Frigid

So cold I suit-up and get outside to split wood before coffee. Full set of stretches to try and prevent damage. Snowing all day, harder in the afternoon. May not be able to get to work. Winter Storm Advisory until 7 tomorrow night. At these temps though, it should be all powder. By 2 o'clock I feel a tightening in my back and shoulders that warns me to stop for the day. Late lunch of potatoes, eggs, and toast, then a wee dram of Irish to warm the innards. Cleaned the stovepipe and the smoke chase in the cookstove this morning, before starting a fire, then, through the day, stocked all the stations with wood, built a couple of ricks inside. Having forgotten to get baking powder, I make a hoe-cake of corn and acorn meal. Increasingly obvious I'll not get to town tomorrow, as the ridge is getting much more snow than forecast. I'll sharpen a chain for the chainsaw tonight so I can cut, split, and rick, inside, more of the red maple tomorrow. Hard to beat red maple for a quick hot fire. Split several rounds of Osage orange today, marginally better than even oak for holding a nighttime fire. The next three nights I'll need to set the alarm for a late night stoking. All the leaves are gone and the landscape has become stark. During a lull in the snow, I ventured out one last time, and the dog stayed home (a testament to the cold) nested in the insulation she has torn from my floor. I walked over to the head of the driveway, admiring the perfect blanket of white. Too soft to hold a print, but nothing is stirring anyway. The quiet is absolute. I carry a round of maple home, stash it in the woodshed. The trip, coming when it did, has thrown me out of step with the season. One should go to Florida in February, to remember the promise of spring. The lake will freeze over by Wednesday night, except for those few pools kept open, for a while, by some heat vented from below. Springs, probably. Even cold water from a spring is relatively warm. The remaining ducks and geese will congregate, in those open pools and leads, in a way that reminds me of honey bees in a swarm. Then the last of them will fly out, except for a couple of families of mallards that someone on the other side of the lake feeds, who take up residence under a Park Service picnic shelter. A murder of crows gathered in the snag near the outhouse, and their raucous partita is the song of the day, near the end a Pileated Woodpecker flies in and lays down a counterpoint. Cold and muscle sore, but oddly elated by the last trip outside, I roll a smoke, get another dram of Irish, and watch the snow from inside, through the various window, each of which frames a different view. I dig out the long underwear tops (I've been wearing the bottoms for days) and the down sleeping bag. I need to sleep on the sofa for the next few days, so I can more easily stoke the stove. Snowing hard now, an inch an hour, and we were only supposed to get an inch. I need to melt thirty-six gallons of snow tomorrow, into three gallons of water, and cook a pot of beans. Don't have any salt-pork, to cook with the beans, but I do find a couple of sausages in the freezer. Made a large pot of coffee, that I can reheat, mug by mug, on the cookstove all day tomorrow, as my espresso pot has chosen this opportunity to blow a gasket. High on the list of life lessons is that sophisticated equipage fails when you need it the most. Hatchets are good, hand-saws and mauls, given that handles fail on everything, eventually. I need to build a new handle on my splitting hatchet, the hard rubber finally split. It's an Estwing, and the curved metal goes all the way through the handle. Must be form fitted, not wood, and after thinking about it for a while, I decide to build up the form, off the metal, with duct-tape, and then seal it with a rubberized gripping agent. There is such a thing, I've used it before, to repair some shoes. It's very good for leather soles in winter. I'm sure I can make a satisfactory handle that'll last a few years and cost just a few dollars. Not so much the economy of any specific thing, but that I could do it with materials at hand. Important when you're snowed in and 17 miles from town. B was over, I had thought he would be, for a dram of Irish and a little conversation. We talk about our winter's reading, what we're both cooking, the history of rock and roll, the weather. When he leaves I make a nice supper of chipped beef and gravy on toast. Mom instructed me carefully on this visit, and I can now make a milk gravy that would feed the gods. Browning the flour in bacon fat is key, adding the milk gradually, and whisking it in. Lots of black pepper, a goodly pinch of salt. Ambrosia. Caramelized onions and mushrooms, added at the end, served on toast, is very good. A bit messy, but very good. I haven't mastered keeping gravy off my shirt-front. Call to order, what will you be doing tomorrow? I have to roll some logs to the house, cut and split them, stack them in the house. Not very complicated. When in doubt I caramelize some onion. More for the smell than anything else. Bacon is like that, more for the smell than anything less; just smell it, and whatever you're eating tastes better. I sometimes cook bacon just to make the house smell good, never has a strip gone wanting, but that wasn't the reason I cooked it. The sausage bean stew is wonderful. Everything is fine.