Environment Canada puts out these monthly forecast maps. Most of the last half of this year has looked like this. The darker the red, the hotter than “normal” it is. The curser marks my place just left of the slab of writing.

People often wish for me a “warm winter.” Warm winters are horrible. OK, we have snow on the ground, which helps, but warmth means grey, grey, grey.

Since mid summer we have had a mega share of dreary. Last year I used the gas generator to charge my solar batteries 9 times – I thought that was a lot. This year I am way beyond that – I have lost count. I am like the solar panels. I don’t do well with dreary. But I can’t just plug in a gas generator to get me going.

The rare days with any kind of sunshine stand out.

A fox on the trail camera

And one extraordinary sunset after a day of fog. The fog is still lying over the Klinaklini River.

Fog can have its own beauty of course.

It hardly seems like Christmas, but the school had their concert. I counted 19 kids present but I think there are a couple more.

And the tree lights adda bit of colour to the gloom. In this basically one-roomed cabin, they are reflected in every window.

And tomorrow the days will start getting longer.