Category Archives: Alaska

Rather Deep in the Minus Shitties

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on being buttoned up for the winter, but we’re well past that happy phase and deep into the reason we were buttoning in the first place. Now we’re topping off the buttons with scarves, sweaters, and extra blankets and burning the densest firewood for maximum heat.

Another crisp day in Fairbanks

Normally, the cold doesn’t bother me much. It’s a good reminder of where we live and the importance of being aware of your surroundings. Here at home we have plenty of firewood, and all is generally well with the world—as long as I remember to plug in my truck.

But we’ve been getting used to global warming making our winters less cold. One account I saw recently indicated that we haven’t seen weather like this since 2012. So, like many here, I am ready for a break from -40s and -30s and even -20s. Collectively, given my current state of mind (having looked at the weather forecast), I’m now calling this weather the “Minus Shitties.”

Oh, the weather’s in the minus shitties…

There are good sides. Here on a Science Saturday as I go over page proofs for a forthcoming paper, I see chickadees and redpolls coming in to the feeder; a Christmas-like ambience to the quiet woods; and I’m enjoying the good, crackling blaze of birch logs in the woodstove. And who doesn’t like this time of year? The fridge is stocked with rare treats just begging to be sampled. For lunch I had an exquisite Stilton and smoked-salmon omelet that would have had the gods themselves agog with delight.

Today we’re experiencing the earliest sunset of the year (2:39 PM), and I look out the window at some of next winter’s wood, diced and stacked in the woods waiting for the seasonal re-opening of the Boombah Haulage Company. Oddly enough, the company’s sole employee was able to get all of the wood that was on the ground and diced up stacked during our protracted freeze-up earlier in the year. The slacker doesn’t know how lucky he is. (Or does he?) When it warms up a bit, we’ll send him out on a stack inspection.

Wood for next winter, diced, stacked, and waiting for haulage.

Return to the Zero-inch Club*

Moose hunting did not go as planned this last year. Life conspired against me for the main, intended hunt in September, and I never even got out. And the moose conspired against me for the shorter, second hunt period during one week in November.
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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 do. 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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