May 6
It's warmer today, though last night dropped well below freezing. Our weather typically swings fifty degrees or more in a day—desert weather. Yesterday afternoon, we hit forty. The pipes in the bathroom thawed, so I left the water running a little all night. This morning, the pipes are still unfrozen. Live and learn.
The goats hate being cooped up, so we let them out this morning. They don’t like the cold weather much, but at least they get to run around for a while. We’ve got three big wooden cable spools of various sizes, and they love to climb on them. Nancy and Barbara, the youngest, played king of the hill, butting each other mercilessly. Neither could knock the other off. Hillary and Laura, the two yearlings, ran around the yard but didn’t climb. (Yes, we’ve named our goats after some recent Presidents’ wives.)
Naturally, we closed the barn doors once the goats went out to keep the chickens warm. I stoked the fire with coal. I know people say it’s environmentally unfriendly, but it’s both cheaper and friendlier than the amount of electric heat we’d need to keep the barn above freezing.
In this weather, we’re burning a lot of wood. I wish I’d planned ahead. Once again, I resolve to go up on the mountain as soon as the weather clears to get an early start on next year’s wood.
I did, however, take the truck down to the timber yard in Parowan yesterday afternoon and buy a half cord of logs. This afternoon should warm to about fifty degrees, and I’ll go out and run the chain saw for a while. Despite the snow on the ground and the north wind, I don't expect to be cold. My dad always said, “Wood warms you three times: once when you cut it, once when you stack it, and once when you burn it.” Who needs a gym when you live out here?
I’ve always preferred to get my exercise from productive activities. Years ago, before I met Sarah, I worked the night shift on the loading docks of a chemical corporation. I’d move sixty or a hundred thousand pounds of product a night, mostly by hand truck. When I first got hired, I woke up sore every morning, but after a while, my body got used to it. I came to enjoy the work and being outside so much of the time—even the city had its moments. Sometimes in the evenings, when the Santa Ana winds blew the dirty inland air out to sea, I’d stop for a moment and watch the sun sink blood-red into the smog-filled Pacific sky. I still love working outside, though the pristine Utah landscape has much more to offer than the smoggy city.
I never had much use for sports. When I got home from the warehouse, I would build models for a model railroad. I lived in a bachelor pad and never had room for the railroad itself, but I built buildings and freight cars. I stored them in boxes, hoping one day I’d have the space for a layout.
Now I have the space. We’ve devoted one of our three bedrooms to trains. I don’t have time to build models these days, but in four years I’ve managed to do some landscaping and lay a fair amount of track. Goffs, California has come to life as it might have looked in 1920, using the buildings I created years ago. Goffs was the point at which the old Barnwell & Searchlight Railway left the Santa Fe line and headed north. Some day, I hope to build Searchlight, Nevada: a town that still exists—though these days it puts more effort into casinos than mining.
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