My friends from the south get a post from time to time with a photo of the snow, or a screen capture of the latest winter forecast. I do it mostly for the shock value, it’s fun to see the reactions and hear the replies of “oh hell no…”. I’ve even made videos on cool winter mornings of me throwing a hot cup of water into the air and watching it all evaporate before hitting the ground. I cannot count the number of time I’ve been asked how we do it (live up north). The majority of times my answer is the same; “We’re just used to it.” The south has it’s own comparable issues… record high temps in the summer, sweltering humidity, poisonous snakes, and cockroaches larger than a 70’s Chrysler. Even though it’s not uncommon for us to see temps in the 100’s during the summer, I think a nice 70 degree July evening, is enough to keep us out of the south during the summer.
Our last post touched on the extreme cold weather that kept us from enjoying Rustic Pines for a while. And, even though we’re far better off than a year ago when we spent our first weekend sleeping in a tent pitched on two feet of snow, it can still be quite an effort to be comfortable in our little patch of the woods. Since it is our intention to move to Rustic Pines, we have spent a great deal of time planning how our home will be built, and how we plan to improve the infrastructure to make life easier. But in reality, the amount of daily work it will take to not only survive, but thrive, is making itself apparent.
This last week, with a great forecast in store, we loaded the truck late Friday and headed north. We had one simple goal: cut and split firewood. Once again, I risked “certain death” and drove the unplowed road up to the neighbors driveway… ok, maybe not certain death, but definitely the risk of getting the truck stuck. We made it all the way in without issue and unloaded the snowmobile and sled and made trips to the cabin with our gear.
Once we were in the cabin, wood from the bin was retrieved and a fire started. Normally the cabin heats up rather quickly, usually by the time it takes to stow our gear and make an adult beverage. It was near eleven when we arrived, and even though the fire had been started shortly after we arrived, by midnight, it just didn’t seem to be warming up. We make a point not to cut any live trees unless we are clearing a trail or a campsite, after all, there is more than enough deadfall to heat us for the next millennia. I knew that all of the wood in the bin was from deadfall, but it just didn’t seem to be burning all that well. After a quick check, I realized that one of the trees we harvested for firewood must have fallen the previous summer and was not sufficiently dried. So back out to the wood bin I went. Nothing beats sorting through a pile of wood in the middle of the night, trying to determine what’s dry and what isn’t.
Needless to say, I figured out which part of the pile was dry and which was still wet. The numbers did not look good. When we headed out for firewood in the morning, we were going to need to be picky. News Flash! Truly dry wood doesn’t all fall in the same location in the forest!
I spent the night getting up every couple of hours to stoke the fire… This is my new normal. It sounds like a pain, but in reality, it doesn’t bother me much. I’m sure someone out there is probably wondering just how I can remember to wake up just in time to add more wood to the stove before the fire dies out. Not to get too personal, but in a weird way, it’s science really. I’m usually a heavy sleeper… like can’t wake the dead level. But, I have one saving grace… I like it to be cool. I’m not a guy who likes 80 degrees and a comforter type of sleeper. I usually kick the covers off somewhere around 70. There is little temperature regulation with a wood stove (yes you can damper it, and I do), when you fill the box, it gets our little cabin quite toasty. 
Most days, even with a half full stove, it can reach 75 degrees inside when it’s 10 outside. So, I fill the stove, crawl into bed, cover up, and go to sleep. (This is the personal part that might sound icky); I have a memory foam pillow. I love the support it gives my neck, and it saves me from painful mornings. If you’ve looked into a memory foam mattress, you’ve undoubtedly heard that they are “hot”. This is true in my experience. Because I like cooler temps when I sleep, and memory foam reflects or absorbs your body heat, my head tends to sweat a little (I know gross, right? Don’t worry, the pillow cases get washed and the pillows get replaced often.) Anyway, before you lose your lunch… when the fire starts to die, the temp inside the cabin drops, the sweat on my pillow conducts the cold, and I get uncomfortable and wake up. This is the point at which Katie would tell me that I think too much. Anyway, she doesn’t mind because she gets to sleep the whole night through.
In the morning, we woke to fairly warm 15 degree temps and partly cloudy skies. After much coffee and Candy Crush, I got a little hangry and decided to make myself breakfast. If there is any tension in our relationship, it revolves around breakfast. Katie’s stomach doesn’t wake up till eleven or so, and mine is ready to devour a cow around six AM. Katie takes great care of me, and she considers it important to personally feed us. She’s a great cook, and I’m usually excited to follow her dining schedule. It’s not a big deal to eat breakfast a little later most days… I know it’s always worth the wait. Saturday though, I was a bit grumpy, and Katie let me know I needed a Snickers. After breakfast and a scolding, I got dressed in my snow pants and we headed out to look for wood. We decided to head over to the first campsite location and harvest wood where it would accomplish two goals; getting firewood, and clearing a campsite. We cut down the trees that needed to be cleared, as well as any deadfall in the area. Katie piled the limbs, I went back to the cabin and grabbed the gas can and our beverages. Upon my return we lit the pile of branches on fire, took a break, and then loaded the sled to haul the logs back to the cabin.
Katie and I made quick work of the logs and had the split wood stacked in no time. After the wood was stacked, we retired to the cabin and cranked up the tunes. I attended to my duties as the grill master and started the charcoal, while Katie prepped the rest of our meal. After lighting the grill, I hooked up a second deepcell battery I picked up at a big box store. Our solar panel has performed wonderfully, and it’s really nice to just flip a switch to turn the lights on. The second battery will guarantee that we can make it through a three day weekend on a charge. After dinner, the cribbage board came out and “someone” won… (Katie), and soon it was off to bed.
With the morning came a special treat. Katie diced up some of her mothers potato dumplings and fried them with bacon and eggs. Around eight AM the snow began to fall. Katie was concerned about making the trip home, but I assured her that we would be fine. We decided to take a walk through the tamarack forest and headed out into the deep snow. It’s always incredible to step out and see the beauty of this place. Especially during the winter when we can walk into the middle of the tamarack forest which is usually filled with water. We took our time and enjoyed the walk, taking in the views as well as trying to determine what animal made the tracks in the snow. While we exited the forest we came across a small tamarack that had died. 
The bark had fallen off, as had the limbs, and the wood was grey with weather. I pushed on the trunk and it fell right over! I hauled the twenty footer back to the cabin and Katie and I quickly cut and stacked the super dry wood. I left Katie in the cabin and headed back among the tamarack to look for more dead trees. I hauled three more trunks out of the forest which gave us a ready supply of great firewood for the next couple of trips.
Around noon, we started to put the cabin to bed and haul gear back to the truck. In the meantime, the snow kept falling, and by the time we pulled the truck onto the main highway, over eight inches had fallen. Eight inches in five hours. Katie’s fears were settling on me by this time. The snow was falling so hard that there was less than one quarter mile of visibility. If an oncoming vehicle drove past, it was white-out for at least thirty seconds. 
The plows were out, and had cleared a strip, one car’s width down the middle of the highway, so even though it was a bit harrowing, we kept our speed under 50mph, and made the trip easily. By the time we passed through Duluth, the roads were clear and there was no snow falling. The rest of the trip was uneventful.
So are people up there rugged? Well, that depends on what you compare it to I suppose. Katie had commented on how much effort we spent throughout the weekend just keeping warm, and that’s what got me thinking about how we build in the future. It goes without saying, that we need to plan things so that we have less work to do. It also impacts where we build and how. Just clearing snow can be a monumental task… long walkways and hills have to be mitigated. All in all, I would say one person’s “rugged” is another person’s “normal”. Even as I type this, Katie is on the phone with a friend, and the conversation is about how awesome it is that it’s so warm… warm, as in fifteen degrees.
Rest assured, that if you come to visit Rustic Pines, we’ll do our best to take as much “rugged” out of your stay.