Tundra

It was -18 degrees outside this morning. As Dave pointed out, that is 50 degrees lower than freezing. Your breath practically freezes in the air in front of you and splinters when it falls to the ground. How cold is outer space? It must be close to this. It sucks the moister right out of your skin. It hurts to see.

But, when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. The outhouse takes on a special crystalline brittleness in this weather that is beautiful. The gossamer spider webs that dangle from the ceiling accumulate delicate pearls of frost that drape and shiver in the air over our heads.

It seems that people want to know how it is to use an outhouse in January in New England – when the spit inside your mouth freezes if you don’t shut it. A lot of people spend most of their time indoors during the winter. It is snowing, or it is too cold, and they rush from their house to their warmed-up cars to scoot off to a warm workday inside. There is little need to connect with the reality of winter unless your car breaks down.

Here at the shack, the day starts with a breath of fresh air and a quick look at the outdoor thermometer as we zip up our jackets and pull on our boots. Twenty below. Some might consider it painful, but it is surprisingly electric and satisfying to breathe in that cold air and crunch down the walk to our little outhouse. Honestly, it is not that bad. The seat is cold, but not painful. I chalk it up to my experience as a teenager using an outhouse in the winter. I was familiar with the situation and I don’t remember the outhouse ever being too cold to use (the only thing I really remember is being embarrassed to have friends over because they might ask to use our bathroom!)

I wondered how Dave would do, not having grown up with an outhouse in New England. In the fall, before it got cold, Dave mentioned some scheme about putting a space heater in the outhouse. Friends suggested warming the seat next to the woodstove and bringing it out with us. Impressively though, over his years in the northland, Dave has built up his cold tolerance. Like a true New England Swamp Yankee, he now swears that the cold seat and the bitter temperatures do not disturb his morning reverie.

A morning reverie in an outhouse can include many contemplations and entertainments. The artwork and poetry on the walls has been evolving and changing since we moved in. We both add new pieces now and then, and we used to get visitors who would scribe their name or a clever limerick to entertain us – though in the past few months, we have had no visitors to entertain us with pithy scribbles. We depend on each other for outhouse art in the winter months. We also enjoy reminiscing over the bits and pieces of writing that we accumulated this summer from friends and family. This week the colored markers are frozen, so we have to wait for better Sharpie weather.
The other morning Dave reported that a chipmunk poked his head in through a little hole in the outhouse door. They contemplated each other for a moment, and then the chipmunk slipped back out. Apparently he likes his privacy on the can as well as we do.

This morning, the hoarfrost had collected in a ring around the seat. Even now, in the heat of the day (8 degrees) the crystals are still collecting. There is something very pure and clean about this kind of cold though. Pure and clean is something that you can appreciate when you are talking about your outhouse.

Some seem concerned about our wellbeing at the shack because of our lack of plumbing. We’ll be frank and say that we miss toilets least of all. There was once a time when it was considered course and uncivilized to use the loo inside where you lack privacy (and the ventilation is poor.) There is nothing we appreciate more than our connection with the wilderness of Deerfield.
No, what we miss is definitely not a toilet. What we dream about most is a shower. I get to the gym almost everyday and shower there after exercising. Dave enjoys my parent’s shower across the lake. We both frequent my parent’s house for the lively conversation as well as their running water. Now that the lake is frozen solid, we are wearing a track through the snow across the lake to their house. Walking over there feels like crossing tundra. There are few places left in the world where you will find complete nothingness for such a long distance. We feel like Arctic explorers every time we make the trek. My parents and I have been working on educating Dave about northland ice. It is very different from what you get south of the Mason Dixon Line.

Several years ago, in the winter when Dave and I were first dating, I brought him out to my parent’s house to meet my family. My father seemed to like him right away and took him out on the ice for a walk across the lake. Upon discovering that Dave was from Maryland and had a healthy suspicion of any body of frozen water, Dad took it as his duty to rattle Dave’s nerves a little. They walked over a mile on the ice while Dad told Dave stories of people who had gone through the ice. I imagine Dave watching with increasing apprehension as Dad jumped up and down to demonstrate the integrity of the ice. Even ice that is twelve inches thick will boom like a gong if you pound on it enough. They returned from their walk safe enough, though. Later, when I asked Dad about how he liked Dave, he grinned and said that Dave seemed like a pretty good guy. On the car ride home, Dave told me about their walk and admitted that he was pretty nervous just being on the ice, my father’s stories and demonstrations only put him more on edge. I told Dad about it later, and he laughed and said that there is no harm in putting a little bit of fear into the heart of the man who is dating your youngest daughter.

This winter Dave has been learning a lot more about the ice. Three weeks ago, he was still suspicious. But now that we are into the bitter weeks of January, he has gained a lot of confidence. Soon the ice will reach a new level of frozen. Trucks will be driven out onto it and occasionally pilots practice landing their planes on it. When it is cold enough, the ice sings a song that is out of this world. Something like the sound of a family of blue whales combined with a darbuka drum circle.

The ice is the defining feature of the lake in the winter. It makes the world around us completely different. We now have a front yard that is nothing like it was a month ago. I hope that you will keep reading our blog this winter, because the adventures of living in the shack on a frozen lake have only just begun.