Friday the promised weather showed up grayly. After a walk around the ponds and
breakfast Linda left and I finally offloaded the immense pile of willowroots from the Chev and
used it to transport 25 gallons of water to the burnpile in anticipation of burning it,
weather permitting. Linda called a couple of hours out, westbound 80 closed at Verdi, but she persevered and made it home. Eventually. Meanwhile here things cleared up cleared towards
evening but Saturday morning a smell of Skunk wafted in, the stench driven from under the bedroom porch by strong west winds [as well as the Inkies who’d become stinkies early on] which did not bode well for bonfires so I amused myself by moving firewood and later took the
’82 down to the lower pond to fill it with dead cattails Tara’d cut only to have the fuel pump self-destruct as soon as I started back. Not good, not shown.
There was, anyway, the studio to consider…
…or something much like it.
Ah well; Sunday came up clear, still and ten degrees which caused my precautionary waters at the pile to transform themselves into five five gallon ice cubes [or tubes] but a good day
for ignition nonetheless; what could go wrong, right?
Fortunately nothing did, though smoke drifted all the way to the Granites and beyond in
transformative still air…air which by late afternoon was blowing in a[nother] promise of winter.
As the winds increased I raked the ashes one last time and paid last respects to the Chev [until such time as we figure out what that replacement fuel pump is]. It may snow…or so it seemed.
Which indeed proved to be the case later that night so Monday, with mad north winds,
was crazy cold and definitively…winter.
Inkies, like all little kids, love the snow but if little kids have been spritzed by a skunk the snow
unfortunately renews the subscription. It wasn’t as bad as two days ago, fortunately…
The porch proved a leetle chilly for a last lunch out as it’s definitely looking very
like rural northern Nevada winter around here and with the wind and a Famous Storm
expected to close roads over the Sierra not very much later in the week I’m expecting to be outa here Tuesday morning, you betcha.
Godspeed over the ridge! Got caught in an early October blizzard coming back from Reno once and it took 15 hours to make it home. 1957? Not sure, but very vivid.
Made it fine although so far disappointed as to the early dissipation of the anticipated Storm of the Century. Oh well…
Read your interview in the alum magazine re “The Sage”. Since I had no talent for writing or art I ran the book store mentored by Mr. Fish. A lot of free time to read people like Allen Ginsburg and James Joyce. Yes,
we were early day Beatniks.
I haven’t seen that yet but Jon Carroll, back when he was a columnist for the Chronicle, wrote a nice piece about visiting Wall Spring [in my absence] that touched on all that…”beatniks without irony” he called us. Aspirational beatniks, anyway. If I can find it I’ll send it to you…
Wow, that’s a lot of snow, Mike. As I recall, it snowed just before your wedding and it snowed when we drove up there in late spring 2013 but I don’t ever remember seeing that much snow. BTW, how are you liking the new regime?
It was WAY snowier as I went south down the desert [will show that subsequently] and good to get it…years past have seen much more. We were lucky for that January wedding, eh? As for the New Regime, I’m loving it, hoping for it, wishing all well…
Storm is moving into the Bay Area now (Tuesday noon), hope you made it over the pass and home OK.
Wall looked mighty chilly, but the burn was toasty…ALL that smoke by the Granites was just from your bonfire?
I’m amazed you got so many photos out in the c-c-c-cold, you must have good gloves/mittens. I hope you got the stinky-inkies de-skunked before the ride home. Try hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap, or did you already?
https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/de-skunking-your-dog
De dog has not yet been entirely de-skunked, but thanks…and yes, that did seem to be all my smoke. It drifted and wafted in various permutations for quite a conspicuous while.
As for the cold, well the fire was more than enough [despite that two days later the ice left from the buckets was still intact on the ground out there] but walking around I just, um, keep moving…have some city gloves good enough for that and after half an hour or so duck in for breakfast…
Your “What could go wrong” set me up for the worst, so the caption under the picture of the fire put me back at ease. It sure looks cold up there. We have just begun to get some genuine cold days and a little snow. It had been positively balmy right from the beginning of November. Alarmingly so.
Same weird warmth all fall and January here too…winter at its belated last, apparently.