Silicon Valley

“A last gasp of bush kicks before giving in to a life of making cellphones vibrate in new and stimulating ways: This afternoon I built a sledge out of a sheet of boat aluminum, scrap 2x2s, and deck screws. Tomorrow Chris & I will use it to drag the 350-pound cast iron Jotul [stove] across the ice. Rick assures me that this stove will make the cabin balmy through the bitterest Ottawa Valley winter weather, and I’ll be testing the supposition tomorrow night.”

Ranger Tim is moving from the Canadian woods to San Jose. There are few places less suited to a great explorer of wildernesses both urban and rural than that dreary valley of million-dollar bungalows, one-track conversations, and Porsches inching down Route 101. Still, if anyone can find life in sand, he can.

6 thoughts on “Silicon Valley”

  1. Dearbh…I’ve been dying to know if he got that stove across the ice. The punishment for an error in judgement was so – um – quantum. Nothing like a 350 pound stove at the bottom of the Ottawa River to chill the nerves.

    Like

  2. He did!

    The first attempt failed. The lip of the sled kept catching snow and snagging. So he persuaded a friend’s father to lend him a pickup, which sounded even more terrifying to me. I didn’t grow up with ice in my drinks, let alone driving a stove in a pickup across it. But the Jotul is now installed, and that drafty cabin is finally warm.

    Like

  3. Yay for Ranger Tim!

    Many years spent I on the frozen and nearly frozen shores of Lake Simcoe fishing for perch and whitefish or skating if the ice was clear. I’ve seen many a pickup, fishing shed and gear fall into the water as the good old boys try to eke out one more weekend in March.

    Lakes are one thing, rivers quite another, even if the are wide and calm. The current things freaks me out.

    Like

  4. What I find depressing is the possibility that our east coast correspondent may follow the intrepid ranger west. With that, a window on Brooklyn would be shuttered.

    Like

Comments are closed.