Category: General

Although its been dropping to 22 degrees F(-5.5 C)over night, the days have been sunny. It may snow by the end of the week, but I’m betting I’ll be able to get out until Thanksgiving.

My wood pile is growing but probably still isn’t big enough. I’m not worried–with my packboard I will be able to cut and pack wood after the snow flies. I also have a small propane heater hooked up to a 20 lb tank that I can carry down to the little store, on my packboard, 2 miles away, and get refilled.

I bought a bunch of food–not enough for all winter, but Amazon sells food cheaper than I can get it in town and though the UPS guy won’t come to my cabin, he will drop my stuff off at the little store or at my neighbors down by the road.

I have never seen a piece of fruit in the little store but they do have milk, cottage cheese, and if your are quick, the occasional tomato.

Last year, my neighbor and I spit a huge box of apples. She stored it in her cold storage and about every two weeks I would go get some more. I ate apples everyday, all winter for 3.00. Maybe she would be into doing the same thing this year.

Once again, I have resumed my Netflick subscription.

The library, out here, mails books to you in cloth bags. When you are done reading your book you just zip it back up in the bag and put it in your mailbox.

I am working on getting a LED lamp hooked directly to my DC storage batteries. It will only draw 2.5 watts and will make it nicer to read at night. I’m very excited about this new improvement.

I’m looking forward to being snowed in. Life is so peaceful and focused once I have been freed from having to go anywhere. Time stretches out, before me, infinitely and  then there is always time, for anything, without hurrying.

I’ve been cutting up this big pine tree today. It doesn’t look that big in the picture but I got quite a bit of wood just from limbing it.

It was up on a piece of my property that was touched by fire. I guess it didn’t make it, because it fell over last winter.

It’s pretty lucky to find a big tree, already seasoned, laying on it’s side, up off the ground, close to the road.

So far, I am taking really good care of my new chainsaw and we are getting along fine.

After checking all the bulletin boards and not finding anyone selling firewood, I resigned myself to cutting firewood but then I couldn’t get the saw started.

I found someone selling some wood on the local classifieds. I called him and asked about buying some firewood. He said that he had sold all he had, but as soon as he could buy or borrow a chainsaw he would start cutting more. He took my order and said he would get back to me when he got some wood cut but that the price would go up once winter was here.

I don’t know, I could go buy a new chainsaw and get busy and cut some wood or it may be simpler to just buy a ticket to Peru and go away for the winter.

I went to the Barter Fair yesterday. In past years, there were people with big loads of firewood for sale and I was hoping to buy some and have it delivered. No such luck. No one seems to have wood for sale around here, this year.

I have lots of land and lots of dead trees I could cut up. I don’t like cutting wood. It’s loud and frustrating and I always need to be messing with the chainsaw. Plus, I worry about sustaining an injury that could end up costing me a lot more than a couple loads of firewood.

One thing I do like, is going around picking up small sticks for my fire. The fire I get from the sticks if very hot. In past years I have wanted to just go out and only pick up sticks for my firewood, but I bowed to others who told me that I needed to fire up a chainsaw and cut big wood. But what did people do before they had chainsaws: they picked up sticks.

Yesterday there were some snow flurries.

I got my chainsaw running so I don’t have an excuse to not cut wood. I cut some. I’ll cut some tomorrow and probably right up to when the snow flies, but I think I may buy some too. I was planning on buying some at the Barter Faire but I think it may have been this weekend.

Laen Finehack taught me this and I had an opportunity to use it this morning. If you grab a Sharpie out of your pen can instead of your whiteboard marker, and start drawing on your whiteboard with it, just grab your whiteboard marker and draw over it and it will come off.

It froze last night; time to get serious about getting some wood in. My chainsaw won’t start; I’m not so sad about it because I’m thinking about buying wood this year.

Today, on my walk back to my cabin, I met a vehicle with a drunk guy and a teenager in it. The vehicle didn’t have a windshield and had a bale of hay in the back. He was lost and asked directions. He was trying to clutch start his vehicle so he was stopped there, I walked a little ways and saw a beer can lying on the ground. I called back at him, “Hey, is this your beer can?” The kid shrugged and the drunk guy said, “Ahh, yeah maybe it fell out”. When I got up to my gate I saw someone had drove right through my fence and there was another Bush can sitting there.

Hunters I suspect. They drive all over the place like they have some right to. They throw out a bale of hay, get drunk and wait for a deer to come eat the hay and then shoot it. When they leave they toss their beer cans out their windows.

I got a sledge hammer and was trying to straighten the metal fence pole and get the fence back up when this little dog came walking up to me. My nearest neighbors are a mile away and they don’t have a dog. I carried the dog up to my cabin and gave it some water outside. Then I went inside and called my neighbor to see if they knew anyone with a little dog. They didn’t.

When I went back outside, the dog was gone. I went back down to my gate to work on it. A pickup drove past me with two guys with camouflage caps on; I said, “I don’t want hunting on my land if that is why you are coming up here.” They said, “No problem”

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Even though when I bought my water access only cabin in coastal British Columbia, I had dreams of kayaking home after long trips up to Alaska and down to the Puget Sound, I had never even kayaked the 18-22 miles into town.

While up at my BC cabin, this time, a section of my stovepipe rusted out. It was getting colder and I was longing for adventure, so one morning I started out to town to buy a section of stovepipe. It was nine before I got my kayak loaded and ready to go and I knew that by noon or so the water can get really rough but my inner voice assured me that I should go.

I had the first 9 miles done in 2 hours and despite not having paddled a kayak in a year and the upper body weakness of a long distance hiker, I felt great. Then the wind and the chop started. In the next hour I had only gone 2 miles.

It was where two inlets come together and I would have an unprotected crossing ahead. My inner voice was egging me on but I began to suspect that my inner voice was trying to kill me, so, I paddled into a little cove with a beach. When I pulled my skirt off from the kayak, a wave came up and swamped my kayak. I turned the kayak back over and pumped it out. Then pulled it up on the rocky beach.

I could see by the seaweed and mussels attached to the rocks that this beach disappeared when the tide came in. I changed into some dry clothes, (Note: You might as well just wear rain pants when you kayak in coastal BC ) then pulled out my pad and stove, and reclining against the rocks made a hot beverage and thought about things. Up on the rocks, was a spot that might be big enough for my tent.

About then it started to rain so I decided to try to get my tent set up there. It required hauling up some rocks to secure my tent because I couldn’t get my tent stakes in very far before they hit rock.

Then I took on the arduous task of hauling my kayak up the rocks. To the painful sound of gel coat scraping away, I pulled, pushed, and carried it precariously up the rocks. I tied it to a tree up there.

Then I crawled into my tent to wait out the rough water and rain. I knew I should only be grateful for this site but it slopped terribly into the sea. Of all the campsites I have ever had, I must say this one was as far from flat or comfortable as I have ever had.

I decided to wait until morning to paddle into town because I didn’t know where I was going to sleep once I got there anyway.

The next morning, the rain had stopped and the water was calm. I paddled into town but now I was sore and it was much tougher.

I spent that night in town and paddled all the way back the following day. I didn’t want to because I was sore, but lots of rain was in the forecast in the coming days, so I thought this was the best day to be going. My shoulders burned, my wrists were swollen and painful, and I was tired.

When I got back to my cabin, I replaced the stovepipe, made a fire, laid down on my couch and quickly fell asleep. I laid on that couch for the next 3 weeks and watched the rain fall.
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