Saturday, March 24, 2018

Growing old gracefully … in the Alaska sunshine

Woodcutting mayhem
March has always been the best month of the year at the East Pole. One of the attractions means
sunlight on the deck in the afternoon, about an hour when it's warm enough to sit out there and have a beer while wearing a t-shirt.
This year, though, the times have been tougher. March also provides the best weather for firewood gathering, but this year between falling and almost breaking my back and overcast weather that dumped heavy snow for days, I've fallen way behind in firewood.
Then eariler this week, I broke my snowmachine. Don't get me wrong; I was thankful I didn't break me as I have the past two years. But just as the sun began to break through, I had to go away, as it turns out all the way the Eagle River for a repair. I mean who knew driving a machine hard against the parking brake would gouge the drive belt enough to make a sound like the whole machine was coming apart?
I went my to favorite place and they had a three-week backlog, but they were kind enough to call their other store and it turned out that one only had a three-day deadline. I went there hoping for three days but fully expecting three weeks, given the clunking sound the machine was making. But three days later they called and said chunks had been gouged from my drive belt. (for those of you who don't know, this is a simple fix) Here's how simple. It is one thing you always carry a spare. The guy said they didn't have one in stock and it would take a week to get one. I told him I've got one! End result, a fix that I expected to take three weeks and cost more than $300, took three days and cost me $60. How often does that happen?
Ok so back to aging gracefully. Over the years as I have cut firewood around here, I've always looked for blowdowns, or dead standing. I have tried to maintain the forest. I don't want to look out my window and see a bunch of stumps (I do cut the stumps eventually), nor do I want to see a huge clearing as far as the view goes.
So, because of weather and injury I have fallen behind on wood cutting.
Then while I was hanging out in the Outside  waiting for my snowmachine repair, I got to thinking and here's what I came up with.
First I am worried about next winter's firewood. Secondly I am absolutely pissed at missing the first sunny week we've had this March. And, I am planning what to do when I get back, mostly about the firewood situation. And that's when it hit me.
So here we go to the point where all this comes together. There's this huge birch tree about 50 feet in front of the cabin. It's one of those I have never considered cutting. So a thought process began like this. I am 75 years old. If I started cutting now and cut every day for the rest of my life, when I die, nobody would probably see any difference in these woods at all. A Decision made.
Today that tree came down. Huge. It took me longer to clear where it fell across the trail than it did to cut it down.
So the accumulation of the days is this. I try to put at least twice as much firewood into the piles as I take out to burn every day. Today from the two other trees I've cut, three times as much went back into the piles.
When the time to quit for the day I came inside to just lie down and listen to the radio. After about half an hour I walked outside. The moment I opened the door I was hit with something like a heat wave. At that point I realized what cutting down that last tree had meant.
So just to test, I made my first single-malt slushee of the year and sat in my new big chair and enjoyed THREE hours of sunshine instead of one. Now if Thoreau could only see this. That tree warmed me once just from getting out of the way, with four more times to go.
And then there is the moment of grace. I prefer that to the moment of zen. I am sitting in that chair, with my single-malt slushee, my feet up on the box that houses my generator for warmth and quiet. A chickadee landed on the uplifted toe of my boot. He perched there for a while, looking around for where he wanted to land next. And at that moment in that place in the quiet of the forest, with the bird on my boot and the sun in my face, I felt it. While he stood there I realized I had reached that state of grace at least for a precious moment. So glad I didn't miss that.

 Firewood  and revery

2 comments:

  1. Having been in Alaska last year, I am enjoying your commentary on actually living there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is so wonderful. Thanks for sharing and making me feel like I was right there with you.

    ReplyDelete

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”