It’s too dark to get a good picture but I have a heater sitting just inside the door of the RV. There was just enough room to put the exhaust/air intake through the wall under the window. This small Toyo started out in the small cabin that Nena’s aunt built. When she left the cabin was sold but the Toyo stayed. Chris and Nena collected the necessary fittings to be able to hook it up.
I would like to say Chris hooked it up. Nena would like to say Chris hooked it up. In reality he was a good assistant and learned a lot. Actually, he had an easier time using the flaring tool on the copper fuel tubing than Nena did so he was necessary to the operation.
Today they need to make a stand to hold up the tank we will be using for fuel oil. The light was long gone by the time they started thinking about it. Fortunately for them the temperatures are in our favor. Yesterday got up to 38°, which is insane considering last week’s temps. We know they’ll be going down again soon so this needs to be done. This is the best time to get it running.
I’m so excited to have the prospect of reliable heat! I’ll get some pictures to share later on.
It’s still 23° though. We got more than a foot of snow and the temps are up in the slip-and-slide range. When it comes to driving colder is better. I’m new up here and I already understand. Once there is snow on the ground the driving conditions only get better as the temperature goes down. -20° lets your tires grip in ways that +20° can’t.
I posted about my ride along to Prudhoe Bay back in June. Part of the experience was the stories told by my trucker friend about what the drive is like in winter. He tells me that traction in the cold actually comes from your tires constantly freezing to the pavement, then breaking loose again as the tire rolls forward. The weight of the truck causes moisture on the road to briefly melt then freeze again. That odd fact combined with experience with the road and great confidence allows the big trucks to go cruising at summer speeds.
We still haven’t gotten a roof over the pit. There is a good path worn into the snow to point the way. My friend Missi and family is waiting for a proper roof and seat to be built over their new pit. Some time soon the ladies will give up waiting and make it happen. The guys just aren’t as invested in a proper outhouse experience.
There is something to be said for roughing it. Or, as I once heard it phrased, voluntary hardship. It isn’t comfortable while you are in the middle of the rough parts, but you will always come out the other side stronger. Whether you want to improve your physical strength or your emotional strength, it is worthwhile to choose the more difficult path.
So here I am, dealing with temperature extremes, ice, and uncomfortable outhouse experiences. I keep repeating what an adventure it is. I’m enjoying myself. I hope you are enjoying the stories I tell along the way.
The RV is back up to 55° again, all thanks to my dear son and my friend’s slave-driver of a daughter. Our outdoor temps have warmed up to -7° and it’s snowing. The forecast calls for it to come up as high as 30°. If you’re keeping score, that’s a 60° swing in just a couple of days. Crazy! But it’s all cold.
Cold nicely summarizes the last few days. And let me be clear, it isn’t just people who don’t like cold. Generators don’t like cold. Propane doesn’t flow in extreme cold. Vehicles don’t like cold. But everything hinges on the generator. I can plug in the block heater on the truck if the generator is running. We can wrap the propane tubing and valves in heat tape to keep it working if the generator is running. We plan to install a small Toyo heater in the trailer, but again it needs the generator for power. The generator needs a box to keep warm. It’s been on the list for weeks now, but Chris doesn’t have enough experience to wrap his head around making one. That’s where Nena comes in.
I’m happy to brag on Nena any time. She’s 17 going on 37 and takes no nonsense from anyone. She has plenty of experience keeping her family warm when things break down at -40° and knows what needs to be done. So when she tells me “here’s what you need to do” I’m going to listen. Luckily Chris is also willing to listen and learn.
So far we have had a couple of generator parties where Nena walked us through the process of troubleshooting. She has taken apart and put back together more generators than I have seen in my life since they have been living this lifestyle for almost 6 years now. I figure she has a clue.
So anyway… back to the first picture. It’s a bit messy but I feel like it sums up everything. It got dark by 5pm but things still need doing. They needed more light than headlamps can provide. So Chris used the moose light mounted on the Scone. Yeah, that’s our storage area under the front of the trailer. We have bins that came up from Oregon, spare propane tanks, generator gas, diesel for the truck, and other stuff. It’s not pretty but it does what we need for now.
I guess the generator hut is done enough. We shall see how well it works. We are a few more parts away from being able to install the Toyo heater. That will happen this weekend. I might even get the porch and steps I want so I don’t break something by slipping on the RV folding stairs.
My generator is running again. My truck is running again. My heat is working again. It might still be cold but life isn’t bad and I always live in hope of better things.
We are getting a good sample of Alaska cold this week. Last night was -31°F and the night before was -23°. Our heat is not working. I keep reminding myself that I signed up for adventure and that’s what I’m getting.
Since the sawmill kept breaking we were unable to get lumber cut and cabin built before the snow. So we are going to spend the winter in the RV across the creek on my friends property. RVs are not set up for temperatures like this. The propane tanks are located in a cubby on the outside, which allows the hoses to freeze up. So we got enough gas flow to run the pilot light on the stove, but not the burner for the heater. Then the generator went on strike because it was cold.
Last night Chris and I slept with no heat except for shared body heat under the blankets. The dog tucked himself in at our feet. The top blanket had a layer of frost on it by morning. It worked, but it was really hard to get out of bed.
I’m giving Chris the assignment of finding a way to get things thawed out by this evening. We’ll see how it goes.
There has been snow on the ground for a couple of weeks now, but I’m going to say winter is truly here today. On my drive to work the temperature as measured by my truck ranged from -4° to -14°F. I’ll have to start plugging in my truck overnight to keep it from freezing up.
It might be cold, but it’s absolutely beautiful everywhere I look. The light constantly changes and between that and the massive amount of texture there is a never-ending color palette where you would think the world should be monochrome. Even overnight the world takes on different moods, and I haven’t even seen a real display of the aurora yet. There are too many clouds and trees where I’m located to get a clear view of the sky.
We seem to be committed to spending the winter in an RV. It isn’t ideal, but we’ve added some skirting to help keep in some of our heat. We are figuring out the best way to keep the power on and the heat running. The generator really doesn’t like to be cold, so it gets it’s own “doghouse” and we might bring it in once in a while to warm up if we hear it struggling. We are fortunate to have experienced helpers for keeping it running. Anyplace that services generators seems to be 2-4 weeks behind and that’s too long to go without.
I have plenty more to share, but I’ll spread it out over the month. It’s an interesting adventure, but I won’t complain since adventure is why I’m here.
What do you want to hear more about? Weather? Driving conditions? Dry cabin living? Let me know and I’ll share. November is a month for writing. It won’t be an actual novel, but I’d like to see if I can make a post every day here instead of the other usual places.
Surprise, it’s October again. There’s that certain smell in the air. The trees here are already mostly bare. I don’t know why I’m surprised.
October starts with my sister’s birthday and ends with costumes and candy. But the first part always messes with me. It isn’t my nephew’s wedding anniversary that gets to me. It’s death. Death in the middle of the sparkling, crisp, beautiful days of early fall. Why do movies always have it happen in the dark and rain? Real life doesn’t do it that way. It sneaks up on you by surprise. My husband died in the first half of October and every year, no matter how much I wish it to be otherwise I wind up being overly emotional from the first until that day has passed.
I remember coming up on the first anniversary of his death I was asked by a coworker if I had requested that day off. I looked at her blankly, wondering why I would do a thing like that. Several years earlier she had lost her 12 year old son to leukemia that burned through him in a matter of months. I knew how much she still hurt and whenever my boys were at work with me and we saw her I would send them to give her hugs. I knew that she knew about living with loss. She told me that she would take off the day of his death every year because she couldn’t be in the right mindset to focus on work. I thought about it as I struggled through my first time and I know she was right.
I don’t like to be overly emotional. I never understood people who talk about these things in public ways. Even now if I say anything on that day it is usually so subtle that if you don’t know then you would miss it. It is a private thing to me, but I start to wonder if by not expressing it I have allowed it to gain a power over me.
I took my coworkers advice. I made sure to take that day off. It became habit to request the second week of October as a vacation week just so I could handle that aspect of my mental health. A couple of years ago I got up and forced myself to get to work only to find out that I was on vacation. I think I cried in gratitude when the driver who had my schedule that week told me to go home. He remembered my husband and understood.
I don’t have a vacation this year. But I think I’ll be okay without. I don’t work on that day. But I still find myself in an odd mental haze. Time will sometimes run faster than I can keep up with. I’ll get caught in loops of negative thinking. I don’t feel like doing things that should be done or should be fun. I am aware of these things and what they mean and so I fight them. I make lists and choose to do the fun things even if I don’t feel like it. And I’m sharing. It’s still limited. There is a lot that I may never tell another person, but maybe by sharing this much someone else might know they aren’t the only one.
Yeah, October is a weird mix. But as long as I can recognize what my brain throws at me and work through it I’ll be okay. Emotions are not forever. I don’t have to live in the bad. I know I’m not the only one.
Grief and loss and the related depression is a normal part of life. More people deal with it than you might think. Not many speak out about it, but it can be good to remember. Sometimes all it takes to get through it is to acknowledge that today is hard and let someone else tell you that they know what you mean. That kind of support is worth everything.
Those mountains in the distance tell me that winter is coming. The farthest ones are dusted with snow.
I’ve talked about breaking out of my rut. Back in Portland it was so easy to show up for work for five days, do errands on one day, and do housework the other, then repeat. Over and over. And suddenly an entire year has gone by with almost nothing to remember it by. It took a messed up sciatic nerve to shake me up and get me to look up from my rut.
Driving up here, a lot of times I’m passing through trees. They grow up alongside the roads thick and tall enough to block the view of anything other than the road. Then you come around a corner and the view opens up to see the hills and beyond. To see the mountains beyond and the whole wide world is a revelation.
I tell my shuttle guests that I decided I can have an adventure. My life came to the point where things opened up and could be arranged to allow me to make this change. But I had to see the possibility first. I had to look outside of the rut to see what else could be. And then I had to open my mind to ideas for how to work it out. Then I had to take the leap.
Look for the ruts. Look for what you can shake up. Look for ways to make things change that you’ve never thought of before. Do something you always wanted but never thought was possible.
Live.
Life is for living. If you wait for that magical someday it will get away from you. Winter will come and the chance will be gone. So look outside the rut and live.
I’m having a problem with social media lately. I’m sure a lot of you feel similar. With the election coming up and the death of an iconic figure the posts have gotten ever more shrill. When you add that to the protests that enable violence, memes and arguments for this side or that, and the general feeling that I’m being told that I should hate myself, I feel like the dumpster fire is burning from a toxic waste dump.
Last week someone posted about how if you disagree with her on this, that, and the other point then you can pretty much F— off and die because you must be a horrible person. Just for holding a different opinion. And her last several posts were all about the masks she was making that proclaim “Love Wins.” I don’t think she noticed the irony. It makes me very sad to see that reflected in so many other people’s posts. How can love win if you hate yourself or those who THINK differently than you? And these are the people that the major platforms keep suggesting that I follow. I can’t do that. I cannot pour that much toxicity into my mind and emotions.
I’m just starting to feel like I’ve shed some of the mindset that was so harmful when I lived in Oregon. I’m just starting to feel relaxed and happy. I’m enjoying my job, not showing up for the paycheck… although money is helpful. Perusing social media brings that feeling back and I don’t think it is good for me. I need to cut it out for a while. But I still want to share.
Here’s my plan. I’m going to allow myself to open those apps once a day for the next week. The only reason will be to share a new blog post. I don’t know how well this will work, but that’s why I said week, not month. Give it a try. And this way I will own my posts, not a big company that might decide it doesn’t like the way I think.
And now for a cabin update!
As of today we have five 2″x 12″x 20′ floor joists cut! And a few 2″x 6″ x 20′ boards as well.
Have I mentioned that we’ve had problems with the sawmill? My friend’s husband Lance has a 1989 WoodMizer portable sawmill. He has brought it with him from Washington to Alabama, back to Washington and now up to Alaska. I know he’s milled wood for another friend to build a house with. He has big ideas for what he can do with his sawmill, but it sat outside through the last two winters and that took a toll. It needed a battery, a servo motor, new wiring, a new chain and a new bolt to mount it. The rollers for the head needed replacing. It seemed like every time one thing was fixed another broke.
Friday the sawmill was fixed. We got out to my property and pushed it into place by hand. Lance leveled it out and gave us all the safety lecture. Then he, Chris, and his 13 year old son loaded up the first log while I got the three younger ones occupied with building a fire in the firepit to warm up. They got to practice using the hatchet to chop up twigs and small branches to feed the fire. I also chopped some of the slabs that came from squaring up the log.
We got two joists cut Friday before dark. There would have been a third, but the belts running the blade were worn enough that they started to let the blade slip out of place. We had to shut it down and try to find replacement belts. We found one and that let them cut some more this morning, but I guess that other one is necessary. So there is progress, but we can’t put anything together yet.
The other thing worth sharing is how many moose I’ve been seeing lately close to home. Almost every evening there will be one or more in the fields along the road. Of course they show up south of town, but never up north of town where I’m driving the shuttle. I’ve only seen moose racks on trucks coming in from hunting up there. It might change as hunting season ends. I just want to be able to show my guests a moose.
I guess that’s enough for now. I have to leave some new stuff for tomorrow. I’ll probably share links all next week as I write posts, but if you want to hide from the social media toxic dumpster fire too then go ahead and subscribe so you get an email whenever I post. I wish I could tell you how to do it, but I don’t know how to see my site the way visitors do. Most of what I’m doing is faking it as far as I can and one day I might actually know what I’m doing.
It’s a bit frosty this morning in Alaska. The temperature was supposed to dip down to 30°F overnight and I’ve started hearing snow warnings for the higher elevations. Everything looks more gold every day. It makes for dramatic pairings with the sunset light and stormy sky. We’re still getting some rain almost every day too. It’s altogether glorious, bright and damp.
Dramatic light on my evening drive home. There’s hay in that field. The extra rain all summer made this a terrible year for hay.
Work is going well. I find that transporting passengers might be only 30% of my job. Almost every day there is a list of items to be picked up or purchased and I get to do a lot of it. I like the freedom of it and when I do have passengers in my van it’s fun to talk with them. I get to geek out on local history and topics such as wildlife, highway development in Alaska, gold mines in history and today, the Alaska Pipeline, local trees and how their location affects growth, and rural cabin life. At least for the cabin life I have my friends as a reference point. They just hired a second driver so I can have scheduled days off. He’s lived here all his life so he knows the area and the driving requirements, but it almost feels like everything I listed is so normal to him that he can’t understand why anyone would be fascinated by it. I told him that it’s all about the adventure. Maybe that retiree from Tennessee would hate the actual work of running a gold claim, but he’ll dream about the adventure.
Still no real progress on my cabin, but the sawmill might be sorted out. Mostly. The other day N spent the morning replacing the rollers that allow the head to move end to end. Several had rusted up and we’re wearing flat spots by sliding instead of rolling. A new bolt had to be purchased and fitted to attach the new chain that runs the length of the mill. It’s how the head moves itself using sprockets. It looks like a hefty bicycle chain. Later that day Lance went over what wiring needs to be redone and she’ll tackle that while he’s gone on a long-haul trip down to Washington. I’m hoping that when he gets back we can get busy cutting lumber.
N gets an explanation from her dad on what needs to be rewired to make the sawmill work. She’s the resident fixer of many things.
Speaking of Washington… anyone watching the news at all knows that the entire west coast is having a bad fire season. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I don’t know how bad it is most places. My focus has been on my property back home. I was first made aware of the situation last Tuesday when I got a text from my mom informing me that there was a fire down in the area between Eagle Creek and the Clackamas River. That’s just a mile or two as the crow flies. Just the day before there were power outages due to high winds. Then fire. The entirety of Clackamas County was on some level of evacuation notice. My property stayed at Level 1 for a couple of days before it went directly to Level 3.
Back in Oregon. Looking down the hill, you should be able to see my shop behind those trees.
The actual threat did not come from the fire down the hill, but from the Riverside fire that came within 1/2 mile of the town of Estacada. Eagle Creek is just 5 miles west of there. My boys, my nephew, and several of their friends put a couple of days worth of work into making sure that valuables and important things were secured and that the house itself was as safe as they could make it. Then we waited. I got the above pic on Thursday from just up the hill, showing how much smoke is in the air. But no flames were spotted. The fire is being fought back away from town and rain is predicted soon. I hear that already the wind was shifting and that people feel moisture in the air.
What a crazy year. I’m trying to wrap my head around the full scope of the craziness. Between pandemic and social unrest, natural disasters, and personal loss it can be hard to find the good. I don’t think we’ll understand the big picture for another few years. But there are good things in life. Just something as simple as knowing that my family is safe is good. Knowing that they had warning is good. Knowing that they were able to come together and do what needed to be done is good. I love seeing the reports of people taking care of each other and opening doors for strangers in need. I hope that these natural disasters can be something that erases some of the division that has grown up in our society. And I hope that the coming winter brings some relief from the craziness of the rest of the year.
