I have recently been writing a daily post on Facebook to highlight the past 12 months. This 12 day writing exercise has been fun but people have gotten bored with it I believe. Good thing I am into the final 4 months of 2024! I found it beneficial for myself to reflect upon the year and wanted to share my thoughts in a hindsight type series of posts. It’s sometimes difficult to gauge peoples interest. That is an aspiring writer’s challenge I suppose. For this post I am focused on facts and recent events that make up a timeline of living.
The past few weeks have been rather busy running back and forth to the Adirondacks. Usually once a week on the weekends. We try to get outdoors for some sort of activity that gets us engaged with nature.We have visited some beautiful places recently to commune with nature! I will showcase some of them sometime. The day after my last post we traveled back to Adirondacks post Xmas party morning. We headed to the Vermontville area near Saranac Lake to cut a Christmas tree. It was a place my companion knew well and I liked it immediately! There was quite a bit of snow on the ground and the trees had a light covering but not so much that we couldn’t look for one properly. We walked uphill to the furthest reaches of the tree farm. I remarked that this a requirement and a sure sign that TCCS was about to afflict me. Remember TCCS? It was featured in a blog in December 2020. TCCS or tree cutting conundrum syndrome is very common when searching for a Christmas tree! Finding a perfect tree can be maddening! There’s a Goldilocks parallel attached to it quite often. Feeling confused? Not too worry! Sufferers of TCCS are totally confused in their search for the perfect tree! It’s always the same problem: this one is too big. That one is too small. Too bare and spindly. That one is the wrong species. That one is crooked… the list goes on and on! But we were fortunate! We were searching for a balsam and found a few possibilities fairly quickly actually. And then suddenly there it was! A balsam standing out in the open in the distance. It seemed too good to be true! How could such a tree have escaped the eyes of so many tree searchers?We closed in on the tree after wading through the snow. It didn’t take long to reach an agreement. This tree was fine! Not perfect but beautiful and totally worthy of gracing the house! So it was soon on our sled and on its way to the truck. Mission accomplished and with no noticeable TCCS! Later after the tree had thawed out and the snow had melted from it, we got it into its stand. It smelled wonderful! There’s nothing like Adirondack balsam scent! Now 3 weeks later the tree still stands proud and green. And for me who had not cut a tree in a couple years , the moments had been secured. MOONTABS! It was so special to share that experience with someone special!
Back in the valley the wood stove project nears completion. The stove pipe parts I ordered showed up and I got everything together finally. But the wood stove couldn’t be used until I installed a brace on the roof to support the outer double walled exterior stove pipe. This project was a little tricky and involved a few tricks. A rope and a ladder over the peak to give me a safe place to stand after getting up the roof on another ladder. The side by side provided a safe footing for the longer ladder and a solid tie off anchor for the rope. Inside I kindled the first fire once the bracing was complete and burned off the stinky oils that coated the wood stove. Things went well and we are very happy with it! It requires firewood in the 10” range and doesn’t hold a lot but it’s really an efficient unit. We think it will perform very well overall. It’s a Dwarf 5K unit manufactured by the Tiny Wood Stove Company located in Idaho. Go online and check out their cool lineup of tiny stoves!
A big part of the wood stove project was the repurposed brick extension that got the wood stove 14” higher above the cabin floor. It’s so much easier to tend the fire that way! Understand there’s even some room to store some wood. The old antique Drury brick is very classy I think and fits the cabin theme nicely. I didn’t mortar any of it and chose a stacked dry fit construction for the base support structure. Sand fills the cracks between the base bricks which are setting on Durarock cement board material. Fireproof and safe. The back wall behind the stove features Drury brick on edge glued with construction adhesive to Durarock backer. The overall amount of brick makes a thermal mass to some degree and should hold heat longer.
What is Drury brick you may be wondering? It’s antique brick that I was given last spring in Saranac Lake for free while helping with a tree removal. I Goggled it recently and discovered that it was made in Vermont from the 1880’s through 1972. I believe mine to be very old. Possibly 1900 era. It is beautiful at any rate and exceeds my expectations for the hearth I had envisioned. I have several different styles of Drury brick all mixed together and it’s a nice look!
I don’t believe that I ever followed up with the progression of the muskrat pelts we collected last winter. Zane and I received our muskrat hats just before Xmas Eve! The pelts had been sent to Minnesota in August and we weren’t sure that the finished hats would arrive in time. I am wearing mine since Monday and love the warm addition to my winter attire! Zane seems happy with his also. It was a good choice and a wonderful example of our rural heritage here. Trapping the muskrats then preparing the furs to ship and then wearing our hats to stay warm as winter continues to progress. There’s nothing like natural fur for warmth! Some people do not approve and that is their prerogative. We respect their position and simply ask that they respect ours. Wearing fur is a choice not a necessity. But trapping is part of our tradition here where I grew up. I no longer trap fur to sell but will continue to add fur garments to my collection as time passes. Gloves and a vest may be my next investment. The beaver population continues to grow in this area as no one traps them much anymore. Harvesting a few won’t even make a dent in the population. For now we don’t require any additional muskrats but these prolific breeders of the wetlands are there if necessary. Nature keeps them thinned out by some rather harsh diseases at times. Winter mortality of muskrat populations in any given marsh is a scientifically proven fact. Nature will keep a balance regardless of any trapping we might do. That goes for most of the species here. My position on hunting, trapping, and fishing is rather clear on these pages and within my posts. It will remain so.Much of my love of nature stems from my time afield engaged in numerous types of harvesting that spans decades. Plants,birds, fish,and animals. These days I rarely hunt or trap though. I prefer a different interface with nature. One of observation mainly. Call it a winding down of sorts. The nature of my sport pursuits has modified itself. Teaching Zane the rural heritage traditions has been important though. Even said perhaps as this topic has been mentioned here before. Given that there will be some upcoming changes to the blog site posts that have continued to accumulate for 4 years now, I feel the obligation to refresh certain topics.
It’s great to have a functional wood stove again after using just the electric heater for all the cabin heating since we moved in. Now we have both. We have plenty of dry firewood at the moment but will need to get more ahead eventually. That’s always a great winter activity!
At this point I wish to mention my recent Christmas gift from Amy! She is rarely mentioned here as her privacy remains important. But I would be remiss not to acknowledge the work she put into something to give me on Christmas day! She painstakingly edited the entirety of my blogs and printed them into a spiral notebook that is arranged like a book! Not to mention imprinting them onto a thumb drive. I had expressed concern to her about archiving my work as blog posting moves forward. Gerry my administrator,friend, and cousin keeps all this saved, running, and functional for me! And hosts a safe site for you to visit!So many continued thanks to him! Keeping dozens of blog posts and photos up online takes up a lot of space. I came to the realization that I might need to retire older posts to make way for the new. The thoughts of deleting work gave me a strange feeling however. No doubt connected to losing my journals in the house fire of 2012 somehow. Better exam that under a psychological microscope sometime. Amy did something that I know took her hours by creating a “clean” blog post book of sorts. Something real and tangible that I can hold in my hands. Hours of my own creativity in black and white. To see it moved me. Perhaps this is the feeling that a writer gets when they see their first book in print? I openly thank her here for caring enough to do it! And for her overall support of my creative endeavors. It has prompted me to reconsider my writing hobby.And my future in general. So I began a list of intentions. Those that I list in two different categories. The two categories are “main” and “cloud”. What are cloud intentions? Lofty goals and dreams that I desire but may not accomplish in the short term. To keep it real the main intentions were kept short and sweet. Not easy by any stretch of the imagination. But a different mindset begins to show itself. And I strive for change. Wait. Have I said this before? Maybe. Time has been a reoccurring theme in my writing. Change is a reoccurring reality in my life. Nature is the central theme here. Look for some new ideas and new directions here as 2025 arrives. I am busy reflecting as 2024 winds down. It’s a journey. And an adventure. MOONTABS in motion.✍️