This is our second winter living off-grid in a remote region of western New Mexico. We’re renting a home close to our land while we’re slowing building a cabin. This past fall we pushed hard to get the foundation in before the temperature dropped, as concrete will crack if it cures during sub-freezing temperatures. We completed the foundation but spent very little time preparing for winter.
Then winter came fast, and we were burning through our short supply of firewood faster than anticipated. Each week we ventured into the snow to cut more firewood and braved the roads to fill our gas cans for the generator we were forced to run because we weren’t getting a sufficient amount of sunlight to keep the solar system charged.
Then we gave up on trying to keep up with cutting firewood and began purchasing truckloads of wood. We found this wonderfully rugged Navajo with a real “rez truck,” that looked like a battle tested beef machine out of Road Warrior. We’d text him one day and the next day he’d show up with a load of wood no matter the weather and driving conditions.
We kept anticipating breaks in the weather when we could get back to working on our cabin but it never came, and the snow kept falling. The days were short, the nights long, and we kept the fire blazing. We also felt the isolation more so than the prior year. You could say we had the proverbial cabin fever.
We got stuck in the snow numerous times and then started keeping a bucket of gravel and a shovel in the back of our truck everywhere we went so we could dig ourselves out. I got good at 4-wheelin’.
One time I mentioned to Maria that it would be a good idea if she did some of the driving so she could get a feel for the roads just in case she’d have to do in on her own sometime. She braved the snow and got us stuck, I dug us out, then backed the truck up about 50 feet from the base of the hill that leads to our home. With a running start I gunned it up the hill, all four wheels spinning, counter-steering the whole way up and sliding into our driveway.
I thought it was great fun. Maria didn’t have the same perspective.
Spring officially began this past week. It snowed all day that day and the day after. Today (Saturday the 25th) as I write these words is the first somewhat sunny day we’ve had in a while, and we’ve been soaking up the vitamin D like a thirsty camel in the desert.
We also came to realize how exhausted we are. Not so much in energy, but in our need for connection with the sun, with the release from isolation, with a desire to be around people again, to be able to visit a restaurant, and feel the new emerging life of spring. It’s coming slowly, but it’s coming.
Such as our little winter adventure has been I haven’t been of the mind to write another in-depth essay for this Sunday’s post, and instead just sharing this story with you and a video I shot from the roof of our home on the second day of spring.
We hope (wherever you are) that you too are feeling the energy of new life emerging, unless you reside in the southern hemisphere of course.
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