desert cold

DESERT COLD
Before we start today, a comment on a comment. Normally, I would already have gone to see the movie “The Road”. It would have given me something to write about, and I would have cemented my status as Super Duper Guy Who Everyone Wishes They Could Be Like And Women Swoon Over. Alas, I always have to guard my secret identity. If everyone knew how wonderful I was, there would be a violent outbreak. With the Internet, I can candidly toot my own horn, being hidden in plain sight. But if I let everyone know how wonderful I am they become insanely jealous and strike out against me. Hell, just having such nice hair is a danger as it is. I think that is why I get divorced so many times. I’m perfect, a swell guy, but she is envious of my hair. Anyway, once I find myself being too good I have to scale back my greatness to protect myself. Thus, I am not going to see the movie on purpose. To protect myself. That, and I’m a cheap bastard and don’t want to spend the money right now. If I go, I simply must buy popcorn dripping with fake butter, a bladder buster Coke and some sour gummy worms. So, even if I go to the matinee ( which I always do ), it is still almost $15. Then, if I go, I have to hear Herself bitching and moaning unless I throw her ten bucks to play the penny slots for the two hours and tip the cocktail waitress for a few beers. $25 for a movie is just too much. The last one I went to was Terminator The Disappointment and that was when #4 wasn’t living up here. I really would have been peeved if it had cost me an additional ten dollars.
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A few loyal minions took over the comments section yesterday and discussed cold weather in their neck of the woods. To which I had two reactions. The first was, I wish they would put that writing energy towards a guest article so I could profit off of their labor. The second was that I could ride on their coattails and take about five hundred words saying little of importance. Now, I bitch and moan like a little girl with a broomstick stuck up her Woo-Hoo about the cold here, but I have also always acknowledged that there are plenty of colder places. I was born and raised in California, mostly the southern/central region, and to me it gets cold under seventy. I lived in Hawaii, Florida and for a very short time before I fled in fear southern Texas. My only real exposure to cold was living in Oklahoma, but that was at a time where petroleum was at historic lows. There was never any reason to turn down the heat. The other time I was in Lake Tahoe, but that also was when the heat was included in your rent. I thought I got cold working at a full serve gas station, but that was really only for short periods of time and in perspective it doesn’t get all that cold there. Almost forty years of my life was living in warm or not-really-that-cold regions. The last five years in Carson City was just getting ready to deal with the weather here up in Elko.
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I haven’t exactly gotten used to the cold, but I am adjusting much better. It is amazing how a few layers of wool get you through the zero degree mark. I can’t think of any reason I would want to live in some place thirty degrees colder. Yes, you would get used to it. But I imagine you could get used to living in an ice hut eating raw blubber and bedding a wife that looks like my grandmother even though she just turned twenty five. Why bother if you don’t have to? Now, having said all that, my point is that even though it isn’t artic cold here, it is cold enough. The only viable housing strategy here long term is underground. On my list of “do this before the collapse, you idiot” is getting the lumber for an underground shanty. I don’t care if it only turns out to be an eight by eight, I know I need to have the means to burrow underground once the propane is unavailable. Yes, I’m insulated enough with southern exposure right now to survive all but the coldest winter weather without heat. But there is no getting around needing a heat source when the high for the day is in the teens, with the sun out. Sage brush is great for short term, but not decades after the collapse. First, it is only a good source if you use it a few times a day in a very well insulated dwelling. Second, you will run out quickly, having to walk great distances to cut more ( and suffer the dust from the cutting in the summer ). Third, brush cultivation is dependant on a steel saw. Lose/break your supply and you can’t get enough to stay alive in the winter. Firewood is like water, you need to need less, not harvest more.
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Besides needing to use less water as a means to adjust to living in the desert, you also need to eventually live underground. It is the only way to survive the winters come PODA. I wish I was there now, but my permanent acreage is still undecided. Too expensive to stay close to town if not working full time, too far to commute if living on the paid-for or nearly-paid-for land. When I pull that out of my butt, I’m building underground. Or at least thick mud and straw walls around the trailer topped with plaster. Or mud in a tire wall as an earth berm. Something. I want to be fifty year round regardless of conditions outside. Fifty before I turn on the sage brush or propane stove. In the meantime, I’ll at least get the lumber for an emergency pit. And, yes, I’m aware of the “$50 and up underground house” book. I had one, can’t find it. But I will be ordering another. On an almost related note, does anyone have a copy of the latest Backwoods Home with the C. Wolf article on her moving out to the desert? Could I get a copy of that article? I hate to spend $5/6 just for that one article. E-mail me if you do. Jimd303@netzero.com
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