Bush rules: break one and pay a price

It's the Equinox at the East Pole.

Despite the freedom it affords, there's a set of rules for living in the Alaska Bush. Well, actually, there are several sets of rules. Everyone has a personal set, based on experience, advice and common sense and no two sets are exactly alike.

Probably the first rule on everyone's list, or should be is: You are on your own. If something goes wrong there is no one around to help and no way to call. Keep this in mind every time you approach a new task.

The weather is here,
I wish you were beautiful.

Down around No. 812 or so on my list is this one: At least in March you break trail with the snowmachine in the morning after the snow has set up in freezing temperatures overnight; in the afternoon when the snow is softer you break trail on snowshoes.

The one photo is the result of ignoring rule No. 812 and attempting to break trail on a heavy snowmachine in late afternoon.

There should be some kind of corollary to that rule but I can't seem to find the right words. The thing is I could have drop-kicked my little Tundra over that knob. Instead I brought this big lunker for its  power and it took a couple of hours of shoveling, a lever and fulcrum and at least two hookups with a come-along and a good 50 feet of rope before it came free. Then once it did break loose it rolled over on its side on this hill. You break a rule, you pay, sometimes double. My Tundra has never rolled over. 

Rule No. 812 violated and the payment.

Now, that mistake was made trying to pack a loop up and down the hill to bring up a bunch of firewood. Forgive me lord, but I took down a giant sort of healthy birch tree. Mind you that tree has been partially blocking my view of Mount McKinley for the past 28 years, so it has been approached with some patience and consideration. Rationalization? Once cut open it exposed the beginnings of rot in the lower trunk. That is the way of a climax forest.

Over the course of the week between digging out the snowmachine several times and lifting heavy sections of birch, some so heavy I had to split them first, my body took a pretty good beating. Another one of those rules. Stay in shape. But there's this about staying in shape. It seems no matter how hard you gain, you are still just as beaten at the end of any chore. The understanding came one day after hiking the trail. At the beginning of the first winter out there that hike had been exhausting. Still, toward the end of the season, it still wore me out. The thing was, when I started out it was taking me about three and a half hours and by the end of winter I was doing it in less than two and a half. So, using just as much energy but doing it in only about two-thirds the time. I tried to explain it to my son one time when he complained about always being tired after basketball practice. Shouldn't it get easier as you get better? he asked. And I said, no, because you are expanding the horizon.  When a sprinter breaks 10 seconds in the hundred does he quit? No, he goes for a 9:98 and then a 9:96 and will always be just as tired if he gives his all, like I told my son and so many others have said, you leave it all on the field.

So as the week went on I felt myself dealing with it much better and lasting longer and best of all, that lack of firewood mentioned after the previous week is over. I was able to split all the wood from a year-old blow-down I cut up last summer and get it stacked under the house to dry. That will be ready next winter. So now I have birch. Plus, under the porch is the remains of the 50-foot birch I cut this week drying for me to split this summer or fall and the way I use firewood out there any more, worth at least a couple of years. 

The remains of the huge birch, still to be split.

Firewood from the blow-down, drying away.

You think of things while splitting wood and one of those this time was all things considered, I should be able to keep coming out there for at least the next 10 years. That would make me 81. If over that time while I am still in good shape, I could put in 10 years worth of firewood, I might be able to stretch it out a few more years. So, now the goal is to cut one big tree over each of the next five or so years and thus take firewood out of the chore cycle for the next five or more after that. We'll just have to see how far I can extend it. Of course that means staying in shape too.

All in all spending the better part of two weeks at the East Pole was marvelous. The weather could not have been better. Clear, cold nights and warm sunny days, day after day and still going on into the future. Almost every day I spent an hour or two on the porch just soaking up rays. Only one major disaster. And this rule should be well above No. 812: I ran out of Jell-O.  This was serious. I don't know why but working hard in the cold almost demands a helping of Jell-O afterward and I thought I had enough but I ran out mid week. A friend on Facebook and who has lived on boats and in the Bush offered to order an air drop. We do have our inside humor.

Does he look regal or what?

Walter had the time of his life running free. I was a little  concerned about him tangling with a moose but there was very little sign around so I let him go. Of course he's still a puppy and took advantage of every chance to try to knock me down the hill again. The baying of  a hound in the deep woods, even if it is objecting to a passing snowmachine is still music to the ears.

It was tough to leave this morning and I found myself thinking of excuses to stay. I had no real reason to leave except maybe running out of Jell-O, but I always could have bought a few more supplies and gone right back. Once committed, though we came back. Next year it might be worth thinking about spending a month.

Now about those rules. With the snowmachine I broke two and then there was the Jell-O. That is one of the interesting parts of those rules, you keep adding to them as you blunder from one chore to another. I have always liked to say let's move on to bigger and better mistakes. As long as you don't make the big one it's all character building. But, too, I like to say I am 71 years old, this  IS my character. There is also some satisfaction in overcoming difficulties without having to call the guy, even when those difficulties are of our own making. Overcoming a shortage of Jell-O however isn't done easily

So there should at least be a corollary to that rule No. 1. It would go something like this. If you are alone and make a mistake, there is no one around to laugh at you, no one to ridicule you, in fact what happens in the woods, stays in the woods if you want it to. Of course if you choose to expose yourself on a blog that's your choice but you do so at your own risk.

So laugh all you want; I have more than a year's worth of birch firewood under the house now despite my rule-breaking and my beaten-up body and that feels good. 

Firewood and Revery