(no subject)
It’s a gray Monday morning, and my wake-up call was the Pileated throwing himself (or herself? How do you tell?) at the suet box on my office window. He’s far too big for the box - even if he were able to get his feet on it, I don’t think he’d be able to contort in a way that allowed him to get at the suet. Now I’m wondering what kind of feeder I need to get to feed woodpeckers the size of chickens. A trip to the bird store later today is in order.
We went snowshoeing on Saturday. My brother called us in the morning and said he and his wife would be up at camp around 1:30, so we cut short our screwing around and drove up there for the first time since November. We can drive to within a few hundred yards, since another camp owner has been keeping the road plowed for the past couple of winters. It’s convenient, but I do miss the inaccessibility that came from only being able to drive to Harlow Lake, a mile away. I liked standing in the camp, gazing out the window with a beer or a glass of Hartley’s, and knowing that there was no easy way out.
When we got to camp on Saturday, we were the first people there, and we debated about whether to start a fire. We ended up building one, and sat down to play cribbage until brother showed up. We were halfway through our first game when they came trudging up, followed by my parents a few minutes later. It was too bad - I was winning, as I do often lately. To my disappointment, my game-playing skills go up in proportion to how little I drink. Playing while drinking is more fun, but I always lose because I'm inevitably more interested in my beer than the game.
The four of us snowshoed to Top-o’-the-World and back, an almost two hour trek. We didn’t go to the very top, since my sister-in-law is new to shoeing and the last bit to the apex is off-trail and difficult. On the way back, we went cross-country, with my brother leading the way to my Dad’s deer blind, where we retrieved the heater and scattered some leftover cabbage. The snow around the blind was trampled with deer tracks, deer feeding posts, deer beds. It was deer party central.
Once back at camp, we jawed with the parents for a bit. My Dad informed us that the culvert that runs underneath the camp road and carries our drinking water from the spring to the stream has cracked or otherwise failed, and the water no longer comes out of the end in a small waterfall - making it easy to fill buckets - and instead seeps out underneath. It will have to be repaired come spring. Mr. Aba asked if the work would be done by hand, or if my Dad would bring in a ditch digger or some other machinery. Dad, always the wit, says he figures he’d use solar power to remove the culvert. “After all,” he continued, “I have three sons.”
We went snowshoeing on Saturday. My brother called us in the morning and said he and his wife would be up at camp around 1:30, so we cut short our screwing around and drove up there for the first time since November. We can drive to within a few hundred yards, since another camp owner has been keeping the road plowed for the past couple of winters. It’s convenient, but I do miss the inaccessibility that came from only being able to drive to Harlow Lake, a mile away. I liked standing in the camp, gazing out the window with a beer or a glass of Hartley’s, and knowing that there was no easy way out.
When we got to camp on Saturday, we were the first people there, and we debated about whether to start a fire. We ended up building one, and sat down to play cribbage until brother showed up. We were halfway through our first game when they came trudging up, followed by my parents a few minutes later. It was too bad - I was winning, as I do often lately. To my disappointment, my game-playing skills go up in proportion to how little I drink. Playing while drinking is more fun, but I always lose because I'm inevitably more interested in my beer than the game.
The four of us snowshoed to Top-o’-the-World and back, an almost two hour trek. We didn’t go to the very top, since my sister-in-law is new to shoeing and the last bit to the apex is off-trail and difficult. On the way back, we went cross-country, with my brother leading the way to my Dad’s deer blind, where we retrieved the heater and scattered some leftover cabbage. The snow around the blind was trampled with deer tracks, deer feeding posts, deer beds. It was deer party central.
Once back at camp, we jawed with the parents for a bit. My Dad informed us that the culvert that runs underneath the camp road and carries our drinking water from the spring to the stream has cracked or otherwise failed, and the water no longer comes out of the end in a small waterfall - making it easy to fill buckets - and instead seeps out underneath. It will have to be repaired come spring. Mr. Aba asked if the work would be done by hand, or if my Dad would bring in a ditch digger or some other machinery. Dad, always the wit, says he figures he’d use solar power to remove the culvert. “After all,” he continued, “I have three sons.”