One night, in the Sierras, I was sleeping under the stars on a small rock outcropping. For some reason, in the middle of the night, I woke up and turned on my headlamp. There, inches from my face, was a scorpion. I flicked it away, turned off my headlamp and went back to sleep. I think this means that some part of my brain must stay awake and hold guard duty while I sleep.
Wild horses at my cabin.
These horses have been loose for at least 2 months. Nobody knows who they belong to. In this area it’s okay for cows to be loose but not horses. They came right up to my cabin this morning. I came out with apples for them but they ran away.
All my neighbors dogs bark at me and hold their tails between their legs when they see me. Despite putting out almonds and oatmeal for the the birds, they won’t come. I think I may have Miss Gulch syndrome.
No more snow…and I want to go.
It’s a beautiful sunny day and almost all the snow is gone. I feel sort of stupid sitting here without winter. I’m starting to check out places to go again.  I don’t want to just sit in my cabin. I’ve done that enough. There is no substance to this winter.   No frame.  I want something different.
Boo!–Slush
We got lots of snow– and the wind blew hard, but sometime last night the world got warm. Now my beautiful thick powdery snow is nothing but a slushy mess.  The forecast is calling for 100% chance of ice pellets.  Weather can be so disappointing.
Yea! Snow!
The snow is here! Winter has arrived. It has been snowing all night and it’s supposed to continue all week. I love it.
It won’t be long before my pathetic woodpile will be nothing but a small bump in the landscape. For some reason that makes me laugh.
Snow and an old hippie.
We finally got a little snow.
Today on my walk, I met an interesting man. He was trying to hitch a ride into town but he walked with me for a couple of miles. He has a vehicle, but neither it nor he has been licensed since 2004, so he drives it down to the little store and hitch hikes the 25 miles to town. He is an old hippie that has been living out here for 30 years. There are lots of old hippies out here. They sport hippie names, (like a trail name but for a hippie.) Many of them came thirty years ago and still don’t have a well, phone or electricity.
This guy had a cabin but his cabin burnt down a few years ago. After his cabin burnt down, his dog and he had to spend the winter in a tent he bought at Wal-Mart. It gets to -20 F (-29C) out here. He said he got sick when he was living in the tent. The next year he framed a 10×12 cabin and covered it in plastic. Now, he has walls and windows, but still no door.
He told me about his buddy that lived in a cave out here until one day he went out wood cutting and a tree fell on him. They didn’t find him for a week or two.
Peeing in the woods.
When I was little and my mother took me to downtown Portland, I remember seeing my first “bag lady”. I was maybe six or so and I thought,” Yes! That’s who I want to be when I grow up.” And though the image of the roaming self-sufficient woman living on the edges of society still appeals to me, I don’t want to smell like one. For this reason, I take a rag with me when peeing in the outdoors to dab away the stray drops of urine.
The best rag, I have found, is one that isn’t too absorbent, because an absorbent rag, like a terry cloth washcloth, will begin to smell and is hard to clean– just rinsing it out doesn’t usually work. Half of a lightweight bandana cut diagonally with a buttonhole at one end so you can loop it on to the back of your pack works well. The best pee dabber I have used was a worn out Teva bamboo sock. I kept it in the outside side pocket of my pack.
Update: Now, I wear a skirt–no underwear, pee standing up, and use the hem of my skirt to blot dry.  For some reason my skirt doesn’t smell like pee.
Related Posts:
Menstrual care–on the trail on off.
Cabin napkin.
The best napkin is a dish towel or hand towel. It’s big and absorbent and much nicer and cheaper to use than paper towels. I use the same one over and over for weeks, before I wash it out. A dark towel is best because it doesn’t look dirty for a long time and the stains won’t show as bad.
So, how do we contact you?
When I first abandoned my life in the city for the simple life of living in a cabin, I also abandoned having a phone, and since my cabin was in the middle of no-where, it didn’t even have an address. Life is more beautiful and serene without a phone or an address. There is a peacefulness to a life where no one can contact you, but when you want to interact with the world of people, it makes life more difficult and frustrating.
My son had a family plan with his cell carrier that I could get a phone for 10 dollars a month, so, even though I don’t have cell service at either of my cabins, I have had a way for people to contact me and leave a message for the past 3 years.
One day, I was driving down the road and I saw a man getting mail out of his mailbox. I enviously thought, “Oh, look at him, getting mail out of his mailbox.� I thought to my self, “You know, you could probably have a mailbox if you really wanted one.� That’s one of the reasons I bought this cabin: because I wanted a mailbox.
After I had been at my cabin for a while I started looking into getting a land line because there is no cell service here. I was excited to get a phone at my cabin. I can lie on my couch and call someone and I can use the Internet anytime I want.
Lately, I have been using a free service called Grand Central. It’s run by Google. Apparently Google bought all of these phone numbers. You ask for a phone number in whatever area code and prefix you want. They didn’t have my town but they did have a town nearby that is toll-free. Then you list all of your numbers–work, cell, and home–and all of your numbers go to one “grand central number.” Then you have one local number that you can give people that won’t change when you do.
Since I have a dial up connection, when I’m on the internet (which is often) I can’t get calls. So, what this service does is record a message from the caller and sends me an e-mail that I have a message at Grand Central. I then go to the Grand Central web page and listen to the message.
When I cancel my phone in the spring and restart it in the fall my number changes. With this service, I can keep the same number. I’m not sure what Grand Central gets out of it.
I got to thinking; would a person really even need to have a phone to use the service. Say, you are moving around a lot and you don’t have a phone; you could get a Grand Central number and check your e-mail at the library to see if you had any messages. I asked technical guru LaenFinehack about this. He said that for most people they want it tied to a phone number. But if you are homeless they have a program called “Project CARE”, where homeless people can get a number.
Hiding your gear (addiction).
I have a fair amount of gear and some of it, is at my son’s. I tell him when he looks at the gear he should get all tingly, thinking about the independence and adventure that it will bring, but he doesn’t feel it. He is moving to a place with less storage, so, he is sending the gear back to me.
Since you’re not supposed to store your sleeping bag compressed, sleeping bags take up a lot of room.
I read a mother Earth News article called, “The year round down bag.” and the accompanying diagrams, where the writer uses her down bags as a comforter and as bolster pillows when she is not backpacking.
I stuffed a sleeping bag in a pillow case and–viola!– a pillow. The big pillow in this picture is a body pillow case stuffed with a Feathered Friends Hummingbird and a Marmot Helium.
My sister made some bolster pillow covers for me. They are just open ended tubes with a contrasting color inside and a tie on either end. I tried stuffing my tents into them. In one bolster pillow cover, I stuffed my Lunar Solo and my Travel Tent ; it looked okay.
I sleep in my Marmot Helium every night, it’s easy to tidy up my cabin by just stuffing it in a pillow case and laying it on my couch.
The urge to go.
I think I know why Thoreau only spent two years at his cabin; after two years, things seem routine. There is no adventure to it. The first winter I spent here was exciting because I didn’t know what being snowed in and living without running water would be like. I would wake up in my cold cabin and feel kind of burly as I made the fire. I would jump around to get warm while I waited for the fire to warm the cabin up. I still wake up when my cabin hits 36 degrees but it just doesn’t feel that cold anymore.
Last winter I got the phone line and discovered blogging.
This winter doesn’t offer anything new. This winter seems a little boring and tame. There are things to work on, like: my diet, exercise, writing, meditation, etc. The same stuff I’m always working on.
As I was driving home this year, I thought, if my cabin were robbed, I would go somewhere. When there was a big windstorm, I thought, “If a tree falls on my cabin, I’ll just get a ticket to somewhere and go.� I’m always threatening that if I run out of wood I’ll get a ticket to somewhere, grab my pack, and take off. I’m sensing a lack of commitment to this winter.
Once the snow gets here, maybe I’ll feel more committed and settled.
A new era begins–The age of light
Six years ago, I bought a remote, primitive, water access only, cabin in coastal BC. After selling my house in Portland, I carried all my stuff out on to the front yard and tried to sell it….Not really my style, but I did it.
“Noooo!. Not Grandmother’s lamp,” my sister howled. I told her she was welcome to take it, but without electricity, I couldn’t justify carting a lamp around with me and I have no room in my life for sentimentality of things. 
Now, after all these years with a headlamp strapped to my head, I have purchased a lamp and a 12 volt DC bulb to go into it. The guy at the solar shop wired up an outlet, so I can run an ordinary AC lamp off of my DC power system.
I ordered two 12 volt bulbs: one 2.4 watt 3-LED luxeon in warm yellow and a 7 watt warm florescent– in case I need more light. I got them both from Backwoods Solar. The 7 watt one lights up the whole cabin but the bulb extends past the shade and looks a little odd. The LED one, is enough to read with and looks good.
When I first plugged it in, it didn’t work. I reversed the wires on the outlet and now it does. I think I should have reversed the polarity on the lamp, if that’s possible. But I will work it all out and post a diagram and a “how to” on plugging an AC lamp into a DC system, soon.
Anyway, it’s working and it’s very cheery.
My favorite documentaries.
For people who love documentaries and all those movies that you could only see if you lived in a big city with an art house, Netflix has been a boon. They have everything. I live out in the middle of nowhere and my movies have a one day turn around. Netflix lets you rent, watch and return DVDs from home – Try free for 2 weeks Here is a list of my favorite documentaries:
- American Movie (1999) About a guy with no talent or skill but a passion for making movies and a contempt for those who don’t.
- Aileen Wuornos: Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) She worked as a prostitute and killed the men that raped her. Her advisers are a barefooted, singing lawyer and a religious woman that adopts her. Both of them sell her out and she ends up on death row.
- Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) The story continues.
- Born Into Brothels (2004) Film maker teaches the children that live in a red light district of India how to photograph.
- Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
- Country Boys (2-Disc Series) (2002) Follows the lives of 2 Appalachian teens that go to a special school.
- The Cruise (1998)
- Crumb (1994)
- Daughter from Danang: American Experience (2002) Woman who was born to a Vietnamese woman and an American solider leaves Vietnam and is adopted by a Texan when she is eight. She is completely americanized including a Texas accent when she returns to visit her family in Vietnam.
- The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
- Devil’s Playground (2002) When Amish kids turn 16 they drink, have sex, and shoot drugs until they decide to become Amish or not.
- The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000)
- First Person: The Complete Series (3-Disc Series) (2000) EarlMorris films people, interrogation style, with his special built camera.
- Grey Gardens (1975) Two eccentric former socialites, who are related to Jackie O, live in their decaying mansion full of cats and raccoons.
- Hands on a Hard Body (1998) Documentary about a contest in the south where people stand around with their hand on a Nissan pickup for days until the last one drops.
- Hell House (2001) Christians set up a “house of horrors” about what will happen to you if you have sex.
- Jesus Camp (2006) Training children to roll around on the floor, talk in tongues, be annoying to non-christians, and praise Bush.
- Jupiter’s Wife (1995) Homeless woman that lives in Central Park.
- Marjoe (1972) Rolling on floor, talking in tongues, child preacher grows up and doesn’t believe anymore yet keeps preaching for the cash.
- My Flesh and Blood (2003) Single woman adopts all these sweet kids with disabilities and one little hellion that makes everyone miserable.
- Sister Helen (2002) Loud, alcoholic nun runs a halfway house for drug addicts and alcoholics.
- Sound and Fury (2000) Deaf parents are given the choice to let their deaf children hear via the cochlear implant but they want their children to remain deaf.
- Spellbound (2002) Spelling bee and the kids that compete in them. Suspenseful.
- Stevie (2003) Filmmaker goes back to visit the boy that he was a “big brother” to many years before. Finds a man that is more troubled then the boy he once tried to help.
- Vernon, Florida (1981) Small town Floridians are interviewed. Ha!
- When We Were Kings (1996) I don’t like boxing but this story of the Zaire match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman is so well told it’s like you are hearing a folk tale.
- Word Wars (2004) The rough world of the professional scrabble player.
- Wordplay (2006) The not so rough world of the crossword puzzle addict.
Gray Jay–pet for a nomad
The first time I noticed a Gray Jay, was when I moved to North Central Washington. They came right up to me–like I was in a Disney movie. I mentioned to someone that these birds don’t seem to have any fear of people, and they nodded and said “Yeah, they’ll take food right out of your hand.”
One morning, high up a pass in the North Cascades, I woke up on a wide section of trail that I had decided was as far as I could go the night before. Lying in my bag, looking out at the glorious view and the morning sun, I reach into my food sack and pulled out a bar for breakfast. As I unwrapped it, a Gray Jay lighted by me. Even though I don’t approve of feeding animals, I held a piece of my bar between my fingers; it hopped on over and took it. Then two others showed up. One landed on my pack that was laying next to me; we finished off the bar together. When the bar was gone, so were they.
I would really like a pet for the winter but I know as soon as spring comes a pet will tie me down. My son suggested I try to make friends with a wild bird.
I worry about putting out a feeder because I don’t want to attract rodents and bears. But maybe I’ll buy some feed and see how it goes. One website has this to say about Gray Jays: “Trusting and easily tamed, the Gray Jay is good company for people in lonely places.”
In the spring I put out eggs for the ravens. They swoop my cabin when they want one. But they are stealthy, once I put the eggs out. We are a long way from becoming friends but a gray jay is your friend right away.
When I came home, this year, there was a Grey jay coming around to my cabin but I didn’t feed it so it left. Maybe it will give me a second chance.
Whoa! As I was writing this, I put out a little bread on my picnic table that sits on my porch. Now a Raven is swooping around my cabin, yelling. If it takes the bread, that will be as close as it has ever come to my cabin. Those ravens always know what is going on.