Rhythms of Winter Life

I've been writing this blog for three and a half years now.  When I started, everything about living here was new.  Every change of light on the mountains, every new wildflower had to be photographed and posted.  I was breathless with wonder at the luck that led me to this life.  I could not wait to share all this with my friends and family.

It is getting harder to keep up the blogging.  There is no lack of joy and fascination, there is no lack of adventure and observation.  But it is getting harder to come up with things to say that have not already been said.  I no longer lug my camera everywhere with me.  And my breathless wonder has slowly settled into deep, calm satisfaction with life. 

So the rhythms of life here have worn themselves into something of a routine, which makes it harder to find something to focus on to write about.  But sometimes when I think of my "routine" I have to laugh out loud.  Life here has its daily rhythms, but it is never what you would consider an ordinary life. 

Winter brings a lot of homely tasks and chores that are not really photogenic or bloggable, but that are pleasantly rewarding and unique to this place.  Having Tom here to share them this winter is especially wonderful.  So I thought I'd just describe what quotidian life is like here.  Please forgive me if I bore you.

We wake  up in the morning to spectacular sunrises.  This time of year the sun comes up from behind the Absarokas and it does so late enough that even sleepyheads like us get to be dazzled by the colors and shadows of dawn. Sometimes our whole bedroom, which does not have any curtains, is filled with a rosy glow.

The house has cooled during the night as the fire burned down to coals, so whichever of us rises first starts the fire going before we do anything else.  Our house doesn't get really cold overnight because the logs hold heat and slowly release it through the night.  So it is cool in the mornings, but no more than it was when we lived with thermostats and turned them down at night to 50 or 55 degrees.

Once the fire is started, if there has been snow we sweep it off the decks and steps.  This winter there has rarely been enough snow to need a shovel - we just sweep it off with a broom. On the occasional mornings when it has actually snowed several inches, we knock the snow off the solar panels, too, so that they will capture the sunlight as soon as it gets around to the right angle.  

Then we bring in firewood from the huge stack we made this fall.  We have a great firewood dolly that I bought from LL Bean for hauling wood.  The wheels are big enough to roll through the snow and it can be rolled right in the door and up to the firewood holder by the stove.

If the kindling supply is getting low, we refill the box from the buckets of scraps and bark that we gathered as Tom split the logs for the firewood supply last fall. 

We light the propane stovetop and put a kettle of water on for tea or coffee.  After breakfast, the kettle will move to the woodstove where it will sit all day, steaming and helping humidify the dry winter air and supplying instant tea or hot chocolate water whenever we want it.

We have a feather bed on top of our mattress in the winter.  Sleeping with the feather bed beneath us and a down comforter on top is beyond luxurious.  It keeps us decadently warm, even on the coldest winter nights.  Each morning, making the bed includes turning back the flannel sheets and blankets so that the feather bed can be vigorously fluffed.

Then it is time for breakfast.  It could be dry cereal, oatmeal, or pancakes, but my favorite treat is waffles made with the cast iron stove-top waffle maker we inherited from Nancy and Doug. 

Morning showers might come before or after breakfast, depending on our mood, and again, something as insignificant as a shower has an element of adventure to it.  The bathhouse has a propane heater that runs all winter so that the pipes won't freeze.  We have the little building well insulated now and it is always cozy and pleasant on a cold morning. It is light and cheerful, and the shower has endless hot water, so even though we have to go outside to get there, showers continue to feel like a decadent indulgence. Almost everyone who first hears about our having to go outside to get to the shower is horrified, but I not only don't find it unpleasant, I actually love it.  For one thing, the reason I live here is because I love being outside - especially in the winter, so having to walk outside is not something I ever consider a bad thing.  And for another thing, the contrast between the cold, snowy air for the few seconds it takes to walk to the bathhouse, then the lovely warmth of the bathhouse and hot shower, then the bracing tingle of cold again on the way back to the house is better than a Swedish sauna.  The distance is so short that I don't even have a chance to shiver before I'm back in the house.  I know I'll never convince those of you who groan in discomfort just thinking of it, but I love the shower ritual. 

If there is laundry to do, I take it with me when I go out to the bathhouse for my shower.  After my shower I run the washing machine.  If the sun is not shining (which with luck might mean it is snowing), I start the generator while the washer is going.  In the summer I can do three loads of laundry without running the generator, but in the winter, with the short days and low sun angle and the frequent clouds and snow, one load is all that can be done using the batteries, and that only if the sun is shining to keep them charging.Our rather small solar power system makes us very conscious of how much electricity everything uses. And we pay attention to things like hours of sunlight and clouds.  Knowing where your power comes from makes you mindful of the true cost of everything you do.  When we lived on the grid, we did not usually picture the hydroelectric dam or the coal fired power plant that produced our electricity every time we left a light on in a room we weren't in.  Using solar panels and batteries has changed that dramatically.  But we still have lights and computers and a washer and audio visual equipment.  We just aren't wasteful. 

After the clothes are washed, I pull out the retractable clothesline across the length of the bathhouse and set up the wooden clothes-drying rack.  The large, heavy clothing items are hung from the clothes line and underwear and socks are arranged on the rack.  The propane heater in the bathhouse and the high, dry Montana air guarantees that the clothes will dry quickly.  Hanging clothes to dry not only saves an enormous amount of electricity, but it saves wear and tear on the clothes.  Many of my friends who live on the grid still hang their clothes instead of using the dryer. 

Then I go up to my desk in the bedroom dormer and Tom goes to his desk in the front room and we both work on our computers for the rest of the morning.  Sometimes we play music on the stereo while we work.  I check emails, work on the websites I design and maintain, keep up with the news, and write.

After lunch we usually go outdoors.  If there is outdoor work to be done around the place, we do it then.  Sometimes I take my chainsaw and go cut up blown down trees around the property and Tom hauls them and stacks them to dry for next winter's wood. We both love this work - I love the sense of competence and mastery I have with the chainsaw after thirty seven years of firewood cutting, and Tom loves the hard work and satisfaction of doing a large job a little bit at a time until it is accomplished.  

If there is no work to be done or logs to be cut and hauled, we go for a hike in our snow boots.  The snow is still quite shallow and the bushes and even some of the grasses are still sticking out.  There isn't enough for good skiing yet, so we slog along in our heavy Sorrel boots and climb to the top of the the ridge. Later in the winter we will ski up to the ridgetop. If it is a clear day, we can look out at all the mountains around us, or over to the East we can see the mesa-bluff of Sheep Mountain and the undulating landscape that stretches out into the Great Plains.  We look up at Quinn Peak to the Northwest and the ridges around the other side of Orea Creek Valley and talk about skiing some of those slopes someday.  Then we pick our way down through the rocks and sagebrush to the meadow, go down the two-track road back to Tipsue Road, then back past Jeff's house (where we stop and say hello if he is home) and back to our house.  During the hike we stop often to look at tracks.  The low snowpack is perfect for tracking.  We try to identify the animal that made the tracks and to figure out what it was doing. This winter we have seen moose tracks and elk tracks as well as the ubiquitous deer.  And there have been ermine/weasel tracks and mouse tracks and occasional grouse tracks as well.  But the most interesting sightings are of cat tracks - much larger than a house cat but not as big as a cougar's tracks.  It looks like there is a bobcat in our neighborhood this winter.  Jeff says he has seen cougar tracks, but we have not seen any that big. 

When we get back to the house, we usually take some time to sit in front of the fire and warm up.  We  listen to the news on the radio or play music.  A little housecleaning might be fit in. Sometimes I bake in the late afternoon. Baking entails a trip to the tipi with the canvas wood carrier to get the small pieces of stovewood we store in there. Then the wood cookstove needs to be lit and brought to temperature.  this helps warm the house, as well, so it cuts down on the cordwood needed.

We have a propane refrigerator.  It is a bit smaller than a typical electrical refrigerator, but it works really well and is quiet (no compressor to run, so no machine noise) .  The freezer freezes things quite hard, but it is rather small.  In the winter, though, the temperature rarely gets above freezing even during the daytime, so we can keep an extra gallon of milk and loaves of bread in a cooler out on the back porch and they generally stay frozen until we need them.  This cuts down on trips to town. 

Still, about twice a week I go to town anyway - to volunteer at the Food Pantry, to go to a meeting, or a protest or a performance or a party, or to cook at the soup kitchen.  Any time I go to town, I fire up the snowmobile, then, while it is warming up, I load up garbage and recycling in bags in the snowmobile's little tub trailer, and ride down to the car. I start the car, and while it is warming up, I transfer garbage bags and anything else I'm bringing to town into the back of it, scrape ice and snow off the car windows, and take off my snowpants, snowmobile hat and gloves and Sorels, and change into city shoes or boots and lighter hat and mittens.  Then it is a five mile drive down Orea Creek Road, usually in four-wheel-drive because the county snowplows are a bit sporadic, to the paved Frontage Road where I pick up mail and newspapers that have been accumulating since the last trip to town.  Then, 4WD gets turned off and I drive on into town like anybody else.  On the way back I buy groceries, and occasionally stop at the truck stop and fill a 5 gallon gas can for the supply for the snowmobile or generator or chain saw.

Now, I do not like driving a car in the dark very well these days because as I age my night vision is waning.  But I love getting back to the snowmobile after dark.  There is something absolutely exhilarating about flying through the cold winter night on the snowmobile toward the warm golden glow of the little cabin where Tom has kept the fire going. The stars blaze in the dry winter sky and it is absolutely glorious to be out in the night. Occasionally  I have walked up and down the hill, and that is nice, too, and really good exercise.  The snow reflects whatever starlight or moonlight there is, so it is easy to see where I'm going and I can hear the wind in the trees and the animals rustling around in the forest when I'm not roaring along on the snowmobile.  But after all these years as a skier, I have fallen into guilty love with nighttime snowmobiling.

After dinner we either listen to the radio and knit (me) or play computer games (Tom) or we watch a movie with our DVD player, or we listen to music and read, or we play cribbage on our elk antler cribbage board, or we get into a long discussion of politics, or economics, or science, or ethics or anything else that comes to mind.  Evenings are cozy and restful and intensely pleasant.  We are looking forward to varying this routine with moonlight skiing soon.

We keep the door to the bedroom closed most of the day so that it will not get suffocatingly hot from the downstairs woodstove.  So when it is time for bed, we open it long enough to take the chill off.  I always run the hot water in the upstairs bathroom for awhile before I go to bed on really cold nights, because buried down under the house the hot water pipe for the bathroom is wrapped in an insulation bundle with the cold water pipe for the kitchen sink.  Running the hot water for awhile puts some heat into that insulated space and keeps the cold water pipes from freezing during the night.  I don't know if it is necessary, but I think it is a good precaution.  Then we hop into the softness of the bed and the feathers surround us and hold our body heat until we are wrapped in a snug, soft envelope and we drift off to sleep.

So that is what is going on when I'm not blogging.  It is a routine - comforting and familiar, but never mundane.  If in the next few months I go for awhile without coming up with something to blog about, you can re-read this post, and know what is going on in the comfortable rhythm of our lives.