Chocolate Mouse

A couple days ago, I was just going to bed when I heard a clatter from the kitchen. I assumed the spatula had fallen over or something and went to sleep. Yesterday, I saw a little pellet on the bathroom floor that could conceivably be a mouse dropping. I was suspicious, but not entirely convinced. I haven't seen any mice in the year and a half I've been in my current basement apartment, but there is a good chance that the recent cold snap could be driving some creatures to seek shelter in warm houses.

Now, the rodent menace has showed itself beyond a doubt. I have a cardboard advent calendar with one chocolate for each day, and when I came home today I found two of the cardboard doors messily chewed off and the chocolates missing. Even worse, the mouse hadn't chosen the right dates, so now I have to finish the calendar out of order.

In any case, I went into pest control mode and did a full inspection of my apartment. I found a few droppings along likely mouse runways, and a few other examples of nibbled cardboard. In the kitchen, an easily accessible sleeve of crackers was untouched, but the plastic lid of a container of cocoa mix had been aggressively chewed at; it seems that my rodent roommate has a sweet tooth. The next step, of course, is to take some time to design and implement an integrated pest management solution, but I have already set out two traps baited with chocolate.

A Week in the Woods: Day Seven

It was still drizzling when I woke up on day seven. I packed up what I could while still inside my shelter, then braced myself and stepped out. It was a bleak morning, which felt fitting for my departure from a spot in the woods that was comfortably familiar, if not actually comfortable. My aim when leaving was to carry back all the equipment I had brought in, so I needed to dismantle my shelter to get back the rope and plastic lining. The bed, which was just a pile of spruce boughs on top of some logs, was left intact and is still there for all I know, but the full shelter only exists in memory and this rare photograph.

I had arranged for a pickup near the local stream, and by mid-afternoon I had rejoined civilization at Squirrel Camp. We had a celebratory thanksgiving-style meal that evening, with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and stuffing. The week in the woods had been fulfilling in many ways, but perhaps the most gratifying thing was realizing that I had been missed.

In the following two days, I rejoined civilization to an even greater extent as we drove to Whitehorse and I boarded a plane back to the USA. Again, I took with me mostly the same things I had brought in at the beginning of the summer. I had a few new shirts and some gear that I had picked up in the course of work, but no real mementos. It's the stories themselves that have stuck with me, from staring at bears to swimming in glacial lakes, so I've tried to record some of them here before they fade too much. I don't know if I'm any more rugged than I was before my time in the Yukon, but I might be a bit more adventurous. I'm grateful to have had such a great opportunity, and if I can help it this won't be the last time I spend a week in the woods.

A Week in the Woods: Day Six

Day six was hard to distinguish from my other days in the woods. The rain from the previous night continued on and off, but my shelter stayed dry and I stayed warm. My reading went on at a rapid pace; I finished Robinson Crusoe and was left with whatever I could find of interest on my Kindle. Trips to the stream for water were a polished routine at this point, as were meals of peanut butter, granola, and fruit on my kitchen hill.

In the evening, I was visited again by a representative from Squirrel Camp, and we decided to do a bit of exploring-- after all, there is safety in numbers. When we had gone along the nearby trail for a bit and taken a few turns, we were surprised to see a clearing full of rusted cans. Other scraps of metal and wooden planks were scattered around, as well as a few glass bottles and other old 20th century objects. There were even a few 55-gallon drums lying around, just as rusted as everything else.

Our best guess for the origin of the can graveyard was some early road-building activities undertaken by the US army when the modern Alaska highway hadn't yet been completed. It was strange to see such a heap of human activity in the middle of nowhere, but it was a good reminder that while it's possible to go places where human's aren't very often, there's not too many places (on land, at least) that humans have never been. Following this line of thought can be useful when thinking about conservation and the role of humans in nature, but that's another blog post.

After poking at the abandoned cans for a bit, we headed back to my camp and tried to make another campfire, but it started drizzling again so we just sat beneath a well-leafed tree, nature's umbrella. The clearing was really starting to feel like home.

A Week in the Woods: Day Five

Nights in the Yukon were fairly cold. Even in the peak of summer temperatures frequently dropped below zero, and by mid-August when I spent my week in the woods, the first chills of autumn were already being felt. As a result, my sleeping bag alone was not enough and I wore all my clothes to bed, five layers all told. This had been alright for the first few days, but on the morning of day five I woke up with my feet hurting from the cold, even with two pairs of my thickest socks on. It was an unpleasantly new feeling, but I suppose it was better than them being completely numb. For the first time, I considered returning to the relative warmth of Squirrel Camp, at least to get extra blankets or something. I would like to think that I wasn't too proud for such an option, but I ultimately decided to try wearing my boots to bed instead. This ended up working well; it was perhaps not the cleanest option for my sleeping bag, but was tolerably warm at least for the rest of my nights in the woods.

Once my feet were safe, I had another slow morning. It was Sunday, so I sang a few hymns and read from my Bible with the spirituality evoked by being in nature and the formality gathered by the habit of doing that sort of thing on Sundays. In the afternoon, I went on another exploratory walk through the forest, but the increasingly cloudy skies combined with the general unease of being away from my shelter drove me back after half an hour or so.

As evening began, it started to rain-- not too hard, but enough to be the first real test of how waterproof my shelter was. I retreated inside with my books and was pleased to find that I stayed dry and, in my sleeping bag boots and all, relatively toasty. Wanting to stay dry while it rains isn't a uniquely human urge, but being under a roof and hearing the rain outside did give me a feeling of primal satisfaction.

I read in bed until I was tired, then I snuggled in for another night of spruce-smelling sleep.

A Week in the Woods: Day Four

Whenever I'm free from the constraints of a tight schedule, I like to take my time waking up in the morning. Sleep is great, but hard to enjoy in itself since you're asleep the whole time, so it's the dreamy period between first awareness and finally getting out of bed that I like to appreciate. On day four in the woods, I woke up at 8 AM and marinated under wraps for an hour or so before being brave enough to poke my entire head out of the hole in my sleeping bag that had been previously occupied only by my nose, periscope-like, for breathing purposes. Having thus greeted the dawn, I played some music on my phone and sang along for another couple hours until I finally emerged entirely for breakfast and a trip to the stream.

In the afternoon, I did some light construction work. One of my coworkers had let me know via walkie-talkie that she would try and visit my camp that evening, so I built a bench from fallen poplars and spruce branches in anticipation of the event. My clearing was getting fairly civilized by this point, and I wanted for nothing-- at least nothing that could be made of tied-together branches.

That evening, an expected halloo sounded over the hill from the trail and I had company. We had a nice meal of spring rolls brought from Squirrel Camp, and a thermos of hot chocolate for dessert. Now, hot chocolate is nice just about anywhere, and it's pretty great in a wood-heated shack in the Yukon, but for a temporary inhabitant of an unheated hovel in the woods, it's just about sublime.

After dinner, we adjourned to the parlor and made a small campfire in an improvised firepit (many precautions were taken). It was late August, so the unending brightness of earlier summer nights was replaced with a slow twilight. We sat on the spruce-scented bench and watched the fire, and then we told stories. She told the Greek myth of Arachne, the weaver who challenged Athena and was turned into a spider, and I rehearsed the story from the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations of how the raven got blue eyes. It was almost dark when we finally put the fire out.

A Week in the Woods: Day Three

Friday morning dawned and the newly foliated roof of my shelter was still in place, so I celebrated by staying in bed and reading until I ran out of water and had to make the day's first trip to the stream. Breakfast was enjoyed on my kitchen hill, just out of sight of the shelter, and it was the same as every other meal I had that week. I sat at the top of the hill next to a flat stone that I arranged my bags of granola and dried fruit on, and I alternated between these and spoonfuls of peanut butter, eating slowly until I wasn't hungry anymore. At the end of each meal, I had four squares of chocolate to round things off. I listened to audiobooks during most meals, and now I'm sure that eating dried apricots will forever remind me of East of Eden and vice versa.

With my shelter finished, there was no big project to fill my time, so I began some of the most undisturbed relaxation I've ever experienced. I made a reading chair from an upturned tree stump not far from the mouth of my clearing, padding the ground with moss and the stump with spruce branches. I sat and read without marking the time, switching between books when I felt like something different. The mosquitoes weren't as bad as they had been earlier in the summer, but I still wore a bug net sometimes while reading because sitting in one place gives them plenty of time to find you.

Later that afternoon, I explored some of the surrounding area. For the most part, there were just more trees. I was a bit disturbed to find some bear droppings about a minute's walk to the west, but they didn't look particularly fresh, so I had some comfort. Still, for some reason, it felt risky to be away from my camp and I kept looking over my shoulder until I was back in the clearing. Even when I was home again, I still felt very alert to noises that could be large animals approaching, and I decided to make a door for my shelter by tying together thick branches to make a sort of large grille. It wouldn't necessarily stop a curious bear, but it could at least give me time to grab my bear spray.

Combined with the other safety precautions I had taken, this barrier was enough to give me peace of mind while in my clearing. Another (mostly psychological) aid to this was the old moose bone I found, about two feet long but surprisingly heavy and just the right thickness to grip comfortably. I read most of Robinson Crusoe at my reading chair with this club held in one hand. A larger wooden club stored next to my shelter completed the primitive but comforting arsenal I had against the wild.

Looking back on it, it does seem strange that the most restful week of my life featured  a constant background of mild primal dread. Perhaps I was unintentionally practicing mindfulness.