It hasn’t gotten there yet.  The temperature scales cross at -40°, and it is only about -38° now.  It is already cold enough that our compact fluorescent porch and yard lights won’t light.  If left on for a day or two, they might.  Several winters ago, one was left on for 36 hours before it finally started to glow.  It’s crisp out there.  Wood splits easily, and if anyone was foolish enough to try to zip or unzip a plastic zipper, it would shed teeth.  My radial tires would take miles of bumpity bumping along before they’d round out after being parked overnight… if my car would start.  It hasn’t run since the weekend before Thanksgiving. 

Such extreme cold is rare in this valley.  At higher elevations and latitudes, it’s not that rare, but I have seen cold this deep only about ten or a dozen times in the 27 years I have lived here.  The coldest it has been in that time was off the scale, more than 55 below, and I really don’t want to be that cold again.  At temps that low, oily lubricants become adhesives and some metal car parts such as hinges and door latches, are as brittle as plastic.

Greyfox experienced forty below for the first time in his life during his first winter here, twenty years ago.  Afterward, he said, “The best thing about forty below is that it makes zero seem warm.”  I agree.  I wouldn’t mind a nice warm zero day right about now.

Standing by the wood stove this morning , I slip out of pajama bottom, into underpants.  Cold silk long johns against my skin next, I hope the insulation they’ll provide will more than balance the chill of slipping  into them.  I sit to put on thin over-the-calf sock liners, up over the silk to keep it from riding up when I slip on the merino wool long johns that have been warming on the stove.  Aah, the chill is gone.  Thus far, everything I have put on is white or off-white.  I find the heavyweight forest green Polar Fleece socks and slip them up over the bottom of the woolies, so they won’t ride up when I pull on the jeans.

In long johns and pajama top, I dig in a drawer for an extra shirt to wear, then lay out 3 shirts to warm on the stove, and stand there warming my hands for a while.  A long-sleeve, long tailed dark blue cotton knit henley goes next to my skin, and gets tucked into the faded Gloria Vanderbilt bluejeans that come next.  After jeans come a pair of raggedy old black one-size-too-large sno-jogs, big enough for the bulky socks and felt innersoles.  Then come the rest of the shirts:  dark blue short sleeve cotton tee and long sleeve off-white wool blend henley. 

Now that I’m through putting shirts on over my head, I brush my hair, clip my phone’s handset on the outer henley, put on the headset and a flowered bandanna over it to keep it and my hair in place.  The beloved little blue hat goes on over that.  Next goes a zippered black fleece hoodie, hood up over the hat, and I’m dressed.  No, I’m not going anywhere.  It is barely fifty degrees at eye level in here.  That’s a safe temp for my tropical houseplants, which are all up high where the temp is relatively warm.  I turned on fans to move heat around and disrupt the thermocline, but it is still frigid and drafty at waist height and below.  We’ve done what we could to insulate and winterize this place, but it remains drafty.

That’s Doug, suited up to go out and split firewood this morning.  He had to come back three times, to warm his hands and defog his glasses, before he was done splitting and ready to start carrying in the wood.

This weather is odd.  It’s not so much the temperature, though that is a bit lower than average.  Early this week the barometric pressure was so high it made news by screwing up pilots’ altimeters.  Our old aneroid barometer was reading just a hair shy of 31 inches of mercury then.  It has been creeping slowly downward all week, but still is above 30″.  Even odder is the difference in temp between here and the lower end of the valley.  We seldom experience more than about a ten-degree difference, but they have been consistently 40-60 degrees warmer than us this week.  While Greyfox was reporting thawing temperatures and slick conditions, we’ve been sub-zero all week.

I have two chunks of firewood warming atop the stove, so it will ignite faster when I put it in.  The scent of roasting birch is pleasant.  I’m going to be adding some cooking smells to that soon.  I haven’t decided yet what to cook.  I’m thinking it will be something with a long cooking time, maybe a pot of soup on the stove top and something in the oven, too.  Anything to make it more comfortable in here until tonight when I can justify climbing back into the top bunk where it’s warmer.

Life is good.  I’m happy.

Greyfox and I were conversing via his Bluetooth and my not-so-hi-tech headset this morning.  He was outside, retrieving cats’ feeding dishes and other objects that had blown off his porch.  It’s another windy day in Wasilla.

A sudden increase in the wind noise from his microphone signaled that he had stepped away from the relative shelter of his cabin.  It became evident which way he had gone when he started talking about what he was seeing in the dumpster.  He said there was a lot of interesting-looking stuff, and apparently, some other dumpster diver had already been there, tearing open trash bags.

Then I heard a few grunts of effort and sounds indicating physical exertion.  Greyfox explained that he was having to manipulate trash bags one-handed as he held the lid open with the other.  The wind was threatening to blow the lid shut on him.

Immediately, I was all, “Be careful, Darlin’!  Those lids are heavy,” at the same time he was telling me that the lid was heavy.  We both started laughing, and went on talking over each other, speculating about the possible outcome of his having a dumpster slammed shut on him.

Occasionally, one or the other of us has the other on the line as a sort of remote ground support when we’re engaged in some hazardous activity, such as when I’m shoveling snow from the roof here.  We’ve speculated in the past about having to explain to a 911 operator that we’re reporting an emergency that has occurred fifty miles away.

Between grunts and guffaws, he told me, in the event of catastrophe, to log onto zoklet (a bb site where he moderates several forums) and report that he had died doing what he loved.  I said, “Yeah: ‘He died as he lived — dumpster diving.’”  That brought a guffaw from Doug, who had been giving me puzzled looks as he listened to my laughter on this end of the conversation.

  

22-year old musher Jake Berkowitz has won the Copper Basin 300 mid-distance sled dog race today.  Super-musher Lance Mackey has finished in (as yet unofficial) second place.

When Greyfox called last night, he said he had news.  He starts almost every conversation that way, as if he needs a reason to call.  His news was that some people had moved out, and among the food they discarded was a frozen burrito, which he’d had for dinner.

There was more to the story.  It was a young couple with little kids, a dog and some cats (one of the cats was 13 years old) that he’d been telling me little anecdotes about for the month or so that they had lived there.  They’d originally had difficulty scraping up their rent and security deposit, and had negotiated to move in still owing some of the deposit.

The family had been working throughout the day, packing their vehicle, cleaning the cabin, hauling out trash, etc.  The man had tracked down Greyfox, who was (sorta loosely) keeping an eye on the office at the time, to turn in his key.  All he said was that they had been unable to come up with the money for their rent, so they were moving out.

Greyfox had been impressed at how clean they had left the cabin.  This is generally a notable occurrence there at Felony Flats, where most tenants leave in the dead of night, often leaving behind a big mess and several months of unpaid rent.  Sometimes, they lock up the cabins and keep the keys, not telling anyone they’re going.  For someone to voluntarily move out without accruing several months’ back rent or being issued an eviction notice, is rare, indeed.

I asked Greyfox if the man had said whether they had anyplace to go, but he hadn’t said anything about it.  I was concerned, because as far as either of us knows, there is no homeless shelter in the Valley, and even in Anchorage there’s no shelter that would allow pets.  The woman had been particularly attached to the old cat, having had it for much of her own life.

I was quiet so long that Greyfox asked, “Are you still there?”  I stumbled over my words, trying to express my concern, my wondering what the family would do, where they might stay, the temperatures dropping from teens above to way below zero that night….

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “…and this was my good news, that I’d gotten a burrito tonight.”

I missed most of it last year, with pancreatitis hitting me hard during the Yukon Quest.  Observers might have gotten the impression that I had suddenly lost interest in the sport of dog mushing, but I was just severely under the weather.  This year, in keeping with my personal tradition / habit / vice, I have plans to swing to the other extreme and be more involved than ever before.  This will be facilitated, in part, by Facebook connections to many mushers, as well as other fans like me – or fans unlike me:  they’re facebook friends, so I don’t necessarily know anything much about them.

Last month, Colleen Robertia won the Gin Gin 200, Ryan Redington won the Alaska Excursions 120, and Lance Mackey won the Sheep Mountain 150. 

Coming up this weekend is the Copper Basin 300, from Paxson Lodge to the Chistochina Village Hall checkpoint, to the The Hub in Glennallen, to the Tolsona Lodge, to Wolverine Lodge, to the Sourdough Creek Bunkhouse, to Meier’s Lake Lodge, to the finish line at Paxson Lodge.  (map here)

The season’s peak, the long-distance races begin next month with Yukon Quest, and then in March, the Iditarod.  I expect to be offering my armchair view — actually, it’s an ergonomic office chair here at the computer desk, but… you know what I mean.

Hang on, and hush, you muskies.