Beyond Where the Road Ends.

Oh, you lucky duckies! Today you get to hop on the tractor with me and maintain the road. I woke up to a fresh helping of “The White Shit” this morning.

While in November and December, everything looks like a sparkling, Winter Wonderland, come February anyone who has to move as much snow as I do has turned weary and cynical. Please don’t act all excited about “The White Shit” around us this time of year; we will run you over with our plow. Even my turkeys have had enough at this point.

I know where I live. This is Alaska, SouthCentral, in the foothills of the mountains. Of course it snows a lot. I’m not really complaining. There is something very satisfying about carving a road out of a vast expanse of snow, but I’d be a dirty, rotten liar if I told you I wasn’t dreaming of green fields and oceans of purple fireweed. Heck, I almost miss the mosquitoes! (ALMOST). I don’t want to jinx myself by saying that I’ve seen worse, but I really have seen worse…

There is about a mile of our private road before you get to a Borough maintained road. I don’t have to do it alone. My neighbor (that term is relative out here), Ben, has a big plow truck. I have a tractor with a 59 inch snowblower. While Ben’s truck is faster, my blower can carve through almost anything, and when the berms get really high, it sure is handy to have!

I have to really pay attention to what’s happening with the blower auger when I’m working. A big rock or tree branch can cause a shear pin to break, or the cotter pin of the auger. Those are easy fixes, but a real pain in the butt to deal with. A child’s sock left out on the grounds tore my whole driveshaft off one year. I really do wish I had a radio in the tractor, but even if I had fancy earbuds, I wouldn’t really be able to hear the music over the rumble of the diesel engine. I am stuck singing to myself. Are you ready, Whitesnake?

(It’s not always hair bands. Some times it’s 50 Cent and Snoop. “No Cadillac, no perms, you can’t see that I’m a motherfucking P-I-M-P.”)

Today I pulled this tuft of sheep wool off the rotating shaft. I also almost sucked up two giant clumps of frozen moose shit, which I thought were conchs that had fallen off a tree, so I picked them up with my bare hands. Gross. But hey, I didn’t break any pins today!

One year we had tree poachers out here. They were sloppy with their thieving and left giant trunks and branches out. I was livid.

So that’s my Winter routine; the price I pay for paradise. According to the forecast, I get to do it all over again tomorrow. Oh, goody gumdrops! How about that view, though?