East Pole Journal February 5, 2020: Life on a hillside

 The view downhill. Lower left is the pile of wood waitng to
be split. The snowmachine is about where it got stuck and
the remaining wood is down the hill to the right.

I have some pretty good trails around the cabin by this time in winter and that makes walking easier.

Still it's a hillside, steep enough that if you lean even a little the wrong way, especially if you are carrying something heavy, you are likely to tip over, or find yourself skiing down the hill or, worse, running, or falling face first into the snow. A day seldom gets by where I don't shout epithets at the cursed hill even though most days with the trail good and some traction from boots getting around is fairly simple. This week, we've had maybe 4 inches of snow over the past couple of days and that makes all those easy walking spots slippery (worse in the steeper parts where you really need traction to move uphill or slow yourself going down) and just that little bit of snow obliterates the border between hard-packed snow of the trail and the almost-waist-deep snow one step off it. Given that background here's how my day went. Mind you snow fell the whole time this was going on.

Accomplished:

Gathered enough snow to produce water to wash dishes with.

Two sled loads of firewood in the round brought up to the splitting yard in the large sled. (3x7)

Two smaller sled loads (2+ x5) split and placed in the woodpile under the house for next year.

One smaller sled load split and put on the deck to burn.

One smaller sled load of seasoned birch and spruce brought from under the house to the deck for the next couple days.

Difficulties overcome

Slipped and fell at least five times.

Slipped and skidded but eventually maintained balance too many times to count.

Stepped off the trail into deep snow three times at least (several uncountable while attending to the next item).

Got snowmachine stuck when it, too slid off the trail into deep snow and had to use a comealong to get it out.

Repaired the trail filling the hole the snowmachine made sliding off it. About half an hour of shoveling and stomping.

Soaked three pairs of gloves and one pair of mittens.

Duration: about four hours.

Early on when I first started living here more or less full time, people used to ask me what I did all day. I didn't really have an easy answer. I would say live, explaining that everything you do in the normal course of living in a house, takes longer in the woods. You don't just turn on the hot water faucet to wash the dishes (imagine one of those electric dishwashers), you have to draw water somewhere. I have found I can keep up melting snow. But when I was married and my wife came out, I ended up having to buy five-gallon containers and go a couple of miles to a creek that runs through the winter and fill four of those containers every three days or so to keep up with her usage. Then of course you have to heat it somehow and finally you can wash your dishes. Now, for heat. Those two sled loads I put under the house today toward next year, given they are spruce (which burns faster than my favored birch) they might last four days if I am conservative with it. No thermostat to turn up when it gets cold. Now multiply that by every single thing you do in a regular house and you get the idea. What do I do all day? Live.

Birds update

I've been seeing a few more redpolls these days but only a couple at a time. Not the big hordes of the past. And there's this. The chickadees have all but emptied the second 40-pound bag of sunflower seeds this winter so I have to go out tomorrow and head for the store.

But then there's the view of Denali.

The East Pole Journal

A COMMENT FROM FACEBOOK: Betty Sederquist Ha ha, you should be all settled into the Pioneers’ Home, all cozy. It would leave more time for writing. You could reminisce with others about the difficulties of hauling water. But I know that will never happen.