johnbyronkuhner.com

http://vbrisket.com/category/virtualization/page/2/ As I was sawing wood yesterday after work, I noticed that one of the bark bins I use to gather mulch for my garden was now a good four inches out of the snow.  It had been covered up to its edge just a few days before.  While we hadn’t had very much of a thaw, the days were longer and brighter and despite generally low temperatures, the snow was melting and compacting.  We may have one or two more big snowfalls before winter finally departs, but chances are that the snowpack is now only going to get smaller.  The snowshoe days are now numbered.

Milwaukee It’s been almost two months since I was able to get in or out of the cabin comfortably without snowshoes, the longest continuous stretch of snowshoe weather I’ve had since moving to the cabin almost six years ago.  I park at the road’s edge, strap on my foot-extensions, and walk the last quarter of a mile to the cabin.  I love the fact that in winter my home is surrounded by a vestibule of silence and beauty, through which I have to pass in order to truly be home.  On clear winter nights the stars reveal my cabin’s elevation, appearing through the trees on every side as well as above; and sometimes the snow is falling, silencing everything.  But all winter long, in all weather, there is no other noise except the slight fall of the shoes into the snow.  Once we had some warm weather and thaw enough to hear the river down in the valley; but that was only once.  I have heard a few woodpeckers – maybe one a week – and on rare and chosen nights the owls boom and the coyotes scream.  But all in all the birds and animals are silent – the only signs of their presence are their tracks – and I hear no machines of men or voices in the woods.

When the snow is frozen solid – as it has been most of the past month – walking on it in snowshoes is almost like walking on pavement, and you move quickly and without difficulty.  When the snow is fresh or melting, you sink in, and the going is troublesome.  Especially when going uphill.  When carrying heavy loads in on melting snow – laundry, or groceries, or gas for the generator – I grumble and sweat and pause on the path to catch my breath.  I also have to carry my water up several hundred vertical feet from the spring, and firewood from my sawhorse.  But even the heavy loads give you new sensory impressions: carrying a long log on my shoulder, I was amazed to feel the difference in my feet: I could feel how much more deeply I was sinking into the snow.

In the sap woods we have been working in snowshoes as well, so I have been walking many miles in them almost every day.  You get used to them, and I even run in them sometimes, though often such flights have the predictable result of falling face-first into the snow.  Backing up is an especial problem, creating bad tangles, and for this reason I still refuse to use a chainsaw while on snowshoes: I’d rather sink into the snow than fall with a live chainsaw in hand.

At the beginning of the season I left a big bank of snow by my front door so I could stick the shoes in it; and there they have been each night since.  They have been my constant companion up here for the past two months: when I go to work, while I work, when I cut wood, or need water, or visit friends.  When someone comes to see me I leave a spare pair behind the barn by the road.  It becomes another way of marking off the seasons.

Sometimes when I see my gardening friends in the spring they marvel that I don’t put on weight in the winter – in fact I often lose a little.  “How do you stay in good shape when you’re cooped up all winter?” they ask.  I tell them they need to try an exclusive pizza and bagels and beer and pepsi diet and they’d stay in great shape no problem.  And a cabin in the woods and a pair of snowshoes probably wouldn’t hurt.