Little Yurt in the Valley

Company going home.  I love the light at this time of day.

By the time I made McCarthy at 9:00 pm on my arrival day, April 11,  I was elated to see that my neighbor had plowed out a parking place for me and created a ramp so I could snowshoe up onto four feet of snow with my loaded sled.  Alhumdullilah!!!  I tromped to the yurt and started up my wood stove. It was toasty inside quickly.  I love the light and the space and high dome with its skylight.  I’m still in the giddy stage of yurt love.

This year my accommodations are a treat: My comfy yurt here in McCarthy with well water and wood heat plus my shared trailer in Glennallen with heat, electricity, running water and my own room.  Once again the Kennecott Visitor Center is closed (growl) and I’m back at Headquarters in Copper Center.  I wish I were in McCarthy but NPS friends, feeling useful and a paycheck are good reasons to survive another summer in CC.

Where I learned to fall into my yurt.

Now, though, I get a three week silent retreat alone at the yurt before park work commences.  My first task the evening I arrived was to clear a footpath up the stairs to my porch, climb over the four foot pile of snow, and then dig down to my front door.  The next morning my first task was clearing a better path so I would stop falling into the yurt.

Snow shoes are essential.  If I forget and take a step anywhere without them, I’m floundering crotch deep and it takes me a few minutes and lots of expended energy to get up on the trail again.  I haven’t dug out the outhouse, the gen-shed or the well yet.  I am pleased that the yurt platform is holding up well under the extra weight. I am slowly shoveling off the decks, except for where my food tub acts as a fridge.

My only two excursions have been slushing, slipping and sliding the four miles round trip to the mail shack.  In one week the McCarthy road has gone from ice to a flowing stream.

Post holing.

The first time I returned from the mail shack, I found that accomplishing the trip home from the parking lot to the yurt was a big question mark.  Could I post hole the whole way and manage to get my snowshoes unstuck every time I went down or would my frozen body be found later with my snowshoe shod feet still trapped three feet down? Would I give up and sleep in the car for the night?   While I was tromping back from the mail shack, the formerly hard top crust softened and as soon as I put weight on it, the crust would crumble and I would fall into the soft snow.  Snowshoes barely helped.  They did make a bigger hole for me to flounder in.

The snow in this condition is obnoxious. It’s officially Breakup, that difficult time when it’s hard to travel on roads, rivers, and snow.  I had folks over for pot roast on Sunday.  All the way from the parking lot I could hear them coming, cursing and laughing,  Falling down up to your crotch is funny. Extricating yourself is agonizing.  

I am relaxing into a languid stupor.  Selling my house of twenty years and moving into and remodeling a new place kept me from really softening this winter. Here, I can relax and putter along on my own time schedule.  I’m sleeping 8-9 hours a night, I’ve read three books,  I’m enjoying my ukulele.  If there is time, I sled another load from the car every day:  stump, pull, fall.  On my return trip I take to the car what I’ll need to live and work in Glennallen/CC: uniforms, books, sheets, household items.  

The night I returned.

Overall, I’m not lonely.  I’m still zooming nearly every day. This writing gives me another way to talk to friends.  I actually enjoy the little chores:  carrying wood, melting snow for water, shoveling off the deck,  making meals and tidying up, baking with my generator and toaster oven, sponging myself clean on the porch in the sunshine. In the middle of each day, I find myself nearly naked in the yurt. I stop adding wood to the stove at 8 am but with the sunshine, the yurt holds the heat.  With no mirrors or other to see me,  I am not critical toward my body.   Life  here is simple and doesn’t accept judgment.  Watch! In another two weeks  I’ll be so mellow that I’ll be writing only six word sentences.  All good, indeed.

My front porch

Another activity that I’m working on is to do absolutely nothing.  I breathe, stare at the scenery, think no thoughts, let my mind hum along to the silence.  White.  Stark.  Silent.  Empty. Vast.  Holy.  I love this place and this time of year.

My fridge

This is how I charge my iPad, iPhone and computer.  I turn on Genny when I need more power but hate to waste gas.

Here is the top of my open-air outhouse.  You can see the tracks some snowmachine made right over the top of it.