Mad, bad and obsessive compulsive

People often ask me, are there lots of mad people in the bush? I don’t know if there are more than anywhere else, but I know this- if you are mentally unwell, living alone in a tiny cabin and seeing no-one for months

on end will send you a whole lot fucking madder.

Snowy day on the beach

We’ve just lost a very dear friend. As far we know they haven’t died, but they left a very odd note in our PO box last month, and have refused all contact by email since. Though they are one of our closest friends, I’ve never written about this person. They are intensely private. When I say private, what I really mean is, delusionally paranoid.

This person can be great company and has been very kind to us, both with advice and possessions. But we knew every interaction we had was mulled over and picked apart in the depths of an unwell mind. We knew that one day we would say or do something that would weave us into the web of conspiracy that our friend saw all around.

We’ll never know why, but we know they won’t contact us again. And we will not visit them. Another unnerving thought about mental illness in the bush is this, everyone has firearms.

By late October, the sun no longer reaches our property

We are sad to lose our friend but once the river is stopped and we have trails in, we can go visiting our other crazy friends.

View from the ridge

Like our Alaskan pal who’s a different kind of crazy. Apparently, he set off from Dawson City by canoe to visit us last week. When the river looked like this-

That is totally, lovably insane. As far as we know, there is no-one from a few miles outside of Dawson to here. That’s a long 30 miles to be dodging ice and hoping your canoe isn’t crushed to matchsticks. But hats off to him for even giving it a go.

River almost clear of ice after a warm up

After a warm spell that seemed to put freeze up in reverse for a bit, we have crept down to -15c. The ice pans in the river are no longer spinning and bumping but seem to be clinging to each other. The river is choked with white and looks like it will stop any minute, though we know by now, anything can happen.

No-one can get in to us nor can we get out. This is a lonely time but luckily, we are both of sound mind and able to enjoy our solitude.

There is always wood to keep us busy. We have a relaxed and free-wheeling attitude to life out here in the bush. We’re pleased to be free of the strictly organised processes of city life.

So here’s a quick snapshot of our current wood situation:

Inside the house- 4 boxes for fire starting- birch bark, spruce kindling, paper/ card, old candle wax.

One small box of short cut wood for the cooking range.

One plastic tote of small wood for the barrel stove and one pile of large wood for the barrel stove.

On the porch, wood to go in the house, as yet unsorted.

Under the back porch, 4’ lengths of spruce- this year’s wood supply.

5 stacks of green spruce ageing for next year.

New stack of birch, just started, to be aged.

No, wait! Come back! There’s more green wood and I haven’t shown you the junk wood with nails in or the lumber pile for building!

Christ, if it gets any more complicated we’ll have to hand the wood supply chain management to a global consultancy like KPMG.

Creek freezing up

So, yes, we might just be edging to the side of obsessive as far as wood goes, but at least we’re not measuring the stacks to check that the CIA isn’t stealing any. (Actually, we don’t need to, these photos will serve as evidence and they are dated and published here in this blog.)

Sunshine across river

Yesterday was time to relax after so much wood doings and have some sane and level-headed fun. November 5^th is Guy Fawkes Night in Britain. The burning of Guy Fawkes in 1605, who tried to blow up parliament, is celebrated with bonfires, fireworks and a spike in emergency fire and ambulance service call outs. We thought we’d celebrate here too.

But how? We make several fires a day so that’s not special. We have no fireworks. But what could be more fun than shooting at the ice pans as they flow by with a 12-gauge?

It is a criminal waste of cartridges, so we decided we’d only shoot 3 each, but oh go on, just one more! We got through more than we should have. But, fuck it was fun.

Some we missed

We don’t have much snow yet but we’ve got Piccolo, our little Indy Lite out of his bear-proof cage and ready to go. His skis are wider than our porch support posts so the job required some lifting and tilting to get him out.

I’ve realised the key to living in the bush is simply having the right tools. We arrived 6 years ago with not even a bloody spoon. That’s what happens when you have the notion to go and live on another continent. It’s takes years to accumulate the things you need.

This job would previously have required lots of swearing, an injured back and a big marital row. One of us would have got so annoyed we’d have cut the porch supports down. With a rope-along winch and a farm jack, it was done in minutes.

We can’t buy everything we need at once. Even if we could afford it, we couldn’t get it here in one go, but so many people have just given us stuff over the past few years. Cutlery, tools, parkas, dogs, soap, pillows, pots, pans, snow bibs, hand warmers and a meat grinder to name just a few items. People have been very kind to us.

We’ve even been given this wall tent and stove. The tent, by our lost friend who’ll we never be able to thank properly for and the stove, by our mate Sarah in Dawson.

We hung the tent from a rope between two trees. Neil's using a come-along to tighten it

We thought we should practice getting it up before we set off into the arctic on a camping trip. I’m glad we did as we were back to the bad old days of struggling and shouting. We would have frozen to death before we’d got it up, or strangled each other with the guy ropes.

Sarah’s stove is known as a “Hippy Killer.” It’s small, light and perfect for our needs. They have a tendency for the bottom to burn out and set the place on fire, so that’ll be something to look forward to. Anyhow, we’re very grateful and it will make for an exciting blog when we get back. Or obituary.

Homer's feeling really confident about the tent

Of course we’re not really alone as we wait for freeze up as we have Homer! Another kind gift from generous friends. With a bit more snow now, Homer is back to work and he and I put trails in around the property with the dogsled.

Homer at work

We’ve also come up for a totally sane way for us all to get water together until we can run the snowmachine. We made a film of the process with proper scenes and edits and everything. It’s a minute long epic. 

If you’re thinking of trying this at home, you switch your sled dog from the wheelbarrow hitch to the rope on the pulley to go up the steep hill.

(If anyone knows how to get a GoPro to record sound whilst in its little plastic case, please let us know. Until then, apologies for the sound quality at the end.)

Next week-

The river looks like this currently so it should be pretty easy to get to the wood we've stacked on the other bank. For our next film, we will hitch Homer up to the bath tub and have him skip across the ice chunks with me in the tub.

Should work fine. I'll post a video next week.