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first time getting stuck in the snow at our cabin
Friday, November 26 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Our usual cabin morning routine is similar to what we used to do on Saturdays, though at the cabin every day is Saturday. This includes collaborative work on the New York Times Spelling Bee, whose letters I write on a piece of cardboard and then stick in a window for us to contemplate over coffee.
Today was Black Friday, and Gretchen and I wanted to do some shopping, but not of the usual Black Friday kind. We'd come up with a small shopping list of things we needed for the cabin: a snow shovel, a mop, picture hanging hardware, hooks, and supplies to finish the newel caps on our stairway. The caps that our cabin had come with had been overly-detailed, with small squares stacked on top of larger squares, making the caps look fussy and rendering them less useful for temporarily placing things atop them. So last night I'd experimentally chiseled off a small square and learned it was held only by glue and a small drywall screw. I could snap that screw off and leave a little hole to be filled with wood putty. But to do that, we'd need better sanding disks and sandable wood putty. In case we needed to haul big things, we decided to leave the dogs at the cabin.
Our first destination was the Pine Street Antique Gallery, the place we checked out when briefly in the area back in late February. We were hoping to find a book shelf, but nothing they had of that sort was anything better than crappy, and the prices were all too high, as if the gallery caters only to wealthy people from New York City. So we continued on south towards the Noble Ace Hardware store, stopping along the way at Terry & Linda's Antiques. They had a smaller, better-curated store with nicer stuff, but the prices for things we wanted were in the $800 range. They also had a log of ugly porcelain from a particularly bad strata of human history.
Noble Ace had most of what we wanted, and the super-helpful guy was there to point us in the right direction whenever we needed something. Yesterday I'd tried to assemble the wood rack using the parts I'd bought at Williams Lumber and had realized that some of the pieces were too long or short. Unfortunately, though, the Noble Ace had very limited stock of black iron, and not any of what we needed. They were, however, selling pallets, and Gretchen wanted to use those to build a fence to block our view of the propane tank. So we got five of those (all that would fit) for one dollar each.
We then drove into Gloversville to see if the TrueValue there would have the black iron pipes we needed. It turned out that they did, so long as we substituted in galvanized pipe for a few of the pieces. The woman there was super helpful, partly (I suppose) because there isn't much commerce at hardware stores on Black Friday. (Neither the Noble Ace nor the Gloversville TrueValue were offering any Black Friday savings.)
A wet snow had been falling more most of the time we were out, though it hadn't been sticking. But once we climbed up the Adirondack escarpment and turned onto Woodworth Lake Road, there was maybe a layer an inch thick on the road surface. This didn't initially cause much of a problem, but as we climbed that last stretch of road just before our driveway, the Bolt lost traction and could make it no further. Luckily we now had a snow shovel, and I could clear out tracks for both wheels, allowing it to get a running start and then make it some distance further up the hill. But this wasn't quite enough, and I had to clear another run, this time all the way to the next summit. From there, we were able to drive into our driveway and make it to the cabin. But we parked on top of the hill instead of going downhill on that last stretch of driveway for fear we'd never be able to drive up it again.
I went out to gather firewood before it got too dark, but by then there was a miserable wind blowing in my face, so I didn't go far from the cabin to get the wood that I got.
Now that we had the necessary supplies, I could generously spackle wood filler onto the stairway's newel caps and then let it begin to dry for eventual sanding. Meanwhile, Gretchen was making some sort of Asian-style noodle dish with broccoli.
[REDACTED]
Cold winds from the north howled without ceasing all night long, making me wish we had a wind turbine to capture some of that energy. Even if it were set up in a non-ideal place, such a turbine would've produced a lot of electricity last night.
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