April 27, 2004

• Rainy Day
  Water Run

  We put off this water run as long as we could, or almost that
  long.  There was still one 5-gallon bucket full, but I prefer
  using “bucket water” for dishwashing and other cleanup work, and
  drinking the water from the jugs.  It’s arbitrary and probably
  stupid, since I can see when the buckets are getting a film of rusty
  crud built up and clean them, and the best I can do with the jugs is to
  shake a little water around in them, sometimes with a bit of bleach in
  it.  I think the main reason I don’t like drinking out of the
  buckets is that I can see
  what’s in there besides the water.   Even with the occasional
  leaf that falls into a bucket, this water is far cleaner than what
  comes out of almost any town’s taps.  The state monitors the water
  quality at that spring, and posts the results on local bulletin boards
  every time it’s tested.  There are minerals in there, mostly iron,
  but that’s about all.  This is clear, clean, cold fossil water
  from an artesian source, and one of the best things about living out here..

  We have
  two new buckets, detergent containers discarded by the rehab
  ranch.  Each of them still had a small residue of detergent powder in
  it, so I dug a couple of dingey old towels from the rag bag to take
  along, and used that detergent to clean all the old buckets.  By
  the time I’d gotten done rinsing and filling all the buckets I was
  exhausted and my hands were numb, so I left the jugs to Doug.  I
  had remembered the camera, so after warming my fingers, I shot some
  pics.  The small clear jugs (appearing white) nearest Doug in this
  shot, are for Greyfox.  Where he is in town, he can get water
  either from his landlord’s well or from the city supply at the
  convenience store across the highway.  They are okay for wash
  water, but in the past when he has run out of our spring water and
  needed water to drink, he has bought bottled spring water, which gave
  us several nice one-gallon bottles to refill for him.

  
  The State of Alaska decrees that we must have the studded snow tires
  off our cars by the end of this month.  The steel studs chew up
  asphalt paving when it is warm.   I was using mine to get through
  snow and slush up through last week. I don’t need them any more now so
  I have an appointment tomorrow with the local tire guys to get the
  summer tires put back on my rims again.  Now, since it has been
  raining for a couple of days the snow is almost all gone.  Farther
  down the valley it has been gone for weeks, except for the dirty piles
  shoved to the edges of parking lots.  In the shot at right, of the
  muskeg across the highway from the spring, the few spots of white in
  the trail across the marsh and the bigger drifts in the middle
  distance, are all the snow that’s left. 

  Low spots are still muddy but the standing water is gone from my
  driveway.  The muskeg across from our house, where Doug and the
  cat took a morning stroll on the crusted snow last week, is now what it
  usually is:  a marsh.  This really is the least attractive
  and most difficult part of the year.  For me, some of that
  difficulty is from my allergy to the tree pollen.  The
  mental/emotional difficulty comes from a combination of eagerness for
  real summer to get here, and memories of what spring is like in places
  where they don’t call the season “breakup”.  Those are bittersweet
  memories, since the allergy season for me is prolonged in warmer
  climates.  The relative scarcity of allegens and other pollution
  here is one of the reasons I stay.

  In a comment, 
  pipsqueak
  asked “Have you ever wished to be in a warmer climate?”  I have
  spent winters Outside (that’s outside Alaska, as we refer to the rest
  of the world) twice in the thirty years I’ve lived here.  I might
  do it more often if it were feasible.  Economics is only part of
  the feasibility problem.  For the first half of my life I moved
  around a lot.  The latter half has been more settled and I like it
  that way.  The comforts of home have a lot of value for me, even
  when my home isn’t as comfortable as some.  It’s  mine and
  it’s home.  I would not
  wish to make my home year-round anywhere else, except possibly farther
  from the city, miles from the highway on some remote lake where the
  only ways in and out are by float plane (ski plane in winter)  and
  dog sled.

  Humanity has shown a tendency to congregate in tropical and
  sub-tropical climates, and to cluster their habitations along the
  seacoasts and in the flood plains of rivers.  Consequently, most
  of the world’s population lives an existence harried by insects and
  warm-climate diseases.  Their homes and lives are frequently wiped
  out by tsunamis or floods.  All my life I have had a preference
  for higher elevations and latitudes.  The preference predates any
  understanding of the hazards of living on the edge of the water among
  the bugs, snakes and fungi. 

  High deserts, craggy mountains, and
  arctic tundra are places I enjoy.  One of their major attractions
  for me is the absence of crowds.  Cool weather is another
  plus.  I spent my youth in California, Kansas and Texas where
  summers are hot.  I have been far too familiar from a young age
  with sunburn, heat stroke, poison oak and ivy….  Here’s a short
  list of some of the things I’m glad Alaska doesn’t have: 
  scorpions, tarantulas, snakes (but I miss lizards), poison oak, poison
  ivy (but we do have devil’s club, a prickly plant with nasty contact
  poison),  and the hot, HOT, burny summer sun.  Here nearer
  the poles, the rays must pass through more air to get to my tender
  skin.  That’s a GOOD thing.
  

  • 11:21 pm
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