C. W. Nicol is a Japanese citizen and the C. W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust is a Japanese foundation, however, 'Uncle Nic' also speaks English and our trust has English-speaking members. This little corner is to keep in touch with them and for any of our Japanese friends who might like to polish their English.

January 2010.

A LETTER FROM UNCLE NIC

   Dear Friends,

   Well, we are into the Year of the Tiger, 2010 and our woods and all around my house and the present trust offices are deep in snow. Ribbon, the now-famous miniature tigress ruling the Nicol house stays indoors and gets fat on canned fish. When the year comes round to July I should be reaching seventy years of age, and when it reaches October, thirty years will have passed since I first settled here in Kurohime. We rented a big old thatched house in the village of Rokugatsu. That was the winter I learned about 'yuki-oroshi' (shovelling snow off the roof). It took two days to get the snow off the roof, then to clear the stuff shovelled off away from the eaves. That was a year of extremely heavy snows and I had to do the 'yuki-oroshi' thing twelve times.

   That's why, when I had our own house built two years later I insisted that the snow slide off by itself and that the concrete 'basement' was high enough so that we did not have to board the windows up against the snow. Even so, the snow piled off the house roof would be so high that my dog Mogus would knock on the window with his paw to be let in.

   The new centre will have roofs that let the snow slide off, and should be high enough to keep the windows clear, I insisted on that and Mr. Ishii, who now does the snow moving around here, heartily agrees.
   It has been pretty cold, but my study is very cosy. I have a fan heater, and we also installed a 'Toya stove' - a wood burning stove made from a propane canister, like the one in Mr. Matsuki's hut. The stove is in the room below my study, with the stainless steel chimney running up beside my desk. When the wood stove is burning it is especially cosy in here with the heat from the chimney. Good design!

   I have spent a lot of time in cold places, but one of the coldest was during the long high arctic winter of 1961-1962, when I was an over-wintering member of the Devon Island Expedition. I built a snow-block igloo to sleep in. We didn't have enough fuel to heat the sleeping hut at base camp. The inside of that hut was close to the outside temperature! My igloo, gently warmed by a single candle and my own body heat, was much warmer. Even so, the inside temperature of the igloo was about minus one to minus five degrees…but outside it could be minus forty degrees or even colder.
   Kurohime is a lot better than that!

   Now we eagerly await for the snow the go, Spring to come, and work to begin. In the meantime, here is a shot taken from the desk in my study. Pass the whisky somebody! Keep warm, keep well!

C. W. Nicol MBE
Chairman
The C. W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust

Past Contents

October 2009.    "GROUND-BREAKING FOR OUR NEW AFAN CENTRE"

September 2009.    "TWINNED FOREST"

June 2009.    "GREEN BANKS"