Short progress report

A whole weekend of building, first blush, taking a break now to let the heater cool so I can lift it out and put flooring under it.

Oh, and I saw the first moose of the season on the road last night. Time to get ready and maybe slow down.

Late Thursday more progress photo gallery

Here we go again

Several nights last week the overnight low went to 20 below. This morning the temperature is above 40 and what little snow we have is melting away. So, again in just a few days we have had a 60-degree temperature change. To tell the truth it is not all that disappointing. Putting down flooring this weekend and I want to put the saw out on the porch to keep the dust out of the house, so it ought to work out fine. And maybe warmer temperatures will bring the birds around. I was a little late filling feeders this year and didn't do it until the big chill last week. So far not one has showed up as far as I can see. So, for the time being the 25 pounds of sunflower seeds I bought is in the back of the Honda hybrid helping keep it on the road.

So far the car is doing all right with the winter. It started right up at 20 below after a couple of hours plugged in, and at work it started easily a couple of nights at 10 below without the plug-in. The electronic displays are a little sluggish at low temperatures, but the heating system warms it up nicely. I didn't put snow tires on it, but it seems to hold the road well, and using the paddle shifters, I have good control. The one thing that's still a concern is bottoming out in deep snow. I have already seen where it pushes through the snow in the driveway. The engine doesn't particularly like the cold, though. Mileage has dropped off from above 50 mpg to the mid to low 40s. Part of this is due to letting it warm up at an idle and part general driving conditions. Still, 43 mpg is a whole lot better than I have ever gotten with anything I have driven before. All in all still happy with it.

There's something about swans

No idea why I find them so fascinating but here is another part of it. I only learned this second hand but it is a good story. Late last summer someone on the Kenai Peninsula south of here shot a swan with an arrow. The swan was spotted swimming around a lake with the arrow sticking out of it. A team from the Alaska Sealife Center managed to capture the swan and take it to their facility.

 They named her Marshmallow which would not have been my choice but will have to do. There they removed the arrow, treated the wound and nursed her back to health. When it seemed she had recovered fully they returned her to the lake where they had found her, and in time, before the southward migration had begun. There she was greeted by what was assumed to be her mate; they, like geese, mate for life.

 Everything seemed to be fine until the migration started and the swans flew south. Someone checked the lake and Marshmallow was still there. Her wing had not healed well enough or strong enough for her to make the trip and it looked like the other swans had left her behind. The crew from the Sealife Center captured her again and then managed to find a way to send her south for the winter. She flew down in a pet carrier on an airplane.

 People in Washington released her onto a lake where she immediately flew into a tizzy and chased two other swans away. So the injured swan at least ended up somewhere south for the winter, has enough moxie to be feisty and perhaps will gain enough strength to make it back next summer. A happy ending, except perhaps for losing her mate. Well, winter came down on us fast and that lake froze. A few days after she made her safe trip south, someone ventured over to the lake again.

There, walking around on the ice was another swan, alone in the winter apparently displaced, perhaps lost, perhaps looking for Marshamallow, his mate everyone assumed had been left behind by the others. Now he was the one left behind. One can only hope there is more of this story yet to be written.

Time has come, the walrus said

If you click that little Alaska flag to the right under the "What's going on here" headline you get the Weather Underground weather conditions for the area around the East Pole. I delved a little deeper into the site today and found weather warnings. On a map of Alaska it shows high wind warnings. Southeastern has them, but for the rest of the state there is only one little spot of blue indicating high winds. Guess where? Rat cheer. And, boy is it howling out. Tools hanging from a rack on the side of the house are banging, trees are swaying, pretty good storm all in all. On a brighter note, heavy snow predicted for the East Pole, 10 to 20 inches in the next 24 hours. That might not be so much fun while it's happening or until the cleanup is complete, but in the long view it means snow on the trail and time is close for snowmachine trips to the cabin. Woo hoo. I have two more weekends of remodeling and then watch out.

Too much smoke

Not long after I moved to Alaska I started having a recurrent dream. In it, I had traveled Outside and for one reason or another could not get back to Alaska. In time I learned that several other people had the same dream. In discussing it with one person or another we decided it was simply that this is where we wanted to be and had some kind of unconscious fear of losing it. Well, that dream faded after a while and I haven’t had one in years.

However, it has been replaced by another, I had one last night. It involves the East Pole. In it, I am making my way along the trial toward the cabin. I run into people along the trail, some I know some I don’t, it changes with the dreams. It is almost always in summer with four-wheelers and difficulties along the trail change also, however it always seems there are more people than usual. Sometimes they are headed for the town, or we can see the town or it involves getting something from the town, but that is not the most disturbing part, When I finally arrive at the cabin I find I can see others around it. but even that is not the worst.

The worst is that just over the hill behind the cabin there is some kind of a development, Sometimes it is a mall or shopping center and sometimes it is a cluster of townhouses but always an encroachment of development with paved streets, stores and traffic. Sometimes I wrestle with that or sometimes I wake up but that seems to be where the dream ends, when I realize that the sprawl of development has caught up and I either need to join and accept it or start over farther away.

Just some side notes on this: After 20 years someone has finally built a cabin I can see from the East Pole and I find that disconcerting. In summer when the trees are all leafed out i can't see it, but I know it's there. In winter it is very visible from the front deck. It is like the solitude is shattered. But the dreams began long before that. I think the new cabin just fulfills the apprehension from the dreams about people moving too close. It is like when you expect people to be around you can deal with it, but when you don’t it can be disturbing,

And I am not without fault. While I was building the cabin I made friends with a man who had lived in that area in a small cabin for the previous 12 years, from long before the land had been sold as a subdivision. One day he was helping me put up the ridge board (a story in itself) and I was telling him how this had been a lifelong dream. He said it had been one of his as well. At that point a startling realization came over me. Shocked, I looked at him and said rather sheepishly, "I am part of your problem, aren't I." He politely nodded affirmatively and we let it go at that, but that realization has always tempered my reaction to others who came out later. One man's dream is another's nightmare.

One of those trivial facts I remember from early history lessons or that I read somewhere is that Daniel Boone had said he always felt the urge to move when he could see the smoke from a neighbor’s chimney. He eventually died in Missouri. I have always wondered if expansion caught up with him there and he just gave up and didn’t move again or if he had reached the end of his trail before another neighbor's smoke pushed him farther west.

At any rate, it seems these days there is just too much smoke to get away from it all.

ADDENDUM: Lately I have discovered an awful number of young people have very little knowledge of American (or any) history so here's a little about Daniel Boone. As if to make my point a question on one of the sites asked "Wasn't he the one who died at the Alamo?" The article even pointed out he died in 1820, 16 years before that battle.

He Lives!

Driving to work on a dismal gray day, snow in the forecast and obviously threatening... memory music playing, the kind that gives you that warm, sad feeling. It had been kind of a low weekend anyway and it all seemed to fit. And then I saw a figure walking the bike path across the four-lane. It took a moment to register. Then in the fleeting of passage at 62 mph, I recognized the wide-brimmed hat, the blue denim jacket, the long gray beard -- the Solitary Man. He was walking away from the town toward where he would cross two lanes of the highway to his island. That lifted my spirits. So great to see him, know he’s alive and still trudging that trail and still wondering what goes on in that solitary life. Immediately I felt a smile, a happy song came up and it just made the day a whole lot better. By night and time to go home, it had snowed about three inches and still falling. This was the first time in snow with the Honda. There was enough snow falling to be blinding especially when another car passed and blew up a bunch of it. Went home slowly then messed around a little after I got off the main highway and it seemed to handle the snow just fine. Paddle shifters help. With seven gears there is a lot of control so the car might be all right. Now if the huge battery doesn't freeze at 30 below everything will be just fine.