Category Archives: Daily Life

Yes, We Have No Bananas

13 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 6 Comments

We have no bananas today. No apples either, though we do have blueberries and cranberries we canned last summer and some canned pineapple. We still have frozen mixed vegetables and spinach, as well as canned tomatoes, beets and olives, dried onions and potatoes. For some reason we have lots of corn, frozen, canned and dried. We were sad to see the last of the peanut butter go; we try to make enough buckwheat pancakes on Sundays to have leftovers for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I had a large can of peanuts, but just as I was getting good at making peanut brittle I opened it to find only one solitary goober, sitting forlornly in a bed of salt.

We’re still enjoying blueberries harvested last summer.

Canned cream: not for the weak of heart.

I haven’t had a glass of wine for weeks. I would miss it more except that we’re limited to boxed wines; they freeze without breaking and we can burn most of the packaging. Some boxed wine is OK; some tastes so bad it has to be really cold to be drinkable. Fortunately, that’s not a problem here.

Last week we ran out of butter, so I’ve been using rendered goose fat, kept frozen in a pint jar on the porch since Christmas. The other night I made licorice chews with goose fat and canned cream. (They tasted better than they sound.) Am I the only one who never heard of canned cream before?  It’s caramel colored — I’m being polite here — with the texture of watery yogurt, and comes in 7.4-ounce cans. If I need cream so badly that I’m buying it in a can, don’t you think they could give me a full cup so I don’t have to adjust every recipe? I’m guessing canned cream is only sold in places where even ultra-pasteurized cream won’t last between trips to the grocery store. We haven’t been shopping since December 23rd, so that would be us. I’ve tried freezing cream, but it never does return to its liquid state.

The bananas lasted five weeks, so we’ve been without since the end of January. When we first brought the bananas home, Gary cut off the tops and we stored them in a cool, dark place. After a few weeks the skin was a disgusting mix of brown, black and yellow, but the fruit was not at all overripe. We ate half a banana each on our daily oatmeal, together with half an apple, raisins and walnuts. After the bananas ran out we used banana chips while they lasted.  I did find some dried apples to simmer with our morning oatmeal and the last of the raisins, and had the presence of mind to order some walnuts from amazon.com, which we picked up when we went to the Post Office in mid-February.

Our last two bananas at the end of January. They are five weeks old and look it, but the fruit is fine.

Thanks to some friends, we also picked up eggs, yogurt and apples at the Post Office. If Brenda and Harold happen to be going to Anchorage and there’s a chance we might be coming to town, they offer to get us anything we need by way of food, hardware or other supplies. It wouldn’t be decent to give them my entire list, so I ask only for the most dearly missed items, and eggs if Brenda has some to spare from her chickens. But since Brenda and Harold weren’t around the morning we came in, they dropped the groceries off with the Postmaster. Jed handed them over with a smile as he piled the counter high with nearly two months of mail and packages. The apples brightened our breakfast for a couple of weeks, and we used the yogurt as a starter to make more yogurt. I was particularly thrilled to get eggs, since I was down to my last one, frozen in its shell. I’ve been cooking with previously-frozen eggs, but the yolk remains oddly firm even at room temperature.

I’ve stopped baking bread on the wood stove now that temperatures are higher. It requires such a hot stove, it turns the cabin into a sauna!

Despite all this, we eat well. Blueberries more than make up for whatever else is missing from our oatmeal. Canned pineapple is ambrosia to us, and it takes all our best instincts not to fight over the juice. I’ve learned to like canned beets, well enough anyway. I made quite a decent minestrone with a caribou neck bone, canned tomatoes, the last of the frozen green beans, macaroni, millet, kidney beans, frozen corn, garlic paste, dried onions and chunks of Parmesan rind. I’ve frozen lasagna made with Italian sausage, frozen spinach and reconstituted mushrooms; I don’t know how it would stand up in San Francisco, but it’s delicious here when we come home tired from logging or skiing and find it warming on the wood stove. With Brenda’s eggs I make a wonderful milk eggnog with snow; it’s like liquid ice cream. And I’ve already bragged about my newly acquired woodstove bread-baking skills. I’m using grains I never cooked with at home: dried corn in the caribou chili, barley risotto, millet, and amaranth in soups and stews. Oats, groats, kamut, and kasha sit in glass canisters on the countertop, in full view so I’ll remember to try them when I’m in an experimental mood. Cornbread baked atop the wood stove with goose fat and frozen corn is as good as it gets; if we top it with honey we hardly miss the butter. A Cornish game hen is perfect for two, with a curried stir-fry of rice and frozen mixed vegetables. And I’ve saved one lonely can of Alaskan salmon to go with my last bag of frozen spinach for a favorite pasta dish. Now, if only I had a really good wine to go with that…

Recent under-river view at my water hole.

Sunrise:  8:21 a.m.
Sunset:  7:50 p.m.
Weather: Mostly sunny and calm, high 10°, low -15°.

Taking a Leap

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 6 Comments

February 29th was as good a day as any; I was bound to fall into the river sometime. I was getting water at my usual spot, about five feet down from river’s uppermost surface of snow-covered ice, a space formed months ago when the ice collapsed down to the water’s low winter level. (See www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/12/03/riverdance/.) Only the location of my water hole remains static; I never know what I’ll find when I get there. The flux of water and weather constantly reconfigures and redecorates what I’ve come to think of as my ice room.

Gary chiseled through thick ice in early December to create our water hole, after the first one froze over.

Not long after Thanksgiving, Gary had chiseled through two feet of ice at no small effort to create a hole large enough to dip a bucket, and up until mid-January I was still using it. The ice grew until it was several inches thicker than my buckets are tall. I had to kneel and lean in deeply to force the bucket’s lip under the surface of the rushing water. A five-gallon bucket of water weighs over forty pounds, and a bucket open to a fast current seems to weigh a good deal more. Either way, bringing a full bucket up from that awkward position is almost more than I can manage.

The ice bridge, reinforced by sticks and snow.

In recent weeks, profound cold has become a rarity, with daytime highs reaching the twenties and testing the thirties. The ice surrounding my water hole thinned, subtly at first, then enough to make my job noticeably easier. One day in early February as we arrived with my bucket-filled sled, Ella and I peered down to find nothing more than a bridge of ice across open water running between narrow shores of ice on each side of the rushing water. Too cautious to make my way down to test the bridge, I left my sled and fetched Gary, who packed snow to make steps down to the lower surface. He filled my buckets, handed them up to me, and recommended I insulate and reinforce the ice bridge with more snow, together with sticks and branches. Ella thought I was collecting sticks for her; packing them in snow seemed a fine game, and she tried to pull the best ones out. But I prevailed and built up the bridge, hoping it would last awhile.

Gary has cleared an ice shelf and is building steps and a snow-and-ice platform for getting water.

Temperatures stayed high, and the warming friction of the flowing water eroded the ice bridge. In mid-February it disappeared entirely. I looked down from the upper surface, wondering whether to test the narrow ledge of ice built up at the water’s surface. Ella peered down as well. As I squatted to ponder the situation, she kissed me earnestly; she does this when she’s worried — or, as Gary tells me, when she senses that I’m worried. I decided to consult Gary again. To give me a wider surface of ice within reach of the water, he broke off a few feet of the uppermost surface with the ice chisel and let it drop, making a wider shoreline of ice accessible at water level. Up top, Gary shoveled a foot or two of snow down onto the broken ice. Now clear of snow, a patch of surface ice became a sturdy flat shelf, the perfect place to set buckets waiting to be filled. With the jumble of broken ice and snow below, Gary created rough steps down toward the water.

This ice "lily pad" with frost blossoms was destroyed when I fell in the river.

The same flowing water that eroded the ice bridge constantly creates new ice along the edges of existing ice. The young ice is beautiful, but more delicate. The day I fell in, I noticed a lily pad of ice covered with frost blossoms, and paused to take a picture before setting to work collecting water.

I aligned my buckets on the upper shelf, set each lid within reach, and accepted some nervous kisses from Ella before stepping down onto the snow and ice. The new ice had grown to over a foot in width, an awkward reach if I had to lean over it with my bucket. But it was also thicker, so I stepped on it with one foot, then with both. The ice held. I kneeled, pushing my bucket down into the flow. It filled quickly, and as I struggled to free it from the current’s pull, the ice supporting me broke free. The water isn’t deep — anywhere from two inches to two feet — but I had been kneeling and was soaked well above my waist, bucket still in hand.

I emptied the bucket and found a place for it on the ice where it wasn’t likely to topple into the current, then grabbed onto some solid ice to pull myself out. It took a moment for the water to soak through my clothes; by the time I stood up I was covered with ice. The air temperature was around zero. All I could think of was to get home and out of the clothes before I, too, turned to ice, and to see if the camera around my neck had survived. Ella had been sitting on the river at some distance and was happy enough to abandon the sled and turn homeward. If she noticed me turning into an icicle, she didn’t think it sufficient reason to fail to invite me to play ball before we reached the door.  I dried off and warmed up in front of the fire soon enough. Although the camera had barely gotten wet, it took until morning for my synthetic down coat to dry.

I dressed and went back; we still needed water. Gary was filling the buckets.

“I fell in,” I said.

“I figured,” Gary replied, handing me a full bucket to put in the sled.

I've started using the longer sled so I can bring home more water; now I only go to get water every other day.

“Didn’t you go looking for me downstream?” I wanted to know.

“No, I saw your footprints headed home. Anyway, Ella would have been running back and forth like crazy.”

Gary plays it cool, but I know he worries. Ever since, as I head out to get water, he voices his concern:

“Don’t forget to take some soap!”

Sunrise:   7:41 a.m.
Sunset:    6:32 p.m.

Gary's been putting black sunflower seeds on the feeder. The first grosbeak of the season arrived yesterday and stayed to eat his fill, despite the chickadees' best efforts to get rid of him.

Weather: High 17°, low -8°, cloudy, light snow overnight. We hit -30° the night of March 4th, the lowest it’s been for awhile, and woke up to -25° on the 5th. We’ve had some beautiful auroras and we’re expecting one tonight if it clears, but it seems to me they always come when it’s too cold to stay outside to enjoy them!

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

17 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

,

“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

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, ,

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!

Division of Labor

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

, , ,

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 http://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

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , ,

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

Posted by in Adventure, Daily Life

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , ,

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!

The Shortest Days

22 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Daily Life

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

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.