According to my calendar, which has all of the officially observed holidays and festivals in my part of the world on it, last week was Firewood Procrastination Week. I’m just now getting around to celebrating it. Never put off to tomorrow what you can put off to the day after tomorrow.
It’s a lovely festival, filled with important rituals like pricing new chainsaws at the hardware store in Kamas before settling on a replacement chain and a new air filter. Might splurge on a fresh spark plug.
The rituals then call for scouting the right wood, which means a lot of dog walks around the ranch looking for trees that are about to fall over on fences and need to come out, but also that are easily reached without getting stuck. The search starts with the dead aspens that are going to fall across the road to my house. Best to get them out now rather than wait until I’m dealing with them in the snow.
Most years I’m able to get a full winter’s wood without leaving my lot, and it looks like this year I can get most of it that way. There are a couple of leaners over the garage that I’d like to get down.
There’s a dead tree snagged in another at the back of my yard. The dead one creaks and groans in the notch in the live tree when the wind blows, moanling like a badly played violin. The first time I heard it, the sound was kind of disturbing. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, or what it was. The dogs were concerned about it and would bark in that general direction. Once I figured it out, I quit worrying about it. As Halloween approaches, it’s a nice feature to have spooky sounds coming from the dense woods along the path to the mailbox.
While I’m still procrastinating about the firewood, other winter preparations are underway. Putting the ranch to bed for winter is a big job, draining irrigation systems, making sure ditches are closed off tightly so high water next spring doesn’t flood them, and generally putting stuff away. The list of unfinished spring work is still looming. Big plans that got pre-empted by bigger surprises along the way will have to wait another year.
It’s a time of year when I’m reminded of how happy I am to be out of the cattle business. I lease the grazing lands to a neighbor. His cattle have been on the national forest most of the summer and are now being gathered up and brought back to the ranch.
It’s a strange business plan. You take your (ambulatory) inventory and dump it out in the woods for months at a time and assume that you will find it again. The cows know winter is on the way, and start moving down the canyons. Usually they know where “home” is and kind of round themselves up. But every year there are some that go missing, and somebody else’s cows that belong in Duchesne end up here, and the ones that are supposed to be here land there. The finding and sorting process will go on for a few weeks now, with cowboys riding day after day in all kinds of weather looking for the missing cows.
I put the snow blower on the back of the tractor this week. It’s early, but I wanted to make sure there were no repairs needed after last winter. Last year pushed it right to the limits and then some, with broken drive chains and whining bearings. I think I got it all ready to go. The tractor itself got treated to new fluids and a couple of very expensive filters on the hydraulic system.
The snow levels this week have been lowering, creating a sense of urgency even though winter is really a couple of months away. The fall color has been as good as ever, and is still coming on. It feels like the aspens turned later than usual this year, stretching the season out. I love it, and a longer fall is fine with me.
After last winter, which was a full Donner Party experience out at my place, a couple of the full-time neighbors have bailed already. Not facing that again, they said. Not at our ages, they said. Cowards. Normally, the switch over from biking and hiking to skiing is something I look forward to. You don’t live here without wanting to experience the best of both seasons. The ski passes are bought, I’m taking inventory on gear to see what might need an upgrade, and trying to get set for it. But the enthusiasm is dampened by the memory of spending most of last winter getting up at 5 to plow snow, and coming home from skiing, happy and exhausted, to face a couple of hours of roof shoveling before doing it all again the next day.
The official forecasts aren’t pointing to a repeat, but I don’t trust them. They were completely wrong about last year. The leaves are still on the trees so I can’t do my hornet nest-based forecast yet.
But winter is coming, ready or not.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.