The fall was pressing through Western Maine with what locals were calling unusually high winds. And I really felt it on my mountaintop (by the way, I learned this mountain that I share with my neighbors is called Perham Hill).
Even when temperatures moderated a bit from their slow and steady plunge, the windchill was chopping off another 5-10 degrees whenever that mountain breath really got started. And the gusty days were more frequent than the still ones.
Way back in the fat green warmth of late June when my realtor and I first walked through this untouched property, the wind was a constant presence. I did notice that this wind was quite prominent. Yet, thinking it was just a fluke on that summer day, after signing my deed to buy this property, I immediately bought the solar system that we have now become so familiar with in this project, in past posts.
Given a second chance with the knowledge I have now, I would have spent a bit extra on a turbine generator and two batteries instead of one. The solar panel worked very well--exactly as it should have. But it was just not powerful enough, nor the battery large enough, to charge all of my equipment and tools, plus run lights and other devices overnight. I will make it a priority if I am able to secure funds this coming summer (2018) to continue building my power system, this time adding the advantages of wind. That would allow continuous charging through thick and thin, with the solar panel supplementing the system rather than serving as its central electric generator.
During this November I found myself wanting to stay on the land for longer and longer periods of time each week. Where I had walked into town each day throughout the late summer and early fall, now I tried to build up food and supplies for multiple days, just staying on the property and working. During these stretches - which varied between two to four days in a row - I continued to primp up and preen the yard. Pathways were further defined and then bordered by laying the many small spruce trees that I had been taking down around the yard. These dead trees were on average ten feet tall and straight a plumbline.
Mostly though, I spent much time experimenting with fire pit techniques. Although I never was able to install a drain for the pit (which would fill up with water during heavy rainstorms), bailing it out with a decapitated one gallon milk jug, like a leaky dingy, worked fairly well. That is, as long as I was then able to get a subsequently significant fire going. The heat from the fire would dry it the rest of the way. Even a fire pit can consume massive amounts of fuel over time. This was true for me, because it was my only means of cooking.
But, aside from braising steaks and boiling water, the falling temperature inspired experimentation with keeping the fire going from morning coffee to bedtime. Through many iterations, I found that the best means of maintaining a daylong fire without burning everything in sight was dues to the following process...
I made up starter bundles, wrapped in masking tape (that I'd found on the road), with thin strips of paper birch bark twisted into their centers leaving a couple inches sticking out to serve as small wicks. The Old English technical term for this kind of bundle, before the more offensive North American meme put it out of business, was "faggot" (being a "bundle of sticks or twigs bound together as fuel")...
A work week's worth of fire starters lined up on the left.
I was developing a nice system of felling, gathering, cutting, chopping and grading kindling and other firewood. All over the yard were the fallen trees I'd taken down by chainsaw, piled up in different spots near where they'd once grown. I would drag each tree up to my chopping stump and "process" it. It is truly amazing what a sharp machete and hatchet can do to a tree.
First, all the branches in the 1-2 inch diameter range would be removed by machete and piled up beside me. Then, by starting at each branch tip and working my way to its base, I would chop it into 12 inch sections. The leftover tree trunks in the 4-6 inch diameter range would similarly be cut (by hand saw or chainsaw) down into 12 inch long logs--later to be split by hatchet and piled up. It was the smaller stick sections of the branches that were most important to me. I would grade and separate them into twigs up to half an inch in diameter, sticks up to 2 inches, and rotten sticks up to 3 inches, into piles.
On one especially nice sunny day I formed a line of cubic yard piles: twigs, 1-2 inches, 3 inches, and 4 or more inch logs were set aside for the fire pit. Especially straight wood was sequestered into 1, 2, 3, and 4 foot lengths of various diameters for building-wood; used in making structures rather than burning.
On that same day, I visited several of my naturally-fallen birch trees, harvesting the paper bark, which was then graded as show here...
Birch is the ultimate matchlight-starting material.
When the day was done, I had enough lighting material, kindling bunches, twigs, sticks and logs to last a month of daylong (being about 6 hours) fires. I could wake up in the morning, light a bundle (sometimes having to supplement it with extra birch bark sections), surround it with sticks, then smaller logs, finally adding a circle of large logs on top and around the perimeter. In this way, the fire would continually feed itself by gravity pulling down large logs to replace the ones that turned into coals. By evening a square yard's mass of thick, glowing embers would be the perfect bed to cook my daily meal over. But I learned early on what the true secret of a daylong fire is: WATER.
Fire is a hungry beast. In order to keep it from growing too greedy and bursting off of its leash (in other words, burning all of its fuel in just a couple hours), it needs to be liberally doused with a few gallons of water on a regular basis--about every half hour to an hour, at least for the size of my pit and depending on how much I wanted to scale it back. On days where the temperature hovered around the freezing point, this was never a problem. My many topped-off water containers and large barrel (about 75 gallons total between these containers at any one time) provided plenty of water for this purpose. Consecutive days of freezing temperatures however, created challenge that grew as each day's hours of sunlight shrank. I kept a plant watering can filled with enough water to sprinkle over, or really soak the fire when it got too large. The nice thing about a well-established fire is that a lot of water can be dumped over it and still it will perk back up again in a reliable amount of time...
Water in its various phases.
With the early arrival of subfreezing mornings, I discovered that I could reapportion the pit for more efficiency, dividing it into different sections. One section would be a place to dump chunks of ice into my large pot to keep a steady supply of liquid water available. Another section contained a place for the flat rack to allow cooking. And, a third section would be piled up with larger wood to pull over the coals and allow for a more substantial flame which I could then visit throughout the day to warm up at. I also scoured the yard for larger odd shaped pieces of wood to just slowly burn over a few days. Here are a couple of fire pit configurations...
Inevitably, the cold began to overtake all the effort I was putting into stalling it. It became more and more difficult to keep any amount of water from freezing. The rain barrel quickly became a permanently solid chunk of 200 pound ice. I was melting small amounts water and keeping the containers close to my bed at night, hoping that a bit of body heat might maintain some amount of liquid throughout the night. But having no source of heat in the tent (besides my own body), was becoming a pretty limiting prospect especially as the sun was sinking behind the western part of the mountain earlier every day, to around 3:30 pm as December grew nearer.
By this, I mean to say to say that because of the late sunrise and early sunset, coupled with the extreme cold that would soon characterize the coming winter, there was little time to do much on the land, and walking into town and back would take the entire period of daylight. I would still often be able to build a fire in the evenings, but no matter how much wood I would pile upon it, the heat simply dissipated too quickly to be of any use in warming my old bones. It got to the point where nothing was achieved besides simply depleted my reserves of wood. I'd cook my meal as quickly as possible, with as little wood as possible, retire to my cold tent, use my dwindling battery to light up the scene until the lamp faded, then climb into my sleeping bag where I would feel the only sustained warmth of the whole day until it was time to get up again the next morning...
The first dusting of snow arrived and I mentally and physically tried to prepare to hunker down for what I assumed would be a very, very long and cold winter...
I was desperate for my heater to arrive. I already had the tank ready to go and it seemed to thumb its brass-fitted nose at me everytime I walked past it under the blue canopy. Unfortunately, because I'd not realized the heater I bought through Amazon was being sent via UPS to my USPS General Delivery address at the post office in downtown Farmington, I was in for a great disappointment. For the mail system, it is a big no-no for the USPS to do any tasks for UPS. And, when I received the cheerful auto-email alert notifying me that the heater had indeed been delivered, I immediately walked downtown, confidently calling Farmington Taxi for a ride back. It was a ride that I smiled about and assumed would include me and my new heater, then walked into the post office to discover they had rejected the delivery and my precious heater was on its way back to California. I was...um...displeased.
Seething, I still took the taxi back to my road because it was far too dark and cold for my deteriorating attitude to handle the three mile walk after such a let down. I didn't make a fire that night. I simply crawled into my sleeping bag at about 5:00 pm and stared out into the darkened tent, watching slight distortions in the air as my breath dissipated around the tiny glow of the LED on the solar charge controller. Light in the form of a LED dot can look so cold sometimes...
That weekend my friend Jason arrived on Saturday morning with his truck and, though my credit card was already loaded down with the unrefunded amount I'd paid for the heater--now on its way back across the country, I vowed to increase my debt even more if necessary to have some heat.
We went to the local Walmart and simply bought the same damn heater there--for less than the online price! In a comedic series of processes that didn't seem so funny at the time, I bought the wrong sized propane hose and fittings--TWICE. Meaning, we made three trips to Walmart and back to the land before being able to hook up the heater.
Jason - though I could tell he was becoming a bit irritated - held his temper in check and cut me more slack than I deserved for these errors. What constitutes a good friendship?: Being (him) able to watch your friend (me) screw up and still not slap him in the face. He's a good guy. And, despite the apparent futility of the afternoon's travels, were both feeling much better when we clicked the ignition on the heater and saw that gorgeous blue flame flicker in waves of orange-tipped gaseous heat up and over the porous ceramic radiant plate. Heat filled the small tent. He'd already stayed well past his planned time of departure and left, I hope, satisfied that he'd really made a difference in my living situation. And, he really had...
Pictures from a few moments of bliss that lifted me higher than any drug. The heat was on!
The next morning I rose from my warm bed and clicked on the heater. Within moments I was warm enough to dress without shivering! It was an amazing feeling. All liquid, in all containers, including the extra coffee I had made the morning before, was frozen solid. But I put the jar of coffee in front of the heater and within about 15 minutes I was able to pour it into an old coffee can. Then I gently placed the can on top of the heater and it was piping hot within another ten minutes. Pouring the coffee into my cup without having to have built a fire was a satisfying act indeed.
I switched off the heater and headed out to walk downtown, passing my carved IWALLK nomadic symbol in the old tree I call my "totem pole."
I'd glued in a tiny diamond earring that represented the Spark into the star (sorry for the out of focus shots)...
Spark.
...and I said out loud, to all creatures great and small, seen and unseen, high and low, and also to the Spark itself... "Now I will be able to continue on!"
As my shoes crunched down upon the jewelled crystals of ice that had pushed their way up through the dusty surface of my driveway I "heard" the Spark faintly, as if it were also waking up after weeks of sleep, say something like...
"Sometimes even the greatest frustration you feel is the best possible blessing you will ever have. This may be the lowest life of your Universe career, but no other experience will give you as much. I know how hard it is to believe that. But look to the east! The sun always returns to warm your soul...as will I.........."
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