Kill your refrigerator!

Okay, now I really have something to think about; life without a refrigerator.

I didn’t even realize that some people choose to live without one (they choose that??) until I came face-to-face with it at my friend’s house. It didn’t even register, at first, until I took a more careful look at Lane’s kitchen, today, and I realized she really wasn’t kidding. They don’t have a fridge. Huh? Go figure. Then she started explaining how you really don’t need a fridge for most food items.

Yet another notion about something we think we have to go out and work hard for because we must have these “necessities” just to live. WRONG!

Talk about a mind-blower. So, now, what else have we been raised to think we “must have” that we really don’t need at all? TV, fridge, car, car insurance, electricity to run the stuff, gasoline, the newest fashions, razors, anti-depressants, MRIs, elective surgery, techno-gadgetry?? How many of us work jobs we hate because we need to money for these things?

It boggles my mind.

I did a little poking around on Google and saw that there are, in fact, more people going totally “off the grid.” Here is a blog from a guy who has been OTG for 30 years or something…wow!

http://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/

Easy way to clean the glass on your woodstove

When I moved into my new place, four months ago, the woodstove glass was grungy. You could hardly see the fire through it. I was dreading having to buy some terrible, toxic potion to use to clean the grime and buildup off. Then I ran across a simple solution, online. Simply use an old dish scrub sponge wetted with some natural cleaner or soap and vinegar. That alone, won’t cut it but if you dip the sponge into some of the wood ashes and

scrub it takes the grime off like magic.

Well, that and a little elbow grease.

My woodstove glass is now sparkley clean!

Trees for cats

I’m finding that my indoor kitties love it when I bring in tree branches for them to play with.

Moss, large branches to climb on, rocks, etc. are all part of their toys.

Of course it makes a mess…but life is messy. Get over it.

Wanna buy some uranium…cheap?

Found out about this site when watching Wired Science on OPB. I wasn’t really interested in purchasing any uranium (geesh, hard enough to get rid of spent batteries…can’t imagine what I’d do with unwanted uranium) but am interested in many of their offerings.

Flasks, beakers, optics, human skeletal models and glow-in-the-dark paint at rock-bottom prices are much more interesting to me.

www.unitednuclear.com

For Women who hike alone

I love to hike and explore. I don’t stop that activity if I don’t have a friend to join me.

That being said, we all get the creeps, sometimes, when we are out in the wilds, alone. Being here and hiking through some of the ancient forests really has felt “different” to me. I actually found myself in a panic a couple of times when I hit the deep, dark forest areas. I felt that I was being watched or that someone or something was following me.

I’m not easily scared so this is different. But, I realize this area is a completely different playing field. There are bears and cougars and coyotes and eagles and many other predators. It’s so ancient and primeval that you’d expect a dinosaur to come around the corner anytime… So that being said, I wanted to enter these wild areas as an informed person so I did a little research.

Found a great article on the subject here: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/walking_retired/23467

I liked the article so much that I wrote to the author, Kelly Winters…and she responded with a couple of really nice emails. Here’s the thread (I have her permission to post this):

Kelly:
Thanks for putting together such a comprehensive and informative piece! I too have received many “lectures” about the perils of women hiking alone. Since I don’t hear too many guys getting this same lecture, it tends to make me more determined to go forward…

I’ve hiked in Baja, southern california, the high sierras, southern illinois and mt. hood areas. Now I’m out on the coast of oregon in some ancient forested areas that are wilder and more remote than anything I’ve been around. There is a fear and creepiness that can come over you that I have not experienced before…well, except when I saw my first big cat tracks up on Mt. Hood at one of my secret swimming places.

Some people here won’t hike alone at all. Many have big dogs. So, I’m assessing the situation and gathering more info but don’t plan to give up my solo hiking habits anytime soon…

Hike on sis-tah!

Dawn

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Hi Dawn!

Thanks for writing! That’s awesome that you’re out there hiking and not letting fear (or things people “warn” you about) stop you. It’s true that people don’t give guys that same lecture. I think people’s real fear about women hiking alone is not wild animals, bad weather, or anything else in nature, but creepy humans (rapists, murderers). But most people don’t realize that the farther out in the woods you are, the less likely you are to find nasty people.

That’s so cool that you saw the big cat tracks! I saw some once on the Appalachian Trail and wondered if I was interpreting them accurately because there weren’t supposed to be big cats there–then got to a shelter and saw in the shelter log that several people had seen the cat in that area. Just this last weekend my partner and I were in Vermont and saw in the local paper that many people had seen a big cat in a wilderness area there. Beautiful.

Hooray for you for getting out there. Follow your intuition about places, events, and people, and it will keep you safe!

Happy hiking! Thanks for the photos–they’re gorgeous.

Kelly Winters

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Note: Kelly Winters is the author of, Walking Home: a woman’s pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail,” as well as many published articles on women, spirituality, writing and hiking. http://www.geocities.com/walkinghome2001/

Learning to swing that axe with authority!

Yeah,

My friends thought that it was pretty funny and perhaps a bit scary when I told them that now, I needed a good, sharp axe.

Yeah, and to improve my skills at building a reliable fire in my woodstove… as it’s my main heat source here.

So, it’s so important that someone actually wrote an article on how to correctly split firewood: http://www.woodheat.org/firewood/splitting.htm

Let’s just say that I’m learning to “Swing with Authority,” when it comes to splitting wood!

(the photo shows a house in the UK that has wood stacked in the eaves all around it)