Category Archives: Alaska

Wood Diaries

Last winter was long and hard. As a consequence, we burned about five cords of wood rather than our usual three-plus. I wrote last spring about some of the fun snow sport antics  that required. I usually have two winter’s worth of wood on hand so everything gets about two summers’ worth of drying. With short summers, this ensures dry wood to burn (I usually work with 16-inch pieces and split it as we use it.)

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Snowshoe Express – Wood

We’ve had a long winter, and we have very deep snow. In addition, in working from home for many hours each week we’ve burned more wood than we normally to. So we’ve run out of the best of it. The wood shed is empty, and next year’s stash was buried under mountains of snow. Fortunately, I covered some split stuff that was piled outside the shed with a tarp, and I was able to crawl in under a snow cave and pull some of that out. Our heated garage dries this wood out in a couple weeks, so as long as I plan ahead, we’re good.

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Stormageddon

I remember when I first learned about global warming (many years ago, now), that a main prediction was that we would see more frequent weather extremes. Talk about predictions coming true with a bang. These days the news seems to perpetually include unprecedented weather events around the world. The periodic unseasonably warm spell—at these latitudes—is okay from time to time, but I know I’d prefer not to live through the big stuff. As if we had a choice…

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Gravity Check on Aisle Stupid!

Rose and I were making dinner the other night when I did something careless and got a quick gravity check. It’s nice to know you can count on something, I thought as I cleaned the floor. In fact, I got a chuckle, thinking that gravity checks were one of the main reasons the TV program America’s Funniest Videos (AFV) exists. I hadn’t seen that show in a long time but had recently watched an episode and was reminded of just how ubiquitous, misjudged, and funny gravity can be.

This wasn’t my only recent encounter with excessively exuberant gravity. I had another lesson hammered home this fall that kept me from hunting.

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