One man’s wilderness (7 page)

My logs are not as uniform as they could be. They have too much taper, which makes much more work. Just the same I like the accumulation of white chips and shavings all over the ground and the satisfaction that comes from making a log blend over the curve of the one beneath it as if it grew that way. You can’t rush it. I don’t want these logs looking as though a Boy Scout was turned loose on them with a dull hatchet.

This evening I hauled out Spike’s heavy trotline, tested it for strength, and baited its three hooks with some of the lake trout fins. I whirled it a few times,
gave it a toss, and watched the stone sinker zip the slack line from the beach and land with a plop about fifty feet from the shore. Let’s see what is prowling the bottom these days.

It was raining slightly when I turned in. There’s no sleeping pill like a good day’s work.

May 30th
. A trace of new snow on the crags.

After breakfast I checked the trotline. It pulled heavy, with a tugging now and then on the way in. Two burbot, a fifteen-incher and a nineteen-incher. A burbot is ugly, all mottled and bigheaded—it looks like the result of an eel getting mixed up with a codfish. It tastes a whole lot better than it looks. I skinned and cleaned the two before going to work and left the entrails on the beach for the sanitation department.

The cabin is growing. Twenty-eight logs are in place. Forty-four should do it, except for gable ends and the roof logs. It really looks a mess to see the butts extending way beyond the corners, but I will trim them off later on.

Rain halted operations for a spell.

When I started in again, I made a blunder. My mind must have been on the big ram I had been watching. I’d just finished a notch, had a real dandy fit, and was about ready to fasten it down when I noticed it was wrong end to! I tossed it to one side and started another. Guess a man needs an upset now and then to remind him that he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. Maybe that’s what the camp robber was trying to tell me.

May 31st
. A weird-looking country this morning. The fog last night froze on the mountains, giving them a light gray appearance. That loon calling out of the vapor sounds like the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe.

The contrary log of yesterday carried over into today. I carefully fitted and fastened it down, and was selecting logs for the next course when I looked up and saw it was still wrong end to! How in the world did that happen? Two big ends together are proper but not three. I pried it off and flung it to the side. But
why get shook up about it? It’s better to discover it now than when it’s buried beneath a course.

Thirty-five logs in place. Nine to go and I will be ready for the gables—those tricky triangular sections on each end beneath the pitch of the roof. The roof logs and the ridge will notch over them. Babe said he could fly in some plywood for a roof. There would be room to spare in the Stinson, but plywood seems too easy. I think I will stick with the pole idea instead. Run those spruce poles at right angles to the eave logs and the ridge, then decide the best way to cover them.

It was snowing a few flakes as I worked. Cool weather is the best kind to work in, although rain makes the logs slick. Very few insects about. No complaints there.

I have a kettle of navy beans soaking for tomorrow. Babe says they must be at least fifteen years old. At that rate they will need a long bath.

June 1st
. Fog lifted early. This commuting to work by canoe is the best way yet.

Just fitted the jinx log into place when I heard a plane. It was Babe. I watched the T-craft glide in for a perfect landing on the calm lake. I’ve heard bush pilots say it is much easier to land where there is a ripple, because calm water distorts depth perception. I shoved off in the canoe and rounded the point to meet him at Spike’s beach.

Plenty of groceries this time. Fifty pounds of sugar, fifty pounds of flour, two gallons of honey, sixty pounds of spuds, two dozen eggs, half a slab of bacon, some rhubarb plants, plenty of mail, and some books . . . religious ones. I guess he has been working overtime on my philosophy from our last chat on the beach.

Babe had planted his potatoes yesterday. He was in a hurry. No time to visit. Wished he had time to inspect the building project. Next time he would. Right now he had a couple of prospectors to fly in somewhere. He would see me in a couple of weeks.

I got mail from all over. Brother Jake is flying up and down that California
country. Wish I could talk him into coming up here and staying a spell. We’d see some sights in that little bird of his.

Sister Florence is going to make a set of curtains for my big window. Dad is fine but he wishes I had a large dog with me. I’ve thought about a dog. It would mess up my picture-taking for sure.

Sid Old is still soaking up the sun in New Mexico. The old boy has been off his feed lately. I could listen to him all day, spinning his yarns about the early horse-packing days on Kodiak: tying the diamond hitch, the cattle-killing bears.

Spike allows that he and Hope may drop in to Twin Lakes in August. Spike not quite up to snuff these days either. Sam Keith writes that the kids in the junior high school where he is vice principal are like beef critters smelling water after a long drive. They smell vacation. Wish I could get him up here with that willow wand of his when the grayling are having an orgy at the creek mouth. Good to hear from everybody. I guess part of a man’s root system has to be nourished by contacts with family and old friends.

The rhubarb plants should be put into the ground right away. Why not plant the whole garden patch while I’m at it?

I found the frost about four or five inches down. I drove the grub hoe into the soil as far as I could and stirred up the plot with a shallow spading. The loam seemed quite light and full of humus. I set out the rhubarb plants and watered them. Then I planted fifteen hills of potatoes, tucked in some onion sets, and sowed short rows of peas, carrots, beets, and rutabagas. Not much of a garden by Iowa standards, but it would tell me what I wanted to find out.

Finally back to the cabin building. I’m a better builder than I am a farmer anyway. Thirty-eight logs are in place and I’m almost ready for the eave logs.

Where are the camp robbers and the spruce squirrel? I miss seeing them. They are good companions, but work is really the best one of all.

A fine evening and I hated to waste it. The lake was flat calm and a joy to travel with quiet strokes of the paddle. My excuse was to prospect for some roof-pole timber near Whitefish Point. I found no great amount, and I returned to this side of the lake.

June 3rd
. I am ready for the eave logs and the gables. I marked out the windows and door and will cut far enough into each log so that once the eave logs are on, I can get the saw back through to finish the cutting.

The gables and the roof have occupied much of my thoughts lately. Up to this point my line level tells me the sides and ends are on the money. The course logs were selected carefully, and I have done the hewing necessary to keep the opposite sides level as the cabin grows. Five logs were very special. These were the twenty-footers, which along with the gable ends would be the backbone of the roof. Two would be eave logs, two purlin logs, and the last, the straightest, would be the ridge log. In pondering how to go about the gables, I pictured to myself the letter A. It would take four logs, one atop the other and each one shorter than the one beneath, to make a triangle up to the ridge log height I planned.

The eave logs are the top ones on the side walls. They would be different from the other wall logs in that they would overhang about a foot in the rear of the cabin and extend three feet beyond the front of the cabin, to hold the eaves and the porch roof. The purlin logs are roof beams running parallel with the length of the cabin, halfway between the eave logs and the ridge log. The roof poles would lie over them at right angles, from the ridge down across the eave logs.

Of course the ridge log still was not in place. To get it there, the fourth and shortest gable log would be spiked on top of the third one. The ridge would be seated on it, equally spaced between the purlins. There would be a framework of five logs, two (or eaves) at the top of the walls, one (the ridge) at the peak, and two (the purlins) in between, supporting the crossways roof poles.

The gable ends will be cut to the slope of the roof. The slope can be determined with a chalk line. I’ll drive a nail on top of the ridge pole, draw the string down along the face of the gable logs, just over the top of the purlins, to the eave nails. I’ll chalk the line, pull it tight, and snap it. The blue chalk lines slanting down the gable logs will represent the slope of the roof on each side. The gable logs then can be cut at the proper angle of the letter A I’ve pictured.
The three-foot extension of the roof logs in front of the cabin will allow for three feet of shed-like entrance to the cabin.

That’s the way the project shapes up. Let’s see if we can do it.

June 4th
. A good day to start the roof skeleton.