Category: A Daily Tree

This tree is the same tree as yesterday’s tree, but the weather changed.

I had an eye doctor appointment this morning, so I drove in the snow to town and back.

[daily log: walking, 5km;]

This tree was touched by the morning sun at around 8 this morning.

That’s the tallest tree on lot 73. It means that the sun is only a few days or a week away from touching the ground there, as the sun’s angle in the sky steadily increases with the approaching equinox. Because of our position on the north side of a steep mountain, for 13 weeks each year the sun is too low in the sky to reach us – we live in perpetual shadow. That’s one reason why ice persists so effectively on the road. Because of this shadow, the south side of Port Saint Nick (the environs of the vast metropolis of Rockpit, Alaska) is a fundamentally gloomier place than the sunny north side – that’s an objective fact!

Well the gloom is just about over. Which doesn’t mean an end to winter weather: we’re forecast a snowstorm this coming weekend.

[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]

This tree was feeling white at the top of ten-mile hill.

Yesterday our telephone landline and DSL stopped working. It was puzzling and distressing because its shutdown was correlated with a moment when I was vacuuming the living room and had moved a piece of furniture, where the telephone happens to be plugged in. So at first I thought the failure of the phone was somehow related to my having accidentally unplugged it or something like that. But after a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error, it seems the whole telephone line (including internet DSL) is dead.

I called APT (Alaska Power and Telephone) but all I got was a machine. I left a message. Maybe because it was presidents day yesterday?

But then this morning I decided to mess around more with the wires involved. Specifically, I switched out the wire connecting the DSL router to the wall – it’s probably 15 or 20 years old, after all. And it had a kind of janky-looking connector on one end. Somehow, my brain works better in the morning than it had been working yesterday afternoon, and I got the right combination and suddenly our phone service was working again. So it was something I’d knocked loose after all – just needed the right things plugged into the right places.

That’s the main adventure here. A bunch of snow yesterday but then rain on top of that, and it all melted again. Just that continuous precipitation with temperatures in the mid 30’s, which seems pretty typical. Not a “rainforest” but rather a “slushforest” really.

[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8hr]

This tree found itself among rocks and crusts of snow.

Arthur has a daily ritual: at bedtime, he asks me “what’s happening tomorrow?”

Last night, I answered, “I’m going to work.”

“And what am I doing?” he asked.

“Not working,” I replied.

“Thank you,” he said, with immense sincerity and relief – as if it was I who’d offered him this reprise.

[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]

This tree was half-wet.

I overheard this, the other day, while entering the library in town. A man and his son were talking.

“Dad, when is this rain going to stop?”

“This rain will never end,” the dad answered, sagely. The dad clearly was familiar with the weather in Southeast Alaska.

[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]

This tree existed.

You can see the treehouse in there. It’s still structurally sound, though it suffers a leaky roof, which I need to fix sometime when things dry out and I feel a sufficient motivation.

It’s been weirdly warm the last few days. Highs in the low 50’s. Though still quite drizzly-rainy. More typical of July, here, than January.

Along with our weekly Thursday shopping trip, today, I went to the dentist. I hate the dentist. Not personally. I hate the experience.

My jaw hurts. In fact it’s hard for me, post-cancer, to keep my mouth widely open. Too many cut tendons or missing nerves in my mouth and jaw for things to work quite correctly. So that’s a layer of unpleasantness for dentist visits that maybe sets it apart.

I survived. And for once, Art had to be patient and wait around for me, rather than the usual other way around.

[daily log: walking, 3km;]