A Winter's walk

In winter I ski. When I can, that is. Sometimes it is just too cold. Even with hand-warmers, my hands freeze. This apparently is due to the fact than when one skis, one clutches the poles as hard as possible. It impedes circulation of the blood. We have no prepared tracks here at Chalupy. Do it yourself all the way. If it is really cold, my feet freeze too. So I have decided -25C is the limit for skiing. When it gets below that I walk. I wear my bunny boots, so my feet do not freeze. I wear my down parka with the fur hood (and a cap underneath that) so my head loses no heat. I wear my padded Carhartt overalls, wool shirt, long underwear, the works. Today it is -33C or so. At these temperatures, if you are having problems with C and F scales, it doesen't matter. Same thing, for practical purposes (the scales coincide exactly at -40). So it's cold!

Nice thing about walking: I can take pictures. Camera must be kept warm at all costs, or the batteries default on their duty. And I have both hands free. I can fish the camera out of the clothing and take a picture before my hands freeze to death. I have to remove super-mittens, though. No sacrifice too great for the blog.

So here is a winter walk in the Alaska bush. It is about 10AM -- just after sunrise in January. We walk down Basargin Drive. The first thing we see is...
... a couple of birch trees, young'uns bent double by the snow load. If it were spring we could make a greenhouse of of them! Alas, it is January. Maybe 70 cm of snow on the ground. Major project getting to these babies!

So on we go. We stop to look at what Little Lonely Lake is doing.
It looks rather blue. Maybe it's too cold! No, it is a camera problem. Too much contrast for proper color recording. It is really white, but it's in the shade. Very few snow machine tracks. What a pity (cynical smile). So on we go.
The rising sun is lighting up the roadside trees. Deep shadow elsewhere. Stunning, I think. After a while we reach one of the houses alogn Beryozova road. The name of the road is Russian (natch. It leads to the Russian village). It means "of the birches" road, very apt. So we come to non-village, but sometimes inhabited territory.
Lot of snow on the roof! The residents are not in residence. Perhaps they are snowbirds. But mysteriously their driveway gets plowed, no doubt by divine providence. Wish my driveway got done that way. Well, we turn back eventually and get home. We are glad to see our driveway.
We note that it is plowed (actually snow-blowered), but regret that Divine providence did not favor us. Sigh. Do it yourself, again. Note that the sun is just now clearing the trees. It must be 1100 hours. Nice thing is that the days are getting longer.

And so, home. Have a cup of tea, enjoy the warmth (if, that is, you remembered to start a fire that morning) and on with the rest of the day.

Alaska Interlude

So when I went and skied to the Iditarod, a post ot two ago, I did not ski any longer than I usually do. Thing is, I cooled off in the middle. And the snow was so nice coming back that I went all out. Disaster. My legs hurt and due to all the complications of old age and the rather convoluted human nervous system, I hurt. A lot. So I have not been skiing until today, almost a week. Instead, I walk. I am learning to toe in. Thanks to some very clever therapists, I can walk without my back aching. All I have to do is toe in! Try it sometime. American Indians toed in; in fact they could tell whether tracks were made by palefaces or one of their own kind . Most Europeans toe out. Guaranteed to give you backache in your old age. So I am learning to walk again, strange though it may sound. So out I went to what I call "Polushkin Pond," retracing my ski route. And there he was...
Aloysius X. Moose, browsing on the ur-Reutov birches (or alders). Totally unconcerned. Now mind you, I have moose tracks one meter from my house, but they are nocturnal tracks. Seldom do you see them in the daytime. Now how do I know that it is probably "he" and not "she?" Well, the ladies are usually accompanied by calves. No kids? Probably a male. Also, the attitude. Females will usually vanish. Protect offspring at all costs, even interrupt a tasty meal. Not the blokes. Their attitude is "if you get any closer I'll stomp on you. Now go away!" Not wishing to be stomped on, much less interrupt a moose at breakfast, away I went. By the way, Aloysius is probably either Ricky or Racky. Those are my two resident males. In the fall, they pal around together, with their splendid racks of horns. Racky's rack is a bit bigger than Ricky's.

In other climes, March is spring. Things start to bloom. But my driveway is still rather snowbound:
Car tracks outside, ski tracks in the middle! This is actually not my driveway. It is a road, known to the Beneficient Bureaucracy of the Mat-Su borough as "North Basargin Circle." I cannot understand this. It is not a circle. Not even approximately. Perhaps the Russians who cut the road were conversant with Lobachevsky's geometry, where circles can become straight lines. It goes the wrong way to be North. You are looking South in the picture. Not even Lobachevsky can get away with that. However, the beneficient bureaucrats regard it as a "private road" and don't clear it. So I have to do it myself or I can't get in. My driveway actually starts where the picture ends. Bless all bureaucrats. May they spend their time in the afterlife shovelling snow in Jehannum. Dear me. Maybe it's too hot in Jehannum for snow. Never mind, if Dante could imagine many Hells then I will imagine one where bureaucrats get to shovel snow. Politicians will go there too. They will shovel snow with garden trowels.