Make Sense Of The Mess

It is feeling like I have overstayed my welcome up here. Except for a really wet weekend that rolled through a few weeks ago, November has been cold and damp. The property has turned into a cold wet mud pit. Nothing is drying out. No real snow to speak of for me yet but I can see the snow piling up across the mountain tops surrounding me. Just a matter of time now. I am doing my best to wrap things up but wet season is here and making it hard to make much progress.

I think I mentioned previously that the property owners along my access road were thinking about getting together to make some upgrades in the hopes of keeping the road open longer. I had my reservations about how long the road upgrades would last since it was a pretty simple effort of just pouring a mile’s worth of gravel on it. Living with the road for the past few years had me thinking (and still does) that it is going to need a bigger effort. My reservations fell on deaf ears and the work went ahead. I do have to say that I have enjoyed the results considerably. It is pretty nice not having to walk the mile in from the asphalt not that the rain is falling. I can now park just a couple hundred yards from my land saving a lot of time when I do have to run into town. Plus less opportunity to run into a bear looking to fill his belly before the long sleep. My concerns are coming true though, sections of the gravel are already starting to sink into the mud as the wet weather continues. I am not sure how long I can continue to make the drive in and El Nino or no, the snow is coming. Definitely back to hiking in soon.

And that could lead to its own set of problems. Beyond getting eaten by a bear, the far more likely challenge is getting towed from my usual parking space. This past summer has seen a lot of progress on building out the development that I have to drive through to get to my place. I counted 16 Multi-million dollar homes ether completed or getting built. The electronic gate is now working to keep the riff raff out. It’s obviously not working too hard because I still get in. My dented and mud covered (inside and out) car stands out amongst the sparkling F150’s and Range Rovers that drive the road now. I am expecting that someone will call on my car as abandoned if someone sees it parked somewhere up here for too long.

Somehow the wet sandy clay I am surrounded with is both sticky and slippery at the same time.  It sticks to the bottom of my rubber boots and clogs the treads of my tires. to a point where gravity is the big determiner of which direction I am going to go in. The only reprieve is it it freezes over night. Then I have a couple of hours to move stuff around on solid ground before it melts out and the slippin’ and slidin’ begins again. It hasn’t thawed out in the past few days so that has helped. Now I just have to sweep out the trailer and Wintershed to clear out all the piles of dried mud that have accumulated.

Other than cold feet, the down side of having solid ground now is that it means the temperatures are staying below freezing. I use lithium batteries to store the solar energy I collect during the day. Lacking any sun, I have turned to running a generator to get the batteries charged. Lithium batteries get pretty angry when trying to charging them below freezing. Supposedly, they have a computer chip that stops them from charging below freezing. Usually I am a trust but verify kind of guy but after seeing a lithium battery fire, I lean towards doubt and avoid. The batteries died a few days ago and I can only hope that an El Nino December means plenty of sun and warmer days. I think I prefer lights over solid ground at this point.

All of my water is frozen too so I am back to melting snow. I am winding down the year by not keeping any perishable food up here anymore. Canned food and pasta are on my limited menu now.

The sun sets a little after 4pm now. Without any electricity, there is nothing to do but crawl into my sleeping bag with all my clothes and a winter coat on to read one of my free Amazon Prime kindle books that have been piling up during the sunnier months. That lasts about 2 minutes before I fall asleep only to awaken around 10pm ready and raring to go. Than I could stare at the dark and try to convince my self that the first 6 hours didn’t count. But that hasn’t worked yet. Instead I scroll Youtube for the videos of ear wax removal and reviews of bad movies I’ll hopefully never see. That lasts until the phone dies and I have no choice but  wait for sleep or the sunrise. Usually sleep wins because it is almost 8am before daylight comes around.
Bedtime….
 

 

Colder than sleeping in a fridge

Ready for sleepy time

Sleepy Time

 

It isn’t all despair and whining though. I am glad that I am up here to see how the cabin holds up to the weather. Not there is much I can do about it it now but I’ll sleep easier this winter knowing that it at least held up to the first of the winter weather.  I still have some work to do but for the most part I am going to focus on shutting down and locking up.

There is a lot of construction debris lying around. It is a mess piled on top of the general dilapidation that I have been living with the last 4 years. My excuse is that if I leave it looking like a hillbilly methlab, it may keep the lookie lous from stopping and looking around. Definitely not because I am lazy or anything. 

No plans yet for the winter only options. I’ll do a year end review for December once I find a place to type without gloves on. I have some videos of the progress that I’ll put on YouTube when I get some big screen time.

Looks like I wrote too soon. Here comes the snow!!!

Enjoy the holiday season.