Second Day of Deer Season

The morning began foggy and stayed that way. With the temperature hovering between 32 and 36 degrees, snow and ice still on the ground, and absolutely no wind at all, we had lots and lots of ground fog. Visibility was reduced to about 50 yards or less and with the snow softening up, there was little to listen to until the taller trees began to glean moisture out of the air and drip, drip, drip was all you could hear.

The guns were silent too. Unlike yesterday, I heard just three evenly spaced shots from the same direction at around 9 AM. Those could have been a hunter, but the even spacing leads me to believe they were from someone who had 1) missed yesterday or 2) dropped his rifle and wanted to check the zero.

I saw nothing except a couple of grey squirrels today and they seemed to take pleasure in producing as much noise as they could as they passed behind me. How they got the snow to crunch as loudly as they did is beyond me.

I pulled up stakes at noon and returned to the Aerie moments before Terry got back from Curves and the post office. We spent the afternoon delivering some furniture to My Neighbor's Closet, taking a couple of vacuum cleaners over to Stony Fork to get repaired, and arranging to have our well examined/drilled/corrected. There was no fog down in the valley as we drove along Route 6 to Wellsboro none south of Wellsboro toward Stoney Fork--very little snow on the ground either, but it (fog and snow) was still hanging around the Aerie when we returned.

[The water from our well turns a muddy red clay near the end of the pumping cycle and definitely not suitable. The well is just 125 feet deep with 24 feet of casing. It's recharge rate is just 2 gallons per minute which is why we have a cistern to hold 500 gallons and provide all the water we need. It's when we refill the cistern we run into problems. The clay is able to pass through our 1 micron filter and turn the water in the tank an ugly shade of maroon. Lifting the pump, drilling deeper or a combination of the two may be needed. They're trying to tell me that increasing the time between cycles might work, but with red water already in the line at the end of one cycle, it will still be pumping red water at the beginning of the next no mater how long the delay. I think they want to go with the easier, cheaper fix but I want clearer water, damn it! Screw the cost! (That's easy to say because we didn't drill the well in the first place and have next to nothing invested in it at this point.)]

Otherwise, the day did improve slightly near sunset with the fog actually settling into the valley below us. With someone from Andrews Well Drilling coming tomorrow, I believe I'll sleep in and speak with them.