Winter is coming

I’m still getting used to the sudden appearance of the early winter landscape around my cabin. Hurricane Sandy was a huge storm, but I still don’t remember any storm that so completely and quickly changed a season from fall to almost-winter. It’s a lot to get used to overnight.

This part of Pennsylvania is one where we usually see all four of the seasons. The winters are cold, the summers are hot, fall is gorgeous and spring—well, spring isn’t my favorite, but it’s definitely its own season. The seasons flow from one to the other, and the constant shift is usually subtle. Changes are small, sometimes almost imperceptible, from week to week as one season melds into the next. For me, that’s part of the fun of paying attention to nature, watching how the seasons shift a little bit at a time. Then this year comes along, and the landscape has shifted a whole month, if not more, in the space of a day.

The trees are now completely bare, which means I can see distances again. It also means the moon shines into the cabin again, so my bedroom is no longer as dark at night as it was during the summer.

The fall seed pods and assorted “stick-tights” that can almost cover my long-haired dogs after a romp outdoors are gone, too. They were just starting to be a nuisance when the hurricane came through. This year it looks as though I won’t have to deal much with them.

The decks and the gutters will need another full cleaning before winter truly sets in. I cleared everything out the morning before Sandy hit, and now it looks as though I’ve never done them at all.

This past week I’ve seen a variety of raccoons, skunks and opossums both around the cabin and elsewhere. The storm might have displaced them, though I think, like me, they are probably and suddenly just in the mode of getting ready for winter. They seem unusually busy and mobile, though.

Even the sky is taking on that wintry cast and feel. A breeze from the east brings a damp chill to the air, which already feels chilly enough. Fall has disappeared, winter is almost here, and it feels as though summer ended just last week. I'd better get used to it.  This year subtlety is in short supply.

After Sandy

Hurricane Sandy was a pretty nasty visitor here at my cabin on Roundtop Mtn. Fortunately, she’s gone now. The hurricane left me with more work than actual damage. Still, I hope I never have to hear wind like that again anytime soon. The wind didn’t howl, it roared.

I also think I was in the eye of the hurricane, which might have been a cool thing to see if it had been daylight. Here’s what happened: The wind was roaring, trees were bending like blades of grass, the torrential rain was whipped horizontal. This was going on for at least several hours from just before dusk through evening, all the time the wind building and gusting. Then around 10 p.m. (perhaps a bit later) on Monday night the wind died. I waited for a few minutes, hardly believing my luck, and then decided to run the dogs outside—who’d been inside for hours—while I had a respite.

Outside, the wind was indeed nonexistent, and the rain reduced to a sprinkle, almost a mist. It was quiet and still. The dogs taken care of, I headed back inside. Perhaps 10 minutes later the rain started increasing again. This time the rain came from a more southerly direction. In perhaps another 10 minutes the winds began again, too, but throughout the night they never reached the fury of the earlier hours of the evening. I still had some substantial gusts, but they were fewer and the sustained winds probably a good 10 mph less than earlier. I’m pretty sure the winds were southerly, too, but I wasn’t outside to determine that. So was that the eye of the hurricane? When I look at the hurricane’s path it seems that it might have been.

Yesterday was a clean-up day for me. You’d never guess that I’d just spent hours on Sunday and Monday cleaning gutters and sweeping the decks free of leaves. Today it looks as though I’ve never done either. Virtually all the leaves are down now, and it feels like a raw mid-November day, still with some rain.

In my photo today, if you look past the downy woodpecker and the squirrel, you’ll see that the mountains to my west are visible again after disappearing into the leaf canopy for the past nearly 7 months. The table under the bird feeders is leaf-covered and messy. That wasn’t the case on Sunday—everything was cleared and arranged or put away. And my lovely, new yellow-topped finch feeder is empty of the pine siskins that seem to be filling the feeders everywhere but at my cabin.

I’m just glad I’m safe and the storm is gone. That was a doozy.

Then and now

What a difference one weekend will make! I took this photo last weekend up at Michaux State Forest. This weekend I will be deep into getting ready for Hurricane Sandy, a gal I’m already not liking very much. I’ve heard too much about her already and she’s still almost four days from appearing on my doorstep.

For me, the wind will be likely be the biggest worry. Anyone who lives in a forest worries about that. Doing without power is no fun but that’s nothing compared to a downed tree on the cabin. Water in the basement is no fun either, but that’s why I have pumps, both electric and battery-powered (though the battery-powered one might not be up to handling the water from this kind of storm).

Whatever plans I thought I might have for this weekend will be put on hold, both because of getting ready for the storm and paying attention to where the storm is going to go and when. The animals are blissfully unaware of anything other than getting their dinner. I sort of wish I could be, too.

So, if blogging ceases for a bit, it’s because I’m out of power and/or internet. I hope to still be online for Monday, but I’m taking no bets for after that.

Trying to ignore Sandy

Along Mountain Creek in Michaux State Forest

I’ve been trying to ignore the Hurricane Sandy information for the past two days, hoping that the storm won’t, after all, turn into a Major Event here on Roundtop. But as time passes, the storm looms pretty large as a probable Major Event to arrive sometime early Monday morning.

As a result, I am in full hurricane-preparedness mode at the cabin. For me this means everything from battening down the hatches on the chickens, to making sure I have plenty of water available, not to mention food that doesn’t need to be cooked or cooled. Electrical outages here are common during minor events, let alone during Major Events.

So that work has begun for me. At least I have several days notice before Sandy arrives, so I should have time to prepare, at least as much as anyone can for these things. Maybe I’ll get done with everything in time to do a little “hurricane birding.”

Hurricanes often bring birds that normally live along the coast inland, to shelter away from the storm. The most common species I see during these times are Caspian terns, but those come with summer hurricanes. The terns have already headed to Florida for the winter. With a pending hurricane this late in the year, I don’t know what might appear.

For now, it’s too soon to think about birding when I have so much else to take care of first. It’s time to get busy and get ready for some rough weather.

Rhododendron at Mountain Creek

Re-powered

After Irene - road is littered with debris but no downed trees

Ah, to be back in the 21st Century again. My power is restored, though I can’t say my life is back to normal just yet.

During the power outage I gathered up many of the items I use regularly and put them in plain sight on my kitchen table so I could find them easily. Battery-powered lanterns don’t give off nearly as much light as the electric lights. So now I am faced with putting everything away again.

I lost many of the items in my refrigerator, though I saved the condiments in an ice chest and took the frozen items to sister’s house. Tonight, I’ll likely head down there again to retrieve them. The restocking of the other items will have to wait until I shop for groceries this weekend.

Our modern houses simply aren’t geared for long periods without electricity. Back before electricity, people used cook stoves fueled with wood. They used iceboxes for chilling items. They had outhouses. They had hand pumps on their wells. My well pump needs electricity. Naturally, I store water for me and the animals, but when power is out for more than a few days, I start to run low. If I didn’t work away from the cabin during the day (where naturally they had power), I could have pulled water from the nearby ponds, built a fire or run a camp stove and then boiled it to make sure it was safe. Try doing that during a work day.

I’d love to go solar, but for me to do that, I’d have to cut down a lot of trees so the cabin could get enough sunlight for it. I’m just not willing to do that, though if I experience many more windstorms such as came with Hurricane Irene, that option might begin to look more attractive.

One thing I noticed is that with so many people, literally for miles around the mountain, out of power the night skies were gorgeous. Here on Roundtop, I have a far better view of the night sky than virtually everyone else and even I noticed more stars. I hadn’t realized just how much light pollution from nearby developments and villages impacts my own view of the sky up here where there are few lights.

So now my life here on the mountain is returning to normal again. This morning the dogs startled two deer that were inexplicably right next to the cabin, scattering them up the hill, crashing through the underbrush. Some things never change, whether there’s electricity or no.

Power-less

Roundtop Ruminations will likely be offline for a few days.  I'm out of power thanks to Hurricane Irene, and the power company reports it will likely be days before it is restored. Please check back the end of the week, and I'll try to write an update (or perhaps I'll be lucky and will have power again by then!)

Fortunately, I didn't have any damage at the cabin.  I'm just time-traveling back to the 19th Century this week.

Cheers from Carolyn H., Dog, Baby Dog and the chickens

“Calm before a storm” is a cliché, but it’s also often a true one. Whether it’s the day before a big snowstorm or the hours before a bad thunderstorm or the day before Hurricane Irene arrives, the calm has arrived in my area. For Roundtop Mtn., the forecast about what to expect from this storm has changed about three times a day since Tuesday.

I don’t know what will actually happen here, though some rain and a breezy or even gusty Sunday is likely. If the storm isn’t too bad here, I will likely go looking for “hurricane birds.” When a hurricane rides up the coast the way Irene is doing right now, it’s pretty common for birds who normally are never far from the ocean to come inland to shelter from the storm. For some reason, Caspian terns seem to be the species I see most commonly during these episodes, though I never know what else can or will turn up. Since I don’t often get to go to the ocean, having a few of the ocean or coastal birds come to me is a treat.

For now, the storm isn’t close enough to see even the highest or thinnest cirrus clouds. The morning was as clear as you could want, if a tad misty down along the creek. Tonight I will do what I always do before the calm turns into the storm. I’ll check the cabin an extra time, make sure I have a few extra supplies and then settle down to wait out the storm, just like those hurricane birds.