The Nadir of Winter

It doesn't feel like it tonight, but we've passed the nadir of winter. The days are getting longer. This is the time of year when the temperatures bottom out and begin to trend higher. In a couple of weeks we should begin experiencing some daily highs above freezing. Then the glacier surrounding the cabin can begin to recede.

Our driveway is a continuous, treacherous ice sheet, but still navigable on most days. There have been days and nights where we must hike in and out. It's cold but the exercise and views are breathtaking. Thus far the car and truck have reliably started but I think both are becoming weary of subzero weather. 

Seventy Degree Difference Between In and Out

The NWS forecasts minus ten tomorrow morning, but it's usually warm and cozy inside. It'll be nice to get back out again and resume the projects. It's too cold and icy to work on the window trim and firewood stockpiling. Our boots have ice gripping spikes but it's difficult and risky to do much outdoor work. 

Frost Covered Window

Our remaining single-pane windows are often painted with beautiful, intricate frost patterns. It's cold on the porch. I use it as a walk in freezer. The new double-pane, argon filled windows are amazingly efficient, but often the first casualty of efficiency is charm.

The Dog Toaster

The beagle spends all but a few minutes of her day on the couch. Here she is in front of the dog toaster. Occasionally we'll augment the wood stove with a portable heater, this one is a small propane heater that's popular with the ice fishing crowd. We don't run it overnight. The beagle stays warm all day and night in front of the wood stove or Kero-Sun heater. 

Juno, a Classic Nor'easter

We weren't affected by Juno, the recent nor'easter that dumped two feet of snow on Boston. The trailing edge of the storm had little energy, most people west of the Hudson River received no snow while the east side got buried. The next big storm system is due tomorrow, but all we will get is bitterly cold temperatures. 

Cold, but a Beautiful Sunrise

When it's below zero, the sunrise provides beautiful show as the morning light is reflected off the Sentinels. The trillions of little ice crystals that flash-form on supercold surfaces sparkle in the dawn. All these subtle effects can't be fully captured in a photo. 

A Winter Sky at Sunset

When the sun makes an appearance - it's not a daily affair - the sunsets are also gorgeous. No matter how many times we've seen it, we have to stop and appreciate the beauty. If you can do that without getting anxious about getting off schedule, then you've crossed into the world of the country person. That's the same culture that expects a long chat with neighbors instead of a curt 'hi, howya doing?'. Which culture is better for the soul?

Our daily low temperatures will creep into the double digits by the end of February - maybe all the way to 11 above zero. Winter retains a firm grip but it's gradually relaxing. 

The January Effect

Minus 21, One Degree Colder Than the South Pole

Minus 21F forecasted for tonight, if so, that'll be our coldest day of the winter thus far. When it gets below about 15F it's too cold for outdoor activities, even walking isn't appealing. But the air feels healthy. This was the rationale for locating tuberculosis clinics throughout the High Peaks a century ago before antibiotics were discovered. 

Christmas came and went, this year it felt genuine with all the snow covered trees, and everything else that snow can cover. We went to Vermont a few times over the holidays, all their snow melted and the absence of snow cover looked odd. We haven't been outside the Blue Line much, so Burlington felt like a major city. Its exurbs appeared almost as ugly as Melbourne, FL, a benchmark of hopeless urban planning. We each breathed a sigh of relief upon crossing Lake Champlain at Crown Point, returning to our light-pollution commercial-free Adirondack Park. The roads were utterly deserted.

A month after the big snowfall we still have a good foot of snow around Woodman's Lee, hard packed and seemingly impervious to melting. I can appreciate how Ice Ages begin: snow packs don't melt over the summer, they become reinforced the following winter, sunlight is reflected, global cooling accelerates and glaciers advance. We're living in an interglacial period; since we are due for new Ice Age it might as well begin in our backyard. 

The kids visited sequentially with a one day overlap, this place is too small to accommodate a full up family reunion. But they had a good time and endured a bit of snow and cold temperatures. We cut down a little tree and trimmed it, hanging battery powered lights, so I'd say we had a proper Christmas.

Out with the old window

When the house cleared out we resumed our window project by installing a larger window on the south wall. We had a rare 40 degree day, so we made the best of it. I still have to trim it out, but now it's become too cold on the days I have time and inclination to do the work.

The seasons influence my daily routine. I still get up early, but it is dark until 7am. The days are short but they are noticeably lengthening, we now have 15 minutes more daylight than on Jan 1st. Sometimes I get up earlier if I'm 'toned out' for a fire or local EMS page. On New Year's Day I responded to a 3am EMS page at a house just a mile away. We assessed and stabilized our patient and moved her onto the stretcher (with plenty of blankets, it was below zero). All this commotion didn't disturb the gentleman blissfully passed out in a nearby recliner. I suppose we had enough spare O2 to remedy his hangover, but we had a higher priority patient to transport. 

The new window

Anyhow, once up I check on the overnight news, a foolish habit that I can't seem to break. Then I'll conjure up breakfast and read. The EMT class keeps me busy, there's a lot of reading and preparation, but I'm at the halfway point and I'm doing well on the exams and practicals. Sometimes W and I will go to the fire station. She sleeps like a veteran firedog on my turnout coat, greeting anyone who arrives and building a goodly amount of social capital in the process. I use the wireless, attending to my latest EdX class and checking on the market. In return, I try to keep the place spotless and address the innumerable technological issues on the equipment. Even remote village fire departments have become too complex. 

Willie the firedog

The federal prison at Ray Brook is, however, well insulated from techno-complexity. You can't even take a cell phone in there and there's no Internet. Once you tune out the fences and concertina wire it's rather nice to teach in an electronic distraction-free environment. My two classes are getting a bit crowded, but no one is turned away. I extended the sessions to an hour and a half so we have more time for questions and checking for understanding. They are up to date on current events, but there are many curious gaps. For instance, because they are un-wired, it took awhile to explain what it meant to 'like' a YouTube video, and although heads were nodding in the right direction, I wonder if all of them understood the concept.

I gave the students a test, mostly to assess my performance...and it wasn't good, as evidenced by an extreme bimodal distribution. A few students excelled but the rest did poorly, one extreme or the other, no one in the middle. The only impediment to teaching trig is getting the class to understand sines and tangents. Once that rather abstract concept is internalized the rest is just visualization and bookkeeping. Unfortunately, teaching sin and tan requires more inmate attention than I can span. But then The Universe shined upon me. I found a YouTube video with an attention-getting trigonometry instructor. Everyone in the class - plus a growing crowd outside the door - paid attention to her presentation of sines, cosines and tangents. That's what inspired the discussion on 'liking' videos, by the way. They asked me to give the video 15 likes, one for each student, plus three more for the guys in the hallway. 

Prisons are exempt from political correctness. 

We had a fire call in Upper Jay, a chimney fire at the residence of one of our firefighters. It was a Tuesday night, cold and snowy and I struggled to make it through the end of EMT class. It's a good class with a good instructor but I fade as we near 10pm. The page came out as I was driving home, so I diverted to the station, grabbed the gear and rode shotgun in the brush truck.

Operational safety is a whole different ballgame with firefighters, they assume more risk than you'd ever see in the aerospace industry. Safety has improved over the years (for instance, no riding on the back of moving fire trucks) but if you spend too much time figuring where to tie off a harness to a hard point on a roof the fire is going to win. When I arrived two firefighters were already on the snow covered, two story roof, no harnesses, with only flashlights for scene lighting, You extinguish a chimney fire by closing the damper, then attacking it from above with Ziplok bags full of powder salvaged from expired fire extinguishers. By the time someone calls 911, their chimney is roaring like an inverted solid rocket motor, so this takes a bit of finesse. But the dry chemicals will put out the fire - unless the chimney ignites the attic. A couple of the old-timers drew upon their experience from the last two chimney fires at this residence - this is a small town with a big memory - and everything was quickly under control. I got home around midnight. 

I haven't spent much time cutting firewood, although this is the time of year to harvest wood for next season. The cabin is cozy and peaceful with the wood stove silently doing its job and the beagle sprawled out on the couch in front of it. It takes a lot of motivation to suit up and cut trees. I hope to get back to work on the woodpile after the January thaw...provided that one emerges and the new Ice Age is delayed another year.