As The Crow Flies

A reader of this blog has been asking for a tour of my cabin. I was going it do a you-tube video but decided it would take to long to upload with a dial-up connection. The cabin measures 19′X 11″. I didn’t build it. I talk about two different cabins, one in Coastal BC and one in North Central Washington. This is the one in Washington– the one from which I blog from.

This is the outside. The cooler on the porch is where I keep my food cold–probably not a good idea because a bear might come and find it and then I would have troubles.

Two couches–good idea if you ever have company or if you just want a change.

This couch is a chest that my brother-in-law and I made out of tongue and grove pine. Inside the couch/chest are the batteries and the the regulator for my solar system and some clothes.

This is the kitchen.

This is the wood stove. The pot holds my hot water. The tub next to the wood stove is used to bring wood in, wash my clothes and sometimes I take a bath in it.

This is the loft. There is a bed up there and a 55 gallon drum of water that gravity feeds to the sink below it.

This is what I cook on. Sometimes I also cook on the wood stove. There is a small propane grill out on the porch if I want to grill or bake something.

This is my composting toilet.

I also have this outside toilet that sits out in the woods. It is a plywood box with a toilet seat lid that sits over a hole in the ground.

The basin hanging on the wall is usually full of water. I use the same water over and over to wash my hands during the day. When the water looks dirty, I start over with new water. I can keep clean (enough for a person who lives alone and seldom sees anyone) with just this basin.

Here is the solar panel soaking up the rays so I can use my laptop.

That’s the whole complete tour.

Tent floors are not really necessary. I like one to keep bugs and rodents from bothering me.  It’s sometimes nice to feel cut off from the world and be left un-harassed while I sleep.

I don’t need a tent floor to protect me from the wet ground I have a full length Z-Rest for that. Tent floors do a poor job at protecting you from the wet anyway because what happens is condensation rolls down the walls and puddles on the floor.

I was thinking, it might be best to make tent floors out of breathable nylon instead, so the water doesn’t puddle in the tent.

I have this travel tent that fits on the a single size bed. I use it when traveling to foreign countries. It has a breathable nylon floor. It weighs 1.9lbs (.86 kilograms) with aluminum poles but it doesn’t have a rain fly. I was thinking if a person rebuilt one of these with carbon fiber poles and lighter weight materials and made a fly for it, you would have this great light tent that would do for wherever you go. If the tent fly was also a rain cape that would be even better.

That’s what I’m always looking for–the ultimate gear. The gear package that you can walk out your door and away from your home, travel the world, and never come back to change gear.

Spring is coming. I know this not because it usually does around this time of year, but because the cabbage I bought at the Barter Fair in October is starting to sprout. From the looks of things, I should have many cabbages. Then I can trade them at the Barter Fair for something I eat.

Think you need a 3000 dollar system to compost your poo? No. All you need is bucket with a toilet seat lid, and this free downloadable book.

A link to the site: http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html

And here is a link directly to the PDF.

Thanks to Richard for finding the links.

Related Post: Simple composting toilet

When I walk on the main road, there is a happy man who stops in the middle of the paved road and talks to me. Last time I talked to him was last year. I was in the laundromat for about 6 hours washing and drying my down bag and I told him about the hike that I was washing my bag for.

Today he stopped me on the road and asked if I made it. I said, “Yeah, and it was my best hike ever. I stayed happy and strong the whole way.” He said “I would love to do something like that but I’m working on my earthen house.”

He showed me some pictures of it and he told me how he is going even further below ground to pipe 50 degree air into his house year round. So it will be warm in winter and cool in the summer. He did a lot of stone work. He said he built it all with just a wheel barrow and hand tools.

When I bought this land it was so I could build a small cob cottage on it. A cob cottage is a dwelling sculpted out of clay, sand, and straw. So far, I have been more interested in hiking then building when spring rolls around, though. Someday.

I told him that I would be really interested in seeing his earthen dwelling and he told me to give him a call.

The snow is receding and my woodpile appears again. It hard to tell how much wood you have if it’s covered in snow. Now I see I have plenty of wood. I had my doubts. Look, there is my ax. I haven’t seen that in awhile.

In Northern California on the Pacific Crest Trail, there is a long hot exposed waterless stretch–Hat Creek Rim. In 2001, the guy at the store in Old Station knew how many hikers had come through and kept a water cache stocked with water mid-way through it. He would guarantee that there would be water for you at the cache, so even though water caches are usually of little use to me–because you can’t depend on them–and because they attract annoying needy people who do depend on them, I found that one useful.

The store owner either had moved on or wasn’t there to guarantee that there was any water in the cache last year, but there is a trail angel in Old Station. I didn’t go there because I just wanted to get my business taken care of and get back out on the trail. I met another hiker who was staying with the trail angel. He said that the trail angel asks that you not take much water from the cache.

“How much is ‘not much’?” I asked.

“I don’t know” he replied.

I decided that “not much” probably meant 1 liter, so, I brought plenty of water–well, enough to get by.

Later, I met up with that other hiker. Apparently he took as much water as he wanted from the cache and he got someone to cache him even more water further up the trail. I suspect I was duped–that he was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough water for him so he told me to not take too much. It’s one of the many things I don’t like about water caches: the sense of scarcity they breed.  About nine o’clock, I passed him camped on a nice savanna but I kept hiking because I was thirsty and wanted to make the water source before I camped.

When I finally reached the water source there wasn’t anywhere to camp, so, I hiked on. Then I came to a house; I hiked on further. Next, I came to a big power plant.

So, it’s like 11 o’clock at night and I have my 1 watt led shining all over this power plant trying to find the way. Something about power plants has always scared me. Power plants in the middle of the night and the night watch men who guard them, very scary stuff. I imagined there was a serial murdering, night watchman around or at least one of Bush’s minions aggressively protecting the power plant, but I made it through without meeting up with either.

I had to go past a lot of man made stuff. I was standing at an intersection, looking at my guidebook trying to decide which way to go when I skunk came from under a chain link fence and walked towards me. I shone my light on it, but it kept coming. Then it turned around and lifted its tail at me. I quickly chose a path and moved on.

I was still in the “No Camping” zone when I came to a small lake. I was tired. I knew from when I hiked before that the lake would have fisherman around it come morning. I made camp, though. It was forest and the forest floor is often very buggy so I put up my tent.

Five the next morning, I was still tired but I knew I needed to get out of there. I packed up, moved 100 yards up the trail, laid out my pad, got into my sleeping bag and thought, “There, I’m not camping anymore. I’m just taking a break.”

For the last couple of winters I have been screwing sheet metal screws in to my running shoes. It makes a world of difference. When the ice is all gone, I can take the screws out or just let them wear down.  I put screws in shoes on  the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) before heading into the Sierras. It worked great on ice or trail but it made walking on rock more slippery.

Anyway it costs a dollar or two in screws depending on how many you put in and then you need a five dollar screw driver that can screw in hex screws. On The Goat’s site, I see there is a company selling this arrangement for 40 dollars.

Last night I looked out to see the moon eclipsing.   I opened a window, snuggled down in my sleeping bag, and watched the eclipse from my couch.

I have been using Google Reader to read blogs all winter. I can easily keep up with hundreds of blogs this way. I just subscribe to the blog and then when the blog is updated, Google Reader tells me and I read all of the blogs on one page. So I don’t need to keep going to a website to see if someone has updated. Google does it for me and delivers the new entry to my reader which I can read from any computer.

Problem is, some people only send a partial feed to the reader. Which means, I know that they have updated but I have to go to their site to read the whole entry. It’s really annoying and usually I just unsubscribe and push those blogs back into the abyss.

I have written to sites requesting that they send out a full feed. So far I have not been too successful with my full feed campaign.

Check out this tent: Titanium Goats Vertex.   It weighs less then 4 lbs and then for another pound they sell a small titanium wood stove that goes inside of it.    How cool would it be to spend the winter in this tent?  Gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.

I’m seriously thinking of buying a new tent– The Six moon Designs Wild Oasis. They say it weighs 13 oz. That’s a 10 ounce saving over the one I have– the Lunar Solo. I don’t know if it would be better to have 175 more dollars in my account or 10 ounces less on my back.

I do know, that of everything I own, my backpacking gear is what I value the most. Even when I was tied to a house, a job, and responsibilities, it was what I valued the most. I used to set up all my gear in my bedroom and imagine the day that I would be out there. That’s why I don’t mind buying gear– as far as material possessions go, it’s the most valuable thing to me.

Update: Wait, there is no floor in this tent. That’s no good. I want a floor in my tent so the ticks, ants, and spiders don’t bite me. Well, that dilemma is over.

I’m plotting my escape from cabin life. I can’t stand it any longer. The Pacific Crest Trail(PCT) is too far off to wait on, so, I’m thinking of doing the Grand Enchantment Trail first. It’s 700 miles and runs from Phoenix to Albuquerque. Then when I’m done with it, I can take the train to San Diego and hit the PCT.

I went to town a few days ago. It had been 7 or 8 weeks since I was there. The road down from my cabin is a slick steep glacier that probably won’t recede till April. I have a small rear wheel drive pickup. I know from past years that if I try to go down that hill with chains only on the rear, I have little breaking or steering. I bought a set of chains for the front tires and that helps a great deal. One of the chains broke, though, so I had to go down with only three tires chained. I was worried about how that would affect my steering but I made it down okay…and back up.

Everyone in town is antsy for spring to get here. The snow is receding.

If you ever hike around White Pass in the North Cascades, you know the horses are bad there. It takes all of my powers to ignore them, but that’s not good enough for the horse people. They shout out orders for me to talk to their horses and get out of the way. They take away the sweet smells of lupine and conifers and make the world smell like horse shit and piss. I hate them.

One year, another hiker and I were walking down a narrow section of trail with a cliff on one side and a hillside on the other, when we came to two women riding horses.

The women were all dressed up in English riding clothes—the little hat, goofy pants, whip–the whole package.

We step off of the trail to let them pass, but one of the equestrians shouts out, “Trail regulations require you to move to the low side of the trail.”

I said, “I don’t go to low side of the trail because it’s a cliff and if your horse spooks it will knock me off the cliff.”

She kept repeating, “Trail regulations require you to move to the low side of the trail.”

The other hiker said, “So what are you going to do, arrest us? Look, we will climb up the side of the hill and sit down. Then you can pass.”

The equestrian said, “No, because if they even see a leaf rattle they will spook.”

Irritated, I said, “If your horses are that easily spooked, you have no business bringing them out on the trail.”

The other hiker and I, climbed up the side of the hill, sat down, and started talking to each other. The equestrians stood their ground and blocked the trail.

After about 10 minutes, the women dismount their horses and walk them past us. While they walked them past us one of the woman pleaded, “Please, say something!” The other hiker said something but I wouldn’t say anything to them.

I carried hiking poles for 6000 miles. I rarely used them. I carried them across my back with my hands hanging over them like it was my aluminum/titanium cross to bear. It just seemed liked a lot of extra work to swing poles around.

I carried them because my tent was the Nomad Light and it required hiking poles. When I got my Lunar Solo, I ordered the carbon fiber pole with it so that I could leave the hiking poles at home.

What freedom to not have to carry poles. My arms are free to swing by my side. They can reach back and grab my water bottle. I can eat snacks on the go. I can get out my navigational data. I can mess with my MP3/radio. The minute I started hiking without poles, I knew it was an improvement.

I wore my jacket backwards a lot last summer–Ray Jardine style. In the mornings, I’m cold and then after 10 minutes of hiking I’m ready to take my jacket off. By wearing my jacket backwards, I could slip it off without stopping. I then would just hold it in my hands or loop it through my hip belt and carry it that way. If it got cold again I could slip it back on with out having to stop.

It’s a good idea Ray Jardine had, because your front stays warm and your back doesn’t get all sweaty.