(no subject)
Well, it snowed all through the night…a heavy, wet snow that compacted on top of itself…it never accumulated under the trees, but on any open grass or uncovered area on the ground and on the branches of the trees it accumulated so that the branches were hanging down and the grass had all collapsed under the weight of the snow. It was wet and cold with the humidity…and the snow was still falling.
We went through our morning routine and finally loaded up the dogs and headed out…we were barely down the road that leads off of the hill where the Palace sits when we hit our first downed tree branches on the road. We were able to drive around them, but when we got to the main road, it seemed like every 30 feet there was another tree down across the road. We moved what we could off of the road using either a saw or hooking a thick wire around the tree and hooking that wire to the truck and hauling the tree off of the road using the truck.
This is me hooking a wire up to a tree before yanking on it with the truck to get it out of the road.
After the first 6 trees, we decided to just start driving around the big ones that had a side open to them, like it looked like other folks had done. It was a county road…they’d have someone up to deal with the trees eventually. We made it to the Hay Creek road and started up that road and were SHOCKED at the number of trees down across the road or just bending over in the road.
D would get out and cut the trees that we couldn’t drive around or under, then I would finagle the truck through the obstacle course:
A drive that usually doesn’t take more than a half hour lasted two hours for us! We weren’t sure what to expect at our snares…we figured the cubby at Spruce Creek would be collapsed, but we were pleased to only find it tripped. The trail set at the same site was still in tact, but there were shrub branches bending all over it, so I just removed the snare and we shut those traps down for the time being. The culvert was fine, of course.
Our trap further up Hay Creek sounded active, still…not tripped and we didn’t even want to deal with more downed trees that way, so we didn’t drive up to check on it. We called Tim to let him know where we were as we usually had reported to him on all of the traps by this time. He sympathized with us being in the damp, snowy cold trying to figure out what to do with the traps and told us to just give him a call when we checked out Coal Creek. We tossed the pups out to run for a bit as they LOOOOOOOOOOVE the snow and they ran and ran and Usko scooped up big mouthfuls of snow as he ran. They were loving life!
We headed down to Coal Creek, dodging downed trees and low-hanging branches…passed a herd of cattle far from their home so we stopped by the owner’s house to let him know how far his cattle were…he thanked us and said he’d go tell them to come home. We continued on down. Once we got to the area of the road where the trees had burned in a colossal fire a few years ago, we didn’t have to deal with downed trees since none of those trees have branches for snow to sit on…so we made good time the rest of the way to Coal Creek. We went in to have a look at our snare since that griz had been there and it hadn’t tripped….and, sure enough, again, it got in and got the bait but didn’t trip the snare…so we doctored the snare a bit more and D looked at the video…it didn’t show the bear coming in, which was odd…but the bait was gone and it was nothing a small animal could have gone off with…mystery…so I re-set the snare with its new doctoring and we threw our hands up in the air and said, “Here’s hoping.” By then we were simply soaking with the wet and my boots were completely soaked through…my feet were frozen and wet and D and I agreed that it was not weather to set any more snares in…we wanted to set more at the Coal Creek site…but I didn’t see it happening…not with my frozen feet…I knew my hands would do the same thing if I had to dig in the dirt to make a new snare site. We called Tim and told him what we found and did at the snare site and what we were looking at with the weather and he said, “Go to the Merc and get some hot chocolate and relax for the day.” Gladly, we did just that. I ended up taking my left foot out of its boot and sitting on that foot to get it warmed up again…kept the right one on to drive with. While we drove toward Polebridge, we passed by the same cattle and I looked at D, “I guess Gary didn’t tell the cows to go home!”
We, indeed, went to the Merc and got lunch and hot chocolate and coffee and yacked with the locals for a bit…then headed up to the Palace. We stoked up one of the wood-burning stoves, I took a long, hot bath and we got into our sweatpants and fleece shirts and D crawled into bed and I crawled in with him and he fell asleep while I worked on a book I had been reading. A chick-book about best friends and first love…I could relate to it in more than one way and I hadn’t been able to put the book down…so, with D curled up next to me, I melted away into the book.
I finally woke D at 5:00 and we took care of the pups, who had been curled up in the camper…we then had dinner and then watched Kill Bill 2 on his computer and I made popcorn and hot tea for us. Great Sunday, actually…first time we’ve ever been holed up in a snow storm together and I commented that, really, this was a honeymoon…staying in this great house up in the North Fork, no neighbors for miles…no phone, no TV, no electricity…well, a little electricity, but we had to be sparing with it…and trapping bears together…pretty cool!
September 12, 2005
We woke up to a light, constant rain today…no more snow….just cold and wet, still. We slept in ever so slightly and got out of the house to check the four traps we still had running after yesterday. I put plastic bags on my feet to keep them from getting wet today…that’ll probably be the routine for the next couple of days…
Nothing at our trap in Hay Creek, nothing at the culvert…so we headed on down to Coal Creek. Almost immediately we came upon the same cows that were far from home yesterday…now they were MILES from home…almost to Polebridge! Gary never got his cows!!!! Ah, well…we kept on going. The rain was constant…not a downpour…not a drizzle…just a constant rain…and the clouds were sitting right on top of us…ugly day.
As we got closer to Coal Creek, we could hear that our snare had been tripped! Hurrah!!! We probably got the bear!!!! We drove in and…no bear…the snare hadn’t even been tripped…the only thing we can figure is that I didn’t check the signal before we left and when we had doctored up the spring we had knocked the transmitter so that it started leaving a signal that it had been tripped…there had been no activity at the site since we had been there the day before. So, I fixed the signal and we steeled ourselves for the setting of two more snares in the area…in the wet and cold. We set another cubby-snare…and then I threw in a trail-set on a path we knew the bear was walking…so, three snares for that bear to be able to hit…deer parts and fish parts to lure her into (or over) them…heeeere’s hoping! By the time we were finished it was about noon…my hands were frozen from working in the dirt and D was soaked from working on building the cubby…he was sweating, so he ran the risk of getting seriously chilled. He also put up another camera on those two sites, hoping to catch the bear coming in on the snares.
We headed out of Coal Creek, cold and wet again…we discussed setting up Spruce Creek again…yesterday I had just pulled the snare loop off of its trigger to keep the trap quiet for the night…and I decided we’d just run up there and put the loop back on…it would be easy. So, up to Spruce Creek we went and, when we got there, we found that snow falling off of the trees had tripped the trigger and I just didn’t feel like dealing with the dirt and the snow again, so we left it. We tossed the dogs out, again, and ran them down the road and they were thrilled to be out in the snow, although a little slower today since they ran so hard yesterday, but they still had fun.
Back at the Palace, we put the pups up in their camper and we went in and had hot soup for lunch, got into our sweats and fleeces, again, D started up the wood-burning stove again and we settled in with our books. I had finished my other book last night over dinner…so have started another one that doesn’t enthrall me as much as the other one, but it’s something to read…so it’s fine.
I couldn’t get my feet to warm back up, though…despite not getting wet because of the bags, the water still go into the boot and got my feet cold and I silently got up and went into the bedroom and crawled into bed, hoping the layers of blankets on my feet would warm them up. I had decided against a bath this time because the inside of the house was so cold, I didn’t see the point and was worried that my wet hair would chill me even more (there’s not enough electricity to run a hair dryer). So, even in bed on flannel sheets, a down comforter and a wool blanket on top of that, I was still pretty chilled. About 15 minutes later D came strolling into the bedroom and smiled as he sat on the bed, “Are you taking a nap?”
I gave him my very best pouting lips and sappy little-girl eyes and, in a very sad voice said, “I can’t feel my toes.”
D smiled and got under the covers with me and cooed to me as he took my feet out of their socks and put them under his fleece on his belly. I looked at him and smiled and said, “You DO love me! You’re putting my cold feet on your warm belly!”
This was something I always remember from my childhood…my mom always coming up to me and saying, “Can I put my cold hands on your warm belly?” and I would shriek away from her because that was pure torture! I do that to D all of the time now because I always…ALWAYS….have cold hands…”Can I put my cold hands on your warm tummy?” and he always says no…but usually I can sneak them under his shirt and he tenses up and draws in his breath and squeezes his eyes shut, but he never makes me take my hands away.
So, back in the bed…my feet started warming up a little and I curled up with D and he finally started drifting off to sleep and I said I wasn’t tired…but then I drifted off, too…when I woke up it was two and a half hours later and I was toasty warm and securely wrapped up in blankets and D’s arms…how I didn’t want to move!!!! BUT…the kids needed to be fed and we needed to be able to sleep tonight…so we got out of bed and D stoked up the fire again and we fed the kids and now we’re just kicking back…I’m writing to you and D’s reading his book…my toes are back…but they’re threatening to be cold…as usual.