Snow

"We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive... From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences we see fantastic forms stretching in the frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art." ~~Henry David Thoreau



After a tease of spring, with melted snow and 50 degree sun, winter has announced himself king with a vengeance.

We have been lucky and our two snowed-in days this winter have been on days off with no destination or obligation. Until we have money to buy a tractor, we are shoveling this drive by hand. It is great exercise. The two miles of dirt road are almost always plowed. I have only driven once through the clean drifted white as if sailing on an albino sea.

Setting our 16 year old licensed driver upon these roads is a test of parenthood and my overprotective nature. For the past eight months he has driven these roads at least twice a week, once with the mother and once with the father, absorbing or tolerating our varied advice and driving styles. I know he is a careful and observant driver. I also know that once that passenger seat is empty he will turn up his music, drive a little faster, and take the snowy corners a little sharper... just because he can. Even though he is aware of impaired drivers and animals that emerge from nowhere, I worry about all these unknowns... the fog of nature and the fog of the mind... but know that he has to gain these experiences sometime. We give him an old but dependable car. One that doesn't matter if it takes the few expected dents of experience. He tells us his destination, calls before he starts the return drive, has a cell phone and various family and friends he can call upon if stuck. I want him to have these experiences while we are still right here, if need be, to pull him out. And that is my theory of parenthood.

Adventuring Spirit

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
Henry David Thoreau


Years ago I watched the movie "Into the Wild" and quickly dismissed reading the book thinking Christopher McCandless to be crazy. I only read the book by Jon Krakauer after much convincing of a friend (is this book recommended because I am seen as crazy?). The book is more than the story of one man lost in his adventure, it is a story anaylizing the adventuring spirit. The thing that made Chrisopher McCandless seem crazy is that his adventure ended in death, while sometimes those that live after an adventure are deemed as heroes. And these stories are important because they make us think and remind us about what is important.

Life today is so easy. Yet we must have adventuring programmed into our DNA. Years past we needed to have a desire for adventure in order to survive. Life was an adventure. The need for food and shelter, for finding and protecting a family all involved adventure. Today we call dominoes and find mates at match.com. Yet we still have the desire for adventure. Adventuring today is found in sports, in entrepreneurship, and in travel... are not people who climb the tallest mountains, risk financial ruin, or travel to remote and dangerous locals crazy? Or are the crazy ones those we find adventuring in darker places such as crime and drugs.

What struck me most in this book is when Kraukauer talked about how youth think they have a God given right to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish. I see this every day with the teens I work with. Every teen is invincible, every teen has the world at their feet. They do not see the perils, they do not see the consequences, they do not imagine the pain they might cause others, they do not doubt for a moment that they will not come home from their adventure. Let us all have adventures, but let them be adventures that build character, that let us become our own heroes.

Winter

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. ~~Henry David Thoreau




(The South Western View from our Dinning Room)








January has always been my least favorite month of the year, but this year it is feeling all magical. The solar system has well exceeded my expectations. We are working out the kinks and developing a rhythm of work and play. The house is the perfect size. Room to move and create our own worlds, yet connected enough that we all end up together. Box Elder County doesn't have the depressing inversions of Cache County. We have sun streaming through our windows chasing off the fog of night. Gradually, the light lasts a little longer each day. The world is a glittery sparkle of white with the frame of pink and yellow hues of clouds and mountains in the distance. The drive, now at the awakening of morning, is so glorious. I feel like I travel in the landscape of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

I have time to walk in that cold cold coldness when you feel the ice forming on your lungs and all the sorrows melting with your movement of warmth. Then I return to sit by a fire, drink a hot beverage, embrace my beloved, and read books of all variety. We are all avid readers of various genres. My kids love to share their favorites with me. It gives us conversation and a chance for me to see their logic and ability to evaluate and reason and to marvel at their intelligence and good sense. In this travel of thought I realize the wonders that are right around me and I know that it is time for me to start giving more to the world the embraces me.

6 months

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.
~~Henry David Thoreau

We have now lived here for half a year. Six months and the house is not finished. In our fast food world of instant gratification, living the life of a modern day Walden is teaching me patience.

We have the long drive.
We wait for a fire to warm the house.
The rooms are finished slowly when they are finished.
We wait for sunny times to use electrical appliances.
We shovel the long drive by hand. Our exercise use to be biking to work.

The water heater froze due to a downdraft caused by a house built too tight; the house consumed more air than was available creating the downdraft. Nature finds equilibrium one way or another. Greg makes a fresh air intake vent which provides the needed fresh air, but also lets cold air in. We buy an industrial grade tank hot water heater. We will consume more propane, but this constant burning will also add a little heat to our utility room.

I love this hot water heater. One less thing to wait for as the hot water it right there, and the water is actually hot. The tankless hotwater heater did not heat to the piping hotness I love for dishes and baths.
Like nature, I hope my children will find equilibrium learning patience and perseverance. These qualities are the keys to success and happiness; the tools of finishers. Our daughter is bothered by the unfinished home and rallies her father with her intense helpfulness.... she has persistance mastered. Our son doesn't even notice when a major project is completed. It doesn't matter to him.... but he is innately patient.


Sometimes we are tired, sometimes things don't go as planned, sometimes this lifestyle is more difficult than we want at that particular moment. And this is the perseverance.
The darkness of this time of year hides many of my pleasures of living in the country. I leave to work in the dark and return home in the dark. Patience will bring the sunsets and sunrises back. For now I dazzle at the stars and the milky way that dominate our sky, and honestly and truly I do not miss living in the city.

Winter

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.... We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces,and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862),“A Winter Walk”


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The forecast calls for a blizzard. Schools close early. I wait for our students to board the bus and find their parents' cars, all ready for an early Thanksgiving break. We drive home, the last few miles in tango whirls of snow.

Home is warm. The blizzard is mild, a few hours of blowing snow. With temperatures dipping down to zero we are maintaining our 55 degrees unheated. With the fire or propane heater we can warm up to 70. Only once, even with cloud filled snow falling days, have we needed to turn on the generator for power and that was to watch a movie. My anxiety level is dropping. My worries are easing. We are passing these tests I feared we were unprepared for.

Let your guard down and the unexpected sneaks in. Our water heater freezes. The room is plenty warm... I am constantly monitoring. We have insulated everything; the pipes in triplicate in my worry. It is a back draft from the venting pipe. We never imagined that one,and between the two of us we are pretty good at imagining all the possibilities. Water heater broken. Warranty doesn't cover freezing no matter the cause. Thought we did this one right but it has just been difficult, this Bosch on demand water heater. Ordered the special venting pipe for higher elevations like the instructions demand, had a plumper hook it up and adjust it, Greg spent hours with the technical help when it only heated to a lukewarm temperature. Then the waiting, the wasting of water, while it heats. This make rinsing dishes a challenging feat. Do you waste the water or the propane? That is the question. The painful payment of a new one. There are so many other things I would rather do with this thousand dollars. Greg has not had work the past few weeks. So early in the winter and I am on the edge of annoyed anger and financial panic. Thoreau didn't have this hostility in a wife, I wonder if he ever got it from his mother. So much easier to live your dream when it is only your dream, not a shared one with the best interest of many individuals. Yet, it is Thanksgiving and I have much to be thankful for.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was perfect. How glad I am to have a daughter who likes to cook. She could prepare this feast on her own and gives everything a festive touch that I do not. She add so much wit and insight to daily observations and conversations. How thankful I am to have a healthy happy thriving son, the ideal teen. How thankful I am to have food and shelter, health and nature, love and family, education and a job that I enjoy, and peace. We live in a peaceful time and for this I am most thankful.

Warmth

“Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I loved to have mine before my window … they warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. ~ Henry David Thoreau






Staying warm is one of my major concerns. As the nights grow colder we stack and split firewood we have collected from dead trees and Greg's landscaping jobs. Watching Greg split fire wood is amazing... a display of grace and strength. With one drop of the ax the log splits in two (lets just say it takes many more swings for me to split a log). I have no idea how much wood is required to heat a house through a winter, and I suppose it depends on the severity of the winter. We have 6 cords of wood and a cast iron stove recycled from my parents rental house. A remnant of the 70's when many heated their homes with wood.

The plan is to use a wall mounted propane heater to warm things up before we leave to school in the mornings and use the wood burning stove in the evenings. Right now the coldest the house has been in the morning is 58 degrees (the coldest outside has been 32 degrees). I have yet to finish making insulated curtains for all the windows, so we will see if that helps hold in heat as the nights and days grow colder. The propane heater can heat the house up to my comfort level of 68 degrees in a half hour, the wood burning stove takes a few hours. I am disappointed at this. I thought it would really heat things up. It does seems to heat efficiently, burning slowly and leaving few ashes.

I am pleased that we have used less propane than anticipated. In four months we have used 100 gallons for heating water, cooking, and the fridge. This is a constant usage. Add the propane heater and we will see how much we go through, but we should be able to make the goal of only filling our 1000 gallon tank once a year. Also, as of yet we have not needed to use the generator for electricity. The solar panels and batteries have been providing all we need, even through a rainy weekend when we were all home. It is all an experiment and an adventure.

Green Roof

This October has been glorious. We are lucky, the greenroof has been more labor intensive and expensive than anticipated.


-Waterproof membrane $1000 and 700 pounds needed help to move it (thanks to those who helped)
-PearlLite from Mallad Idaho (in the giant white bags) $500 a light weight soil mixture to help with drainage
-Top soil $200
-Peat Moss $300
-Plants $500 got a great deal from Willard Bay Nursery on succulents and other small rooted, draught tolerant, evergreenish plants
-Crates $500 keeps all the planting medium from sliding off and provides drainage

Give it a few years to grow in and it will be beautiful.

Digging in the dirt is such a joy to me. It is something that gives me pure happiness. That magical chemistry of life and death and renewal. Now we not only have plants underneath our feet but also over our heads.


I couldn't find a Thoreau quote on roofs, this surprises me because they are the ultimate symbol of our disconnect with nature. We build this structure to keep out the cold, the wind, the rain. This structure protects us from the dangers of the unknown, of a world that can be violent and unpredictable. This structure becomes the line between the natural and the man made. Humans can spend their entire life never leaving a place with a roof over their head. You get into your car in the garage, drive to a parking terrace, never have to feel the heat of the sun or the biting cold. Never feel the wind in your hair or the rain on your face. Without these constant discomforts and unpredictable possible dangers we lose our ability to adapt-- to problem-solve-- to enjoy the few brief moments of perfection. The natural world teaches us how to cope with the discomforts of being human. To be patient and hope and know that all that is beautiful will return again.