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a maintained stone wall gradually improves
Saturday, December 14 2024
In monitoring the power situation at the cabin remotely, today I saw that the cabin's battery had been taken off-line, yet another step in its typical winter decline. I'd never seen this happen nearly in real-time and had never been clear on what circumstances cause it to happen. At the time it happened, the battery still had about 30% if charge left in it, so it's still a mystery why it happened (though it's probably a decision made by the battery, not the inverter). Once the battery is off-line, the cabin only has power during the time it is getting a sufficient amount of power from the solar panels. And at no point today did it get enough to turn on the cabin's power. This means that the marine battery powering cabin connectivity has spent several days without a recharge. When it fails, then all information from the cabin will cease. With the battery offline, there are now two separate issues at the cabin that will require a visit to correct: the Generac generator no longer being in standby mode, and the cabin battery needing a trickle charge to go back online.
After drinking a french press of coffee and eating some granola and then some asparagus soup, I took Charlotte for a nice walk starting near the south end of the Farm Road and then heading almost due east, going straight up a fairly steep slope to a scrubby highland that looked like it might've been an open field as recently as the 1960s, making me wonder if there are vintage satellite photos of the area. There's a low, steep-sided ridge up there somewhere with an old hunting blind at its northern end that I'd run across before, and I ran across it today too. Continuing eastward, I somehow crossed the Chamomile Headwaters Trail without noticing it, went down a steep escarpment and then through the dense white pine understory to the Stick Trail. Somewhere along the way, I passed a derelict hunter's stand that had already been derelict the first time I'd run across it over 20 years ago.
At the Stone Wall south of the Chamomile, the one I'd built mostly in 2019, I found a small section had recently collapsed, leaving a notch about foot in depth at its top (the wall is about 48 inches high). There was no evidence of anything falling on the wall, so this was either a spontaneous failure, perhaps triggered by frost heave, or maybe a coyote triggered it trying to get at a chipmunk. I noted the issue and later returned to fix it. The great thing about stone walls is that they respond nicely to Darwinian effects: the worst parts of them collapse and those sections are then generally built back, well, better. So a well-maintained stone wall is always getting better. When fixing this particular issue, I started gathering some large rounded stones that I could use to make something of a flying buttress. I topped this buttress with a large flat piece of bluestone I specifically went looking for, and then found a long stick-like piece of bluestone to reach from one end of the failure to the other and form a new solid section of spine along the top of the wall. The result not only looks great, but it is much more solid than the ramshackle pile of stone that had been there before.
Charlotte on the Farm Road today.
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An ancient hunter's blind atop a low ridge in the forest east of the Farm Road.
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Charlotte viewed from the hunter's blind, looking south.
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The remnants of a hunter's stand about two thirds of a mile from home along the Stick Trail. Note the way the tree has almost engulfed the step peg.
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A view towards the Lowes and Walmart from the Stick Trail. Those businesses are seven miles to the northeast.
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The notch in the Chamomile Stone Wall resulting from a spontaneous collapse.
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The pile of stones resulting from the collapse are visible at the base of that one tree.
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The Chamomile "River" after being reinvigorated by recent rains.
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The east end of the new stone wall at the bottom of the Woodshed Path where it meets the Stick Trail.
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