A Day in the Life of an Adirondack Outlaw

Posted On February 13, 2026

He awoke well before dawn. No alarm clock required. Because every black & gold tabbed Roger’s Rangers desciple has Standing Order #15 : “Don’t sleep beyond dawn. Dawn’s when the French & Indians attack”, hard wired into them.

But it wasn’t musket bearing foreign maurauders or tribal war parties he readied himself to do battle with this cold winter’s morning as he shook off sleep’s grip. It was a foe far more formidable; another north woods mid February overnight blast of snow.

The grizzled greybeard quickly shook night’s cobwebbed sleep vestiges from his body’s operating systems, rose from the well worn overstuffed fireside reclining chair that served as his bed, and carefully folded and tucked away the camouflaged army poncho liner that had been his trusted companion since his days in a uniform. That poncho liner had been with him through thick and thin. He and that poncho liner had hard earned medals on the wall for missions most folks heard about on the TV news, watched on movie screens, or read about in books. That poncho liner was far more than a blanket to him. He counted on it as his friend.

He opened the stove’s damper and door, reviving what remained of the glowing embers of night’s fire. After adding a fresh layer of kindling and hand split seasoned hardwood, the old man quickly brought the wood stove’s blaze roaring back to life.

The old man checked the thermometer, flipped on the porch lights, and looked out the window. Several inches of fresh snow had fallen overnight, with pre-dawn’s temperatures having plunged below zero. From their designated winter home drying over the metal gate guarding the wood stove, the old man donned warm socks, hat and gloves in one well rehearsed motion.

He trapsed quietly across the kitchen floor, down two steps into the laundry room, and out his home’s inside back door, where he slid into his boots and donned a blaze orange hunting coat in his mud room, where both were strategically placed, warmed & dried by the blowing air of a nearby electric wall heater.

Fully clad to face a February morn’s work, the old man worked his way around his trusty snowblower, which sat thawed out & ready to roll from its overnight winter home in his mud room, a trick the old man had learned from his childhood days when his father would wheel his green John Deere into an honored spot in their dining room to ensure it was free of ice, snow and sufficiently warm to start without fail when duty called.

The old man then opened another door and, day’s first light still beyond the horizon, punched a button engaging an overhead door as he stepped into his garage. There he lifted his day’s primary weapon from it’s hook on the wall. It was an orange combination shovel/snow scraper; composite, light weight, multi-purpose, and durable. Its construct allowed him to push, lift & throw snow with a rythmically optimized conservation of effort evolved through a half century’s north woods life’s practice.

The first assessment the old man each morning was whether the day’s mission required pushing or snowblowing. Though it required more manual effort, he preferred pushing the snow from his driveway if able. Not only because it allowed him to scrape sidewalks and driveway down bare in a way in which the snowblower just couldn’t, but because pushing snow muted the criticality of factoring in wind force & direction when caluclating the day’s snow removal equation.

He counted his blessings this morning. The pre-dawn subzero air was crisp as he surveyed the slightly less than two inches night’s snow gods had bequeathed him. The old man scooped up one shovel full of snow, lightly tossing it skyward. He’d long ago learned that wind direction was a critical factor in snow moving. Woe be to the individual who forgot wind direction’s strategic importance and ended up with a face full of snow blower discharge chute blowback as a result.

His home faced due east. Thus so did his driveway. The prevailing winds generally blew in from across the great lakes to his west. A westerly wind worked a bit to his advantage, blowing drifting snows away from the front of his house, down the driveway and into the road where the town plows could deal with it. If the wind was out of the north, he pushed snow left to right. If it was out of the south, he reversed course. The rare occasion where the winds blew in from the east was the worst case scenario. When that happened, snow drifted hard up against the front of his house, quickly blocking the doors. There had been occasions when snow drifts from an east wind made it near impossible to exit the front of his house.

But that was not this day. This day’s winds were quiet. The old man began rhythmically pushing light fluffy snow from his sidewalks and driveway. Most folks found it work, but on mornings like this, the old man rather enjoyed moving snow. He’d work into a rhythm, losing himself in his thoughts. It helped cleanse his mind for the day. He found it soothingly theraptutic. The scraping sound of the shovel sliced the early morning silence surrounding him.

As he worked up a healthy sweat, the air’s arctic chill rarely bothered him. His weathered hands & visage were conditioned like well oiled leather. The endeavor on mornings like this took him just over an hour. By the time the sun had risen above the horizon, he was finishing up. Just as he did so, right on schedule, the town snowplow roared past, filling the end of his driveway with salted slush mess.

The dreaded hump at the end of the driveway. A north woods’ boy’s curse. Woe be to the younger version of him whose dad found that snowplowed hump still in his driveway when he got home from work. He smiled quietly to himself as he reminisced ingrained snow moving lessons long ago learned.

Once the town plow’s morning offering had been duly processed, the old man stood for a moment. A feeling of serene satisfaction nourishing his north woods soul as he surveyed his work.

The old man returned to his garage and carefully hung up his shovel. He stomped himself free of snow, then re-entered his mud room, where he doffed winter coat and boots, carefully returning them to their appointed places strategically placed near the heater so they could dry for the next round. He then went upstairs into the house, removed hat and gloves, hanging them once again over the gate surrounding his woodstove, whose fire had by that time died down to embers, which he quickly stoked back to life with a fresh helping of seasoned kindling and hardwood.

He then turned on the television set and tuned into the day’s news and weather as he brewed his own special “rocket fuel” breakfast coffee concoction to take in through his cancer survivor’s feeding tube. He loved the freshly brewing coffee’s aroma that wafed through the kitchen as it dripped into the trusty metal canteen cup that had been with him since Ranger School.

Once the day’s tube fed breakfast had been taken in, the old man showered, shaved and got dressed. Intermittent snow squalls were predicted throughout the day, so there was no time to dilly dally with several daily tasks remaining on the agenda.

The old man stoked up the fire once more, then redonned hat, gloves, boots and coat. He opened his garage door and prepared to undertake the next chore on his list; raking snow from his roof. As with the rest of his snow moving routine, the old man had evolved his own time tested system. He pieced together his long metal roof rake and slowly begain working his way around his home’s perimeter, pulling snow back away from the roof’s edge, gutters and downspouts.

Unlike the newer plastic versions, which simply scraped across or even bounced off hard packed roof snow, his old school metal roof rake worked well, effortlessly cutting through settling snow on his roof like it was going through butter. But as with most things, somewhere along the lines, some genius had decided that metal roof rakes were dangerous. At this stage of the game, his was likely illegal. Which was precisely why he had two of them.

He had long ago discovered that taking the half hour or so it took each day to roof rake new snow helped prevent massive ice cicles and dreaded ice dams from forming and endangering his home. “An ounce of prevention…”. The old man smiled as he thought to himself “When it comes to roof ice, no words more sage had likely ever been spoken”.

Roof raking complete, the old man then cleared snow and ice from his downspouts. Mid-Feburary’s daytime temperatures might not rise much out of the teens, but in cloud free blue sky moments, the sun’s melting rays were intense.

He then returned to his garage and disassembled his roof rake. The morning had warmed up rather nicely into the twenties, but there were snow laden clouds moving in and he had one more daily chore to complete ahead of the next round of snow. The old man walked out to his wood supply, neatly split, seasoned, and stacked.

He purchased twelve face cord of good halved hardwood blocks from Joanette’s Firewood each year mid June, which he diligently hand split and stacked for seasoning by mid to late August. The owner was a burly, hard working salt of the earth kind of guy, who always delivered good clean seasoned hardwood by the face cord and charged a fair price. The old man’s father had long ago taught him an honest woodsman’s measurement; 4’x8’x16″ deep = a good honest face cord. Not the “ricks”, “racks”, “truckload” or myriad measurements folks had come up with through the years to hide, mask or confuse unwary customers as to the true volume of firewood they were peddling.

The old man would split, measure and stack enough wood from the load to give him an ample supply through the winter. With each stack measuring a cord and a half, he’d split a stack for each month from September through May. While annual consumption rates varied, this system had served him well through the years, with the wood he ended up not buring during warmer months equalizing higher mid winter months’ burn rates. Employing his system thusly, the old man’s wood stockpile generally lasted through April.

The old man’s three stage wood storage system involved keeping a two week supply from the seasoned snow covered stacks in his yard in his garage, from which he fed the two day supply he kept in the house in a third and final stage fireside drying. He had at one time attempted to keep all of his year’s wood supply housed in his garage, but had long ago determined that unneccessary, figuring that if at some point a storm so severe that he couldn’t figure things out in sixteen days came along, he had far greater problems to deal with than his wood supply.

About the time the old man finished replenishing his indoor wood stockpile, a mid morning snow squall blew in. After returning to his living from and taking in a rocket fueled lunch tube feeding by his wood stove whilst the snow squall blew through, he went out and cleared his driveway and walks of another two fresh inches of snow.

Most folks likely say to themselves “Why not just wait until the end of the day and snowblow it all once?” But the old man had long ago learned that it was far easier to move two inches of snow three times than six inches once. Another squall swept through later that afternoon. The old man went out and cleared that one after his dinner tube feeding as the winds died down and one more mid February sun set.

Then the old man stoked up his wood stove one last time for the night and turned down the damper. Out the window he could hear another night’s round of snow piling up as the thermometer plummeted.

As he wrapped himself in the comforting embrace of his poncho liner and settled into his chair by the warmth of the fire, the old man drifted towards sleep knowing he’d awaken to live this day once again on the morrow.

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Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO