To celebrate my quarter-centennial birthday (back in January), we rented this cabin up in the mountains of the Cascades, in a tiny town called Detroit. As you can see, it’s a super-cute little A-frame that felt to us like a mansion (the phenomenon of relativity…). Our intentions were to cross-country ski (for her) and soak in hot water (for me), we tried to choose a place that was close to hot springs and a ski area. It turns out that the weather that weekend (warm and rainy) melted all the snow; so, we just relaxed in our mansion, walked around Dexter, explored the banks of a flooding river, and went to Breitenbush Hotsprings. Since the hotsprings is also a vegetarian community, we had to sneak back to the car and eat yummy chicken parmesan.
In case you were feeling bad for Katarina... we did go skiing eventually. A few weeks ago, we had another west-coast blizzard (defined as a few inches of snow in the valley that melts by mid-day). It was pretty pathetic down where we live, but up at Mt. Ashland the snow was good. We rented skis, drove up to the snow park and Katarina schooled me in cross country skiing. It seemed more like walking awkwardly on a slippery surface than fun at first, but I got more into it as we went along. She really liked it, so we’re going to have to go again. Actually, I kind of envision a compromise between skiing and boating wherein I get interested in skiing during the winter and in exchange, Katarina nurtures her little kernel of an interest in sailing for summertime. We'll see.
This is our new mailbox. I decided to make it after a funny encounter with our landlady one night. Here’s what happened. Our bathroom is right next to the front door. Our landlady likes to walk the dogs down the driveway and bring the mail back up. Sometimes she stops at the bus and delivers our mail. Sometimes I poop at night. One night I was sitting down to poop when I heard her come up the stairs and knock on the door. I told her that I’d let her in but I was on the potty. She left the mail on the porch.
After that, I thought it might be nice to make it easier for her to deliver the mail. The mailbox is made entirely with scrap materials and stuff out of the wood pile. Pull down on the lever and the door is counterweighted (beer bottle) to open on its own. Landlady says it’s the cutest thing she’s ever seen.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with the bus, but recently I’ve been noticing certain quirky things about where we live. For example, one morning a while back we heard this funny sound outside and discovered a red pileated woodpecker banging away at the plastic backboard of the basketball hoop. It’s a great sound: perfectly smooth and precise, like a drum-roll. For the past few weeks, this woodpecker has returned every morning between the hours of 7am and 8am for a few minutes of practice. He (or she?) never misses a day. I think its endearing. We have our own personal alarm-clock bird (except we’re always up by 6:30 anyways).
The last thing I have to report about is our wood-fired bathtub. One of the first things I did with the bus after building the porch was to install a cast-iron tub back there. It was quite a job actually. I acid-etched the old scummy inside and refinished it with a special epoxy. Then I build an enclosure out of cedar and I thought it looked pretty nice. But, it never actually got plumbed in and instead of being a bathing apparatus, it became a bottomless pit for "storing" random stuff. It started bothering both of us recently, so one Sunday we took it out and rolled it down off the porch. I’ve always wanted a wood-fired tub, and we needed to do something with the thing, so I started digging a trench.
After a few days of messing around, it was done (kind of).
The fire burns at one end in an enclosed firebox and runs under the tub to the other end, where the smoke goes up the chimney. Once the fire is going strong, the smoke is pretty minimal. Of course, everything in this project was salvaged or left over from other projects--the cost was zero. Two cedar butt-boards save one’s bum from roasting and the temperature goes from hose-water cold to between 105-110F in about an hour. We like it.
That is a fair chunk of the interesting, fun-sounding stuff we've been up to. Katarina has been very busy working and getting the Master Recycler Class off the ground (which I am taking). I've been playing the game of attempting to balance work, assignments, classes and extra-curricular activities. It's a game that I never imagined I would get good at, and the intensity always peaks right around now (in the last two weeks of the term). Wish me luck. We just had our sustainability club open mic and "trashion show" today and it surpassed all of my expectations. Katarina and I were both models (along with several other students) and I will have to link to pictures once they're available. Just to whet your appetite, picture me on stilts, wearing a ridiculous zebra outfit and performing the composting poop song. See, aren't you sad you missed it?
