The Heartbreak of the World Class Athlete

Broken bindings - Broken dreams

World class mountaineer in this case. As you can see from the photo above, my trusty Tubbs snowshoes gave up the ghost during this morning's walk. I guess that means they're not that trusty after all. But trusty or not, I am now forced to give up my preparation for an ascent of Mt. Everest during the 2008 calendar year. And I was just getting ready to head to Colorado for some real altitude work. I've canceled those plans since altitude conditioning can be rather expensive. It's too late however for me to cancel the desert training portion of my preparation which is scheduled to start on 15 March in Burkina-Faso, Africa. I'm not sure why there even is a desert training module for the ascent of Everest, but my sponsor (Northrop-Grumman) insists on it and they are paying the bills after all. After locking myself in my bedroom and crying for several hours, I pulled myself together, went downtown and ordered a new set of snowshoes. As some of you may remember, Tubbs used to be made in Vermont. No longer. Tubbs shoes are made in China now like almost everything else on the planet. Fortunately, a company named TSL took over the Tubbs factory and TSL is making great snowshoes just an hour north of us in Burlington. I ordered a set of their snowshoes and they'll be here next week. I'll keep everyone advised of my Everest training schedule for 2009.

Wood

The Trees

The Forest

The House nestled in the Forest

Wood from the forest waiting to burn

Wood burning.

Working in my wood-shop the other day it occurred to me how central wood is to our lives here in North-Central Vermont. My house is built of wood and surrounded by woods. Those woods shelter and provide habitat for the animals that are of such abiding interest to me. Working with wood is my hobby. And if that weren't enough, we use wood for about half of our heat. Many of the people in this area make their livings from wood. There's are numerous loggers, saw mill operators, and furniture manufacturers all right here in our small town. But in the midst of all this practicality, we shouldn't forget the most important role of wood in our lives which is adding beauty. That's why we live here. The beauty of the forests and the mountains. We are not the hollow men; we are the woodsmen.

A New Convert

Our son Neil showed up yesterday for a brief weekend visit and immediately took to our Northwoods Winter lifestyle. We dressed him up in a modern version of the "voyageur" fashion so popular among French trappers in the 18th century and, voila, a new north country woodsman. Unfortunately he fagged out after a relatively short walk in snowshoes, and he appears to think it's rather cold here. The amount of snow came as a shock as well. We're bundling him back to Seattle on Monday before the next snow storm which is expected for Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Deja vu all over again..."

Grand Canyon of the Dog River which runs through our property.

Tired of the seeming never ending stream of postcard perfect snow covered Vermont landscapes on this blog? Yeah, well, welcome to my world. Except you can flit to another website as you yawn at the now boring perfect whiteness of it all. No such luck for me. I get to shovel the deck again after our 8 inch snow a couple of days ago. You can't help but thinking "Gee, we've had a lot of snow" when the guy with the big 4x4 pickup gets stuck trying to plow your driveway. And reading this you might be tempted to say, "Yes, that's a lot of snow!" But then you are forced to reconsider what a lot of snow is. Turns out it's a lot of snow when the second guy with the big 4x4 pickup comes to get the first guy out and gets stuck too. Of course, while you're down on your freezing hands and knees helping dig them out, you have lots of time to think about your choice in retirement locales. What the hell was it that we didn't like about New Mexico anyway?

p.s. Have you heard the joke about how much it snows in Vermont? No? Well, I'm sorry but you won't hear it from me because IT'S NOT FUNNY!

A Hard Year for the Deer

Apple tree bark stripped by the deer.

The early and continuing snows are making for a brutal year for the deer and other wildlife. The bears and the chipmunks are right to hibernate because "nature's bounty" this Winter has become "nature's cruel paucity". I guess the deer have it the worst. They are too heavy to walk on the surface of the snow and so they expend a great deal of energy struggling through the 4 foot depths we have on the ground right now. And of course there's the little matter of nothing to eat. I actually took this picture of our bark scoured apple tree a few weeks ago. Who know what the deer are eating now if they were reduced to eating bark weeks ago? On a brighter note, I saw Rocky the Flying Squirrel last night on one of our bird feeders. And we thought Barry the Barred Owl had eaten him!

"One to three inches..."

Weathermen here in Vermont have an interesting way of forecasting weather for the next 72 hours. Borrowing from Native American culture the idea of a "vision quest", Vermont weathermen go on a "forecast quest". This quest can be quite grueling and involves copious amounts of peyote and the "sacred herb" also known as marijuana. After several continuous days of sacred "stoning", the weatherman or woman will lie naked on the frozen surface of lake Champlain until their forecast vision arrives with enough clarity for them to forecast the weather for the next three days. In the latest example of the effectiveness of this ancient spiritual method of weather forecasting, we were recently told that we would receive "1 to 3 inches of snow over the next 48 hours". You can judge the extraordinary accuracy of this forecast from the photo above. The table and deck were completely clear of snow as the 48 hours in question started. How much snow did we finally get? 16 inches. What's in the forecast for today and tomorrow? 1 to 3 inches.

Winter Workshop Wonders

Part of the future entertainment center.

From another angle.

As the season drags on, I have finally gotten a major furniture project going. It's the entertainment center / library for the T.V. room upstairs. I have to say that the project is coming along pretty well, particularly considering that my shop is usually at about 40 degrees which limits the amount of time I can spend in there at one stretch. The two pieces you see in the pictures are about 40% of the bottom portion of the future built-in. Since this whole thing sits between two walls, I'll have to wait until these two pieces are finished and installed to assemble the last piece. Otherwise you risk getting the exciting "1/4" too long" surprise, something I have already dealt with when I installed the kitchen cabinets. These pieces are 3/4" birch plywood with solid maple facings. Most of the facings aren't installed in these pictures.

New Snow...New Tracks

A mink with fresh fish.

More snowshoe hare tracks.

A ruffed grouse zigs through the forest.

Where our mink went fishing.

Ruffed grouse.

We got another 4 or 5 inches of snow and sleet yesterday and the day before and the new snow left a smooth, pristine surface that proved to be a perfect canvas for animal tracks. We definitely have a mink that likes to visit the river and pond. Much earlier this Winter I saw a hole he had dug in the snow along the bank of the pond. I'm sure he dug down and then went fishing under the ice. This time Catherine and I saw where he had gone swimming under the ice in the deepest hole along the river that's on our property. The mink tracks are spaced about like those of a fox but are much smaller. In this case the mink's tracks lead up to the edge of the water and then disappear, only to reappear on the other side of the ice sheet covering the big fishing hole. This is the hole where Neil caught a couple of decent sized trout this Summer. Maybe the mink had similar luck although we didn't see any signs of that. The dogs scared up a couple of ruffed grouse the other day and then this morning I saw one's tracks. I had seen one this Summer perched on a big log back behind the house. They are large birds, the size of a really big chicken and are generally solitary. And we're starting to see quite a few snowshoe hare tracks which means there's a reasonable population of them in the area. I don't know if I'll ever get to see more than their tracks since the dogs scare them away whenever we're on a walk. So the list of animals we know we have around the house continues to grow. We can now say that we have turkey, deer, bear, moose, grouse, snowshoe hare, barred owls, flying squirrels, mink, fox and coyote. I've left off all of the birds that come to the feeders as well as the reptiles. It kind of makes you feel like you're living in the wilderness