A hen wild turkey strutting around the back yard on Thursday morning

June 5, 2015 - Friday

55 degrees/cloudy/calm

Pentoga Road

Ouch, my back hurts this morning. It seems arthritis has settled into one area of my lower back making early mornings more challenging than they really ought to be. 

Year's ago, when I was living in the arctic, someone gave me a huge pair of little-kid, Teddy bear, house slippers, more as a joke than anything. They had cloth bottoms and tended to be slippery when on a bare floor.

It was a Saturday morning and I was cleaning my cabin located thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle. The temperature outside was well into the minus thirty degree range. The inside was over seventy, but the floor was still frosty cold. Dressed only in my BVD's and the Teddy bear slippers, I stepped outside to shake a rug.

Looking at the back of my cabin in the early fall.

As I was going down the steps, the cloth-bottomed slippers met the newly fallen snow on the steps causing me to slip and fall backwards, hitting my lower back on the edge of one of the steps. I rolled down the rest, and crumpled to the ground.

I could barely move my legs and the pain was excruciating. In fact, it was difficult to breathe. I lay on the snow knowing that it would be only a short while before frost bite and hypothermia set in. 

I tried to move several times, but simply couldn't. When the urge to fall asleep began, I knew I had no choice. It was either move back into the cabin or die... and I didn't want someone finding my body clad only in my underwear and oversized Teddy bear slippers.

And so I pulled my body back up the stairs and into the cabin and my bunk. Thankfully, the wood stove was close enough that I could reach it from where I lay and that's where I remained for three days. 

The front of the cabin after a typical arctic storm. It took me over two hours to dig down to the door after returning home from a two week trip to Barrow on snowmobile. This one was so severe that it blew the blades of my wind generator (to the left of the roof) off the hub.

I attempted to start the snowmobile on the beginning of the fourth day, but the pain was too severe. It was then I remembered the partial door found floating in the sound the summer before, the one that was split lengthways. Wood is a rare commodity in the arctic and nothing goes to waste, including half a door.

It took over an hour, but I used duct tape and strapped the door to my back, wrapping tape round and round my torso, rendering it unable to bend. I finally got the snowmobile started using my entire body and rode the seventeen miles into the village, lying almost face down on the seat of the snowmobile. 

I'd broken my back, a vertebrae in the lower part and the doctor suggested surgery. I nixed that idea saying it would heal and it did... sort of. He warned that without immediate surgery and rehabilitation, the chances of suffering later in life were almost a certainty. I told him that was the chance I was willing to take. I was so wise.

So here I am today, paying for my earlier wisdom, and my back hurts. Aging, it's not for the weak of heart... or back.

Onto the next page...

Thursday dawned rainy and chilly but calm. I was tired of working inside looking out and with the skies clearing, I decided to go fishing.

It must be mating season for the loons. A male spent the entire day chasing his mate around the lake. It was as though they were trying to take off, but never quite got airborne and sounded like two paddle boats churning the water. I never did see the male catch the female, but I'd think both would be too tired to do whatever it is loons do when once one finally catches the other. 

At one point, both disappeared under the water and this one popped up right alongside the boat. It was the closest I've ever been to a loon in my life.

Fishing was pretty good. I must have caught eighty or a million bass. Legal keeping size for our lake is 18 inches, so all I landed were turned back. Most weighed in the two-pound range.

I caught a nice mess of large bluegills and a couple of big crappies. It was a good fishing day.

It was getting towards late afternoon when I arrived back home and cleaned the fish. The rest of the day was spent working in the garden. With the recent rains, everything is growing like weeds, including the weeds.

The last of this spring's radishes. This year's crop was the best I've ever grown, hopefully a preview of the growing season ahead.

Sargie was home early and we worked a while in the yard before coming in and relaxing. I threw a few burgers on the grill and we had a summer-type supper, burgers, macaroni salad, freshly cut asparagus, and radishes. It doesn't get more summery than that!

Sargie closes tonight... another long day for her. I need to gather up some tomato plants I had left over for sisters-in-law Nancy and Holly. Sargie will take them over to Iron Mountain with her this morning. Otherwise, I'll be mowing the yard today... again. It's been a week and I could probably bail the grass rather than simply cut it. 

Mmm, nothing smells better than freshly brewed coffee which reminds me, it's time for a cup and do some thinking. Today's deep thought concerns sharpening the hooks on a couple of my favorite fishing lures.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Back in the arctic. I'd been cutting and working up firewood, my main source of heat.