Ice, Ice, and More Ice

Where is my snow? It seems to have been misplaced over New York and surrounding countryside, and wherever, but most certainly not here. Instead, we get, of all things RAIN.

Things were going so good too. Back in mid October sometime we got our first skiff of snow, pretty much right on time so I was happy. It was just a little bit and water in the river was still going down, but I was certainly happy. Then there was a cold stretch where temps averaged in the single digits and maybe into the teens, possibly warming up into the twenties during the day. Frost heaves began to show up along the trail, and I must admit, it’s fun crunching them down. I never get them all; sometimes they’re just too thick and hard.

Not long after that first dusting of snow, after it had almost evaporated away, we got another dusting of snow, and in the mean time every tree limb and blade of grass, and absolutely everything in between became coated with a thick frost. It was really quite pretty out there. I should have charged my camera and taken pictures.

The river went down to it’s lowest and ice grew across it more and more each time I went down there. Someone posted on Facebook a short video of what it sounds like when you throw a rock across the ice. It really is a rather amazing sound, so I went down to the river and did it myself. My ice was thicker and that sounds becomes less spectacular with the thicker ice. It’s still awesome. I never walked out on it though. I don’t trust that ice until I’m certain it’s thick enough.

Then comes this massive storm swirling into the gulf. Everyone is certain that it’s every bit as big as the nasty storm that hit the upper east coast a few years ago; the storm that very nearly rearranged the beaches and businesses all along there with massive flooding and super high winds. Our storm wasn’t so spectacular. There were some winds I guess, but next to no damage – at least nothing that made the news. Here? Next to nothing at all. In fact it was a very non-wind that surprised me. Always there’s some kind of breeze, but it was quiet. Quiet before the storm is what I expected so we waited.

And we waited.

And it warmed up.

And then it started to rain. Rain? In Alaska? In November? I was completely insulted.

I happened to be taking a nap when the first rain hit, and I remember thinking I should have my empty buckets in back catching the runoff, but I also figured my buckets would also get covered with ice (messy) and surely it wouldn’t rain for long and it would turn into snow soon.

Surely it would.

It didn’t.

I broke down and put my buckets in back. I made the mistake and allowed it to wait overnight and the next day (no rain), so I had to use hot water to get my water/ice out of my buckets. When I was finished with that project, I brought in two buckets full of rainwater. Far more than I expected. Figuring it was all done, I once again lined my buckets out front in wait for the next snowstorm. But what happened next?

It rained.

I was wakened by rain hitting the roof early in the morning so I got up and once again put my buckets out back to catch what came. That night (not waiting this time), I brought in two buckets + of rainwater. This time I left my buckets where they were, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be catching any more rain. Yesterday there were blue streaks in the sky upon occasion, and today the sky looks all blue.

The rain did make a royal mess though. My days started out around 35F, just above freezing, barely, and maybe warmed up ten or so degrees during the day. Warm enough to rain, but not warm enough for the ground to thaw, not even a little bit. Every drop that hit the ground added a layer of ice to the surface. Things up off the ground less so, but only because the water could quickly run down to a lower resting place. Anywhere it was still for more than a moment, it froze.

I walked down to the river yesterday on a trail that was utterly coated with ice. I can’t tell for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all the hollow frost-heaved places were now full of water, especially if they were spots were I’d broken through the top. I saw enough frozen puddles in such locations to make me believe that. Places covered with leaves were coated with a glass of ice as each leaf held its drops in place as well as between where the leaf touched the one beneath it. Now filled up to the point of only the highest points protruded above the level of ice.

The place where I normally turn the four-wheeler around down there was an ice skating rink. It was still brown, but it was coated thick with glass-clear ice who knows how think – it didn’t break under my weight, which, considering it’s fairly soft sand, it might have if the ice was less thick. It was so clear I could clearly see all the birch seeds that had fallen during the course of the progressing winter.

As I was coming back, I noticed that my footprints looked as if I’d walked through flour first – clear white prints marked where I’d stepped. This was caused by my crushing all those bits of leaf and grass that had protruded above the ice – everything encrusted with ice, now shattered to dust. I had stepped in those places to take advantage of the traction the protruding vegetation provided. Believe me, there were places where there was no such traction offered. Those places were polished slick and I had to be very careful.

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Spring is in the Air

For the last few days, there's been a light haze in the sky. Not enough to call clouds, but more than perfectly clear skies. This time of year, clouds have a different effect than you might think. They're rather like a blanket for the Earth. No clouds is rather like trying to sleep without any blankets at night - all the heat that may have accumulated during the day simply goes away during the night. Clouds will hold some of that heat in, at least until the sun comes out again. But it always has the opposite effect during the day, shielding the surface from much of heat of the sun. In the end, without clouds, nights are colder and days are warmer. For some time now, it has been 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 to -15C) in the morning when I got up and reached nearly into the 40s F (5 to 10C) by mid-afternoon. With clouds, over the last three days, it has barely frozen at night, and only reached mid 30 during the day.

These warming days set other things in motion. I'll be going to work come June and I need to make some effort to getting ready for that. The hardest part is getting up earlier in the morning. Being 'solar powered' like I always say, it's hard for me to get up in the dark, but the days are now longer than the nights, not by much but still longer, so getting up earlier is easier. Still, if I don't go to bed earlier, getting up earlier really sucks. So I set my alarm every morning, but since I don't HAVE to get up - well you know how it works. I'm getting better though, slowly.

I've also taken up my walks again, and kudos to me, I do 20 leaning push-ups off a tree at the river. Can I keep that up? I think so. It's not much really, but it's something.

This morning I got up to snowflakes, but it didn't even accumulate half an inch, and it was all gone by this afternoon. There's still 2 feet of snow out there, but over the last few days, another step became visible out front. I've also started to accumulate buckets of water. I collect snow to drink and this winter, a bucket has equaled a third and more recently, a half a bucket of water. So I let it melt, and now I'm consolidating. When I get eight buckets filled with water, I'll keep filling the last four with snow as they empty until I run out of snow or until it starts to rain, whichever happens first. Speaking of which, I need to check to see if there's room under the eves in back for the buckets. 

At work, it is my hope that I'll be able to do my advertising and maybe some writing during the afternoons when everyone else takes a nap. Napping is something I've been told to do, and I probably will at times, but sleeping while I'm at work just doesn't feel right. I've spent 12 years thinking that while I'm at work, I'm 'on the clock', and I always felt guilty even stopping for lunch. Previous housekeepers have been in-house employees so they had a cabin to retire to for those long afternoons. Since I go back and forth to home, the housekeeper's cabin has been assigned to other employees this summer, leaving me without someplace to sleep, so I'm going to take my computer to work and see what I have time to do. They have internet; I'll have to see if I can do my advertising there, but if not, at least I'll have quiet to write. I also might do things in the kitchen like canning whatever fish they catch for me, or baking some cookies or bread. There will be empty guest cabins from time to time, so I'll be able to sneak a nap once in a while. We'll have to see how things develop.

Last summer, the last three weeks of the season, I had four books here that I could sell. With the lodge being primarily Swiss, the last thing I expected was to sell books. This summer, I anticipate having six books here, or I will as soon as I can get them here; the mail hasn't been cooperating this winter in that regard, and with luck, there might even be another one here by the end of summer - I hope so. Last summer there was room for a couple of my books at a time in the little rack where they have folders and papers displayed. I guess this year I'm going to have to drum up a bookend so I can have them on the end of the counter, or maybe I'll come up with a better idea.

Sigh, the days will be LONG, but summer is short. I can do this. Soon enough, I'll be back here at home annoying all you fans with my book covers.

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Snow vs Rain

So what's with the weather these days? It seems like Mother Nature can't make up her mind what to do with all the precipitation. Last year (September, 2012) she dumped inches and inches of rain, causing the rivers to crest over their banks by several feet, doing quite a bit of damage in the neighborhood.

This last fall, she tried again only it was later, in October, when the rivers were mostly empty. The water made it over the bank but not by much, enough to float the boats sitting there, but only just. Not satisfied, she tried again with less success. I guess she was just trying to do a little house cleaning.

Anyway, whenever it rains like that in the fall, I wonder if it's all going to come down as rain, or if there will be something left over for snow. There always has been, but you know how it can be. This year, that might be the case. This year, there's only about two and a half feet of snow, compared to the normal five or so feet.

But snowfall, or the seemingly lack of it, isn't the only oddity. Over the last few years, it seems that the winters have been getting colder, or the cold spikes have been getting longer, however you want to look at it.

What I used to consider normal was temperatures ranging from -10F (-23C) to +20 (-6C) with the occasional cold spikes down to -20 to -25F (-29 to -32C). Sometimes these cold spikes happen in November but nearly every year they happen in February, lasting only a few days, maybe a week at the most.

I no longer know what normal is. Those cold spikes now last sometimes weeks, though still centered around November and February. Average temps now hang around minus something, and occasionally it will warm up to 0F (-18C) or so and drop some dry snow. This winter, it has warmed up to above freezing and actually rained - twice - how depressing.

But the weather, the temperature, isn't much of an issue - it is what it is, it's the lack of snow that's really making things inconvenient around here. For us to get on and off the river, we need to shovel in a ramp. It's like shoveling a ramp down from your second story balcony. Two feet of snow on the ground for some distance around, both at the top and at the bottom, got us our ramp, but it's kind of steep.

Another issue of lack of snow, is being able to drive through the woods to get firewood. Elders and other bushes average around 4 feet high. Normally, snow weighs them down and covers them over and driving over them isn't hard. There's not enough snow for that yet.

And the rain. Poor trees. The high humidity + the very cold temperatures caused frost to cover all the trees. No problem and really rather pretty. Snowfall sticks to the frost and coats every branch, making them look all pretty and white, still no real problem. The wind blows and knocks most of it out of the trees and they're fine, but add rain to the mix and suddenly you have these snow-coated branches, and now that snow becomes saturated with water. It freezes and the wind won't dislodge much of it. The first bout of rain was bad enough but it hasn't snowed much since then, some fine dry stuff most of which sifted away, but not all. Now it's rained again, quite a bit actually, maybe a quarter of an inch of water in the bottom of the buckets I had outside. Now all the young birch trees and thin branches are bowed hard over.

This morning, when I was out in the rain packing trails and such, I heard a tree somewhere back of the house break. I'm pretty sure it was just a branch or maybe the top of a small spruce tree. I couldn't see it and it wasn't a big sound as if a whole tree had fallen. If it stays warm, and maybe a wind blows some of that will be knocked loose, but the warm will cause new issues. Overflow on the river. We need to pack a runway, and day before yesterday overflow was already showing up out there. It's going to make packing a runway very difficult. It really needs to get cold again. If we pack a runway like this it would be ruined, leaving ruts that will freeze and never smooth out. Ruts in a runway might damage a plane, if not cause landing problems.

So yeah, blame the rain on me cause I was wishing for more snow, now I want it to get cold again. I guess I'm not much different from Mother Nature. I need to make up my mind. hahahahaha

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A Study in Patience

Walking. I bet you didn't even consider that walking might be a study in patience, did you? Well, it can be, especially this time of year, and more so this year. As the days are warm and the nights aren't so cold, the snow that once was a hard-packed trail, grows soft. Trouble is, they aren't the soft of new snow or even of mushy snow, easy to slosh through. The surface is uncertain; one step might be solid enough but the next one gives way. To preserve the integrity of your back, you need to be patient with every step. You need to be ready for every step to give way. Allow yourself to be pleased if it doesn't but don't trust that it won't until you have completely moved on to the next step - and the whole thing must be done all over again.

The best strategy is to take small steps, nearly heel to toe, not perfectly so but far shorter than a comfortable stride. Those of you ladies who like to sway your hips might find the necessary stiff back hard to accomplish, but it is a necessity. The step that gives way, seldom does so with any warning.

To add to the lesson in patience, and to reinforce the necessity of taking short careful steps, is the fact that the snow is still nearly knee deep. Not very deep, you say, but if your step suddenly plunges down and you are already throwing your weight into the next stride, you run the very real risk of leaving your knee behind stuck up in the hole your boot created while the surrounding solid surface didn't give way for the rest of your leg to move forward.

So, no matter how far you have to go, patience is key to keep your extremities in tact. Soon enough, when the snow is less deep, there will be an added dimension to the patience of walking.  At the moment, the only problem is that you break through and your step goes straight down. Likely by next week, not only will the foot go down at unexpected moments, it just might go sideways too, and any direction is game.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention, whenever I'm going somewhere out there, it's usually to carry something back, so I'm a pound or 3 or 5 or 10 heavier, depending on what I went to get. That means that just because some spots might have held me up on going one direction, doesn't mean that same spot will hold you up on the way back.

So, patience is walking - a necessity. Are you patient enough?

Civilization -Taking it for Granted

Every once in a while I have simply got to rant a little about civilization. There's a reason I live out in the wilderness. Yeah, it's harder to live there in a way. Things aren't quite as convenient as they are in town, but really, it's only hard to get used to at first, it's most assuredly not hard once you've passed that hurdle.

I arrived here in Eagle River Saturday before last and over the last week plus I have been monopolizing my son's time driving me around all over the place to find this and that wherever it may be until I finally got almost everything on my list. It's been so crazy (in a way) I haven't really had much of a chance to just look around.

All in all, Eagle River is a nice little town. My last experience with spending any time in town was when I went up to Fairbanks to get my book published. You can find my spring rant here. I don't know, maybe it's because of all the snow this year. Fresh snow always makes things look prettier. All the yuck generally drifts to the surface as the snow melts.

Speaking of 'all the snow', for some time now, it's been all over the news to the point of even being a point in local politics. There's not enough money to pay the guys that plow the streets and there's nowhere to dump all the snow anyway. I went for a little walk today all by myself and discovered a brand new layer of snow all over everything. Everything except the roads, streets and lanes are all pretty and white again.

Two or three inches of new snow is certainly no obstacle to walk through, but it got me to thinking. In my little half hour jaunt I saw absolutely no one outside on this really nice day shoveling or even sweeping the snow off of any sidewalks. Okay so some of my chosen path was across parking lots or maybe down streets that didn't go in front of any shops, but still. If everyone is so concerned with all the snow or the snow removal, why isn't anyone out there contributing their two cents worth? Once was the day when shop owners were outside keeping the front of their store clean and neat, not to mention chatting with passers by. It was a far more basic concept than keeping the sidewalk clean - friends will go shopping at stores run by people they know and like. Where has that feeling gone? Poof, with the explosion of civilization, this was lost and we didn't even know it was missing.

But I digress. Back to your two cents. If everyone is so concerned with all this snow being hazardous, why isn't anyone out there shoveling off the sidewalks? It wouldn't take much. And not to toss it off onto the street either. Snow from the sidewalks tossed up on the lawn isn't going to hurt it much, whereas they are always spreading salted gravel or some chemical to melt the snow onto the streets. Who knows what that does to the lawn, and I won't even mention getting all that gravel out of the grass once the snow has melted.

The plows will come by and scrape snow and ice off the street onto the sidewalks and then they will go by again and scrape that off further onto the yards. They can get that stuff hauled off from the bigger streets but not everywhere. At least that's what I see everywhere I've been. And since there has been really quite a lot of snow this year, rather large piles of snow has developed in some rather dangerous locations forcing drivers pulling out of some lane or parking lot to edge out a little far in order to see if someone is coming. Yeah, most everyone has been either the person pulling out of the parking lot or the person they're trying to look for, so everyone watches for this, but it's no guarantee. My son just had his car totaled because someone pulled out right into the side of his car and shoved it into a meridian pole. The pole was taken completely out and my son's car was mushed in on both sides. Fortunately, no one was injured. Also fortunately my son had a vehicle to fall back on so he can still get to work.

Ach, I've digressed again. Rants can be that way, you know. The entire point of this is, if everyone contributed their two cents either to creating some emergency fund (and I'm not talking about a tax) to make it possible to pay the over time or hire more guys to plow the streets, or simply get out there and do a little shoveling themselves, especially in bad places like mentioned above (we all know where those places are), wouldn't things be just a little better? Wouldn't everyone who has to slog through a few inches of snow to get to wherever they're going be just a little happier? Ah but I suppose if things were a little more walk-friendly, people would drive less and therefore spend less money on gas, and we can't have that, now, can we. Gas prices are climbing again and yet I do believe I heard somewhere that the price of oil is not going up. Hmmm I better stop. I've made my point for this post. I really shouldn't digress too often. So get out there once in a while and do a little work yourself rather than complain that the other guy isn't doing it good enough or soon enough or often enough. Go for a walk to the store and buy yourself a soda as a reward. Pick up a piece of trash from the street and get it to a trash can. I did. You can do it too. Wave at your neighbor while you're at it; you might discover he's a pretty nice guy.

Winter Snowfall

If anyone was watching the weather, you all know that night before last and most of yesterday, Mother Nature decided to dump a bunch of snow on us. A neighbor just up river from us reported an official measurement of 19 inches. I woke up yesterday morning to find 4 or 5 inches piled on top of previously cleared objects, like the snowmachine and it was coming down in huge wet flakes - my favorite kind. By the time I finished my advertising and other Facebook sidetracks, a healthy foot or more had accumulated. Since my battery had run out, and since we didn't REALLY need to start the generator yet, I decided to enjoy the day and shovel off the bedroom roof. Of course, I also needed to brush off the eye of our satellite dish - again.

When I shoveled off a spot on the roof big enough for me to stand on, I discovered that our total, disturbed only by gravity, snowfall for the winter was nearly waist deep - funfunfun. Actually, I did have fun. When I got the last crumbs shoved off the roof and was nearly ready to step off onto the ladder again, I looked back - our house is only 12 feet wide plus a few odd inches, and over there on the other side of the roof, already about an inch of fluff had accumulated. No worries though, it wasn't long after that when it stopped snowing and warmed up enough to sprinkle a little of the liquid stuff, fortunately not very much.

Today's task was to shovel off the other nearly flat roof we have here and to snowshoe some of the trails. By the time I was done with that roof, Don was starting up the snowmachine with some dread. Sometimes this much snow all at once can make packing trails a bit of a pain if not a total nightmare. Today, it ended up being a pleasure. The snow stayed where it was packed and it didn't suck the machine off the side or sugar away from under it and sap all traction and steering.

For me on my snowshoes, it meant I only had to lift my feet boot high most of the time. All this snow did cause one problem for me on my snowshoes. A couple years ago we decided to move the outhouse. When it was first built, it was nested on a bit of a hill. Nothing tremendous, but the ground in back was a handful of inches higher than in front. To compensate this, we put the little building up on logs. It's new home was more level and leveled even more by the gravel dug from the hole so we decided it didn't need a log foundation. Take my word for it, if you live somewhere where snow falls by the foot, you want your outhouse up on something. Today, as I was shoveling the snow away from the door, I was standing at least a foot off the ground on my snowshoes. The task was awkward to say the least.

Trails to the outhouse, the dump, and to where I dump our compost all finished, and the day was rapidly waning so I hitched a ride on the snowmachine to the top of our hill so I could pack the trail out to the river before it got any colder than it was. The day was in the upper 20sF (that's barely below freezing C), but it was clearing off and it was best to take advantage of the warmth and get the snow settled down on the trail down the hill and on the ramp out onto the river, even if only by snowshoe. Tomorrow's plan is to brave that trail with the machine. Going down is the easy part, it's the coming back up that could get interesting.

Once again today, I was thinking about winters past plus my fifty pounds, lost but not missed this summer. What with my night-owl husband keeping me up until the wee hours of the morning every night, I still wake up with daylight, which is around ten in the morning these days, and I still have energy even now after shoveling snow and snowshoeing trails. It's just awesome. Thank you HCG!!!

Winter

Like last winter, we are planning to spend time in town. Things are much better set up for it this time around. We have gas, and thanks to an incredibly bitter cold November, we have ice on the river. Also, thanks to those -20sF (which is -30sC), it was nearly impossible for us to move around and get some outside things wrapped up and battened down. Then, to top off our troubles (nothing is ever trouble free) Don ran out of tobacco, and he gets nearly sick and rather disoriented whenever he tries to quit. Because of that, and though we really wanted to, we missed a delightful Thanksgiving dinner cooked by my daughter-in-law.

In an effort to celebrate the meal without all the fixings, I heated up some canned chicken, made some turkey gravy and a box of instant rice pudding. I also opened a can of cranberry sauce. It was a pretty thin dinner but it was fun in a funny sort of way.

Now that the weather has let up, we've gotten a couple feet of new snow (fortunately not all at once). It even rained one night, but though it was warm the next day the snow packed really nice rather than turning completely to mush.

Though we have the ramp shoveled in so we can get down on the river with the machine, we haven't actually driven it yet. It's rather steep and it's important that it settles and hardens before we try to abuse it with the machine. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to dig a fairly heavy machine out when its been nosed directly into a vertical bank.

What I like to do is walk up and down the ramp as we are shoveling; it serves to push the snow down where it is needed most and pack it into place as well. I deem it good enough if I can walk up and down without slipping much, and certainly without landing on my duff. This year I did the initial walking up and down without snowshoes, but recently doing so with snowshoes to keep new snowfall packed down.

Today was my second trip out to the river with snowshoes. Since the trail to the river was already packed, I didn't put them on until I got to the top of our hill. It's awkward walking in a snowmachine trail with snowshoes; the track is too narrow and the skis are too wide.

As I walked down the trail, it was very quiet. No little birdies twittered in the trees; no bigger creatures trudged through the deeper snow off among the brush. My own noise was muffled by soft snow as I shuffled along. I never did walk like my mother thought I should, and big, heavy boots are just plain big and heavy. My method of walking is most noticeable when I'm in town, say at the mall. I've always worn my boots essentially unlaced and they do flop. This makes walking with snowshoes easier, but it's a really sloppy stride on a hard floor. It's not so noticeable with shoes, but I've finally succeeded in wearing them all out - I bet you can't guess what one thing on my shopping list is.

A few days ago, when we were out and about packing trails, I was snowshoeing the hill and carrying a can of gas up too. Don was waiting for me at the top with the machine. After several trips up the ramp, and then trudging up the hill, it being the first time this year for me being on snowshoes too, I was coming up the last stretch quite slow. Also, I do much better pulling my kiddy sled behind me than I do carrying a can full of gas, so I was setting it down frequently - it seemed like about every ten steps, but it really wasn't that bad. Don commented that it must be nice being fifty pounds lighter. Oh, man, you have no idea how much nicer it is. Yeah, I was pooped, but always, walking up that hill, summer or winter, I used to take old lady steps. Now the only time I take old lady steps is when I'm purposely shuffling in order to pack the snow.

April Showers Bring...

I stepped outside my door yesterday morning and realized that there was a sizable spot of bare ground out there, off to the side of the main trail to the steps. In front of the steps there's still an inch or two of ice - don't worry, it's not slippery, it's too pitted to be slippery.

Now that's not the first bare ground to show up; the first one was under the exhaust of the generator, which sits on top of the doghouse. Putting it there for the winter is tons easier than trying to keep a hole dug out for it on the ground, and the exhaust keeps the snow 'down wind' melted to a distance of roughly three or four feet and the top of the doghouse is easy to scrape off.

Back to the real melted spot. So far it is the only spot of bear ground that I know of. I'm sure there are more. Places like under the big spruce trees always have less snow and at the rate of melt I'm sure the bare ground around those trees is growing daily. I also saw that the four-wheeler no longer has snow on top of it, but the snow around it is still every bit as deep as the four-wheeler is tall - around waist deep there, give or take a few inches.

Other trails: the trail down to the fuel drums now looks like a trail in new snow, if you ignore the dirt darkening the snow in that trail. You see, the new snowfall we had a little while ago is still white, but where it was disturbed the dirt underneath was found by the sun that has been shining for weeks nice and warm every day. The darkness of the dirt absorbs the sun's heat and melts the snow faster than the white of new snow, so since the trail down to the fuel drums is pointed primarily in the same direction as rays of the at it's hottest, it had become a bit of a trench. The trail to the outhouse or the freezer are both sideways to that source of heat and so are melting sideways. The said dirt, visible in all trails, melts the snow to the side, each fleck of dirt moving to the north a tiny bit every day, thus creating a false trail, so to speak. Now, if I were to walk where the trail appears like it should be, I would quickly be wading in snow that is still more than knee deep. However, walking on the packed part of the trail isn't easy. It too has been 'burned' sideways by the angle of the sun's rays. Yeah, it's interesting walking around out there these days.

Last night, it started raining, and it is raining still, now the clock around. I know 'rain' means many different thing to different people. If you live in Texas, rain comes down in buckets and can cause flash floods, an interesting detail found only occasionally in western novels. Here such a goose-drowner happens only once in a great while. Our normal rain is sure to get a stroller wet, and driving an open boat in the rain is highly unpleasant but all in all, it's rather pleasant if you don't have to be out in it.

The rain, nice as it might be, does complicate my problem with walking around outside. Since it didn't freeze last night, and likely won't again tonight, getting to the fuel drums for my little can of gas might be interesting. I may have to plan on wet feet tomorrow morning. Then again, it may work out better than I think it will. I like little surprises like that.

Now that the rains are falling and the nights aren't freezing, one more step towards spring has been covered. That's not to say there won't be more freezing nights but they are numbered I'm sure. Any time now I'll be seeing small flecks of green and I'm not talking about the perma-green trees.

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.

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?

I've Got Mail - Maybe

I’ve gotten more mail in the last year and a half than I’ve ever gotten all together in my life, but it’s all email. Getting regular mail, or snail mail, as it’s come to be called, is difficult to say the least. When the kids were going to school, it was merely an issue of making an extra stop after school, but even so mail only came twice a week. Back then, we took great pains to not have monthly bills; the only one we had was the phone bill and we kept that one paid over the phone, we still do. The rest of the mail was just junk mail anyway most of the time. There were the occasional Christmas cards from assorted family but all in all, there was really very little.

Now that the kids are grown and gone, getting the mail is not so easy. With the post office being over twenty-seven miles up river, and since I just don’t get that direction any more, going to the post office has to be a planned affair. I’m old and lazy these days so the trip pretty much kills my day. During the summer, it’s a two or more hour run up there, a delightful chat with Joe, the Post Master and maybe a nice visit with Norma, his wife, and then it’s another two hour trip home - faster going down river, but really, it’s not different enough to calculate - maybe twenty minutes faster going home than going up - I never really did the math. Of course you have to remember that during the summer, I’m also working at least six days a week. Now really, on my one day off, do you think I want to spend it running to the post office? As it is, I have six days of chores at home to catch up on.

Sometimes, my husband will check out the fishing up river and he will stop in at the post office when he does. Sometimes my boss does the same thing and he’ll pick up my mail too. Everyone loves Joe, and everyone likes to show off our unique post office. Occasionally some of my other assorted neighbors will collect the river mail and deliver it down the river and sometimes someone will bring mine over to work for me. It’s always a nice pleasure when that happens. All in all, if I can’t get my mail brought down to me, I don’t go get it until I can do it by snowmachine. It’s still a long trip, but I can pick my day, a nice sunny day. I can bundle up, put my sunglasses on if the sun’s shining, and toodle on up at a comfortable speed, enjoying the view as I go. I suppose I really should be more sociable on these trips but really, I just want to get there and get home. I really am kind of lazy when it comes to that sort of thing and I never have been a visiting kind of person.

There are great chunks of the year when a trip to the post office, or anywhere for that matter, is quite impossible. From somewhere in September usually to somewhere in December if I’m lucky the water goes down too far to travel by boat and I need to wait until we get a couple feet of snow before we can go anywhere by snowmachine. You see, down Twentymile Slough, where I live, there is at least two places where we need to shovel ramps in order to get on and off the river. One ramp is right here where we park the boats. That gets us down onto the river, but Twentymile Slough is a wicked witch sometimes and there is one place between us and the Yentna River where it only freezes over safe enough for travel at like twenty below (that’s Fahrenheit) (roughly -50C). So, rather than wrestle with this spot, we go around it, which calls for another ramp.

Breaking a trail all the way out of here is more than just shoveling those ramps. You need to be somewhat skilled at driving a snowmachine in powder snow, not my strong point. That’s Don’s department; I’m the one who gets to do the shoveling. Along with the first ramp, we generally pack and mark a runway down on the river, so while I’m shoveling, Don’s going up and down the river, packing the runway.

I shovel some and then walk down and up it to pack it some and then shovel some more. I keep doing that until I can walk up it without crawling, then Don drives up and down it a time or two. Maybe there’s some more shoveling, but generally, if I can walk it more or less, it’s good enough for the machine to make it up. Then it’s a day or two to let it harden. When we’ve recovered enough from doing that, it’s the seven-mile trip out to the main river, the Yentna, with its one necessary ramp about halfway there.

My laziness factor comes into effect here too. Once was the time when I would get a couple week’s work at the lodge during the Iditarod, but that hasn’t happened for a few years now, so the need to break that trail out comes down to my one post office run. Yeah, I only go up there once. Yeah, I’m that lazy, but really, I never have that much to go up there after. And it’s not as if we get a lot of visitors. In all the time we’ve lived down here, we’ve only had a handful of visitors stop in and that’s not counting the neighbors who live down here - two, one who long since moved down to the lower 48 and our next door neighbor who only comes out on holidays - he stops in at least once every winter.

At any rate, my need to break out a trail I’ll use only once is really rather slim. I think, now that my son is living in Eagle River, I’ll change my mailing address. It will be a lot easier for him to drop our mail off at a plane coming our way than for me to do all that work for a leisurely toodle to the post office.

In the spring, from somewhere in April to somewhere near the end of May, the river is once again untravelable. In April the sun in the afternoon is starting to do its work on the snow and the trails start getting soft - sink far enough and you hit melt water on top of the ice. At this time of year, you only have to sink a few inches to see water. There’s still plenty of ice down there, but you can still get stuck if you’re not careful, and I’m not strong enough to get unstuck. Walking on a trail that’s soft enough where a snow machine sinks is impossible unless you want to get wet up to your knees or higher - I see myself crawling. I don’t let myself get into that kind of situation.

Sometime around the end of April or first part of May, enough water has melted to float the ice - breakup, we call it. The ice will lift up, break apart and get carried down the river. This can be a very dangerous part of the year. The ice will jam up somewhere and the water behind it will build up, sometimes to near flood level. It did that here a couple years ago. I had to go down and babysit the boats. Not that they were in much danger of being carried away, but I wanted to ensure that they remained in the river when the water went back down. They kept drifting to the side, which would have left them high and dry, and so much harder to launch. As long as they were in the river, it didn’t matter if the water going down left them sitting on the bottom again, they wouldn’t be that way for long.

When the water rises high enough to lift the ice over whatever obstacle it was caught on, the whole thing gushes down to the next obstacle where the process starts all over again. The further these jams get down river, the less affect they have on what’s left behind, and all the time, both the sun and the water is eating away at the ice. This has all passed by the end of May and enough snow has melted to bring the water level back up to normal, or up far enough where travel by boat is again possible, and very shortly after that, I’m off to work again.

A Spring Rant

Originally posted on my primary blog on May 1, 2010. This blog didn't exist then.

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Here at the end of April the beginning of May, I thought I'd give a bit of a rant. In case you haven't caught on yet, I don't really care much for spring. Oh yes, April showers bring May flowers and all that, but for me, that never really quite happens. For me the snows are melting quickly, leaving behind soggy ground and months worth of man's sins. Out here, 'man's sins' are few and far between, but in the cities and towns, they're everywhere. There's the little plastic shopping bags dangling from a bush or a fence, invisible under the snow all winter long. There's the bag of trash that some dog tore up before it got to the dumpster and never completely picked up (if at all). It's as if no one wants to touch trash after it's gone into a trash-bag once. At that point it suddenly becomes totally contaminated - life threatening if ever touched again without a full-body contamination suit like you see on TV. Then the snow melts away, revealing plastic water or juice bottles, or chip bags, or used paper towels, or the empty soda cans. We all know what we throw away. All the little wrappers, boxes, papers, clippings, and even hair from a trim, now all becoming visible as the snow melts away.

Currently, out in my soggy front yard, littered with snowmachines that have yet to be put away for the summer, is a carpet of dog hair. Last December and January, my dog decided it was time to shed. She'd go in and out several times a day and scrub her body in the snow - she really loves doing that. I think it's a doggy version of a bath. I'd give her a bath more often but without running water, it's really quite difficult and the creek water is very cold. She generally gets one in the summer though, when the water is a little warmer and I can make her fetch a stick from the creek. She really does love to fetch and it really must be that stick. At any rate, two or three plunges and she's thoroughly rinsed. But that was way last summer. Last winter, along with her gleeful scrubbing in the new snow, which left behind a brown spot, she apparently left behind far more hair than I was aware. I knew she was shedding, I even went out and combed her a time or two, but she really hates being combed and seldom holds still for it, so I knew about that hair, but really, someone could weave a living room rug from all the hair out there. What did she do, molt?

For years, my husband wanted a stack of firewood here in front of the house, convenient for splitting and stuffing in the stove only steps from the door. And since we generally cut a tree at a time that idea was fine by me. So for years, long about now, or a little later when the ground is dryer, I'd rake up all the chips of wood and bark left behind by that chore. This year, what with LOTS of cut wood, there was no way I was going to have all that wood in front of the house so room was made in the long neglected woodshed. Well, tired of my spring ritual of raking up wood chips and bark in front of the house, I figured what better place for that mess than in front of the woodshed where, for the most part, it can stay. Deep heavy sigh here, I still have to rake the front yard. I wonder if hair rakes up any easier than bark.

So yeah, spring, for me, is the ugliest time of year. The snow is no longer white as all its accumulated dust is now on the surface. Nothing is green yet. You can't walk anywhere without getting your shoes full of snow or slipping and sliding all over the place. I did manage to make it down to the boats and made sure all the plugs were in, so when the river comes up they'll float. There's certainly no driving a snowmachine down there. Well actually, that's not quite true. If we REALLY had to, we could drive down there, but that would be driving through mud on both ends and having to turn the machine around by hand on that end - not fun.

My walk was not a stroll in the park. It was very slow and diligent, every step had to be taken with care. I even took my snowshoes, just in case. You see, there's this one part where, when it fills with spring snow-melt runoff, the icy water is generally around three feet deep. This is the place I had brought my snowshoes for. I knew the trail would still be there, but that didn't mean that the water under that trail wasn't deep. As it turns out, no water yet. Back to the walk. Since the trail goes through the woods, it's still about a foot or so deep in most places, but it was soft. I was lucky, most of the time the trail held me up, but there were plenty of times when it didn't and the foot doesn't always go straight down. It's not so bad when the foot slips forward - you gain a few inches. It's a little irritating when the foot slips backward - those two or three inches make a difference. It's awkward as hell when the foot slips out - I mean, how much have you had to drink? The absolute worst is when the foot slips in, under you, it's all you can do to not end up in a heap, there's just no way you can get your other foot over there where it needs to be to keep you off the ground. But that's not the only frustrations of walking this time of year. There's the deceptively solid trail that suddenly decides not to be so solid, only after you've trusted your body and soul to its strength - then you go down that foot or so rather abruptly, and you may or may not encounter one of the slippery problems enumerated above. This always happens right after you've lifted one foot to put it in front of the other, so once again, you're left staggering. You really should try paying attention to each and every step for a quarter mile, though I don't recommend you do it in snow your first time. It can so easily develop into a cussing issue if I was a cussing kind of person. For those of you trying it along your nice safe sidewalks, I'll give you the first dozen steps or so before something (very small) distracts you and you don't think about the next step or two. I totally understand. It's really very boring. It's not unlike walking heel to toe along a line that's not at all straight, but at least you have a task to hold your concentration there.

Ah, but that's enough of my rant about spring. Summer will come soon enough and the trees will start shedding their pollen, and then I'll be miserable for a healthy half of the summer. If I didn't love my job I'd hate summer too.