Cold, any way you count it.

Depending on the scale you use to measure temperatures, today when I woke and took Malaya out registered as nose-hair-freezing, husky-pleasing, or -22 degrees F/ -30 C.  That's just really cold, no matter what your metric. Malaya couldn't be happier.  These deep colds must hit some northern-breed arctic switch deep inside her, because at the same instant I registered that the inside of my nose was crackling frozen, she gave her playful growl and began bouncing around my feet, dashing in and out in an effort to recruit a good chase and play.

I knew we'd been below zero the night before, and I knew the draft that seemed to seep in around our bedroom window had seemed chillier last night, but I didn't check the current temp or forecast before taking Malaya out into the snowy field at sunrise.  I just knew, as soon as I stepped out the door and breathed in, that it was cold.  Only on returning to the kitchen and turning on the radio did I hear the hard number:  minus 22.

And so, today, I am more grateful than ever that our new place has this powerful and efficient woodstove, and that we made those two trips to Lubrecht forest before we started moving ourselves in and managed to cut enough aged wood that we have been warm, at least in the small radius of the stove itself.  The farther reaches of the house are chillier, but considering that the whole place, with some inefficient and convoluted hallways and wings, is right now heated only by the woodstove, it's doing pretty well.

And the stove is getting a workout.  To keep the farther reaches even a little warm, it is going pretty much full bore all day and as much of the night as possible.  That does mean the area immediately around the stove is a toasty haven from which Mabel has hardly moved.  Sprawled on the couch, spread out and drunk on woodheat, she has no intention of going anywhere until this cold snap is well over.

Returning

I have decided, for friends and family, to return to periodically posting here on the Current Local Time blog, bits and pieces.  On the Forest Voices and H-Brace Farm blogs, Noah and I write together and try (whether or not we succeed) to find the links between our efforts and accomplishments, and some of the bigger issues facing the world.  I think of it as focusing a bit more on the bigger picture.

It takes some effort and adjustment to set the "tone" of a blog, but it seems good to keep it consistent, and we've decided that those more public blogs should reach beyond the tiny and ordinary details that our close ones might love to hear, but don't necessarily appeal to the rest of the world at large. I like the pressure to think big-picture, and yet I have such a draw to the minuscule details as well.  The way the shadows of weeds across the snow can be long in February, even at noon.  The sound of the chickens settling in for the night.  The cat melting in the heat of the wood stove.  They sometimes call to be noticed, and sometimes call to be shared, at least in a small circle. So, for the ordinary things, the smaller crumbs of the day and the little details observed, I'll post again here, but with no promises of regularity.