Not with a bang, but with a flush

                                                    

The overnight visitor.

So this is how it's going to end, with a flush instead of a bang. With rain in the forecast for all of next week, I guess I am going to call it a winter at the East Pole and head out. For all the folks welcoming spring, I feel sorry for you. March is the best part of winter and if all you do is sit around waiting for spring you miss one of the best months of the year.

At the Pole the snow is a good two feet deep and another foot fell over the past couple of days. Now the sun is out, it's about 60 degrees on the west-facing veranda (isn't that a classier word than porch or deck?). I spent most of the day getting the remaining firewood under the house and I have a couple of more days of that and then I will head out before the rains come. This hasn't been a great winter but at least I got the month of December and most of the month of March.

Had some interesting fun this week. A chickadee flew into the house and spent the night. I had tried to guide him out and he disappearred quietly and I thought he had gone, but in the morning fluttering around he actually banged into my hat. So I opened a window again and spread some seed on the sill and within a few minutes he flew out apparently none the worse for the experience.

I also learned about a luxury accessory on the snowmachine. All I have ever owned or driven are Ski Doo Tundras; I had the original model and now a 1995 Tundra II. They are popular among bush folk for one because they go on forever and two, they are light enough you can almost pick them up and throw them around when they get stuck.

But when it came time for my son to have one, a Tundra was not going to do the trick. Living in the snow capital of North America as we did, teenaged boys could care less about hot rods, but they knew all the hot snowmachine models and every kid had to have one. I bought my son a fairly modest one, another Skidoo, but a racier one with a 550 CC engine. Among other features, it has a reverse gear which didn't seem all that necessary to me. I inherited it when he went away to college but hadn't used it much. I paid quite a bit of money a couple of years ago to bring it up to useable so I thought I would try it out on this trip particularly because with its more powerful engine it would be better able to haul heavy firewood up the hill.

That part worked great and so did the surprise feature. Yesterday I had to go out for some supplies over a trail that had just received a dump of snow atop its icy surface. Twice I got stuck, once on an icy hill and once when I went off into deeper snow. Both times I was able to unhook the sled and pull it backward to a level spot and then put the snowmachine in reverse and back right out of my problem. I have a new respect for reverse gears and am loving this snowmachine. Do I have to mention the hand and thumb warmers? Of course if my son reads this, he's probably going to want it back. No deal!

Other than that it's been fairly mellow around here as winter fades under the sun, but I am not mentally ready for a garden yet.