As The Crow Flies

We have about 2 feet(.60 meters) of snow here. Yesterday it got down to 5 degrees F (-15 C), but now things are warming up. I was hoping for a, “Oh no, I hope I don’t die” kind of winter. So far things have been too comfortable for my comfort.

I had a little dog stay with me last weekend. She was really sensitive to cold, so she wasn’t much of a walking companion, but she did show an astute appreciation for 800 fill down during the night. She belongs to the neighbor that asked me to house sit. I told him I didn’t want to house sit, but I would take care of his dog at my cabin while he was away. I think the dog will be coming again next week.

I asked the library to mail me some exercise videos. The other night, I was exercising away in my small cabin, to a woman that was so cheerful she seemed to be a satire of an exercise instructor, when–“bang!”– I backed in to the large pot I keep on the wood stove and 8 gallons of hot water soaked my cabin. The pot is now dented and the lid doesn’t fit on it anymore.

Too many Netflix videos and copious hours on the internet have pushed me over the line of being an observer to being a participant. Society is entertaining and interesting but I don’t want to be part of it; I just want to be amused by it. Good thing my solar system is starting to fail; I spend too much time with this laptop.

It’s finally happened, I have tired of movies. I can’t make myself go down and mail movies or pick up the one that has been sitting in my mailbox. I whine, “Nooo, not another movie.” Good thing I have found something else to motivate me to walk–another PCT(Pacific Crest Trail) hike.

Many times a day I find my mind back on the PCT. I try to get excited about other hikes, but when I think about being back on the PCT, my world becomes brighter and starts to sparkle and my body hums. Seems crazy to want to hike the same hike over and over but life is so good out there.

If I had a purpose it wouldn’t seem so crazy, so, Laen Finehack had this idea for a way to create a trail guide using a GPS data logger and a small digital camera. The GPS runs constantly, recording my position. When I see something I want to record for the trail guide, I take a picture of it. The camera puts a date/time stamp on the photo. Put the data from the data logger and the data from the photos together and I have a trail guide.

My cabin in BC is water access only and I don’t own a boat. I usually stay up for between 1-2 months before the water taxi comes back to pick me up.

One of the things I discovered living up there without access to stores is I don’t need anything. If something would break, I would need to fix it with what was at hand. If I couldn’t fix it, I would lie down on my couch, have a hot beverage, look out at the view for a while, and then an idea would come to me as how I could fix it with what was at hand. If that idea didn’t work, I would repeat above steps. If it still didn’t work, I would leave it. Because it’s hard to say anything is a pressing need when you have shelter from the rain, a good view, and a hot beverage.

Some times I would begin to run out of something like coffee and worry, “Oh, no. I’m going to run out of coffee.� When the morning came that there was no coffee, I would wake up, make myself a cup of tea and never think about it. Then I would start to run low on tea and I would think, “Oh no, soon there will be no tea.� When the morning came that there wasn’t any tea, I would wake up and make myself a cup of hot water. Lying on my couch, drinking hot water, and looking out at the view I felt even happier because now I was free from the need of coffee and tea.

After six months, I talked to my sister about my experiences up there. I said it was weird; I didn’t need anything. I told here how strange it was to come back to town and see a whole society built on exchanging money. She told me it was the Sears and Roebuck catalog that finally got farmers to leave the country and go to work in factories.

I went up to my BC cabin in September. It had been a year since I had been up. My BC cabin is mostly glass–36 windows in 600 sq. ft. and most of them are big panes of glass. It has double, full view, French doors on it. There were smudges on the doors when I got there. I washed them away but they kept reappearing.

One night, after dark, I was lying on my couch reading with my led headlamp, when I see something big and black brush up against the double glass doors. Sometimes when my neighbors come up, their dog will come over to see me. Thinking it was their dog, I opened the door and said, “Kobi?â€? What ever it was ran away which made me feel a little uneasy. In the morning, I went to see if my neighbors were up–they weren’t.

The next evening, before it got dark, I hear something walking around on my deck. I looked out to see a black bear moseying up to the front of my cabin and then sitting down against my cabin like it was my dog.

Then it started sniffing around my kayak. I wanted to watch the bear but I didn’t want the bear to feel comfortable around my cabin so I opened the door and yelled at it. It went down the stairs of my deck.

It was a very high tide and the water was close to the stairs. I couldn’t figure out were the bear went. I looked but it just disappeared. If it had gone into the water, it seems like I would have heard a splash. If it had gone through the brush, it seems like I would have heard the brush rattling. I started to suspect it might be living under my cabin. But, I was afraid to look because it might feel cornered and attack.

I brought a bunch of rocks inside so I could lob them at the bear if it came back, but it never did. I never did look under the cabin.

Life is getting back to normal after that house sitting stint. I’m settling back into my nice life at my cabin. That guy called again and asked me to house sit but I had the good sense to say no this time.

We got a lot of snow but then that strange warm wind came again and turned a lot of it to slush. There was thick slush to wade through on the road. I didn’t want to wade through slush for 5 miles so I took my truck. It made it down but it didn’t make it back up. I parked it two miles away. Yesterday someone plowed the slush so I was able to bring my truck back up. Now, it’s cold again so the road will be a sheet of ice which is not easy to walk on even if you have sheet metal screws in your running shoes.

Life is not offering many challenges this winter. I think about my next adventure, though I’m not sure what it will be–just kicking around ideas.

Hell is a overheated house filled with stuff, a big TV playing insipid fragments of thoughts, domesticated animals, and enough electric lights that the darkness will never inconvenience you.     I’m happy I know that.

Tomorrow morning I start house sitting for a neighbor. He waved me in as I walked past his house today. He has the biggest TV I have ever seen. He also has a big bath tub, satellite internet, washer and dryer, a cat and a dog. He showed me where all his food was kept and told me to help myself.

Originally, I said no because I like living in my cabin but he looked disappointed when I said that and it was only for a day and I would get to use his washer, so, I said okay.  Now, the commitment has grown to 4 days.