11 November, 2011 Friday

The rain is heavy this morning and snow is falling in the mountains above us, probably a foot or more every day.  An even colder front will move in this afternoon, so we expect to see snow on the Van Zandt Dike, just across the valley from us, and immediately behind and above the cabin, on Bowman Mountain.

It seems like a typical autumn-winter morning and an appropriate time to describe our typical morning routine here at the Sasquatch Observatory.  By the way, I call it an “autumn-winter” morning because there really isn’t much to distinguish this weather — rain and 40 degree Farenheit — from most of the weather we experience here between October and April (and sometimes even later, into May and godforbid, as in the last two years, a morbidly dreary “June-urary”).

Now that we’ve turned the clocks back I usually wake up somewhere between 6:30 and 8:00 a.m.  I prefer not to get out of bed until I can find my clothes and boots without a flashlight, so today I rolled over and slept until 7:45.

Chico and Cuca sleep in the room with us, Chico in the old recliner close to my side of the bed and Cuca on the couch, across the room.  Though he is just five months old and bursting with energy, Chico seems to understand that I prefer a calmer approach to the new day.  He’ll watch me get dressed and only occasionally gets down from the chair to tug on my socks or shirt sleeves.  Cuca won’t stir until I call her for breakfast, though she does warble a low greeting when she realizes that I’m awake.

My clothes will be more-or-less out of Chico’s easy reach, either stuffed onto an office chair or piled on top of his crate next to the bed.  My uniform-of-the-day for the next several months includes liner socks under heavy wool boot socks, long john pants, a thick flannel shirt and cheap Wrangler cargo pants.  Unless I’m going for a long walk and change into my Kean light hiking boots,  I wear slip-on Bean boots both inside and outside the cabin.  If I won’t be going outside for a few hours, I’ll slip into my (badly Chico-chewed) wool slippers.
Even if I’d been something of a lay-a-bed and managed to sleep until 8:00 a.m. the kitchen will still be quite dark.  Once I’ve dressed I go into the kitchen, let Chico out for a quick pee, then turn on the kitchen lights.  I’ll also take a quick look at the Trimetric Meter on the wall next to the back door, to get a quick idea of our current power useage and battery levels. (Rather than attempt to explain this further, I’ll save a very long discussion of our off-grid energy system for another day.)

The only variation over the next twenty minutes relates to how the weather and season affects our use of the wood-fired cookstove.  Because Lorena is so easily chilled and the climate here so consistently cool and damp, there are really very few weeks when we don’t need a brief morning fire.  A small blaze takes the chill off and prevents dampness — even in August the temperature inside the cabin will occasionally fall into the 40’s, especially as I like to leave a door open at night for fresh air.  We also have a very heavy dew, so heavy, in fact, that water often drips from the eaves.

Today, like most autumn-winter mornings, my first thought is to warm up the cabin.  Because the rain is fairly heavy, I grab another heavy flannel shirt from a hook on the back door , add a well stained baseball cap and a pair of work gloves, and head across the yard to the woodshed.

Living in a place as wet as this without a decent woodshed is not pleasant.  We know this because we’ve tried it.  Thanks to persistent dampness, using tarps to cover your firewood, vehicles, lumber or anything else that needs to be kept genuinely dry is a gradually losing proposition.  By the end of November at the latest, rain will completely saturate the ground and dampness will creep and percolate under most everything.  A real shed, with a roof and good air circulation, is the only certain way to have dry firewood year ‘round.

Originally, the woodshed was just an extension of the cabin itself, a low ramshackle shed just a few steps from the back door.  Although it leaked in places and threatened to collapse under heavy snow, Lorena and I were very fond of this woodshed, if only for its authentic pioneer character and rough-hewn construction.  Unfortunately, we had no choice but to demolish the woodshed in 2007, when we added onto the cabin.

Over the following three or four years our firewood was stacked in long rows on wooden pallets out in the meadow.  To keep it dry we covered the top of the wood with tarps, boards, and old metal roofing, but left the sides uncovered.  I assumed that this would give the wood enough exposure to the sun and wind to keep it dry, even during the rainy seasons.

This worked reasonably well, except during times of very heavy rain or snow.  The long trip back and forth to the woodpile was especially miserable when I had to push the wheelbarrow through a couple of feet of wet snow.  It was also virtually impossible to keep the woodpiles covered during prolonged windstorms.  With tarps flying off like broken kites and windblown rain being driven into our wood for days on end it was no wonder that we became quite nostalgic about our old leaky shed.

…to be continued….