After weeks of bitter cold and blasting arctic winds, it may have been exhaustion or general inattentiveness, but sometime last night I neglected to make sure all the faucets were still dripping. It was still very warm in my room. Warm enough that the thermostat set at 64 did not kick on the furnace. Yet when I came out to check the wood-stove at 4 am there was no water to the kitchen sink or the tub or the back bedroom. The tub had been dripping all night – at least up until three or so.

That little blurb was written just two weeks ago when many folks in CNY were struggling with frozen pipes and heating systems. One of the problems with our modern homes is that we are more susceptible to the whims of nature. Indoor plumbing, not to mention multiple bathrooms and have left us little choice but to keep our homes heated. My as yet in the planning stage bathroom reconstruction will take this into account.

It turns out that my wood stove which kept the house very pleasant, left the pipes at risk because the duct work which runs under the trailer did not offer them protective heat.This wonderful sunny weekend with temperatures in the plus 30’s F has dimmed the tension of those negative 10 F nights with fire/faucet checks every two hours. Now we wait for the roofs to clear of snow and ice (fingers crossed – without leaks) and hope the snow melts slowly enough to prevent flooding.

We managed to stretch our wood into this weekend by harvesting dead trees near to the house that we could get to through waist deep snow. This weekend I was able to venture a bit farther out into the woods. The back yard looks as if a monstrous anaconda has slithered across  it where we skidded logs with a rope. A porch full of firewood makes me feel like it’s my birthday.

I must admit that the past two snows were left lying in the driveway. A couple inches of snow just didn’t seem to matter anymore. Two of us drive jeep style vehicles and my daughter’s car just follows in our tracks. This weekend a visitor with a smaller car came visiting and I had to acknowledge that the 4″ rise from the road to the drive was problematic, especially as the snow becomes slushy in the warming sun. So I spent some time with the snow blower attempting to move now packed, wet and clumpy snow.

This morning I contemplate the trail forged by squirrels from the treeline to my bird feeders that run across the shadows of tree trunks in the snow which reflects the bright glare of sunlight.