Light side of the Earth

Wisconsin has been on the dark side since November, when the last deciduous leaf falls from the trees. By mid-December my world is dark by 4:30 and the sun won’t peak out from the distant hill until after 8 in the morning. Being a independent and frugal survivalist living in the woods becomes an endless struggle, in spite of all the preparations and improvements I make each and every summer. Of course, summer is just a preparation for winter up here. Why I live up here is a long story that I won’t touch on right now.

I refuse to burn fossil fuels to heat my cabin. I do take pride in knowing that if everyone was like me the Muslim world would still be a few tribes riding camels and living in tents in the desert. I burn wood, and only heat a small part of my home, which I call my ‘bubble’.

Everything was going fine this year until the temperature one morning was -7 F. I started to drain my pipes, but the main pipe from my spring froze while I was still draining my hot water tank. Shit. Plan B: Go visit Bronwyn in Australia!

I was going to do that anyway. 😉

This is my tenth winter of going to visit her.

After two weeks of breaking a layer of ice on my toilet every morning, hauling water up from my spring once a week, collecting gray water to flush the toilet every third day (the trap in my sink was frozen, anyway), washing with a five gallon bucket of heated water once a week, and tossing logs in the wood-stove every two to three hours, my plans were all made and set into motion.

The trip was excruciatingly long, as expected. 12 hours flying to get from Chicago to Dubai, 7 hour layover in Dubai, and 12 hours flying from Dubai to Adelaide. To numb my boredom/anxiety, I watched all three Ironman movies, two Spiderman movies, and one Captain America. The smoking lounge in Dubai was pathetic. Imagine 30 smokers packed into a 10 X 30 room with 20 chairs and no noticeable ventilation. Customs in Adelaide brought the drug sniffing dog out of its cage just for my luggage (long hair profiling?) and it went nuts over my smaller suitcase. They found nothing except the small bag of tobacco that I had already declared. They let me go… without charging me taxes on it (~$200). 😉

I arrived on Valentine’s day. The weather is perfect. Kangaroo Island is the last paradise on earth… and I get to experience it with its native princess. All my suffering has made it that much more wonderful. Man really is a tropical animal.

I am so happy to be on the light side of the earth.