only then will we learn whether it is cancerous.

Cocooning with Gary through the winter here, I have felt protected, safe, untouchable. But life is inherently dangerous; it must be so. What lies outside the cocoon is not yet clear. But as we emerge we will endeavor to face it with strength nourished by the love and beauty we have found together, and by your good thoughts and prayers.

I will keep you posted.

Icicles akimbo off the east side of the cabin.

A constant drip from the roof, the occasional “thwump!” as a section of snow slides off, chickadee-dee-dee, these are the sounds of spring.  Snow disappeared from the porch, then melted away from the grate in front of the door; once again we can stomp snow from boots on our way in. Yesterday a porch step re-emerged, a now-unexpected drop-off. Our well-insulated, formerly icicle-free cabin is dripping icicles as sun melts the still-thick snow from the east-facing roof. The steeper west-facing roof is blue again; I watched the last section of snow crash to the ground a week ago. Gary leads an expedition to cut firewood, logs and poles or break and reinforce ski trails most days with a new sense of urgency, while we can still run the snowmachine and its sleds on the river and through the woods.

Gary reinforcing a new ski trail with a wooden "drag" behind the snowmachine

Canadian jays overwintered here, but gave off begging for food suddenly in the last days of March. Chickadees, with us again since late January, were joined first by one grosbeak, then others, in early March. Week before last I heard a woodpecker in our yard; and while we were out in the woods a few days ago, we saw the first bald eagle of the season high overhead. The snowshoe hare or hares are in frequent evidence, and Ella has chased her first squirrels of the season. She will soon be providing copious amounts of nesting materials for the local feathered population: she started shedding a few days ago.

Our resident snowshoe hare.

Sunglasses are a permanent fixture around my neck or on my head – I didn’t need them this much in California! I’m more likely to forget my hat, gloves and even my jacket, cheechako that I am, than my sunglasses; the brightness is astounding, even on a cloudy day. The ice around my water hole has become mostly transparent and even less stable; on warmer days I think about going to the river in nothing but my boots, to avoid drenching my clothes when the inevitable happens. (See www.indeep-alaska.com/2012/03/07/taking-a-leap.)

Ella gets a ride on the snowmachine.

For months I drafted these blog posts in a notebook to conserve energy, but now I can type away knowing we’ll have plenty of solar even on a cloudy day. Days are balmy, up to 42°, a temperature that seemed far colder last fall than it does now. I had started sitting on the porch to work at the computer, but moved back indoors after Ella hurt her two right paws in short succession, as no amount of pain seems to keep her from jumping and playing when she has the chance. Her injuries put a crimp in our plans to go camping, but Gary assures me we’ll have enough snow to carry our gear in sleds for weeks to come.

After the snow-camping season ends, a pack animal may stand in for the sled. We’re thinking of getting a goat. I used to drink copious amounts of milk, and miss it terribly. Goats are social animals, so if we get a milker she will need a companion. We saw an experienced pack-goat on craigslist the other day; though we couldn’t call about it, not having a phone, when we go out next we’ll see if a milking doe and a pack goat can’t be squeezed into my SUV.  Yaks might be even better for milk and packing, but I don’t think I can get even one yak into my car.

Gary is working on this peeled spruce trellis he calls "Rising Sun."

Spring has given us other ideas, too. With the season for garden sales coming up, Gary had a thought to design and build bentwood trellises as he thins young spruce from his land. As for me, when we went to Fairbanks I bought supplies to make a mould and deckle for papermaking, something I’ve never even thought about trying before.

It’s too warm to keep the fire hot all day, and that’s started us thinking about cooking outdoors. I miss baking (and all three of us miss my bread), so we’re going to set up to bake over an outdoor fire. And since I dragged a solar cooker all the way from San Francisco, where I never had enough sun to use it, Gary pulled it out of the shed today, and I’ll start learning to cook in it on the next sunny day.

Springtime in San Francisco meant flowering trees and greening hills. Here we have sunshine and snow. Everywhere it’s time for the new, time for renewal. Get out and enjoy.

Spring is a lovely time for after-dinner walks. This is what 9:00 p.m. looks like.

Sunrise:  7:01 a.m.
Sunset:   8:56 p.m.
Weather: High 42°, low -8°, mostly cloudy.

Spring solstice, looking north to the Alaska Range

Sunny days, sunglasses and sunscreen: it must be spring break! Snow and sun combine to make the world bright white and blue; even the green of the trees fades into the background. Days stretch to evening, long as mid-summer days in San Francisco. I never need a flashlight when the snows are lit with the reflection of the moon and stars; if I did, it would blind me to the green glow of auroras that followed the recent spate of solar flares. No wonder Alaskans find this the perfect place for spring break.  Just as a torrent of snowmachiners rushed down our highway, over our river and through our woods, we took our own spring break and headed north to Fairbanks.

The impetus for our trip was a three-day conference on sustainable agriculture in Alaska. But it was also a chance to buy groceries and do laundry after nearly three months in the backwoods. We stayed with Gary’s sister Tina and her family in North Pole; I even got my first haircut in eight months, thanks to Gary’s niece Selena!

See how the dogs jump with excitement as they wait to start the race!

North Pole is the town that gets and answers all the letters sent to “Santa Claus, North Pole.” It’s a place where keeping Christmas decorations up year-round is encouraged, especially around Santa Claus Lane (which intersects with St. Nicolas Drive). It earns its name in part by having weather that is easily 15 degrees colder than nearby Fairbanks, which is itself as cold as or colder than we are in winter. But we got lucky—it never got below -30° when we were there.

The Fairbanks ice sculpture contest brings in artists from around the world.

A flashy fur parka in the Fairbanks Parka Parade.

And there’s lots going on in Fairbanks this time of year: we saw the third and final day of the Open North American Championship sled dog race, noisy dogs bouncing with excitement, a parka parade showing off traditional parkas (and, with nine entrants, reminding us that Fairbanks is still a small town), an ice sculpture park, and the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska.

It’s always hard to leave home, in part because it robs us of so many good days here. It takes the better part of two days to get ready for the trip, two days of travel round trip, and a day to unpack and resettle. Getting ready includes gathering laundry, packing and cleaning, but we also have to prepare for the cabin to freeze. Gary makes large batches of kindling, enough to start and keep a quick, hot fire burning for the several hours it takes to warm the cabin and everything in it when we return. I take charge of dealing with food and water. It’s getting easier: this time we didn’t have any fresh food left, eliminating the chore of blanching it or otherwise preparing it so it would survive freezing. Last time we went away I made ice in small batches in pans to thaw quickly when we returned, so we wouldn’t have to get water from the river after a long day’s travel. It was tedious, since only a tiny bit of water could be left in each pan or bucket; allowing water to freeze in any volume will cause the containers to bulge and buckle. This time I harvested ice and icicles from my water hole and stored them in buckets. At first I chiseled ice, which I needed to do anyway to re-open the iced-over water hole. When most of the ice dropped into the current as it broke free, I hit on the idea of filling my buckets with icicles. I hated to do it—I love seeing the icicles in my beautiful ice room—but by taking them from the least visible spots I was able to keep the beauty of the place intact. (See http://www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/12/03/Riverdance/)

We went to the conference to hear what’s going on in agriculture in Alaska, which ships in 95% of its food supply. We learned about mushroom cultivation; flour milling; cold-hardy hogs that eat grass and don’t root; beekeeping in top-bar hives; geothermal farming done near hot springs; why peony farming is such a specialty here; how to get the government to pay for your greenhouse; biochar, an environmentally constructive charred-wood product used for long-term soil improvement; and how to sell at farmers markets and to restaurants and buyers for Princess, the big hotel and cruise line.

Living here is amazing, but it’s hard to generate much income. We’d like to have land where we can grow our own food and keep horses and livestock for work, play, meat, and maybe dairy. Our growing season is short here and the land won’t support much more than one or two goats or sheep (or reindeer or yaks) and six weeks of garden vegetables. We’ll need more land in a less remote, more temperate place. That doesn’t rule out Alaska, but it almost certainly rules out our home here, which sees snow early and late, and is likely to have a freeze every month of the year.

Gary has some experience working with cattle and sheep. I am bereft of experience even vaguely relevant to ranching. Some days I think about finding some docile, high-butterfat sort of animal for a varietal butter or artisanal ice cream endeavor. Having just left the regulation-intensive industry of money management, I question the wisdom of getting into anything as highly regulated as dairy. When I think about the ice cream itself, the regulations don’t loom so large. Then I remember I know nothing about milking animals, except that it must be done every day twice a day, except in winter when I could let the poor gals dry up. So my thoughts turn to sheep or mushrooms or biochar or ecotourism. But eventually I return to dreams of butter, cheese and ice cream: if I can’t sell it, at least I can eat it!

Pooling our resources, Gary and I hope to find land—land in need of improvement, perhaps, but enough for a few grazing animals—land enough to embark on our experiment without taking on debt or spending all our savings. We want natural beauty, live water, room to roam. If the land is fenced for cattle, with a house and maybe a barn, that would save precious time, but we could live in a tent or a yurt at first if we had to. We love a sense of seclusion, but community is important too, and not just to have a market for our products. Where we might do this—in Alaska or in the lower 48—is, like everything else about our plan, very much unsettled.

I’m in no rush. I should be, I suppose, as we are rather well above a prudent age for embarking on such a different and demanding venture. I’m just not ready to leave. I don’t want to think I’ll never have another winter and spring here. April, Gary tells me, is perhaps the most beautiful month of all. I suppose everything will come together in its own time. We’ll find land that seems right, and it may tell us what to do. Then we’ll start our new adventure. Meanwhile I’ll revel in this one, knowing it won’t last forever.

Sunrise: 7:36 a.m.
Sunset:  8:27 p.m.
Weather: High 17°, low -23°, calm, mixed sun and clouds.

Having fun at the Fairbanks Ice Park!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve showered to wake up, warm up and wind down as well as wash up; a hot shower is refuge and reward. Gary knew this, and perhaps he couldn’t be sure I’d ever feel at home without a shower. He fretted about making what had been more summer camp than cabin into a home in when he arrived here in June, just two-and-a-half months before I did; soon he wrote me he was building an addition to the cabin to house a shower and closet. I was pleased, of course, but felt a twinge; I’d never asked for a shower, but I knew the price, particularly in time, was dear.

Gary’s letters took me through his struggle to make a home for us from the day he returned to the cabin after two years’ absence, overwhelmed by decades of stuff and the memories it contained. Beyond the truckload of belongings he’d brought from San Francisco, Gary had enough in storage to fill a boxcar, and he actually did. The Alaska Railroad unhooked the boxcar from the train, he spent three days loading it, and when it arrived he spent another three days unloading it, filling his truck and horse trailer each time, making the thirty-mile drive down the gravel road to the cabin, unloading, and going back the next day. There was more to it than that, including a broken nose, but it was still only a small part of Gary’s challenge: to clean out the place and make a comfortable space for the two of us.

Gary got the place looking great by the time I arrived. This is the cabin's main room.

Summer days are long here, but summer itself is short. Gary had to prioritize work requiring unfrozen ground, temperate weather, abundant daylight, or any combination of these. Planting a vegetable garden, digging the foundation for the addition and for the shower’s underground drainage tank, building a small woodshed for firewood that otherwise sat on the porch, these things Gary had to do early. Making an outhouse seat – it was a simple squatter before – was a small job, but one he thought best to complete before I arrived. Building drawers, shelves and a cabinet in the kitchen gave him something to do on the frequent rainy days.

Gary had to bring in the shower stall and attach the drain before putting up exterior walls, but once that was done the shower room project gave way to more urgent matters. By then I’d arrived, and we had several multi-day trips to winterize my car, find warm clothes and skis for me, and buy a snowmachine and sled, solar panels, generators, wind turbines and provisions for winter. The cabin had never been used in winter, so Gary removed the blue metal roof, panel by panel, along with a number of squirrels’ nests, positioned new insulating foam board, and then reinstated the roof. He built yet another woodshed to accommodate the load of green birch we’d bought, and began splitting wood so I could stack it there to dry. We set up the wind tower; Gary installed the turbine and together we dug four-foot post holes for the platform we needed for the additional solar panels and managed to fix the heavy sixteen-foot six-by-six timbers in the holes with no major injuries. By this time in the season the sun was too low in the sky to reach the platform, so Gary finished building it but set aside the task of installing the panels.

The large woodshed going up.

Separated as it is from the main room with its hot wood-burning stove, the new addition is cold in winter. We close it off in extreme weather to retain heat where we need it most, but when temperatures dip much below zero we can’t imagine showering there. So priorities shifted to logging deadwood to refill firewood stores, installing the solar panels, keeping trails open and packed with the snowmachine, skiing and generally getting out to enjoy the season. With the upturn in temperatures recently Gary refocused on the new addition; he installed insulation, paneled the interior walls, built the closet and shelves, configured a workspace just big enough for his carving bench, and put finishing touches on the shower stall. He was going to paint the shower area, but previously-frozen latex paint never returns to its liquid state, come to find out. Last fall we bought a pesticide sprayer that holds three gallons, and after a certain amount of futzing it was ready to function as the shower’s mechanism.

This is the pesticide sprayer that serves as the mechanism for our new shower.

Meanwhile, we’d been making do with nightly sponge baths and the old-fashioned Saturday night bath in the galvanized steel tub. (See www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/09/27/complex-solutions-for-a-simple-world-part-ii.) Well, Saturday night for me, right before our Saturday night movie; Sunday for Gary. Gary loves his bath, reading or working Sudoku while he soaks.

I love how I feel after my bath; the experience itself is hardly relaxing. First I mix the water from one of the large stock pots on the stove with cold water or hotter water until I’ve got it just right. I kneel on a towel next to the tub and stick my head over it while Gary ladles the water onto my hair. (This sounds easy enough, but involves some rarely-used muscles to hold the position.) Once my hair is wet, Gary pauses while I lather up, then gives me a rinse. The once-weekly schedule means my hair is really dirty, so it’s rinse-lather-repeat. When we’ve decided my hair is clean and shampoo-free, I climb into the sudsy water and bathe. The process is much like any bath, except there’s no room to maneuver in the cramped space; how to get the soap to the harder-to-reach body parts is a puzzlement. When I’m done I really should rinse off the soapy water, but it’s not worth the trouble; I feel clean, and that’s enough. Of course there’s still the matter of the tubful of dirty water; we can empty it right away or trip over it until we do.

Shower, sweet shower. The room is small, so I couldn't get any farther back to take the photo!

But now we have a shower! We just fill the pesticide sprayer’s reservoir with water, pressurize it by pumping the handle maybe 150 times, carry the sprayer into the shower and, voila!  The hose is long enough to hook the nozzle up so it sprays down like a standard shower head, or it can be used like a flexible European shower handle. The nozzle works much like a miniature gas pump; it can be set for continual spraying or not.

I can shower as long as I want with about two gallons, and there’s always at least that much water warming on the stove. The water drains to the underground tank, so I can just relax when I’m done. It’s not the same as the kind of showers I’ve known and loved before — nothing’s the same here. But I guess that’s the point.

Happy Leap Year! Ella spotted the elusive snowshoe hare for me. The hare's not posing; he thinks I can't see him!

Sunrise: 8:11 a.m.
Sunset:  6:06 p.m.
Weather:  High 30°, low 16° and snowing. We’ve gotten about six inches of snow since Saturday night.

Return of the Sun

On Tuesday, January 24^th, 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.