Wintering in the old log cabin
I didn’t know it until I got here, but apparently: spending a winter outside of comfort of civilization had been my childhood dream. It had been inspired by Jack London stories of Gold Rush on the Yukon river, and had always seemed like the manliest and most challenging thing to do in life. Surviving the harshest climate on Earth with a tent, a fire and a pack of “barely domesticated wolves”. Though, my adventure is not as drastic, and I’m still waiting for the right time to get my “wolves”. The time when both me and them would be comfortable to move in.
In the meantime, preparing for the night in the old log cabin was a mixture of excitement and fear. The most obvious fear had been – Am I going to freeze to death in there, without proper insulation and heating system. Unfortunately, the most knowledgeable people on the topic that I know of are my parents. They had been climbing the mountains in their youth and sleeping on the glaciers. It’s unfortunate, because them being my parents meant that worrying about me is their natural state of being. The most extreme worry had been expressed by my close friend and sounded something like: “Even if you don’t freeze in there under all of the blankets and sleeping bags, you’ll probably catch pneumonia from breathing in cold air”. Another precaution had been getting a carbon monoxide poisoning from having fire burning throughout the night in a closed space. And the list can go on depending on your own creativity.
Throughout fall I was completely dependent on my neighbour to point out trees that are good for the firewood. The problem being, I did not have time for them to weather. How much do I need? Is this tree to wet, or is it too rotten to give off any heat? And so on, with his help we filled the firewood storage in the cabin and hastily build firewood shed. We also gathered a lot of moss to fill in the gaps in between the logs of the cabin. It took me almost entire week to take out old rotten wood floors and level it with the native rocks and gravel I got from the local concrete place. Remembering possibility of the carbon monoxide poisoning, I chose not to isolate the cabin too thoroughly. With all of the preparations finished and weather getting colder by the day it was time to test how well prepared I was.
One snowy afternoon I came up north knowing that I’m staying overnight in the log cabin and hopefully stay warm enough to keep working in the forest the next day. I chose to sleep in the hammock to keep myself away from the rodents, and I also stored all of the food in the cooler for the same reason. It gets dark rather early in Canada in the winter months. Around six I had been in the cabin feeding the stove and heating the refractory brick I’ve placed all around it hoping to get enough heat to get comfortable night.
As the fire burned, it got really hot around the stove no matter what the temperature is outside. Initially my back felt cold but over time the whole space heats up almost making you forget about the cold outside. Around nine o’clock the refractory brick got as hot as it can be and it was time to go to sleep. Getting into sleeping bag while in the hammock is out right impossible since you don’t have any stable point. That means the only possible way is to get into the sleeping bag before jumping into the hammock like a caterpillar. And finally, off to a comfortable, peaceful sleep. You get full three hours of sleep until you wake up cold and realize that it’s time to put more firewood into the stove. Luckily two and a half – three hours is a full sleep cycle, so you can keep waking up during the night without feeling tired. Over time I figured out the most efficient way of loading the stove with dry and wet firewood to make it burn for a longer time.
Going to sleep at nine sets you up nicely to wake up around five, restart the stove, prepare the breakfast, eat and clean up before the sunrise. Packing up the stove one more time before heading out to keep the water in the cabin from freezing and keeping the cabin somewhat warm for when I come back from working in the forest. Over time we can get used to everything and later that week I even took a shower in the cabin standing in the tub before the fire died down in the stove. Now that we got a trailer to live in, it will definitely improve our comforts in the land, but I’m sure that the experience in the cabin will stay as a unique memory of proving to myself that the humans are capable of much more that we think we are capable of.