As The Crow Flies

It got down to -12 F(-24) yesterday and a strange haze covered the entire sky and blocked out the sun. I had to bring the generator inside to let it warm up before I could start it. It was 11 degrees F this morning ; I think things will start warming up.

My wood stove is very small but so is my cabin; my cabin is 19′ X 11′(6 X 3.5 meters). Most of the time it heats the cabin fine but when it gets really cold it has some problems, mostly because in my small cabin are 11 large single pane windows. Last year not knowing how cold it would get or how I would react to the cold I bought a portable propane heater and a 12ft hose, so I could hook it up to a 20lb propane canister. I never used it because it seemed kind of whimpy to not deal with the cold. This year I hooked it up and use it to help the wood stove heat up the cabin. It has been very nice to wake up in a cold cabin, turn on the propane heater and then start the fire. In a very short time my cabin is cozy again.

It looks like it will be a sunny day today but with the rising of the sun, the temperature is dropping.. How can that be? It’s already down to 6 degrees. I’m always interested in the weather, now.

This is my composting toilet. I use it, throw the paper in it, and cover with sawdust. When it is full, I dump in under a big pine tree and cover with pine needles. If the pine needles are covered with snow, I cover it with snow. If I have some grey water saved I rinse out the bucket and throw the water on the pile. There isn’t any smell. The toilet usually sits out on my porch but it is very cold now(-6 F -21C) and snowy so I moved it inside.

I’m thinking about building a small addition on to my cabin so it could be kept in it its own room. It a very simple system that I learned from reading the book The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure.  Now Free and downloadable at:http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html

You don’t have to use sawdust you can use what ever you have, dirt, bark, duff, what ever. For material to cover it outside, the idea is to have something fluffy that allows a lot of air to get to it so that it can heat up, kill any bad stuff, and compost fast. In the book he recommends straw. I use pine needles because that’s what I have. But you could use leaves or weeds or what ever. My bucket is called a Luggable Loo;a five gallon bucket with a toilet seat lid. In the book he builds a nicer looking system. You could just use a 5 gallon bucket with a regular lid.

The warmest it got today was 2F (-17C) degrees. The sun isn’t even down and it’s already in the minus. I snow shoed down to my mailbox, 2.5 miles(4km) away. It was 2 F(-17C) degrees and the wind was blowing some of the time. I didn’t feel that cold but now that I’m back I feel chilled to the bone. Times like these I really miss having a bathtub.

Most days I walk down to my mailbox to retrieve or send a movie from Netflix. Some days I walk down to mail a movie in the morning and again in the afternoon to receive a movie. On those days I get 10 miles(16km) in. It’s my getting fit by watching movies plan.

A lot of snow fell yesterday. Today, I put on my snow shoes to go for my walk. It was 8 degrees F (-13 C) when I went on my walk, now it’s 4 degrees (-15C) and I presume it will get colder tonight. I didn’t know it could snow when it got this cold but it’s still coming down.

When I go walking in the snow I wear running shoes because they let my feet move and so they stay warm. I was reading The Prairie Traveler: The 1859 Handbook for Westbound Pioneers and they recommended wearing moccasins in the snow for the same reasons. In an old Boy Scouts manual they also recommended wearing shoes that let your feet move as the key to keeping them warm in the snow. Boots hold your feet stiffly so your feet get a lot colder. My snow shoes are called Northern Lite Elite Snowshoes. They are very light (36 oz per pair 1kg ) and you can run in them.

My son came for Thanksgiving weekend. He brought with him a small hand held powerful laser. Outside we looked at the stars and pointed at them with the laser. Inside he wrote his name with the laser while I took a picture using a 10 second shutter speed.

The Pacific Crest Trail is a nearly 2700 mile (4300Km) wilderness trail that runs from the Mexican border at Campo, California into Canada at Manning Park, BC. Most people making the pilgrimage start in late April or early May at Campo and end up at Mannning Park sometime in September. Anyone can do it, but saying that I also say don’t underestimate what it’s going to take to do it. It’s a hike that will change your life and make you look at the world differently. Once you make it on the trail, don’t quit. It’s hard and a lot of the time it might not feel like fun but don’t quit. Like anything else in life, it’s mostly mental. Keep yourself happy, well fed, and hydrated and you will be fine. The time on the trail that I came closest to quiting was resolved by hitching to a store, buying a bunch more food, hitching back to the trail, setting up camp in a beautiful spot with a great view and just taking the day off to eat, sleep and enjoy the view.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is to have a fervent desire to hike the trail. The next most important thing to have is a light load. Ray Jardine’s book, Beyond Backpacking: Ray Jardines Guide to Lightweight Hiking, is a great primer on long distance, light weight backpacking. He made most of his own light weight gear for very little money.

PCT hiker alumni, “Yogi”, put together a PCT Hiking Handbook on hiking the trail full of all sorts of essential advice, tips and trail information.

The three guide books for the trail are: The Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California , Northern California, Oregon And Washington. I tore up the books and mailed myself the sections to where I needed them.

There is a Pacific Crest Trail Data Book that is particularly useful and combined with a compass/alimeter watch makes figuring out where you are on the trail and how long to the next water source much easier.

I also brought the AAA map of what ever state i was hiking through. The trail is shown on the map and gave me a big picture view of where I was.

The only permits you will need are a thru-hikers permit that you can get for 5 dollars from http://www.pcta.org and permission to enter Canada through the PCT permit which is free.

While I was biding my time waiting for the day that I would be out there. I watched Lynn Welden’s “How to hike the PCT video“ And read books about peoples experiences on the PCT.

Related Post: How to get to Campo– the southern end of the Pacific Crest Trail 

My current tent is a Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo. It weighs 23 oz (652 grams) with the light weight floor option. You can use a trekking pole with it or buy the optional 1.8 oz ( 51grams) pole. It sets up fast, and offers a lot of room- enough for 2 in an emergency. Things I look for in a tent: covered porch so I can lay in my bag and cook dinner out of the rain, fast set up, full bug protection, and light weight. This tent offers all of these things. Mesh comes up the sides so that even though it is a single wall tent , places where you might touch the walls are double wall. It comes in gray and green. Grey is the best color, I think, for not being seen.

It comes unseamed sealed. To seam seal your tent, go to the hardware store and buy some mineral spirits , some clear silicone caulking, and a cheap brush. Mix the silicon caulking and the mineral sprits in a small can and paint on the seams.

It takes 6 stakes, I bought orange titanium stakes from backpackinglight.com. All six stakes, together, weigh 1.30 ounces (37 grams) Don’t buy stakes that aren’t a bright color they are just too easy to lose. I carefully count them as I pull them out and put them in a pocket in my pack.

All totaled tent+ seam sealing+ stakes+ pole+ stuff sack= 27ounces (765 grams)

I open my umbrella in it to poof out the back wall a little more.

For wiping the walls of a tent which on some days can become wet I carry a small viscose camp towel which is sort of like a very thin sponge; it works a lot better than a bandanna and of course doubles as a towel.

Six Moon Designs has other other lightweight shelter options, also you might want to check out Henry Shires Tarp Tents.

For world travel I also bring a Long Road Travel Tent. I have found lots of wonderful places (and some not so wonderful) to stay at that were really cheap but they might have huge cockroaches or rats in them and I can’t sleep when surrounded by huge cockroaches and rats. Cockroaches and rats don’t hurt you but ticks, lice, mosquitoes, and spiders can kill you. This travel tent is free standing and fits on a single sized bed. It has a breathable nylon floor that extends up the sides so nothing can bite you where you might touch the sides. I can stay anywhere with this tent, just zip myself up and rest easy. It weighs 1.9 lbs (.86 kg)

• Put water and pasta in pot, cover with lid or foil
• heat to boiling or near boiling.
• When water reaches boiling or near boiling turn off stove let pasta cook on it’s own.
• When pasta is done, pour excess water into your nalgene bottle.
• Add peanut butter, garlic powder, dried crushed red peppers and some of the hot water from your Nalgene bottle to pasta. ( You can get the crushed red peppers in little packets at the pizza parlor.)
• keep stirring and add more hot water if necessary.
• Add a packet of chicken or tuna, if you like.
• Use remaining hot water, if there is any, to make your after dinner hot beverage. Always drink your pasta water.

Even though the days are warm (40 F, 4 C) and most of the snow has melted, there are still thick patches of ice on the road. I think they will be there until spring. I only left my cabin twice in 4 months last winter but this is what I learned about driving a small rear wheel drive pickup on the ice:

• Carry weight in the back of your pickup: sand is the best thing to be carring because you can sprinkle it on the road for extra traction if needed but anything will work. Try to keep the weight over your back wheels.
• If you have to go down a steep icy hill, get a set of chains for the front of your pickup, also. I like Les Schwab chains. They have cables where you hook them and chains for the actual traction. They come with a big plastic mat that has pictures and directions on how to put them on that you can kneel on while you are putting them on. You can buy them in the winter and if you don’t use them they will buy them back from you in the spring. There is also a video on their site of how to put them on.
• Bring 4 composite roofing shingles to put under your tires in case you get into a situation that you need the extra traction.
• Bring a shovel in case you get stuck in a snow bank and need to dig out the tires.
• When going up the big steep hill I put it in first gear at the bottom and never let up on the gas until I get to the top. When going down the steep hill I put it in first gear and give it no gas and as little brake as I can.

I like going to the library. If I will be in a town for more than a month; I call myself a resident and get a card. At one time in my life I had books checked out from 5 different library systems.

The worse library system that I have ever encountered is the Multnomah County Library. Those surly librarians were always annoyed with me for some reason. When I was a kid, the children’s librarian was always scolding me for not being carful enough when using the big dictionary. She would run over and say, “We have to be very careful with this; it is very fragile.â€? Why would anyone buy a fragile dictionary to begin with and then to add stupidity on top of impracticability, put it in the children’s library?

As I got older I ventured out of the children’s library. When I brought my books to the check out they would say” these are adult books you need to get permission to check them out. Go to the big desk.”  Most of my life, checking out books at the downtown library required going, for one reason or another, to that big desk. As I remember it was this large room with soaring ceilings and a very high counter like a judge’s pulpit and there I would have to plead my case as to why they should let me check out books. Sometimes they wouldn’t let me. Most of the times I was sent there was because of overdue library fines.

The exorbitant library fines were hard when it was just me; a good chunk of my babysitting money would go to the library, but when I had a child they became crushing. It doesn’t take very long to read a children’s book so we would have to get quite a few children’s book at a time to keep us in reading material very long. Since life gets busy when you are a single parent working 60 hours a week sometimes the books wouldn’t get returned on time. Often the fines exceeded the price of the item I had checked out. At one point I just started buying books instead of going to the library, saying, “It’s justs cheaper, this way.”

We moved away from the Multnomah county library and started going to the Forest Grove library where they didn’t have fines and the librarian is happy that you came in to get some books.

My son came up with this theory about librarians: There are two kinds of librarians: (1) those that see themselves as keepers of knowledge and(2) those that think of themselves as educators of the community.

The keepers of knowledge don’t want you to check out any books they just want to have them all there still in the same condition as when they bought them… Those librarians are never happy when you come in to take “theirâ€? books and I think if they could, would like all the books under glass and locked up.

Then there are the librarians that see themselves as educators of the community and those librarians see books as tools that need to be used to be of any use. They are happy when you come in and happy to see you leave with a bunch of books.

We eventually moved back to Portland, right away the fines started piling up. (Now the library had videos and the late fee for a video was a dollar a day!) But we always paid them before they would let us check out more books. But then the Multnomah County Library started giving their accounts to a collection agency. This is not for unreturned library books this is for books that were returned late. My son moved away to Florida and went to buy a house. When he applied for a loan, his credit report had a ding on it from the Multnomah County Library. Even the loan officer was surprised to find that someone’s credit rating had been hurt from overdue library fines.

I have since moved away, myself. Yet once when driving through town I stopped to use the Internet, as I have done in dozens of libraries across the country. The librarian said the internet is only for people with a Multnomah County library card. Since library cards don’t expire, I said I have one but I don’t have it with me. She looked me up in the computer, turned to me and with a look and a voice most often found on police officers and Nazis said, “You know, you have 97 dollars in fines”.

I don’t like using much soap to wash my dishes or me because without copious amounts of hot water, a soapy residue stays on, so, I have been using baking soda when I have a greasy pan to wash and sometimes I use it to wash my hair as well, as I learned to do from this Mother Earth News article. The baking soda acts as the alkali and the grease in the pan or the oil in my hair acts as the fat, put them together and you have soap. It has been working really well until I ran out of baking soda. Lye (the alkali that soap is usually made with) is made from wood ash so I tried washing a greasy pan using hot water and ashes from my wood stove, and it worked great.

I used a pan of hot water (no soap) and a scrub brush and the rug looks a lot better. Last year I tried cleaning my rug in the snow as told to me in this Mother Earth News article but it wasn’t a complete sucess and dragging my dirty rug out into the brilliant snow and sunshine made it look that much more dingier.