Benjamin Scribner's Blog, page 13

The weeks news. Is that you ol’ man winter?

It’s been a crazy week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Winter finally decided to show up this week, dumping over a foot of fresh snow, with more in the forecast. It’s as if mother nature realized we were out here on the west coast and decided to give the east coast a short break for a bit.

In other news, I finally got rid of the UTV after a couple of years of it causing us nothing but headaches. Since December, it hasn’t run a full week without some issue. So, earlier this week, I got rid of it. UTV’s are great with tracks if your intention is to only use it a couple of times a month (which was my intention before meeting my lovely wife, who I often think must be crazy for leaving the comforts of a small city in Iowa to move up here on a mountain), not as a daily driver. The tracks put too much strain on the axle bearings and other components.

So then, Thursday, as I was trying to start my trusty, 40+-year-old Arctic Cat, I hadn’t noticed that a bolt had come out of the recoil starter. This cocked it just enough that, upon pulling the cord, the pawls that engage the flywheel snapped in half. I managed to locate replacement parts, but they are out in the great state of Minnesota and have to be shipped in. They will be here by the end of next week, I hope.  Tina is happy she doesn’t have to ride the “snowmobile of death” for a bit.

It’s called the snowmobile of death, because last winter it tried to kill my lovely wife.  I had loaded up the sled with supplies and hooked it up to Tina’s more powerful machine. Now, since she had little experience on a snowmobile before then, and none pulling a sled, I wanted her to ride mine.  Now, my snowmobile had an issue with the throttle sticking open when it was frosty; frost would get into the throttle cable, and unless you thumbed the throttle back, it would continue to go at whatever speed it was at, instead of dropping back down to an idle. I hadn’t thought to inform my lovely wife of this fact, so when she started to take off, she couldn’t stop. Her and the snowmobile bounced down the road until hitting a bump, throwing her off and causing the throttle finely to snap back to the idle position. She hasn’t driven it since.  Her snowmobile got back at me later, when its throttle stuck wide open while I was starting it and drug me 10 feet before it went over the bank.  I was able to let go before it went over, fortunately.

This leaves us with one working snowmobile, which has its own issues. It is a newer machine than mine, and I was planning on working on it before winter set in, yet never had the time. It will run, but can be a pain at times. I plan on having both machines in good running order before next winter, and now that the money pit UTV is gone, we should be able to afford to make the necessary repairs.  I will most likely find another snowmobile as a backup, since redundancies for your redundancies are a good idea when living off grid.

Nothing much else has been going on this past week.  I assume the Old Loggers are still meeting for coffee at whatever diner they have chosen. I haven’t had much time to spare in town, and when I do, it’s later in the day, so I go see Sam at Always Grounded and grab a latte instead.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

The weeks news… Is it an early spring?

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Spring is right around the corner; it appears to be arriving much too early on the mountain this year. Warm temperatures and lots of rain have been knocking the snow down quickly.  So much so that I can now drive the pickup to within a mile of the cabin, and if I wanted to waste the time putting on tire chains, I could most likely drive right into our driveway. Putting chains on and taking them off is time consuming, so I haven’t bothered.  We continue to ride the snowmobile down as far as possible, then hike across the ice and dirt to the truck. I am sure we will get a few more snow storms before spring officially arrives, but I don’t think they will amount to much.

Something odd this winter has been the lack of winter birds at our feeder. We bought seed this fall and filled it, but nothing has shown up, not even the annoying jays we had last year. I’m not sure what’s going on, and am a bit concerned by their absence. It looks like the seed will be going to feed the chipmunks when they come out this spring.

The UTV has broken down again; this machine has caused nothing but headaches since December. UTV’s are great, if not used as a daily driver when tracks are installed. My original plan, before meeting Tina, was to only come off the mountain a couple times a month. Therefore, the UTV would not be used all that much, and mechanical troubles would have been kept to a minimum. Tina and I have decided that this summer we will put some money into the snowmobiles and use them most of the winter time, only using the UTV when we have to haul up the monthly supplies. I also have two parts snowmobiles down on the lower lot, and I am thinking about pulling the skis off to build a bigger sled to haul in supplies, thus only using the UTV for things neither snowmobile can haul. My Arctic Cat is woefully under powered, but so far, it has managed to haul both of us and our supplies up without much complaint, since the other machine isn’t functioning properly yet. For a 43-year-old machine, it’s doing better than its newer counterparts. I can’t complain.

I haven’t seen much of the old loggers lately.  It seems the owner of My Kitchen has made them mad, and they have decided to take their business to some of the other eating establishments in town that open early. I don’t know what set them off, and haven’t gone looking for their new hangout when I’m in town. The sheriff and a couple of the old group still show up at My Kitchen, so I still go there hoping for some interesting story from the sheriff to add to my next book. So far, only one tale worth writing about was told, and I wasn’t there that day. I have been hounding him to retell the story, but he won’t yet. I already have a couple to add to the new book, but am hoping for at least one more. I guess I will have to spend more time at the diner.

I’m already planning my spring and summer projects, hoping to finish at least some of them before next winter. I have begun perusing the free sites online, looking for anything I can use up here to finish off at least a couple of rooms before next winter.  I’m sure something will pop up before too long.

Well, that’s al the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weeks news. Old memories

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

It’s the first week of February, and our weather can’t make up its mind. Winter made a brief appearance then vanished again, leaving a few inches of snow that melted off by the end of the week. The bottom half of our road is a combination of ice and dirt that is not fun to get around on, though I have been able to navigate it with some degree of success. The long-range forecast is calling for warmer temperatures and more rain, which is great, but without the normal snow pack, fire season out here will be long and dangerous this coming summer.

As I sit in town with the old loggers some mornings, joking over coffee, I am reminded of my old school friends.  I haven’t seen them since I left another small town to join the Navy, many years ago.

I grew up in many small towns in my early life. I talked about Castine, Maine, in a previous post, where I spent some of my preteen years. I spent my junior high and high school years in the small town of Brookfield, New Hampshire, nestled in the foothills of the White Mountains in that beautiful state. I had many friends there, and I have fond memories of them.  Some were girls I was madly in love with, others were guys with whom I got into, and out of, trouble more than once.  The world, to us, was an open book, waiting for our generation to grab it and shift it into our view of how things should be.

But, life has a way of shaping us, instead.  Few of us went off to college, many found jobs, or got married to a high school sweetheart and stayed close by where we grew up.  I, in contrast, spent many years away in the south and overseas, soaking up the different cultures and learning the ways of others different from myself.  I only went back to the old hometown once during my enlistment, seeking out a few old friends, only to find that nothing had changed but me.

Many years later, after coming back from the war, I had a chance to spend a weekend in my old stomping grounds when I delivered a load to Portsmouth in the southern part of the state. There were no prospects of a return load until the following Monday. So, I decided to take a walk down memory lane, and spent the weekend at a few of the old haunts. I ate at The Poor People’s pub in the town of Sanbornville, the town right next to Brookfield where my family lived. The pub was a local hangout, serving meals and alcohol.  Many a summer’s evening was spent there joking with friends, or trying to romance a new prospective girlfriend. I drove past a few of the houses where my friends had once lived and recalled the fun times we had had.  Life was so much simpler back then with no bills and no real responsibilities.

I never found any of the old gang, and that’s probably a blessing. We have all gotten older, and I would rather think of my friends as the young boys and girls we once were. I don’t wish to shatter those memories. Most of my friends are still back there, somewhere, though a few, like myself, have moved on to other states, finding a life elsewhere.  I do stay in contact with some through social media, but that’s as far as it goes.  We all know, deep down, that we will likely not meet again in our lifetime.

“You can’t go home again,” a saying and the title of a book written by Thomas Wolfe in the early part of the last century. Truer words were never coined. I think that the more one travels, and the more worldly and wise one becomes, the further one drifts away from those old anchors of the past. We choose to visit those old memories from time to time, but there is no turning back.  After years of travel, I find myself living in another small town, having coffee with a few new friends. I will always have those memories of another small town back east, and the friends that helped shape who I am today, even if they don’t know it.

That’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

The weeks news. Alaska dreaming

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Winter has finally made it here.  Two storms have dumped close to two feet of fresh snow on our mountain this past week. It will take a lot more before the snow pack is adequate for the spring and summer seasons to not be as dry as the last couple of years. I am hoping for a very wet spring and summer myself, even though it will mean outdoor projects will be slow to finish. I would rather have that than the threat of forest fires as we have had the last few summers. Last summer, we went without rain for around 88 days, a record for the northwest.

Alaska had an earthquake this past week, a big one, too, from what I heard. It was off the coast and caused tsunami warnings as far south as San Francisco. Nothing came of it and the warnings were canceled.

There was a time, many years ago, when I wanted to homestead in Alaska. I was a much younger man serving in the Navy at the time, and my plan was to do my one three-year enlistment, then head out to the Great White North and make my way as a homesteader. The thought of living in an off-grid cabin far away from the civilized world appealed to me, only venturing to the nearest town for supplies a few times a year, while hunting game and raising what vegetables I could in the short growing season.  A marriage to a southern girl put an end to that, and the next ten years were spent in the Navy and in starting a family.  Even after that marriage ended, there was no way to begin the life I had dreamed of, since I had custody of my three young boys.  A truck driving career and another marriage put that dream in its grave.  Now, here I am, in an off-grid cabin in northern Idaho, living out my dream. Though it’s not Alaska, it’s as close as I care to be at this age.

My equipment continues to cause trouble, but I think even new machines would have problems up here as much as they get used. The last thing occurred this morning when the exhaust suddenly became incredibly loud. I found that the exhaust pipe had snapped off just before the muffler. This was a brand-new system, put on when the rebuilt motor was installed last year. Why it broke is anyone’s guess, but it will be pulled off next week and welded at the shop that put it in.

Allen stopped by this week, I haven’t seen much of him lately, as he doesn’t like to venture out if the weather is questionable. Jack showed up for a few days, camping out at his cabin near Allen’s. He probably won’t return again until he can drive his pickup up.

Jack wants to live up here year-round, but can’t seem to put forth the energy to accomplish the hard chores that are required of anyone living on the mountain. Cutting, splitting, and even gathering logs for firewood, is just something he has no desire to do. I don’t see him becoming a permanent resident on the mountain.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. equipment trouble, again…

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

It’s been unusually warm this winter; where we would normally have four or five feet of snow, we have around two.  Down below, rain has washed all the snow off the road, leaving behind nothing but ice, and making travel hazardous. We are hoping for a lot more snow in the next month or two.

Snow pack in the mountains fills the reservoirs, providing water for nearby towns and cities. It also helps in forest fire prevention, as the ground is saturated and vegetation doesn’t dry out as fast.

The south and east appear to be getting our weather lately. In parts of the deep South that hardly ever see snow, the snow has caused problems for people not used to it.

I’ve been spending more time than I would like in town this past week waiting for parts to arrive for vital repairs to our equipment.  Sam down at Always Grounded hasn’t minded the extra business and income. Lattes are my one weakness; a luxury I really can’t afford but I indulge in on rare occasions, as does Tina when she’s there in between her bus runs. We have tried cutting back, but are weak. We must endeavor to be strong in the face of caffeine.

The UTV has broken down a number of times so far in the last month.  This latest round started with needing to repair an oil leak, likely from when I put the new primary clutch on in a previous round of repairs.  Once down the mountain, I noticed that the left front track did not look right.  I figured that the bearings probably needed to be replaced.  However, when I removed the track, I found I needed to replace the whole steering knuckle.  This meant, of course, ordering new ones for both sides, since the right side was close to needing replaced as well.  Not having the UTV in operation, I had to take Tina down the mountain on our snowmobile (as she calls it, the snowmobile of death).  Hopefully, both parts will be in this Monday and the UTV will be operational again.  Then the challenge becomes getting it over the icy sections of mountain road to bring it home.  Tuesday, I hope to take the pull cord off the snowmobile and take it in to Dale at Idaho Rigging to see if he can fix it.  The cable is fraying on it and won’t last much longer.  I have been loathed to take it down while this machine is the only transportation we have but I can’t put it off any longer.

I’ve also been helping to repair a pickup for an old logger. Not one I normally see and have coffee with down at My Kitchen, but a friend of Larry and Moe’s who lives over the small ridge behind their home.  I was asked to help due to my many years of experience with larger diesel motors.  It seems his old truck had been having trouble, and we discovered it was the injector pump which supplies the needed pressure to the injectors. Fuel was pouring out of it at a rapid rate, creating a fire danger as it hit the hot engine block.  After much searching, we located a rebuilt pump, the cost of which was, by far, cheaper than anything else we could find. Therefore, this coming week, I will be pulling the old one and installing the new.

Hopefully, the next weeks will see an end to mechanical troubles, and I can spend the rest of my winter catching up on my writing.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

This weeks news. Mild winter

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain. my little slice of heaven.

It’s a new year, and with it, brings new hope for the future. Up here, I am hoping to finish a few more projects this year, getting closer to having a finished, cozy cabin with rainwater storage.  With the rainwater storage in place, we should no longer need, during the winter, to have a barrel in our bathroom filled with melted snow for showers and dishes. Drinking water will still need to be hauled in, but that is a minor inconvenience we can live with.

Winter has been unusually warm this year, and what snow we have had so far seems to be melting almost as fast as it hits the ground. The creek down below has been running as hard as it normally does during the spring melt. Rain, instead of our normal snowfall, has also kept the depth of the snow down to around two feet in our yard, where we would usually have around five feet by now.  The old loggers say that we get our hardest snowfalls in February and March, but it would need to snow almost continuously those entire two months to make up for the lack of snow so far this season.

Equipment break-downs have kept me busy these last few weeks, starting with the wet clutch in my UTV that was supposed to have been new when the motor was rebuilt last winter. Turns out, it was not replaced, and I had to make the necessary repairs in my yard. In doing so, I failed to tighten an important nut that held the primary clutch in place, causing it to fly apart and cause major damage to the clutch about a half mile from the cabin. I had to wait a couple of weeks for parts to arrive, then make the repairs on the side of the mountain road, since hauling the machine back to the cabin was impossible.  A couple more break-downs rounded out the first couple of weeks of the new year, and I hope that I am done with them all now.

At times, I wonder what my mentor Henry David Thoreau would say. He, in his day, walked when he traveled, and though I’m not opposed to a good hike, walking down and back up two miles of snow-covered mountain road doesn’t appeal to my nature. So, I will continue to live in this modern age of machines and fix them as needed, while envying my mentor his simpler time.

With all the repairs, I have not had the much-wanted time I was hoping for to finish the two books I am currently working on.  I still hope to see them in print before this summer, but it means I will need to buckle down and spend most of the weeks ahead writing.  My new short stories for kids have also been suffering, but I will be able to catch those up more quickly than my other works.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

This weeks news. Traditions

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain. My little slice of heaven.

Traditions, especially around this time of year. We all have

them, they started when we were young living at home with our families. Then when we moved out, and started a family of our own, we combined our traditions with those of our spouse, to form new traditions that were, in turn, passed down to our children who will one day start new ones with their families.

For my sister and I, we would keep up the tradition of running to the bedroom when we heard Santa’s sleigh bells ring, even though we were old enough to know Santa wasn’t real, it was still fun. We had our Christmas Christmas eve, Santa brought the gifts from the North Pole, and gifts were opened after he had left. We also revived our stockings hat morning, St. Nick having come by early so we had something to keep us occupied and out from under foot while the adults did what adults do before the on-slot of the evening ahead.

Traditions, from the decorations you hang on your tree, to the type of lights, Christmas music, to even the type of tree itself, you pass down to your children in hopes they will keep some of them as they start their own family.

These things we all hold dear, a part of us we want to pass along in hopes they won’t be forgotten. You hope that when you go to visit them, that you will see something that reminds you of Christmases long past when they were growing up, and it will bring back a fond memory of a time long past, yet for a moment, just a fleeting moment, you will relive those younger days and smile.

That’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

The Weeks news. Winters slow start on the mountain.

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Normally by now we would have a couple feet of snow at our elevation. But after an unusually warm and rainy November, we only have around eight inches so far.

This past week has been sunny and cold, with another week forecast for more of the same. Compared to last winters conveyor belt of  storms that started with rain at the end of September and turned to snow in mid October and didn’t let up until mid January, this is starting out to be a mild winter.

It has those of us on the  mountain a little concerned, since lack of winter snow-pack means a longer fire season come summer. Hopefully, things change soon, or we have a very wet spring.

Down at My Kitchen, the old loggers have been discussing this years hunting season, with a few reminiscing of past seasons when they were younger. Often the tales will be quite funny with one of the old guys telling a tale about one of his friends getting knocked off his mule by a whisky bottle, tossed from another hunter after he had asked for it after a hunt on the ride out of the woods.

From the story, the hunter with the whisky had had it in his saddlebags, and the other hunter asked for a drink. So it was pulled from the saddlebags, without looking, and tossed, again without the thrower looking at where he was tossing it, And hit the other guy right between the eyes.

this got quite a few laughs around the table, as others went into some of the funnier hunts they had been on, even one of the guys talking about the same guy, getting hit again, only this time in the side of the head, by another bottle thrown by a different hunter. I guess the guy hit, after picking himself up off the ground, shook his head and couldn’t believe he had been hit twice in two seasons. He no longer went on hunts with that particular group, seems he was afraid the next time a bottle might just kill him.

Most of the tales told around that table are of the tall verity, often funny and embellished. Most of the time I think, since they all know I’m a writer, these tales are told in hopes they will end up in my next book, and thus immortalize the teller in some small way. After all, don’t we all wish to be remembered after we are gone?

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

This weeks news. Thanksgiving

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Today is Thanksgiving, a time to give thanks for all we have.

Back when I was a kid, the annual Macy’s day Thanksgiving parade would be on TV and my sister and I would be watching, staying out from underfoot while my mom finished cooking dinner.

Many times my uncle and cousins would be there, gathered around the TV with us. Since nobody in my family was a sports fan, we had no fear of losing the parade to football.

There is one tale from those years that gets told every year, it’s a funny story that happened to me when we had all sat down for dinner.

The table was crammed with food, and all the cousins, my uncle and Aunt, my sister and myself, plus mom and dad. So things were hectic and passing everything around the table was impossible. So plates were passed instead, and whoever was near what you wanted on your plate would dish it up and pass the plate back.

I had handed my plate to a cousin and asked them to pass it down for something at the other end of the table. I already had a pretty full plate by this time, but was wanting just one more thing.

Everyone was talking and laughing, and generally having a great time. Somehow, as my plate made its way down the table, people thought is was a serving plate and began taking things off it.

Five minutes went by before I realized my plate hadn’t returned and I asked where it was. Everyone, as I said, thought it was a serving plate and took food off of it and after it was empty my mom had put it in the sink.

So there I am, while everyone is eating a full plate of food, with nothing in front of me!

Mom went and got another plate, and everyone filled it before it was passed to me.

My uncle and Aunt are long passed now, and I doubt any of the cousins remember, but ever time my family is together on this day the tale is told, and often embellished upon.

Up here on the mountain, the weather has been warm this week, with lots of rain. So much rain in fact, that we have almost no snow left and could quite possibly drive the truck up.

Later today we will be going down to Larry and Moe’s for our dinner. Every year, those of us living up here have gone down for dinner. Moe puts on quite a meal, enough food to feed an army is the order of the day. Homemade pies, cookies, fudge and other sweets will be set out for snacking on.

Moe hates leftovers, so those will be packed up and sent home with everyone there.

I wish you all a happy and healthy day.

Bye for now.

Thia weeks news, and good coffee

It’s been another quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

It’s the week before Thanksgiving, and everyone is getting into the spirit.

At Larry and Moe’s place, More has started her annual baking, hauling in 50 lb sacks of flour, sugar and other ingredients for her cookies and other treats.

Down in town at Always Grounded, they have broken out the Eggnog for the holiday lattes. This is the place to go for something besides regular coffee.

The owners, Dave and Hannah, along with their daughter, Samantha keep the music going and the latte’s flowing.

Sam is only 19, but has a quick wit and a sharp sense of humor that keeps me on my toes when I walk in.

Her mother has the same sharp wit, plus a healthy dose of sarcasm, we often trade barbs when Tina and I show up.

The atmosphere is laid back, and the latte’s are great. I highly recommend the establishment if you happen to be in the neighborhood.

Our Sheriff is heading south next week to spend the holiday with his daughter in Reno.

I saw him last evening, and wished him a safe trip there and back.

Up here, snow is gently falling, adding a few more inches to what we already have on the mountain. It looks as though winter is here to stay.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.