Wood

 It feels i am on roll with blogging, i decided to go with the flow of it. I wake around 7 am, meditate for half an hour,  go on the computer ( ah see i skipped my exercises, still not a habit), I made and ate breakfast.. takes 10 min tops. (i will time it tomorrow). And now 9 am. The newspaper says sunrise in Whitehorse is at 9 am. I do not know at what kind of horizon this sun is rising above. We do live in the mountains here, but if it rose i am sure i should see some light, i will go out and look now! ok maybe there is a very faint glow on the eastern horizon, which accidentally has no trees or mountains, but it is really too dark to see. It is dark out no doubt about it.

And as the city is also in that direction, on a clear night the city 80 km away will give off a glow .

Anyway i was going to write about my wood cutting.

  My house should be smaller. I think it is insulated ok, could be better. Our windows are  triple planes or more. Our ceilings are lowish 8 feet.  I think our house is 1600 square feet. We have a large woodstove an old RSF, in the middle of the house.  Old , meaning we do not know, we have had it 20 years, but it was bought second hand. The insulated chimney is the part that gets replaced  a little more often. 

We live in an old growth forest, mixed spruce and aspen.  Due to climate, our biggest trees only get two feet in diameter. We live at the edge of a far out subdivision. say 200 people.   To the east is our city, to the west is Champagne and Haines jct. And south 200 km no roads or settlements there is Alaska. To the North more kilometers of space.

To be so far out is  not very good for the environment,  but gives me an opportunity to live from nature. Lots of wood at our disposal.  You know i even eat it.  We do need permits if cutting it outside of our property. Our house is partially build with spruce logs, from a mill in Carcross. 

Our wood for heating is right here!  Still, like i said my husband is not able to cut anymore.  But for 30 years he did. or we did, and we always enjoyed it,  As a family we made it lots of fun. We never worked our son very hard (maybe ask him)  we found it more important that living this way was happiness, not hard work. But it is hard work. Very labor intensive. I like to joke that wood heat makes you warm many times over. Include the dusting and sweeping i have to do  in the house due to it. Wood is very dirty.

So yesterday, the woods were magnificently beautiful, the hoarfrost  2 centimeters long, the birds abundant.

ehh 9.30 am still pitch black out there, but i am going to wrap this up.

Yesterday two people, 4 hours work incl, getting there on foot) maybe we cut  2 weeks worth of wood, for average winter temperatures ( -15C/ -20C) I actually have no idea.  But i know to cut all my wood for all year,   as a family we were out there,  days, many days.  And then the splitting, stacking, bringing in, stoking. on and on. It is a way of life.

And now we get older, we have started to buy most of our wood, 500 dollars a cord as is.

9.45 am  i stepped outside, still very faint light at the eastern horizon no change from at 9 am.

First light i know  is around 11 am, i have to look into that, why the newspaper says 9 am.