A winter's worth of wood

So, the Darlin'Man cut down a whole passel of trees before the sap ran this spring, clearing out a piece of what I dearly hope will become a sheep field before too entirely long.  Today, he and his Finnish axe made a bet that they could chop in a day what we'd otherwise use a wood splitter to make our way through... 

I think he succeeded in his challenge. I'm reminded of the legend of John Henry.  Thankfully there's no heart attack for us at the end of the day, just an icepack on his back. 

I'm so proud of - and oh so thankful for - my Mountain Man... I think I'll keep him. 

Hunkering Down

There's a husky curled up on the couch.  A husky ball is one of the coziest things there is, a world of comfort unto itself.  Nose under tail wrapped around paws.  The past week and more has brought a cold spell to the Interior, with temperatures in town reaching into the thirties and forties below zero, ice fog reducing visibility to zero in places.  Out here at the Homestead, north of town in the hills, we've mostly stayed ten to twenty degrees above the valley where the town lies.  One day last week, I came home from a twenty three below zero day to find the (relative) warmth of one point eight degrees below zero.  Mostly we've been hovering in the ten to fifteen below range.  This past weekend saw us dip to thirty below, but we are back to ten below now.  The sky out here is crystal clear and you can almost reach out to pluck the stars from the sky.  Driving into town every morning, and driving back home every evening, I encounter that invisible line of atmospheric density made visible in winter where the particulate of exhausts hangs trapped in the cold cold air.  Ice fog has some water vapor to it, it can occur entirely of water vapour in pristine areas untouched by exhaust, but within Fairbanks it is certainly primarily made of exhaust.  In the hills directly above town, you can look down at times in winter to the top of a lake of ice fog, buildings and roads entirely obscured under the cloud.  It is as though a magical barrier exists, a containment wall made of atmospheric density and the difference in molecular kinetic energy.  Cold spell, indeed.

We have moved into the downstairs of the house.  Between the cold, carpooling through long days in town to accommodate theatre schedules and yoga classes, and heating primarily with wood in a woodstove that has developed a worrisome crack it makes so much more sense to consolidate our life around said woodstove.  We have hung a curtain between the floors, and another partway down the hallway to block off the two extra bedrooms (as yet uninhabited by young humans), the studio, the library, and our bedroom.  I mourn the loss of the studio to the cold, but have been promised guiltless use of space heaters on the rare days when I actually have the handful of hours to work on a project.  There is a song by the Decemberist that has always been resonant to my darling man and me: "Crane Wife."  It is sad, as many of their songs are, but it is a beautiful love story as well.

"I forced her to weaving, on a cold loom, in a closed room, we down wove."

Well, now my loom room is cold.  We are currently sleeping on the pull out couch directly in front of the woodstove, but plan to move into the guest bedroom for the winter.  This house is large for two people.  It is a house in which to raise a family.  So this season of dark and cold, we will live in the connected kitchen/living/dining area, one small bedroom, and the bathroom.  Conveniently focusing our life and our warmth where the pipes are housed.  This has the added benefit of clearing out our bedroom area so that we can pull up the old and wretched carpeting, lay flooring, repaint, sand and finish the windowsill, and build walls and a closet.  Then build a real bed for our mattress, and move back upstairs sometime next year.  Or, you know; the next.  But for right now, there's a woman writing, a man reading, two dogs sleeping and two cats lounging within ten feet of the woodstove.  And we are warm.

Seasons of Cold

This week has seen the temperature drop to more than twenty below zero.  While some –many – areas of the country are enjoying the promise and excitement of the first snow, entering into that hovering in-between month of November and others I am sure will not see their first hard frost for a month or more, we are well into winter.  I grew up in New England, where the seasons and the months followed the kindergarten pictures fairly closely.  Spring was ushered in with grey puffy rainclouds and mud boots in March, with tulips and pasque flowers in April, with flowers galore in May.  October was a riot of gold and red and orange.  November was chilly and wet and grey.  December saw snow and decorated trees, and January was always painted in light blues and whites with crystalline snowflakes.  I'm sure you know the pictures I mean.  Living now in the subarctic, I find that living a seasonal life shakes out just a little different.  It is the first week of November and already my seasonal/mindfulness display table with its candles between the dining room and the kitchen is covered in cloths of light blue and white, with blue and white patterned origami snow cranes.  That's the "January" of the kindergarten pictures. 

Our fall this year was long and lovely.  We had a week of "September" weather, with tall grasses going to seed, sunny days and cool evenings, and the merest hint of gold in the leaves.  Then we had a week or a little more of the bright bright gold of an Interior "October" followed by two weeks of "November" with cold rain and overcast skies.  By the middle of October, the temperature hovered between five below and twenty above, and there was a coat of snow on the ground. 

Now, sitting by the warm fire with a mug of spicy mulled wine, I realize that it is no wonder that I feel the pull of the winter celebrations so strongly – I am a month into true winter dark already.  We are losing more than eight minutes of daylight each day, as we draw slowly closer to the Solstice.   The holidays are 'supposed' to start a month or a little more into wintertime.  A fellow Fairbanksan blogging friend confessed that she has been listening to Christmas music ever since Halloween.  I too, have been cueing holiday stations on Pandora or Spotify when I am alone, and poring over pictures and thoughts of holiday crafts and baking and decorating and gifting.  I have always been slightly horrified by the store displays that pull out the Fourth of July the day after Easter and Christmas even before Thanksgiving has come.  I still am, a bit.  It is blatant over-commercialization.  But in this particular instance, in this particular clime, for this particular holiday, it makes sense.  I was waiting and hoping for the holiday displays to begin even before they did.  And I feel a little impatient for the weekend after Thanksgiving to arrive so that I can pull out the box of decorations and convince the Darlin' Man to help me pick out a tree. 

I think about the psycho-social origins of winter holidays in the Northern lands.  They were based around the Solstice of course, celebrating the return of the light even before Christianity had left its birthplace in the Middle East.  Whether you celebrate the days getting longer or the birth of your savior, the last days of our calendar's December are a time of hope and renewal, even in the depths of the winter hibernation.  Many of the traditions we think of are about this renewal or rebirth.  But many of them – the mulled wine or cider, the cookies, the warming spices of ginger and cinnamon and clove, the firelight, the family, welcome wreaths, even the gifting – are also about the drawing-in and the gathering-around of the winter season.  The weather out of doors is inhospitable at best, so we create our own warmth within.  We gather with loved ones to eat and to tell stories.  Most holiday decorations have meanings associated with the religious and spiritual significance of the holidays, from the colors to the evergreens to the stars, but also by decorating the space that we live in, where we retreat to away from the winter cold, where we gather with loved ones we make that space –our home- inviting and welcoming.  We allow it to be a space of retreat and respite, a place where spirits are lifted.

Which is all a fancy and very long-winded way of saying that this year I shan't be ashamed of my intense enjoyment, and early commencement of the winter season.  

Keepin' Warm

The temperature is now back up in the zero to 5 below range, and it feels so warm!  We had a about a week where cars and generators froze, with temps of 35 to 55 below. 

Way to cold.

The house did pretty well, considering.  The woodstove kept the downstairs warm, and under covers even the upstairs was lovely.  The back rooms were freezing, and I didn't even attempt to sit still at the loom, but when its that cold, kitchen and hearth are all you really need.

The generator froze twice and wouldn't start, but each time, darlin' man was able to get it running again with help from the propane heater.

There was alot of this:

and of this:

going on!

Weeks like this with temperatures so cold really and really remind you just how dependant you are on energy, whether from wood burning, or the generator and monitor and cars that run on fossil fuels.

Weeks like this make me want to stay home with the fire, and not leave.

Last weekend, along with the ridculous cold, we had ice fog so intense you couldn't see headlights across an intersection.  The radio was giving periodic warnings about how air quality is not advised for the young, pregnant or elderly.  Ice fog is something that only happens at super cold temps, when the moisture in the air crystalizes into fog.  It is compounded by pollution - car exhaust, power plant emissions, woodstove and heater exhausts - it all gets trapped by the cold density of the air and the fog and gets worse.  It is like breathing soup.

Sometimes when I've driving the 40 minutes home from work, I wonder if we wouldn't have made a better choice by finding somewhere closer into town.  If the commuter gas makes up for the eventual food production.  But then a week of ice fog I would NEVER want my future children breathing reminds me that that is another, super potent reason why we live outside of the populated areas.  There was no ice fog at our house, only crystal clear air that burned with chill as you breathed it, and made the stars shine brighter and look both closer and farther away.



"An old-timer who operated a weather station north of the Brooks Range once told me that there's a digit somewhere between 40 and 50 below zero that marks the frontier where civilized life begins to shred. Dip even a little ways below that, and generators and combustion engines tend to bust. Belts grow brittle. Tires flatten. People stop bathing, or making small talk. Sanity fades with the light, and the air goes liquid and bitter on the tongue. Below that line, one blunder with bare hands can lead to frostbite or worse. Below that line, you can die due to mishaps. Better pay attention to small things."

So true, and so well put. 

It is difficult to describe the extreme cold.  What it does, how it feels.  I hear over and over that people's main impression is walking out the door and immediately having all moisture in the nose and eyes evaporate or freeze.  The river does odd things in the winter until it is thoroughly frozen over.  It steams in the cold.  If you have a complete grasp of physics, this has something to do about temperature transmuting water from form to form.  I prefer to see it as magical.

I always describe winter air as crystalline.  Focus and distance and dimensionality shift. 
 My mother, who lived through the 60's, says its like the atmosphere is on hallucinogens.

The snow covered branches of trees seem to stand out from the air that surrounds them, like they are both solid.  or are equally permeable.  When you breathe, the air sears your throat.


It means being minutely conscious, focused on the tasks of living.  The fire in the woodstove has never been so important.  Wood must be brought in to thaw before it is burnt.  You start the car twenty minutes before you go anywhere to let it warm up.  We set the generator to a maximum run time of one hour, so that it never fully charges the batteries, so the house pulls the draw down to the level the generator kicks on more often, so the generator runs more frequently and keeps itself warm so it doesn't freeze. 
Darlin' man doesn't let me out the door to drive the 26 miles into town in the morning until he's assured I have my fur hat, down coat, snow pants, and bunny boots (the last two I keep in the car for emergencies and don't generally wear). 




The above quote is by Doug O'Harra from Anchorage and can be found in the article here:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/joys-skiing-alaska-20-below-zero?page=0,0