Glad January is Over
January is the month of survival. Just get through it. The county road gets plowed weekly by Van, the local plow guy, utilizing a massive road grader. It then drifts back in, often within hours, becoming impassable again. Our private road, over an 1/8th of a mile long, has been impassable since sometime in December.I just fed the horses and am watching them eat in a log round pen about 100 feet from the house. An inch of new snow coupled with 30 mph wind gusts completely obliterates the view with regularity. There’s a foot or two of old snow, hard to tell because it continues to shift and drift, becoming what we called cement in my ski bum years. Break through that stuff hauling ass down the Horseshoe Bowl at Breckenridge and you would likely be sidelined to the bar for the rest of the day for rejuvenation.
A Quick Look at the Past Week
Tuesday: Spot the grader plowing out the county road. Carol walks down to where the car and 4-wheel drive truck are parked on the county road, shovels out around the car after the plow goes by and drives to HartselHartsel for mail and essentials at the South Park Mercantile. Hartsel is the closest town at seven miles and has somewhere around one hundred residents.Wednesday: Decide to take the truck down to Woodland Park (round trip 120 miles) to get new tires. Battery isn’t what it used to be and we have to jump start the truck with the car. Temperature’s up to about five degrees and the wind’s blowing like crazy. On the way down we reminisced with stories about the truck, which we purchased in February, 1985. A basic 6-cylinder Ford f-150 for $10,000. We also decide to splurge and get a new battery as the one going bad has been in the truck for ten years. If you want a truck to last a long time, limit its used to 3000 miles per year. Got home and evening chores done before dark (days are definitely getting longer). Had stopped at the Mercantile on the way home and picked up some tire chains for our tractor that UPS delivered there.Thursday: Twenty degree day, sunny, light wind. Pulled the box of tire chains up our road on a snow saucer powered by me. Worked pretty well after I got the box tied securely with rope. It said on the box that it weighed over 70 pounds and I’ve got no reason to think otherwise. Put the chains on the tractor (a vintage 1968 International Cub with front-end loader) and started the process of opening our road. The chains have improved the tractor on this type of snow more than I had hoped for. Staying on the contour as much as possible and breaking the drifts and pushing the snow back from the road as far as possible, a third of the road is opened by the time I have to quit for evening chores.Friday: High of seven degrees, nasty wind. Too cold for machine work. Body aches. Do what has to be done, then read by the fire and take a nap. County road still open. Radio says it’s 47 degrees in Colorado Springs, seventy miles away but out of the mountains on the plains. A whole different world.Saturday: Temperatures climb to the mid-twenties, sunny, calm. Push more snow with the Cub, get almost down to our gate. From the gate to the county road is only 150 feet or so, but it blows in really bad and has an elevation change of about six feet with the road grade tilted crazily to one side. This has a lot to do with the fact that the Rocky Mountains are made of rock. You just do the best you can.Sunday: Another decent day, in the twenties, sunny, not much wind. Another storm (wind and snow) is predicted for Monday so Carol goes to Fairplay (roundtrip 65 miles) for massive grocery shopping trip. She leaves and I clean the breakfast dishes, then break ice in the livestock’s water tank with a digging bar, throwing the ice out (big chunks with my hands, little ones with a scoop made for ice fishermen to keep ice out of their holes). Then start the generator we use for pumping water and fill the stock tank. Then up to the house roof to clean the chimney cap, which is starting to plug with creosote meaning we’ll have to clean the chimney in the next week or so. The ash bucket is full so I spread it on the snow and then dig my three wheeler (circa 1985 Honda) out of a snow drift behind the house and attach the wagon to it. One tire is low so pump it up. Spot Carol coming up the County Road in the truck. The three wheeler starts with two pulls. I give it a little pat, then race to the gate on the newly cleared road and get there just as Carol gets there with as many bags as she can carry. From the gate to the truck, parked for weeks now on the side of the County Road, the road has three to four feet of snow in it, but its so hard we walk over the top of it, never breaking through, and get the groceries ferried to the three wheeler cart. The cart is crammed full and Carol rides behind me on the three wheeler as we creep back up the road to the house. I unload groceries and as Carol puts them up I bring in the night’s supply of firewood, close up the chicken coop after giving the girls some fresh hay for bedding, feed the horses, and start the generator again for showers. It’s a gorgeous sunset, and as I watch I get out the Martin (acoustic guitar) and worked on several songs that continue to evolve as Carol cooks. Tonight will bring another severe storm that will close the county road. It was already questionable today after Friday’s wind, though with 4-wheel drive Carol got through and the pantries are full. My hands are cramping and tingling and my elbow aches, casualties of driving an old tractor in the cold so I put down the guitar and pour a shot of Tequila. I’m looking forward to February.
