Month: February 2022

It’s still February, the looongest month.

It is so much easier to live off-grid successfully today than it was when the kids’ dad and I did it in the ’70s in northern Idaho. Back then, solar was bulky, expensive, and hard-to-find. We wanted to use it, but even the Whole Earth Catalogue couldn’t help! Generators were the same. We had a small one to pump water from the creek in the summer (we carried it in 5 gal. buckets in winter) but that was about it. It was all 12v, and car batteries were the only choice. We’d haul a battery in from our truck and hook it up it to listen to the radio. We used kerosene for both lamps and an awesome fridge. We bought kerosene in 55 gallon barrels.

Now the choices seem endless. After much discussion, Alan and I have decided to have 3 separate solar arrays: a 660w array (above) for our 12v/DC refrigerator, composting toilet and most of the lights, a 1.6Kw array for the 12v/DC well pump because it is 750′ away and across the creek from the house (too far to trench wires affordably), and a big 8Kw system for all our 120v stuff: microwave, range, washer, and, of course, an electric Ford Lightning pickup!

The goal is to use no fossil fuels on the property. Not even propane. We’ll see if it’s possible. Alan has the first array nearly complete, should get it hooked up by next week, and we’ll have a fridge and some lights, yeah! The array for the well is being shipped now (it’s been delayed, as so much has this winter), and will start getting installed this week along with the new well pump and 80 gallon pressure tank. If all goes ok, we might have water by April. The big array will be built over the summer and hopefully will go online by fall.

In the meantime, we are living off a generator. Above is the gennie we have for our camper, Pippin, but it is so easy to start and fuel efficient, we’ve ended up using it all winter here at the house. It burns about 4 gallons a week. It sits under a roof at the back of the house and it’s not too loud. We run it for an hour or 2 in the morning, so we can use the internet, make phone calls, and read the news online or look at emails. I do the NY Times Crossword. We watch Stephen Colbert with our morning tea and chocolate. Then we run it during the day as needed to power tools, or when I grade school work. And finally, a couple hours in the evening to stream a movie. Yup, we still have our big screen TV. Several nights a week we forgo the gennie and just read by lantern….very peaceful. Everyone should try just turning off their electricity sometime. There’s a disconnect switch in your main service box. Completely off. Quiet!

We have a second, back-up generator, a big monster that can run it all. But it’s a gas hog, and we haven’t connected it to the propane yet, so it’s sitting there on the porch. It will be what we keep for when a system needs repairs or the sun doesn’t shine for days, something that hasn’t happened yet, and maybe never will. It shines a lot in New Mexico.

It ends up being less expensive to have 3 completely separate systems than one huge one…that is partly because the 12v fridge and toilet are already here and work fine, but this also allows for some redundancy between systems. We are building a closet for the lithium batteries upstairs in the office area. They can’t freeze.

The Ford Lightning is my dream. I really miss our Nissan Leaf, but it would never make it up the county road, so it had to find a new home. The Lightning wants 80 amps for charging, which is a lot of electricity, but it can be “trickle-charged” on 30 amps, if you don’t need to drive it every day. We’ll see what the final cost ends up being, but that’s my fantasy! I also think it would handle mud season like a champ.

Most of the work to get these solars installed will fall on Alan, my hero, but I think (hope?) it’s work he really enjoys. He seems to, anyway.

(May the people of Ukraine be safe, be healthy, be not alone, and live in peace. Namaste.)

As a kid, I got into exploring the area around our home on Lee’s Hill Road in New Vernon, NJ. If I wasn’t being a wild horse, I was a detective/spy: Nancy Drew or, later, Ilya Kuryakin from The Man from Uncle. Our place backed onto a wonderful Bridle Trail (www.BridlePath.org) that went for many miles with numerous forks and side trails. In those years (we’re talking 1961-1967), no one cared for the trails, and I rarely saw anyone else on them, but some of those trails had been there since the Revolutionary War days, maybe longer, and were in amazingly good shape.

I spent thousands of hours on them, and got to know dozens of miles. One trail wound to the Great Swamp (https://www.fws.gov/refuge/great_swamp/). Another took me past our neighbor’s dairy barns (where the farmer sometimes let me help milk), and yet another led me to someone’s huge back pasture filled with miniature Shetland ponies. I would often climb on one and gallop across the meadow, my feet nearly dragging on the ground. I followed the wild animals who called the trail their home, and began learning to track them: raccoons, skunks, deer, feral cats, woodchucks, opossums, fox, and once a bear.

But this is the story that relates to today’s hike:

Back then I read everything I could about tracking, and started my lifelong “hobby” of following things in the woods. The mystery of how wild animals lived never failed to fascinate me. One day, however, maybe in 1967, I came across the footprints of 2 men, something I’d never seen, both sets large and smooth-soled, sliding around in the 1″ of snow covering the ground. I followed the prints backwards, and they ended at a sedan parked in the woods behind the school down the hill from our house. Strange place to park a car, hidden away. I decided to see where the tracks led, and followed them back into the woods. It took over an hour, but they eventually led to an abandoned and dilapidated old farmhouse that sat on a hillock just inside the Great Swamp. The land around it was wet and smelly, dense and dark. Any road that led to it was long eaten up by the marsh. I knew of the house but had never gone close to the place as it looked dangerous. The Great Swamp was notoriously scary, with stories of quicksand and monsters hidden deep within. Not even Freddie, who was older and lived across the road, would go there. Today, there was smoke curling from the chimney and 2 sets of shoe prints that went straight into the half-hanging door. I could hear men arguing. I was totally spooked, and turned and ran home.

Once home, I told my parents what I’d seen, and they called the police. I remember my mom thinking they might be thieves she’d heard about on the news who had recently robbed several stores. 2 cops came by the house, and I told them what I’d seen. They asked if I could show them the trail and tracks, so I did. The trail was a couple hundred feet away from our house, and the footprints joined it while still adjacent to our property. I ended up leading several officers all the way to the abandoned house in the Great Swamp because they couldn’t figure out where it was on their maps, or find any road leading to it. It was getting dark. Once we got there and the police announced themselves, the 2 men surrendered right away. I was walked home by one of the officers with a flashlight and didn’t really see the arrest. (In my mind, though, it was a big shoot-out, like Bonnie & Clyde. I can even hear the guns blazing.) They indeed WERE burglars on the run; cold, tired, hungry and ready to give it up. My mom had nailed it.

I went to the station later and got a medal from the cops for helping them out, and my love of the mysteries of tracking became cemented in my psyche forever. I had that medal until it burned up in our house fire in 1979.

All of that is to say: today, I followed the tracks of 2 mountain lions. I saw them at the top of our driveway, and followed them down canyon on the road for a mile. It was the same mother and cub tracks we’ve been seeing all winter, but this time they were on the trail of several deer. Their tracks covered the deer prints. Neither set had drifted, melted, or collapsed, so they were from early this morning, after the wind stopped, but before our neighbor left for work at 4:30am. Interestingly, off to the side were the even more recent tracks of a lone coyote. (A couple of places his tracks covered theirs, that’s how I knew it was later). He was following them, they were following the deer. Was the coyote hoping for some leftovers? The smaller cat headed off-road several times, probably to check out possible rabbit or squirrel hideaways, but the big one never wavered and neither did Wily Coyote. After a mile, deer, cats, and coyote moved into the woods and steeper slopes of the valley, and Clair and I turned around. She had carefully and seriously sniffed each and every track. I wonder how the story played out for the deer. Where do those cats sleep? Did they at least catch a mouse or two? How about the coyote, did he evade them? The mystery never fails to astonish, just like it did when I was a kid.

A day like today lets you know who’s boss. While the media delights in regaling us with horror stories of major natural catastrophes (hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and tornados), you can see the power of Mother Nature in ordinary weather, too. For me, it’s a mix of sound, movement, smells, and visual euphoria.

Right now, we are between 2 winter storms. The second should be arriving anytime, as it pushes its way past Utah. It’s already dropped several feet in the mountains, but we only got a few inches, already melted. The wind, however, is gusting to 40mph and the sun is playing peek-a-boo with the clouds, which are racing across the sky like they’re late for a date. I was outside throwing the ball for Clair, standing on some ice in the back yard, and the wind caught my jacket and spun me in circles.

The juniper trees love it: their branches are dancing and bobbing with the gusts. Unlike pines, their conical, tight shape makes all their branches move in unison and they flounce around like ballerinas in green tutus in nature’s choreographed ballet. It’s quite mesmerizing.

The sounds of the wind are dramatic, too. It whistles through the trees with that low howling sound you associate with a horror film. Whooooo! It’s especially eerie during the night of course, when you’re heading to the outhouse. Last night coyotes added their song to the wind. They were making their own music; they have their own orchestra. During the day the wind is more like a lullaby, calming and soft. There’s also the sound of the snow, which is skittering across the crusty ice in the meadow. Shhhhh, shhhh. Finally, there’s the sound of ice cracking in the creek bed and the waterfall running over the banks into its pool of ice water. We haven’t heard a rockslide, yet, but we will.

Finally, there’s the smell. When it gusts, the smell of winter sage is everywhere. Normally, you have to get right up to it to smell it this time of year, but something happens when the wind moves over the bushes. To me, the scent of sage is truly the symbol of the West in all it’s glory.

As you know, we are working to get the existing well back online. This is a major operation, especially now, in the winter, with the road melting more every day and a storm on the horizon. Our neighbor (who asks not to be named) has taken this project on as a personal mission to get us running water in the house by spring. If he succeeds, I will ask the Queen that he be given a Knighthood.

The purpose of a Well Vault is to have a dry little room, accessible by ladder, below the frost line so it never freezes, where a pressure tank, water valves, solar equipment and wires can be safely kept.

To be continued….

No, it’s not all sunshine and roses around here. Not all the time. As Alan says, sometimes we scare ourselves with our own audacity. What the heck are we doing? We’re too old for this s*#t! Especially at 3 in the morning when the demons of doubt come out to play with our amygdala. Negativity bias is alive and well here at 4Fords. Will the road collapse with a mud slide and leave us trapped in the canyon for weeks? Will we get the well working? Will we stay healthy long enough to enjoy this beautiful place?

Amazingly, the angst doesn’t last long. By morning, I am excited by a sense that I am taking my personal freedom in hand: a wonderful, fragile, and sacred privilege here in the first world. And that freedom can be as frightening as it is exhilarating. Too often our choices move toward security and safety, unreliable values that, while fine in and of themselves, are in no way guaranteed, no matter how much we work, save, or eat healthy, and which seem to breed their own unique brand of worries.

I do not want to live within that sphere of anxiety. I’d rather take my comfort in reflections in the water or in the funny rocks that lie all over our land. In watching Clair meditate with us in the mornings. To hell with security.

To change the subject, do you know Mark Boyle, The Moneyless Man? He’s a writer, who first wrote a bestseller about living without money: The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living (2010).  Recently, he published a book about living without technology: The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology (2019). It’s a wonderful examination of living in Ireland without electricity and running water. (How do you write a book without a computer in this day and age? With a pencil!) He’s an inspiration and I recommend the book if you like that kind of thing. I personally love much of technology…I say this as I am listening to my Eufy vacuuming the upstairs. (It runs even when there’s no power!) Not to mention my Kindles or laptop!

But I don’t believe new tech, no matter how cool and innovative, can magically solve all our human-made problems: instead, it tends to solve one thing by creating an even bigger problem that will have to be solved sometime in the future. Witness the reversal of the Chicago River or the barely functioning New Orleans levees, the silting of dams, the centralizing of the electrical grid, and climate change, to mention a few. Another great book that tackles this issue is Under the White Sky (2021) by Elizabeth Kolbert. I think technological advances need to be considered for their future costs, too.

Then there is the “Jevon’s Paradox“: we think that having a new thing like an LED lightbulb will save us all on electricity, but, instead it just makes us put up more lights! The more efficient a tech, the more we use it! An “inefficient efficiency”(Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020).

As Doc Brown said in Back to the Future: “The future isn’t written!” So let’s enjoy it now.

So, when you have a moment, Google Dulce Base or Archuleta Mesa. Scroll down. You’ll see a bunch of fascinating articles about aliens, UFOs, and cattle mutilations. It seems we live in the midst of an alien invasion of little grey men (as different from little GREEN men, I’ve been told). Archuleta Mesa is a large mountain just NW a few miles. We can see it from our hillside. It has a bunch of cell towers on top. And apparently a huge underground joint Alien/Military base tunneled below. Geologists have confirmed (on The History Channel, no less) that it is possible to drill inside the mesa, because it’s made of rock!

We’ve been told about these aliens by each and every of our neighbors, who regale us with their personal and very serious stories of cut up, dead cattle falling from the sky, little grey men knocking on doors, and multiple UFOs landing right here in Monero Canyon! They ask us if we’ve seen them yet. They are not joking. We haven’t, but we’re looking!

In other news, I finished up with taxes yesterday, the earliest ever, and we’re celebrating our first refund in 20 years. I hope our taxes are helping to fund the Dulce Base!

4Fords has 2 cisterns, and they both need a little work. One is 1,000 gallons and sits right next to the house, catching rooftop water. Pretty common in water-starved New Mexico. We emptied and shut it down for the winter because it freezes, but yesterday, Alan climbed inside and tightened the drain so it wouldn’t leak, then replaced the downspout inside the lid. The whole gutter system needs to be replaced, but that’s for another day. Maybe we’ll start getting some rain now, but the snow on the roof is melting also.

The second cistern is a 1600 gallon tank, mostly buried in the hillside above the house. Being buried means it never freezes and can be used year-round. That’s where the well pumps up to, 1,000′ away. It fills the tank allowing the water to settle and the hydrogen sulfide that is in all water around these parts to dissipate. Then, it flows downhill into the house when you turn a faucet on, creating a gravity-fed plumbing system. This tank is ok, but needs some TLC where snow melt and cows have pushed dirt down on the lid.

We plan to add a THIRD cistern, also buried, behind the house as the back-up for long dry spells. Having a well doesn’t guarantee enough water for gardens and irrigation: it will likely only pump a couple of gallons/minute, and only while the sun is shining…as it will be running on solar. Redundancy is the key in an off-grid home. There’s no city services to rely on.

I write this to point out 2 things: most of us take water for granted, and water is a precious commodity here in the Southwest (and much of the world). We waste so much of it every day: flushing good drinking water down our toilets to be dumped into sewage ponds; squandering quality water to sprinkle lawns where lawns shouldn’t grow and assuming that clean, drinkable water will always be there. Every day now I watch as the snow melts and sheets, drains, and trickles down into the arroyo and disappears downstream to the Rio Chama, eventually to land into the Rio Grande. I think about how I wish we could capture more of it and keep it here on this dry, sparse land. If you read about the efforts Los Angeles is making to preserve and reuse water, you’ll get an idea of the scope of this problem.

If this interests you, I invite you to check out Brad Lancaster: https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/ I’m especially taken by the idea of Zuni Bowls:

So, a story:

While we were under contract for this property, back in September, we searched in vain for someone to do an inspection of the well. We knew it wasn’t working, had a burned-out pump, and was likely plugged somewhere with a rock the previous owner’s son had thrown down it. What we wanted to know was 1} if it had any water in it given the drought, and 2} if that water was potable. We had no luck finding anyone to help. It was frustrating: should we terminate the contract or accept the well “as is”?

So, to help us decide, we had the idea (from a YouTube) to measure the water depth by dropping a plumb-bob down into the well, listening for when it hit water, and then pulling it up to check the length of the string where it becomes wet. If there was water, we’d send a tiny bottle down to collect a sample.

During our next visit, we tied a long string on a spool to our plumb-bob. We opened the wellhead. Just as Alan let the weight go, it occurred to me that maybe it should go slowly. He let go, and the plumb spun downward at terminal velocity, too quickly to see the string unwind, disappearing into the void. I said “Do it slowly!” but too late, which caused Alan to startle and jerk the string. My bad, should’ve kept my mouth shut.

It stopped unreeling. Alan started pulling the string up, but, surprise, surprise, after just a few feet it caught and stopped. The bob was stuck. A looong ways down. And there we were: me, Alan, and our Realtor, staring down the 8″ hole into the dark. We pulled it, wiggled it, tried everything to unstick that thing, but it was stuck for good. So now we had a broken well with a possible rock, a dead pump, and a plumb-bob. We went home to Pippin (the camper).

Now it is February, and we have found a neighbor with well experience willing to help. This was his plan: create some kind of jig-thingy that would attach to the polypipe that runs down the well to the old pump in a way that won’t snap, and try to pull the whole thing up. That worked some, but it was still stuck, so he and Alan dumped a whole bottle of (biodegradable, of course) dishsoap down the well to grease things up, then attached a 50# 6′ digging bar to 200′ of cable, threaded that down 70′-80′ into the well and DROPPED it as hard as possible onto whatever was down there, BONK!. Very scientific. And it worked! He and Alan hit the blockage with that bar a few times and, using Alan’s truck, a block and tackle, and the neighbor’s front loader, were able to pull the whole mess up: pump and 150′ of pipe, rope, wire, and plumb-bob. The rock didn’t make it up and is likely sitting down on the bottom. Among a lot of soap bubbles.

The icing to this story is that the polypipe was wet, which confirmed that there is water down there, and only at about 60′, which is great news.

Look who moved into the truth window this morning:

While it is still definitely winter, the snow began to melt with vigor yesterday as the temps reached 45 degrees. (Still in the single digits at night) The 20 acre meadow behind our house has a very gentle slope allowing the snowmelt to “sheet” gradually. That means water is moving all around our house in tiny rivulets on its way to the arroyo, where it spills in small waterfalls (some not so small), creating new, tiny washouts that will add to Mother Nature’s ceaseless earth-moving project. The arroyo is no longer dry.

It amazes us how little of it soaks into the ground, but that’s the reality of the southwest high desert in a drought. If you dig down, it is damp for only 3-4″, then bone dry. You can see that in the picture below. We also wish we could capture this water and save it, but that dream has to wait. This land has been mistreated for decades and will take time to restore. We will be landscaping using old tech like Zuni Bowls, one-rock dams, and rainwater capture basins. I can’t wait to share the same shot of the yard a year from now. Hopefully you’ll see sage, lavender, and oregano beds, larger shrubs and a few aspen and cottonwood trees. (And a new fence).

I feel very small watching the earth being reshaped all around me. We just hope to create a small, safe oasis in the midst of constant change.

Alan and Nick will be working on the well today, after a 2-week hiatus. Hopefully they will be able to clear the obstruction so we can get a new pump down there. It will be a muddy mess!

The last couple of days have been rather mundane and boring: long drives all over to run errands, go to the dentist, etc. It’s February, and Alan and I are feeling our usual Feb. blahs. We usually get away for a couple of weeks to take a break from the snow, mud, and cold but this year we are staying put, mostly so we can learn about the mud season here at 4 Fords. (Unless we change our mind, pull Pippin out of storage and take off!) We’re also hoping to get further on restoring the well.

I’m adding a few pictures that show what we’ve been up to. We try to do at least one small project every day. Today it was building the bedroom door and repairing some plaster damage.

Alan has all the components now to install our first (of three) solar arrays. This one is a 12-V DC 660W array to run the existing FrostKing fridge and Envirolet toilet, along with some lights. That should be up and running within a week. The second array will run the well, and the third will be the big AC one, running everything else (washer/dryer, hot water heater, etc.) and able to charge a future electric truck. Can’t wait.

Finally, it’s evening. Time to relax and watch a show.

When I was 5 or so (before we moved into the apartment in Morristown, NJ), I have many memories of waking up very early, before everyone else, and going outside to watch the dawn. I still do that more days than not.

One morning, back when I was 5, I got up, went down to the kitchen and took a paring knife from a drawer. It was the only knife I was allowed to use. Our housekeeper/nanny, Zena, would let me stand on a chair and help sometimes. It maybe had a 3″ blade and a gray, wooden handle.

Anyway, I took that knife outside with me and crawled into a stand of bushes that grew behind the house (Rhododendron? Hydrangea? It had flowers.) Under the bushes was a secret spot just big enough for a little girl to wiggle in and feel like she was hidden. I used to play there a lot.

I took the knife and made a shallow slice across the palm of my hand. Enough to get a few drops of blood to squeeze out onto the ground. With each drop, I made a vow. The vow was that I would NEVER GROW UP.

I have no idea where I got the idea to do this. I adored Peter Pan (with Mary Martin) and believed in him as much as in Santa Claus. Maybe from that? But a blood oath? A pirate story? I know I was aware that being a grown up seemed boring and like nothing would ever be fun or new again and I wasn’t having any part of it.

Until I was in my 40s, the scar from that little cut was faint but visible on my right palm. I looked at it every day and remembered that vow. Maybe that’s a piece of why I am drawn to live in a place like this….it feels like a child’s world under a big bush: new, exciting, hidden, and never boring.

We take a walk up to Crystal Gardens. Sounds like a great destination, doesn’t it? Clair, Alan, and I wander up the county road from our place, which has been plowed since the last storm dumped a foot. No one lives up here in the winter, and after crossing the Continental Divide 1/4 mile above us, the road eventually dead ends at the Jicarilla Apache Reservation boundary. We pass our barn and notice that a horse has been sheltering inside. (The horse is gone, but there are a number of “apples” left behind, and she had peed on Alan’s truck.) The horse likely belongs to our only neighbor (she lives a mile away in the other direction).

Then we leave our property and keep on walking, crossing a tiny bridge. It’s named after the woman who coerced the county into installing it, “Ily’s Bridge”. It’s pretty sketchy; but apparently has been in place for 20 years.

There’s a million elk tracks here, and I notice something else (can you see it?):

It’s a lot of recent mountain lion prints, one set very large, one smaller, likely a mama and cub, who have traveled up the road like us, following the elk. You can tell it’s a cougar by the size (as big as my palm), the absence of claws, and the round shape. She’s probably showing her little one (likely born last spring and soon to leave home) how to track, in hopes that one of the elk is ill or lagging. There’s plenty of rabbits, turkeys, foxes, and mice, too, for a hungry lion. Clair is VERY interested and carefully smells each of the hundreds of prints, keeping us waiting for 10 minutes.

From there, the road climbs more, and we can see a house on the left. It’s a long-abandoned place, but I think was once quite lovely: 3 stories of log and stucco, with a sunroom, huge cistern, a (collapsed) Gro-Dome, and the remnants of a garden and corrals. Looks like no one’s been there for years. Wonder how long it will stand?

Finally, we get to Crystal Gardens.

Not much to look at maybe, but it raises a lot of questions…who put it here? Were they trying to start a business? See the dolphins? The shed gave us a better idea of why New Mexico so embraces the color turquoise: the building both sticks out in a pleasing way against the winter hues, and also somehow fits into the surrounding landscape. It compliments the sky and makes us smile. What more do we need? Will anyone ever return here?

Today was a project day. Alan took Clair to Pagosa to run errands, so I pottered about, working a little here, a little there. Here’s some of my current projects:

You might recognize our old stools, coming back for a rerun. The island is a funky old homemade cabinet that we’ve given a new butcher block top and are about to trim and paint. The entire kitchen behind will eventually be torn out and rebuilt with more counterspace.

The house has no closets, so I’m building one. Needs doors, trim and some shelving, but I got the walls up.

The house had 2 stovepipes, one (like the one in the picture) from an old wood cookstove that came up through our bedroom. We’ve dismantled it and replaced it with a heat register. The floor is well insulated, so the upstairs is always cooler than down. The extra heat was nice last night when it hit minus 14 degrees. The pipe in the picture comes from the regular wood stove, and will eventually be surrounded by decorative metal.

While we have all the power tools needed to do the work around here, whenever possible I prefer using hand tools. It’s quieter.

Alan got home around 3pm with the parts for our first (of three) solar arrays. This one is 12V (DC) and will run the FrostKing fridge, the composting toilet, and some back-up lights. The second array will run the well, and the third will be the big one, 6-8KW, running everything else.

I realized something recently. You know that feeling of mild dread when you wake up at 3am with a full bladder? You just KNOW you’re going to have to get up and shuffle over to the bathroom. But it’s warm and cozy in bed, so you don’t want to, so maybe you try to ignore it. But eventually, you simply have to get up.

Well, here’s what I realized: that sense of dread is no different whether your toilet is 6 feet away from your bed or 30 feet across your yard. However, how many times do you return from your bathroom to your bed smiling?

I’ve found that every time I crawl back into bed from going to the outhouse at 3am, I am smiling. Why? Because of the stars. This fall/winter has been exceptionally great for stargazing. All fall, Venus, off to the west, lined up with Saturn and Jupiter toward the east, waiting their turn to dance with the moon as it waxes and wanes. Mars wandered around the periphery. I’d leave the outhouse, then spend a minute or two staring up. Orion, setting off to the northwest, Cassiopeia, hanging overhead, the Pleiades trying to hide above the north ridge. We have zero light pollution here, so they sparkle and glitter like diamonds in the cold air. What’s not to enjoy? Throw in some coyotes, and maybe the hush/swoosh footsteps of elk moving through the arroyo for full-on laughter from me.

Then, I feel the cold air – it is very cold here compared to Bayfield – and realize I need to get my body back to bed, where it’s warm and cozy, just like I know it will be.

On cloudy nights, I watch the movement of clouds and the moon against the cliff face. Maybe not as dramatic, but still worth checking out. In snow, I watch how my flashlight plays with the flakes as they fall. Either way, clear or cloudy, the night sky offers something never seen during the day, and that alone makes it worth the effort.

That’s not to say I won’t be happy when Alan gets the Envirolet composting toilet working. (He’s picking up the rest of the solar parts that will run it tomorrow. We have a lovely small bathroom, and having a working toilet will give us comfort when we’re not feeling great or sleet is pelting down. But I bet I’ll still use the outhouse on those starry, starry nights.

We got a foot of snow today, first in a while and well needed.

So, while it was snowing hard, I started doing our taxes, which put me in a bad mood, so we went sledding and walking in the snow instead. Then I felt great!

More tomorrow.

We inherited 2 cats with the property. We call them Cat 1 and Cat 2. They are big, healthy boys, rather feral, and had been abandoned by the previous owner. They are fixed, so we figure they came from the local humane society. I have no idea how old they are, but would guess 4-5 years. I set them up with a cozy home in the greenhouse/chicken coop. The greenhouse gets up to 70 degrees during the day, and hasn’t frozen yet at night, even though it is below 0. Cat 1 will now deign to be petted occasionally and loves to tease Clair. Cat 2 is very shy, but loves to sleep on the bags of soil in the greenhouse. They are why we don’t have any mice. They are not allowed in the house.

Clair, on the other hand, rules the house. Her fav spots are in front of the fire or on our bed. It is not a democratic society here among the animals.

Sometime in the fall of 1967, when I was 13, I bought a used copy of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. The bright orange cover caught my eye at one of the ubiquitous NYC book stalls across from the Pierre Hotel (coincidently where Alan and I spent our honeymoon!).

I started reading it on my way home on the train, and didn’t stop until I’d read it twice back to back. That’s when I began a meditation practice, which I still do today. I started by spending hours staring into a candle flame (probably stoned). I don’t do that now. I went from Yogananda’s Hindu teachings to Tibetan Buddhism a long time ago. But what I’m excited about is that for the first time ever, we have an actual space dedicated to meditation and yoga in our house. Never had that before.

I don’t consider myself a Buddhist particularly, although I honor the 4 Noble Truths and try to practice the 8-fold path. But I dislike religious dogma, so have never gotten deep into the religion of it all. Since COVID, Alan and I enjoy attending the Monday night dharma talks via Zoom at the Durango Dharma Center.

I did get to meet the Dalai Lama twice, though, once in London at a small gathering in 1970 where he was soliciting donations for the Free Tibet movement. He spoke a few words to me during the Khata ceremony. He said “Keep learning. Go to the mountains”. I think. His accent was very strong. The second time was in NYC around 2004. I was chosen by lottery to attend a day-long retreat for American-Vietnamese monks who had been waiting for years to be ordained by HHDL. It was amazing. This time during the Khata, he said to me “It’s time to give back”. Those words changed my life.