Nature's Opera

There was coyote song on the air this morning, and it was so echoing and so varied that opera was the first thing that came to mind. Like opera on stage, it is sung in a different language, and unless you can speak Italian, there's no understanding the words and one must depend on the actors, the scenes and the costumes in order to understand the story, and of course, knowing what the story is ahead of time helps immensely. Unlike opera, rather than lasting a couple hours, coyote song is over in moments, leaving the air echoing emptily, leaving my ears searching for another note.

With coyote song, there's no knowing what the story is. There's no script to follow or look up online. Some say they are calling their brethren to the hunt, and some say they are calling to the kill. I've even heard they'll call in frustration as the quarry gets away. Whatever the reason, in my opinion, it is pure heartstrings.

Ever since our foot of brand new snow, I've been out early to fill my buckets. My thought was to have most of my buckets full of nice clean water, and when I have all but two or three full, I'll circulate the last of them until I run out of snow to collect. Last night it froze (it's 25F right now). I was outside, packing this crunchy snow into my buckets when I heard this soprano note climb and fall, echoing through the trees. There must have been half a dozen of them sounding off, imitating each other as if they were singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'.

I wish I had more operatic terminology so I could make it clearer. Take my word for it, it was so pure and stunning it took me a moment to identify what I was hearing.

There are other opera singers out here. Unfortunately they seldom occupy the same stage at the same time. The lonely wolf cry, something I seldom get to hear, is the soloist tenor. The woodpecker, which I did hear this morning, is the percussion. Sometime next month maybe there will be swan song and goose song and maybe even some duck song. Before too much longer there will be the whip-o-will song back in the swamps, at least that's what I think they're called. I hear they are calling a mate, and I hear they are really quite comical about it. Unfortunately, I've never seen it.

So tell me, what sounds do you hear on a quiet morning when most of humanity is sleeping?

Winter's Last Gasp

I woke up this morning to a fairly thick snowstorm outside my window, and when I let the dog out, I saw upwards of two inches of snow on the steps. Course it looked deeper so I went out and measured it.

It's well into April; last gasps are supposed to happen in March, or well most of the time they do. March was beautiful. Clear skies, cold nights, and warm days. All this week it has been clear skies most of the time, warmer nights - most of them barely getting below freezing, and very warm days reaching well up into the forties during the day. It did try to snow once a couple days ago, but it was scarcely enough to give a white dusting noticeable on various dark objects and gone by the end of the day.

This is the time of year when I dread going outside, even to go to the freezer. The path to the freezer is still three feet deep in snow. I know this because I broke through the other day and was suddenly sitting on said path, and I don't recall my foot touching ground.

This is the time of year when the packed part of any trail becomes narrower with each sun's crossing, when all the tree trash blown out of the trees over the winter has started eating at the snow, creating a choppy surface sure to twist the ankle of any unwary creature. And now that I think on it, this is why moose, and other assorted bovine-type creatures, have the leg structure they do. Mother Nature long since created them to be able to walk most anywhere without twisting an ankle.

Now that there is a brand new layer of snow over those trails, twisting my ankle is more of a certainty. Fortunately, my excuses for going outside are few and I'm very familiar with the hazards, so the worst that will happen to me is that I fill my shoes (again) with snow.

I wear my shoes most everywhere, most any time of the year. I put my winter boots on when I know I'm going to be wading around in snow for an extended period of time. Even if I'm wearing my snowshoes, I prefer to wear my shoes. Back in November, when I was packing the runway the hard way, I was wearing my shoes with my snowshoes. Though I might not have developed blisters if I'd worn my boots, neither would I have managed to get most of that runway packed in one day. The only other time I wear something other than my shoes is when I start walking to work and have to wade across a muddy spot along our trail. Spring runoff creates a small creek, and when the ground thaws out the mud seems bottomless. That's when I wear my husband's knee-high waders, at least until I get to the boat. These poor things, made by Timberland, have covered a lot of distance on my feet over the years, and if ever I see another like them, I'll get a new pair. They've spent their fair share either in the oven over night or hanging over the wood-stove drying out after I've filled them with snow once too often and they start feeling soggy.

It's hard to say how long this snow will last, not long I'm sure, but the white will slow the melt and cover the ugly for a little while anyway. Spring is the ugliest time of year. Things are no longer white, draped in winter's glory, nor are they green, bursting with summer's promise of bounty. Even fall's colorful glory is by far prettier than spring.

But such is the time of year. Now is the time when I start thinking about accumulating enough water to make it from gathering the last of the snow to collecting the first of the rain or going to work, whichever comes first. Now is the time of year when we should be gathering firewood, but with my husband's seemingly constant migraines, it looks like that may not happen this year. Weather change, be it good or bad, and even if it misses us directly, gives him a bad headache and running a snowmachine, not to mention the chainsaw, becomes a painful prospect for him. Aw well, we may still get out there - there's still plenty of time, and now maybe just a little more.

Back last October I posted a spring rant I'd written on my other blog, before this one existed. There I talked about the ugliness of spring in town, sad really. Out here I go out of my way to pick up my trash, any trash wherever I am, even going off out into the brush to pick up what a bear drug off. Last fall, on one of my last trips out with the boat, a friend tossed a soda can on the beach. Sure, it wouldn't have been there come spring, but out of sight does not mean gone. So what if it's somewhere else. So what if it ends up at the bottom of the river crushed to an unrecognizable lump of aluminum. So what if it will cause little damage in the grand scheme of things. It is trash and I won't litter up my world. I picked up that can and tossed it in my boat. I don't know if my friend even noticed, I didn't say anything to him. But another friend there saw and noticed the entire thing. He smiled. Even here at home I'll pick up after my family. A couple winters ago my son was out here. He and my husband both smoke (trying to stop), and at the time they had cigarettes with filters (store-bought cigarettes). Their habit was to stand outside and smoke (giving me a break), and then flick their butt somewhere in the snow. Roll-your-owns I don't worry about, heck, I don't even find them come spring, but cigarette butts are another thing. When I started picking them up by the handful (almost), I started hollering. I believe in taking care of my world the best I can. Too bad so few people feel the same.

Do you take care of your world? Make me feel better about spring; tell me how.

Getting Lost

Becoming lost really is relative. One day, several years ago, during moose hunting season, I decided to walk along a ridge above a small creek. There was a game trail along this ridge and there was a foot or so of snow on the ground so I was wearing my snowshoes. Since it was hunting season, I was also carrying my 30.06.

Cutting across the landscape are some size-lines. They are man-made lines cut arrow-straight through and over any and all terrain. Some of them go on for miles and miles, and some start and stop after covering much shorter distances. If any of them parallel another, it is purely by accident. I don't know what their purpose is, but I believe they were an aid in making topographical maps.

Near my home is one heading roughly east and west. About a half mile to the west is another that crosses the first at near ninety degrees. My goal on this day was to hike around this ridge until I encountered that first size-line and then head on home, going out of my way by maybe a mile from our normal trail.

Needless to say, I missed the size-line and continued walking on, ending up on the second size-line. Having never approached the size-line from this direction before, and being just a mite stubborn, I walked much, much further than I should have, and I did find a small herd of moose - perfect for shooting. No, I didn't shoot one. I had already been walking for maybe a couple hours (did I mention I was stubborn), but I wasn't stupid (not much), I had no desire to hike an entire moose out that far on foot. My shot would probably bring my husband and two sons as fast as they could get there, but it just might take all night to get the entire moose home.

Still not finding the landmarks I was looking for, I decided there was nothing for it but to turn around and follow my trail back to the beginning. Yeah, I was an idiot; I should have come to this decision long ago.

Needless to say, my rifle was getting heavier by the mile and my arms were starting to feel like they were going to fall off. I was SO so so glad to run into my men as they were trying to hack their way along my trail with a snowmachine, some miles before I made it entirely back to my starting point. And thanks to their trail, I could now take my original target trail back to the house.

I'm sure my husband acquired several gray hairs that day, just as I'm sure my boys did a little more growing up - fear of losing a wife and mom to the wilderness of Alaska would do that to a person, but I was too exhausted to notice much by then. I gave them all a hug and handed over the tonnage that was my rifle, and trudged on for home, leaving them to get the machine turned around and follow.

To this day, I have never lived it down. I wasn't quite lost; I did have my own trail to follow back, but my family didn't think of that. Needless to say, I try very hard not to be so stubborn.

Bear Play

Yes, bears do play, and sometimes it's rather comical. Catching a bear playing is really quite hard. I myself have only seen the play come out once and that was in a two-year-old cub. My first encounter with bear play was our very first summer here. We had only just taken a look-see, paced off our property corners, and had the surveyor come out and put our property on the map. On our next visit we brought the weed-eater and a small one-gallon gas can and we brought back the chainsaw and I'm sure we had a machete or two; it was time to clear the yard and see what we could make of the place so we could start building.

I picked a spot that was more grass than anything else, but six-foot grass can take a bit to cut. What brush we found fell to the machete, and small trees met the chainsaw. We decided to call it quits when we ran out of gas. We were all pooped anyway, even though the afternoon was barely half over.

Not wanting to carry all our tools back and forth every day, we found a place in a tree where we could hang the weed-eater and chainsaw, but there just wasn't anyplace to hang the gas can and we hadn't brought any rope. Maybe we could have thought of something, but really who's going to bother a gas can? So we stuck it in the fork of the tree.

Now, as I've recounted in a previous post, I live roughly half a mile from the river, so when we returned the next day we had the dubious pleasure of carrying a full sized can of gas. I'm sorry, carrying five gallons of anything is heavy lifting as well as awkward. Don carried it sometimes, but he also carried the gun and I'd rather he be able to use that, so I carried the gas. The boys were still young though my oldest could help too.

When we got to our tree, everything was just as we left it - everything except the gas can was gone, and not only move but totally not in sight. Well, we had to get on with our work and we had gas so we didn't spend much time looking for that little can. In truth, I can't remember when we found that gas can. As my yard stands now, it was clear across the front of the yard and down in a tiny cleft in the ground, totally out of my present keep-the-grass-cut yard but not far. The boys found it when they were playing, and if they were playing here, we had already moved here, though I think the house hadn't been built yet.

They came running up to us. "Hey mom, look what we found." They presented us with the little red gas can, but the poor thing would never hold another drop of gas. It had a multitude of holes in it all over, most of them quite small but ranging in size from toothpick size to a couple big enough for me to stick my little finger in at least up to my first knuckle. Considering all the holes and how far it was away from its starting point, at least one bear had a blast playing with it. I wish I could have seen it. My mind fills in all manner of details, rolling and kicking it up into the air, tossing it, shaking it, tackling it and rolling. Maybe there was two cubs and they wrestled over it. There's no way of telling.

I remembered this story because I now have another gas can that was similarly played with. Last fall it was down on the gas barrels and one day I found it on the other side of the trail. I didn't think anything of it and I didn't look very close. Planning to use it this winter, my husband wanted me to bring it to the house. Only when we were going to fill it did I see the holes. Something must have interrupted the play this time. And now, thanks to the receding show, it has become visible again.

If you watch bears carefully, you will see dog behavior, cat behavior, and even people behavior. They are fascinating creatures, and yes, they do play.

Battle for Season

The wind hums through the trees, sometimes a light breeze, sometimes a wannabe gale, struggling hard to push back the sun's heat.

The sun shines bright, higher and higher every day, five minutes longer than the day before, patiently advancing toward spring despite the wind's struggles.

The snow is now polished to a high sheen, glowing brightly in the afternoon sun. One step, once covered with a bit of packed snow, now only has a small patch and may be dry tomorrow. A small gas can, once covered by the last snow, is now visible, as if the last snow never happened. I went out and got my buckets of snow today, discovering in the process that the sheen was all polish and no ice, one small victory for the wind, in the battle over season.

The not-so-pretty part about this time of year.... They call these months the starving months. It was -1.1F this morning when I got up, and got up to about 10F during the heat of the day. For the assorted creatures out there, most food is either buried deep or frozen very hard, and if not enough stores were hidden away, and even if it was, it would be running low. Heaven forbid the industrious squirrel forgot where one of his stashes was hidden.

Small birds chatter merrily as they flit from tree to tree, searching desperately for seeds the wind might have left behind.

Moose eat the tender shoots and branch ends from the assorted bushes and small deciduous trees - whatever they can reach. Plenty of those still visible, but thanks to the incessant wind, such browse is freeze-dried, as evidenced by an orange-red pee spot too small for a moose and yet way too big for anything else. His struggles clearly visible as he plows chest deep through the snow in search of something he or another hasn't already found earlier.

The tracks I saw, or didn't see, as I walked to the river this afternoon. One moose. I suppose it's possible there were two, but I doubt it; I didn't think to try to count. The tracks were old but the trails were still quite clear. Young, maybe two years old, pretty young to be all alone, though not unheard of. Since he was peeing red I doubt he'll make it to spring, but I can always hope.

I didn't see any squirrel tracks, and I don't recall hearing one, but that doesn't really mean much, it was pretty cold.

I didn't see any rabbit tracks, but that doesn't mean much either, there's not many around - too many coyotes. Then again, I haven't heard any coyotes calling either, but that's not saying much, they don't call during the day all that much.

Mice, well mice don't leave many tracks this time of year, though I have seen some here and there throughout the winter. Nothing is going to bother the mouse population, they're safe and sound in their grass-lined tunnels deep under the snow where all the grass and their seeds are free for the taking - industrious little creatures. When the snow is all gone, there will be an impressive maze left behind to be raked up or merely obscured by new growth.

Spring is coming, I can feel the heat in the sun, though the wind is still out of the north and quite cold. The snow is very dry, still less than a third of a bucket of water per bucket packed with snow, and I pack it as hard as I can. I'm concerned that the rivers will be late in filling, delaying my going to work. Then again, last spring the sun heated us up to 80F for nearly a week in May, which got me there in time to meet the first employees getting off the plane - that's a first.

Tomorrow is the start of the Iditarod sled dog race - The Last Great Race. Ride a sled behind a team of a dozen or so dogs all the way to Nome. It's an amazing spectacle. Watching it on TV, well, watching it on TV just isn't the same. This year will be a cold one for them. The moose will be dangerous, willing to fight for what little solid footing the trail may provide to give them a break from plowing through the deep snow, even if only for a little while.

Global Warming

Is it about warming, or even about weather change like they claim, I don't know, but things are different lately. Everyone's interested in the polar bears and the glaciers melting. At first, I couldn't see why everyone was so worried, I mean, my winters seem to be colder every year.

For years, 'normal' winter was an average of ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit to ten degrees below zero, with cold spikes in November and February where it might get as cold as -30ish (F), but those spikes lasted only two or three weeks and it was back up, and then it would warm up into the 20s and 30s and snow (sometimes a little - sometimes a lot), and then back down to average. Come the latter part of February, the longer days start having an affect on the heat of the day, and by the end of March things start to melt.

Lately, the November cold spike kinda went away, which put freeze-up off until much closer to Christmas - really kind of a pain for me, but we can't control the weather. And the rest of the winter has been really quite cold, spending most of the time down around -20 if not colder. You know it spends a lot of time down around there when 0 to 10 above feels like a nice day.

Once was the time when a hot summer day was 70 degrees (F), and those days didn't show up until July. Any more, 80 degrees is fairly common and sometimes warmer, and they've been known to show up in May, if only for a few days. I still start melting at 70, and long before it gets to 80 I'm searching for dark corners and shade, and wishing for a root cellar.

Some time ago I friended this guy on Facebook who was all for dams and culverts to divert water to Californian farmers. Not that I have anything against farmers, I like oranges, when I can get them, and I'm all for everyone making a living. But my discussions with him prompted me to think about the cycle of weather.

Water evaporates, becomes clouds, and once enough accumulates up there, it comes down in some sort of precipitation depending on the time of year and the temperature. The more evaporation, the more precipitation, which, in this case, means more snow. It takes snow to make glaciers and the ice caps at the top and bottom of our globe. Not that I know how all this works, but in my thinking, running water and thrashing waves in the ocean are going to evaporate more efficiently and faster. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm not getting the whole picture.

When I brought this concept up to said friend, our conversation stopped. He said he'd look into my theory, but he never got back to me. So, are dams and culverts to blame? Probably not; I'm certain there's far more to it than that, but my train of thought leads me to think that 'global warming' isn't really such a bad thing. Warm air holds more moisture, more moisture in the air means more snow coming down, more snow means more of a nice white covering on the tops of our glaciers, which will slow down their melting. Glaciers were formed because there was more snowfall than melt during the turning of a year. So we want more snow, and we won't have more snow if we don't have more, wetter, precipitation.

What do you think?

Snow, Snow and More Snow

You all know what snow is - that's that white stuff that comes to cover the ground every winter for most of you, but how much thought do you give it, really? Warm days and cold night can cause snow to melt and then freeze, making your streets and highways slippery and dangerous. Many cities keep fleets of snow removal equipment, massive snow-blowers, plows and dump trucks. Even cities in Alaska have such equipment. I really don't know all that much about how cities deal with the snow aside from what I've seen, but out here we don't have any of that equipment.

Many of us out here have some sort of groomer for making our trails nice and smooth, but still there is no snow removal involved, it is merely rearranged. There are many different styles of snow groomers, but in general they are a long piece of construction with some sort of cross-piece in the middle and at both ends for stability. The center cross-piece can have some sort of reinforcement - one we used to have had a heavy metal blade. What these contraptions do is scrape snow off high spots and drop it into low spots along the trail, and in the even that you have finally scraped all the high spots down, the snow then filters over the grooming board and onto the trail behind, of course by that time, it's quitting time - there's no real point in grooming the trail any further.

As our need for a smooth trail diminished, we traded off our long groomer. Now, our biggest concern is a smooth runway so we use a drag of some sort. Most of the time we borrow our neighbor's old steel bed-springs. It's mostly his runway and it works quite well. Our keeping it packed and groomed allows him to come and go freely whenever he wants so he doesn't begrudge us it's use.

Well that's trails and the runway, but what about the rest of the yard? The yard, like all the rest of the trail gets packed, either by the snowmachine driving round and round the house or by foot as I make at least one trip a day to the woodshed - no need to mention the outhouse. Outside of that, there's the assorted roofs.

Our generator shed is our greatest concern because it's the flattest roof we have. It is slanted but since there's no heat to help, the snow will never slide - not until we start running the diesel generator again sometime in the spring when it gets above freezing for the greater part of the day.

The woodshed is the next roof we worry about. Though build sturdier, there's no point in pushing luck and with mineral paper on top, it'll never slide. If we get some really heavy snow, I have to get up there and shovel it all off.

Our bedroom roof is also nearly flat but since the house is heated, the snow up there generally creeps off by itself, so aside from keeping an eye on it, I don't worry about it much.

The task of shoveling roofs is mostly decided by what kind of snow we are getting. Have you ever gone outside after a nice fresh snowfall and thought, "I'm going to make a snowman today."? When you have lots of snow every winter, it's something kids love to do. Now you all know how to make a good snowman. You scoop up a big two-fister of snow and start making it bigger, pretty soon you're rolling this big ball around and watching it get even bigger by the moment. But have you ever tried and had the snow just sift away between your fingers? Refusing to make a ball without a lot of force and maybe even the heat from your bare hands? This is dry snow, and dry snow doesn't pack worth a darn. It also doesn't weigh much and that's because, though it's wet and white, there's not really much water there. It's the nice big fat snowflakes that make the great snowmen.

To give you a little perspective, if you've not read earlier posts, I collect snow in buckets to melt for washing and drinking water. Nice wet snow packed into a bucket generally gives me about a half a bucket of water. So far this year the snow has been really quite dry and I'm only getting a little more than a quarter of a bucket worth of water. So, because the snow this winter (so far) is so dry, I'm not worrying about shoveling roofs (yet).

In my totally non-professional opinion, we are having something of a drought. Yeah, there's snow, and yeah there's rain in the summer. Everything is green and growing healthy, but once was the time when ten feet of snow wasn't unheard of. I've seen it twice in my time out here. I'd say average (since I've been here) is around five feet of snow. I think we're a little behind here, though I don't know what the professionals say. There's only around two feet of settled snow out there now and the temperature has been bitter cold for a long time, far longer than normal (again in my opinion), hence the dry snow.

When the temperature drops, the air can't hold as much moisture. That moisture squeezed out of the air shows up as frost coating most any surface - it can leave the trees looking really quite beautiful. Therefore, when it warms up, suddenly there's room for moisture and, wallah, snow, very dry snow. Eh, I probably have it all wrong but that's what it seems like. All I know is, when it goes from a long term of minus teen something to a degree or two above zero Fahrenheit and then it dumps two feet of snow, it's always really dry. The best snowman snow falls when it's much closer to freezing if not slightly above.

So what do you do with snow?