We enjoyed Spring arriving this Weekend without power and in a snowstorm. My auto mechanic even got stuck in a ditch on a gravel road and spent the night in the car. His wife was with him, and I can't decide if that made it better or worse.
Our candles burned out. We had a couple fat ones left by midnight Saturday, and that's all. Everybody got a flashlight. The little guy had a Hippo-shaped light. When you held the handle the Hippo opened his mouth, laughed and the light came on. The next guy in line had a Tiger. He roared, though it wasn't a very scary roar. The Storm outside was thick, you couldn't see the neighbor's house, and it was black when the Sun went down. Our house had the sounds of the Hippo Laughing and the Roar of the Tiger.
It's pretty late in the season, and we didn't have much wood left. You had to dig it out from the snow, and then thaw and dry it by the fire. The oldest kid did right the second day, and filled the hall with wood. I was proud of him. He'll be using a khuk before too much longer. He's eight.
There were two thick rounds of wood I'd used as a pounding board all Winter. They wouldn't fit in the stove. I have a 20" Village AK that gets the worst jobs. I shaved the logs with it. That's a little dicey, because a miss or if you blast through, the blade wants to keep traveling to the floor, and does. I don't really care anymore about the carpet; not after three young kids.
I put the Maglite 4 D cell in the hallway by the kid's rooms so they wouldn't panic. But it went out. The littlest was upset. He was too tired to fully wake and scream but too scared to go to sleep all the way either, so he just kinda moaned and whined.
I put the railroad lantern I'd been using upstairs for him. That ended my reading for the night. A book by Peter Bowen, a Montana writer Rusty had given me not too long before he died. It's the first fiction or almost any book I've read in many years. There's lot's of good stuff there, but I notice some malarky too. For one thing, our hero makes 400 yard shots on a running Antelope instinctively. He's a Native American. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to eat an Antelope shot running, and doubt very much a good hunter would do such a thing, even if he could SEE an Antelope at that yardage enough to shoot at. Hunting is a skill that makes such shots uneccesary, not desirable.
The main theme of the book is good guy vs bad guy. Not the plot; the dynamic 'tension'. Our hero is a savvy colorful person in a world of modern superficiality, and the Reader naturally wishes to identify with him, and not 'all those flatlanders'.
The snow outside the house would melt, reform against the wall and stick. Our little County had 57 poles down in the wind. And yesterday, just when I thought it was all over, the power went off again.
A local has three girls who instead of watching TV played cards all day. She thought it was wonderful. The girls laughed and laughed. Now, in the book I finished last night, our Hero has a daughter who was so smart that she did not go to Kindergarten, she already could read. Must not have lasted, because the same gal 12 years later is doing all this remedial work before she goes to a fancy Eastern College. Montana schools are rudimentary, dont ya know?
Our Hero also observes fancy high tech clothes and shoes get people into the backcountry who then perish. Somehow the tennis and hiking shoes are so advanced a 90 pound weakling climbs the Rocky Mountains before he realizes he's too weak for such endeavors and falls off.
I wondered what the author would think of me. I have a synthetic pullover someone gave me once. Miracle fiber. It just naturally wants to carry me down the trail. I hardly puff at all.
Yes, it would have been nice to have an old fashioned wood burning stove here. We could have cooked and heated the house. But the catalytic converter model is double walled and can't cook. My wife did make rice crispey treats though. It was just hot enough to melt a pot of marshmellows for some flatlander marshmellows like us. Without electricity the stove was not efficient, but it did keep us from the cold, and we survived.
munk
Our candles burned out. We had a couple fat ones left by midnight Saturday, and that's all. Everybody got a flashlight. The little guy had a Hippo-shaped light. When you held the handle the Hippo opened his mouth, laughed and the light came on. The next guy in line had a Tiger. He roared, though it wasn't a very scary roar. The Storm outside was thick, you couldn't see the neighbor's house, and it was black when the Sun went down. Our house had the sounds of the Hippo Laughing and the Roar of the Tiger.
It's pretty late in the season, and we didn't have much wood left. You had to dig it out from the snow, and then thaw and dry it by the fire. The oldest kid did right the second day, and filled the hall with wood. I was proud of him. He'll be using a khuk before too much longer. He's eight.
There were two thick rounds of wood I'd used as a pounding board all Winter. They wouldn't fit in the stove. I have a 20" Village AK that gets the worst jobs. I shaved the logs with it. That's a little dicey, because a miss or if you blast through, the blade wants to keep traveling to the floor, and does. I don't really care anymore about the carpet; not after three young kids.
I put the Maglite 4 D cell in the hallway by the kid's rooms so they wouldn't panic. But it went out. The littlest was upset. He was too tired to fully wake and scream but too scared to go to sleep all the way either, so he just kinda moaned and whined.
I put the railroad lantern I'd been using upstairs for him. That ended my reading for the night. A book by Peter Bowen, a Montana writer Rusty had given me not too long before he died. It's the first fiction or almost any book I've read in many years. There's lot's of good stuff there, but I notice some malarky too. For one thing, our hero makes 400 yard shots on a running Antelope instinctively. He's a Native American. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to eat an Antelope shot running, and doubt very much a good hunter would do such a thing, even if he could SEE an Antelope at that yardage enough to shoot at. Hunting is a skill that makes such shots uneccesary, not desirable.
The main theme of the book is good guy vs bad guy. Not the plot; the dynamic 'tension'. Our hero is a savvy colorful person in a world of modern superficiality, and the Reader naturally wishes to identify with him, and not 'all those flatlanders'.
The snow outside the house would melt, reform against the wall and stick. Our little County had 57 poles down in the wind. And yesterday, just when I thought it was all over, the power went off again.
A local has three girls who instead of watching TV played cards all day. She thought it was wonderful. The girls laughed and laughed. Now, in the book I finished last night, our Hero has a daughter who was so smart that she did not go to Kindergarten, she already could read. Must not have lasted, because the same gal 12 years later is doing all this remedial work before she goes to a fancy Eastern College. Montana schools are rudimentary, dont ya know?
Our Hero also observes fancy high tech clothes and shoes get people into the backcountry who then perish. Somehow the tennis and hiking shoes are so advanced a 90 pound weakling climbs the Rocky Mountains before he realizes he's too weak for such endeavors and falls off.
I wondered what the author would think of me. I have a synthetic pullover someone gave me once. Miracle fiber. It just naturally wants to carry me down the trail. I hardly puff at all.
Yes, it would have been nice to have an old fashioned wood burning stove here. We could have cooked and heated the house. But the catalytic converter model is double walled and can't cook. My wife did make rice crispey treats though. It was just hot enough to melt a pot of marshmellows for some flatlander marshmellows like us. Without electricity the stove was not efficient, but it did keep us from the cold, and we survived.
munk
:grumpy: 