Racing winter

Just about ready to pave. The original street was about half this wide.

This morning a couple of chickadees showed up at an empty feeder left out over the summer, checking it out now that it's turned cold overnight. So I filled it and another one.  I usually wait for snow. By early evening at least three chickadees and two nuthatches were attacking the feeders with suitable enthusiasm.

The house feels like there's an earthquake every few minutes these days from a compactor pounding the earth out on the main street as the upgrade continues. I walked down there again this afternoon and they are getting close to paving. A guy there said they can pave even in cold weather.

The work on the bridge that had been blocking one exit is done but they are waiting a week to let some concrete cure. Pretty soon we will have safer roads through the area, wider and with better paths alongside them for walking and snowmachines and four-wheelers. I didn't see anywhere in the plans where they expect to pave a bicycle path.

While a road improvement around here is welcome; if you have to live among other people you might as well have good roads. But, I think it would kill me if someone started putting in a road near the East Pole,  and a road following our trail isn't all that out of the question. One is actually embedded in borough future plans and now someone has proposed a dam on the river a few miles upstream from the pole and that will take access roads for construction equipment and materials. The dam proposal also includes a connection to a large electric intertie that runs within a couple of miles of the property.

Not so far-fetched about killing me either. In the past I have had thought dreams about standing up to advancing bulldozers. If you hear some day in the next few years about some crazy guy in the Alaska woods mowed down by yellow machinery, remember me kindly, OK? Deal? OK.

Google map with some enhancements.

Company files preliminary paperwork for dam on Talkeetna River.

As is often said around here Alaska has two seasons, Winter and Construction.  Watch this space.