Monthly Archives: December 2011

Sights and Surprises December 28, 2011

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Sights and Surprises

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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.

Aside

Merry Christmas!

25 Sunday Dec 2011

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Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all!

I harvested some of the icicles from my watering hole. Gary heated a wire to put a hole in each for hanging. The rest of the ornaments are from candy wrappers and Christmas cards, plus the aluminum foil star. We just got home yesterday from Anchorage—Gary was best man in my cousin’s wedding on the solstice—so we haven’t gotten around to the popcorn and cranberry garland yet. We were afraid the birds would finish it off before we got the other ornaments up!

The Shortest Days

22 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Daily Life

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With sunrise coming later and later – it was at 10:38 this morning – I usually wake up once or twice before dawn. Our bed sits high, level with a window, affording an easy view of the night sky and the spruce-covered slope up to our hill. I’ve learned that if I wake to see Orion directly facing me, the time, now in late December, is about 3 a.m. A few days ago I woke to find a bright moon in Orion’s place; it was 7:30, well before first light.

Sunrise comes late and lovely

When I was a kid, my sister Janet once gave me a Snoopy pillow that read, “I’m allergic to morning.” I’ve always loved my sleep. In recent years, though, I learned to rise very early, just before 4 a.m., to make time for my coffee and my thoughts. Then I would head off to the gym or out for a run before turning the rest of my day over to the needs of others at work and at home. In Alaska, with the best of both worlds, I can sleep in and still wake up before the crack of dawn.

I like to be the first one up. Though we keep a chamber pot in the bedroom, I can’t bring myself to use it, so I use a bladder-activated alarm clock. Wedged as I am between the window and Gary, I slide off the foot of the bed, careful to find the floor first, then the opening to the loft’s ladder, which lies just inches away.

Ella greets me as I reach the landing, making it hard to disembark. She used to stay curled up if I got up early or if the fire had gone cold. Now that she’s taken to climbing up on the loveseat after we’ve gone to bed, she tries to sneak down before we can catch her. I stoke the fire, slip on the imitation Ugg boots I got at Costco, and zip up my giant parka. Then Ella and I run outside together, racing back before I have time to wish I’d put on some clothes. Though it’s in the 20’s now, we had a cold snap with several days starting at 38 below. Still, even at those temperatures a quick foray doesn’t require more than a jacket and slipper-boots.

The coffee grinder, with jars of coffee beans at the ready and a loaf pan to catch the ground coffee

Back in the cabin, I grind coffee in an old grain grinder, enjoying the sound and smell and the crunching resistance as I turn the handle twenty-five times for the first of our two pots. Ella and I might sit together on the loveseat as I start my first cup, but she jumps off to greet Gary, who emerges very shortly. Between pots, I make the trip to the raised garden bed in back to dump the spent grounds. Oatmeal and raisins simmer on the stove while Gary and I make our plans for the day. This is our routine every day except Sundays, which we celebrate with buckwheat pancakes, blueberries, and maple syrup. Usually we finish breakfast just after sunrise these days, so we are suddenly alive with activity, keen to capture the daylight.

Blocks of snow cover the crawl space and form a base for banking snow around the cabin

Snow banking is a seasonal chore. A few weeks ago we set about banking the house on all sides with snow for insulation. To cover the crawl space under the cabin, Gary filled apple boxes with snow and left them overnight to set into blocks. But the warmth from inside the house and outside from the sun causes the snow to pull away from the walls, so every few days I mend it with new snow, trying to see how high I can get it to stick.

Despite our best efforts, when it is very cold rime grows on the inside of the windows, and an increasingly solid frost outlines the front door frame. The kitchen drain stopped draining, so until we can figure out whether it’s just frozen or if the underground tank is full, dishwater has to be tossed outside. I know it won’t be long before I slip with the bucket of greasy, oatmeal-y water on my way to the compost pile.

Gary covered as many windows as he could with the foam board he had on hand, and we open the boards every morning to catch any light that may come our way. The rooftop solar panels catch little light as the sun makes its lazy arch lower and lower in the sky, so if there’s no wind we have to keep Internet usage to a minimum, which partly explains the recent gap in my postings.

I once sent Gary a winter solstice card, thinking what a relief it must be to know that the days would begin to grow longer. He answered that he always felt a bit sad knowing the daylight would start eating away the dark. For the first time, I think I understand. The short days give a happy sense of urgency, whether to go out in the snow for pleasure or just to use the daylight to get things done. I love how the pink shades of sunrise and sunset set the boundaries, soft boundaries now as they very nearly join up. And the nights, to my great surprise, are almost light. The snow reflects every ray of moonlight or starlight, and only at the new moon is there any real darkness. We often ski on the frozen river, coming home by the light of the moon. And once we’re home for the night, I love knowing that the darkness will bring time for reading, talking and planning, cooking, eating and sleeping, uninterrupted by the guilt of burning daylight.

Three days to Thanksgiving

16 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Travel

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By the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we still hadn’t told Gary’s sister Karen whether we would come. An email from her daughter, Kristen, saying “please please please” promised cheesecake and “maybe” a lemon meringue pie. Our desire to go had been sincere, but now we could taste it.

But our failure to confirm didn’t stem from ambivalence, forgetfulness, laziness, lack of courtesy, or even—my personal favorite—lack of wind power. It was just too cold. Nights dropped to 36 degrees below zero, then 38 below; if temperatures didn’t rise during the day, the wind did.

On the "highway" going to town

So, without a break in the weather, Thanksgiving travel was a non-starter. Literally. We were pretty sure my car wouldn’t start, and dead certain when even the snowmachine balked.

“This is not good,” Gary said. Ella hates swearing, so Gary has developed a gift for understatement.

My car is parked in town, thirty miles away and more than an hour’s travel by snowmachine. It’s not a trip we’d voluntarily make in those temperatures; it’s dangerous in extreme cold to be sitting still, let alone on a machine that creates its own wind chill. But without a snowmachine, we’re truly stranded. In an emergency, we would have to email friends to call one of the local bush pilots, or go out to the road hoping to flag down a passing musher.

The day warmed, the snowmachine started, and we found new energy to prepare for the trip. Our cabin and everything in it would freeze once we left, so we had to deal with anything that wouldn’t survive and ready things to return the cabin to its toasty state quickly when we got back.

On Monday we’d taken care of everything that wasn’t time-sensitive. Some things were basic: changing the bed, gathering six weeks of laundry, tidying, making shopping lists, packing. Gary built a wooden box for Ella to ride in behind the passenger seat. On Tuesday we did the things we’d wish we hadn’t if we did end up staying home: we put away tools, skis, snowshoes, and anything that might walk away (snowmachiners sometimes explore the area) or disappear under a snowfall. Gary began packing the sled with the space heater and battery charger for my car, gas containers to be filled, and coolers to fill with groceries for the return trip. He split birch wood into kindling to start a very hot fire very quickly when we got back. We gathered sleeping bags, fire starter, flashlights, and extra warm clothes in case we broke down on the road.

I focused on food. We had two enormous bags of carrots, several pounds of sweet potatoes, purple potatoes Gary and Karen had cultivated in their mother’s garden during the summer, a couple of onions, a bag of garlic, and a flat of apples, none of which take well to freezing. I must have spent an hour grating carrots, missing my Cuisinart for the first time. When I couldn’t stand grating anymore, I mixed the grated carrots with crushed pineapple and raisins for a salad to take as our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. The rest of the carrots I blanched in stew-sized chunks, so they would still be sufficiently carrot-like for cooking when we got back. I blanched the purple potatoes, too, and Gary baked the sweet potatoes atop the wood stove in the Dutch oven. The salad and the rest of the perishables he wrapped in a sleeping bag and set in a cooler to make the round trip.

I emptied the water filter for fear its ceramic elements might otherwise crack if they froze. Ella packed her food and dishes—well, someone did, anyway. When we went to bed late Tuesday night, the temperature was eighteen below. Not bad. We were almost ready to go.

Wednesday morning we woke early. Now it was twenty-eight below, pretty close to some unspoken cut-off point. We ate quickly and downed our coffee. We gathered bowls and buckets and pans, pouring in only a couple of inches of water in each; that way the ice wouldn’t warp the containers and it would thaw quickly when we got back. Gary finished packing the sled and carefully tied it all down while I finished dressing.

Arriving at Diane's, where my car is parked

I wore two pairs of long underwear, three pairs of socks, mukluks with two insoles—tufts of hair Ella had been shedding sandwiched between them—a pair of wind-resistant pants, and down over-pants. Then came a wool camisole, a silk turtleneck, a cashmere turtleneck, a Swedish wool zip turtleneck with a long shirttail (sweatertail?) and thumbholes—great for eliminating the gap between mittens and sleeves—and a wool plaid shirt. I waited until I was outside to don the giant hooded synthetic down parka—sold to us with the understanding that it would be uncomfortable in temperatures above zero—a neoprene ski mask, goggles, and a wool hat. I topped all this with a windproof, canvas, knee-length hooded anorak with a thick coyote ruff. Only then could I cover my cashmere-lined leather gloves with bulky wool knit mittens, which went inside gigantic over-mittens.

You may be wondering how I could move or breathe.

I couldn’t.

Ella and I walked to the road while Gary warmed up the snowmachine. I thought he would stop to lock the gate, so I took off my hood and goggles; since I couldn’t do anything with my mittens on, they came off, too. However, as it happened, Gary had no intention of taking time to lock the gate; he had the same problems with movement and overheating—it’s as much a matter of safety as comfort to avoid getting wet with sweat in that weather—and was none too happy about waiting while I struggled to get my mittens and goggles back on.

I faced backward on the snowmachine for two reasons: to reduce the wind in my face, and to watch and comfort Ella, who is happy to run alongside and then catch a ride in our arms when she tires, but did not want to ride in a box. I stuffed my overly mittened hands into the box next to Ella’s warmth, peering at the passing landscape from beneath my fogged-up goggles. Gary reached back and gave me a reassuring pat on the leg.

After several miles he pulled to the side and stopped. I tried to turn toward him, but only a few of my layers turned with me, so I couldn’t see him. All those hats and hoods create a pretty convincing preview of what my hearing will be like if I live long enough, so when I heard Gary’s voice I assumed he was saying, “A musher’s headed this way,” or “I have to pee.”

But he wasn’t. Frustrated, he shouted, “Look!” and pointed.

I managed to turn enough to see a gorgeous bull caribou in his winter-white cape.

“What did you think I was stopping for?” Gary said, more quietly now that he had my attention.

“No idea,” I said. Even more than a few words seemed difficult with all the layers.

The next time we stopped, I worked harder to get both myself and my clothes to face forward. Good thing, too: Gary wanted to show me a gorgeous view of the Mountain. Here, “the Mountain” refers to Mt. McKinley─Denali. It’s the same as San Franciscans saying “the City” when speaking of their town. It would have taken too long for us to dismount and get back on, so I handed Gary my camera.

If I have your address, you will probably get our holiday card with the photo Gary took that day.

View of Denali on our way to town

Less than ten miles later we reached my car. The battery was dead. Even the heater─the one we had brought to heat the engine─wouldn’t start until we thawed it in our friend Diane’s home. I hoped what I saw dripping as Gary carried the heater back to the car was melting ice, but when Diane stepped back inside from feeding her goats, she found me sniffing her floor.

“Uh, we dripped fuel oil on your floor,” I said awkwardly. Confession seemed like the only option.

“That’s OK. Are you kidding? It’s not the first time,” Diane reassured me cheerfully.

Then she pointed out the outhouse, seemingly apropos of nothing. I looked out the window and realized she would have had a perfect view of me peeing out front when we first arrived.

“Oh, great, thanks!” I answered weakly, deciding against confession this time.

A couple of hours work got the battery charged. Gary had transferred everything from the sled to the car, and we were ready to go again, except now the Subaru’s back gate didn’t want to shut tight, leaving us with the interior lights on. Dark was closing in, and we had several hours of driving on snowy roads ahead of us. We unscrewed the bulbs we could reach and drove on. After a while we pulled over, and by then the tailgate was more cooperative.  Soon we were able to get a radio station to come in. A reporter stated that 42 million Americans were traveling over the holiday weekend, most by car. We saw about 42 of them in the first couple of hours of driving.

When we finally pulled in to Karen’s drive it was well after the dinner hour, but we found a warm welcome, pizza, a microwave, and a shower. It wasn’t Thanksgiving yet, but we were very thankful.

Sunrise: 10:32 a.m.
Sunset:  3:09 p.m.
Weather: High 17, Low 7, snow and wind.

Note: In the hustle of the return trip, I lost my camera and the photos for this posting.  When I come up with similar ones, I’ll add them.

Riverdance

03 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in Nature

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I come from a place where the seasons are constrained in an extraordinarily tight and moderate range. San Francisco rarely sees temperatures above 90 or below 40. Seasonal change is comparatively subtle. Autumn leaves drop in the heat of Indian Summer; cherry blossoms appear when the year is new, and reliable old oak trees come into focus on the straw-brown hillsides well before summer fog rolls into the City.

Here I expected a monotony of winter broken mainly by changes in temperature, snowfall and wind. And the freeze-up of the river, I knew that was coming. But I naively imagined ice would spread from the banks inward, simply a thickening layer over the water.

Early ice on the river

At first that’s what seemed to be happening. One day the stepping stones I had used to get to the clear flowing water in summer had a thin shell of ice. A scenic frost formed around them, and soon ice scalloped the length of the shoreline and began to edge the mid-stream boulders. The rush of water swept young ice into its stream, and I filled my buckets with icewater.

Ladling slush from the overflow

I was surprised by what happened next. Unseen ice forming along the frozen riverbed narrowed the creek’s channels, pushing water up and over the surface crust. Slushy water flowed onto the banks and through the willow brush. I learned to wade cautiously until I found myself in ladle-worthy depths.

Once temperatures dropped close to zero, slush quickly turned to ice. Snowfall covered the slightest crusts, creating the appearance of a river largely frozen over, breached only by a few pools. Under the snow was a patchwork of ice, made thick or thin by forces of air, sun, wind, water and snow. A deep eddy was close to shore; the ice leading to it was solid, so I had an easy filling station for my water buckets. Briefly. A cold snap brought temperatures as low as 38 below zero. High winds made a good excuse not to go out one day and that was enough; the pool had closed.

Surface ice forming on the creek

I moved on to the next opening, but the hole quickly became the very definition of a slippery slope, a two-foot perimeter of slick and sloping ice. When I didn’t come back promptly from my water errand one day, Gary found me with the ice chisel, back at my original spot hacking away fruitlessly. Taking over, he chopped through six inches of solid ice. To defend the breach, we laid spruce boughs over it and topped them with an insulating blanket of snow.

We hiked upstream on the riverbed, turning home at sunset

We left to spend Thanksgiving with Gary’s sister and her family near Anchorage. It stayed cold, so we delayed our return and didn’t go back to the creek for a week. Everything had changed. The creek looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake. Long fissures appeared through thick ice along the shore. Its sources frozen, the river rapidly lost volume, leaving nothing to support the surface. Here and there ice had crashed to a new, lower surface; in other spots it had cracked but held, for the moment. Our water hole was intact—if a hole can be intact—perfectly protected by the snow-covered boughs. But the water level had dropped a good two feet; a new layer of ice had formed below. The water was well out of reach.

Ella peers down toward the new watering hole

Our second pool, too, was gone. Heavy ice covering an area about half the size of our kitchen had collapsed down about three feet, revealing a ceiling about eight inches thick. A smaller shelf appears above the floor, making it seem like a room.

Standing quietly, we could hear water. Gary stepped down onto the floor, chopping at it with axe and ice chisel. The ice was about two feet thick. He worked up a sweat, making a hole large enough to dip the bucket in. We brought bigger boughs and shoveled more snow to protect it.

The ice is nearly as thick as the bucket is tall

I love my new watering hole. I can sit on the floor and peer under the river’s surface. Icicles hang from the bottom of the surface ice, and the ice version of stalagmites rise from the floor. It is decorated with crystals and carpeted with snow. I can look right through the sheered edge of the surface ice; transparent blue, it is utterly gorgeous. I hope the ice and water will stay awhile, unaltered. But I know that when I come back to find my ice room changed, something beautiful will take its place.

The ice is transparent where it sheered off; I can see under the river's surface of ice

It may not be convenient, but it will be beautiful.

Sunrise: 10:07 a.m.
Sunset:  3:23 p.m.
Weather: High 28, low 14, light snow off and on throughout the day.