When the sun came up yesterday morning — 7:18am CST on the 28th day of December — these were the conditions on The Mountain:
Ridiculous, isn’t it? Here we are on the doorstep of the New Year, and I can go shirtless when taking Smudge out at dawn.
The predicted swing of -51°F, though, was a mite concerning. I’ll definitely have my shirt on in the morning for the foreseeable future.
The evil sub-plot here is the wind — sustained 20mph+, gusting 45mph+. Sunday, though mostly bright and pleasant, was no day for a brimmed hat.
After taking Saturday off, I very much needed to accomplish something yesterday. Knowing that the next two mornings would be bitterly cold — and that I’d probably respond by sipping coffee, tending the woodstove and keeping the Heeler company — I set my Sunday sights high.
I went back to the east slope and resumed clearing the Ranger trail.
I got an early start, too, 8am, and dove right in. It was easy lopping and light felling, for the most part. The largest trees I took down were five or six inches at the base, and there were a couple of those.
An hour in, I took a break. Somehow I’m always surprised by how taxing this kind of work is. But it was going smoothly, which pleased and encouraged me. I kept at it.
There was no way I’d finish the job Sunday, I told myself. I simply wanted to make progress.
Then, through the trees and brush, I saw my objective — the cargo sled, the stacks of bucked oak, the log lengths, the stumps. I was within 40 yards. Hell, I could do that.
I made it.
It took everything I had on this day to finish that final stretch. I parked the Ranger where it had never been before and flopped onto a log, thoroughly exhausted.
What I’ve built is no superhighway. It’s best navigated at a crawl. The trail twists and bends and there are needles to thread.
But it’s access. The new path makes it easier to reach a favorite spot, and it makes it possible to harvest firewood in that area. Win-win.
And there’s more to be done. Eventually I’ll extend it 20 or 30 yards south to a relatively flat place where I intend to put a fire ring. Short-term, I need to clear spaces to turn the Ranger around — at trail’s end, for sure, but also at a couple of spots along the way.
You might suspect that I hauled some of that previously bucked wood out yesterday, to avoid wasting a trip. I didn’t, because by the time I reached my destination, the bed of the Ranger looked like this:
Everything I cleared that was worth keeping got bucked right away and brought up to the wood yard. I dumped it without stacking, though — at that point, I simply was too tired.
I shut the cabin door behind me, gave Miss Smudge some love and looked at my watch — noon, on the dot. Four hours’ hard work in the books.
I feel very, very good about what I accomplished yesterday.
Then I took out my phone and checked the weather. The temperature had exceeded the forecast high by five degrees. That was as warm as it’d get.
I took a hot shower and started the first of two loads of laundry.
The leading edge of the cold front — called a “blue norther,” by the way — appeared as a dark cloud bank in the northwestern sky around 3pm. An hour later, the temperature had fallen by 20°F, and it wasn’t done yet.
Given the unexpectedly toasty high, our thermal whiplash between noon Sunday and daybreak Monday was adjusted to a drop of 56°F.
I do believe we’re ready for it.
Bonus anecdote — when I arrived at the end of the trail yesterday morning, I sat down to collect myself. I’d no sooner gotten comfortable than I realized that I’d left my coffee in the cab of the Ranger, ten steps away.
I was almost at the driver’s-side door when my left boot got snagged on a vine. No, this time I didn’t fall — I stopped, took a step back and reached down to yank it out of the ground.
It wasn’t a vine.
I know that there’s century-old barbed wire on that part of The Mountain, and I’ve plotted it (in Gaia) wherever I’ve seen it. This location was a surprise.
Notice in that photo that the wire runs close to one of the Ranger’s tires. That’s a bad thing.
It’s in front of the tire, however. That’s a good thing.
But it’s a rear tire — the fronts already had run over the barbed wire. And that’s a bad thing.
Or it could be, anyway. I’ll keep an eye on ’em.
I fished a pair of fencing pliers out of the Ranger’s toolbox, cut the wire and pulled it out from under the buggy. Both ends were tucked safely out of the way, wrapped around trees I’m certain not to take down.
I’ll chase and pull up all of that stuff one of these days.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable