By using smaller diameter logs I had to use more of them to get the wall height, and I also had to do a lot more scribing and notching and fitting. But one man can only lift so much, even with a block-and-tackle. And, I liked the scribing and notching and fitting. There’s a lot of engineering that goes into a good joint. There are four or five different ways you can fit logs together to make a corner. I’d opted for the simple “round notch”. It’s relatively straightforward, and is probably the best for keeping wind from blowing through, and water from rotting the logs. You only notch the bottom of each log. Water runs off the still round, uncut, top surface. The “saddle notch”, like the ones in the toy Lincoln Logs, calls for a notch on both top and bottom. It makes for a nice lock, but it allows water to get into the top of the cut, and your logs rot eventually.
Once I found my rhythm, I managed to lay two courses per day – eight logs. As the walls were fourteen logs high, I was cutting and shaping the top sills after only two weeks of construction, the first week having been devoted to moving the big rocks into place for the foundation piers, getting them all level, and rigging up my gin pole. After I got the top sills beveled to accept the roof pitch, I hoisted the gable logs into place, left them extra long until I set the purlins and ridgepole, and then cut them to the appropriate length and pitch for the roof.
When the walls were all standing and the purlins and ridgepole were set, I dismantled my gin pole, and tore down the old stone chimney. This had to be done before I nailed on the roof decking. When I got the chimney demolished down to the hearth slab I discovered a curious thing. Clearly visible in the mortar of the slab were two footprints, side-by-side. One was the forepaw of an enormous grizzly. The odd thing about it was that it was missing two claws. The track looked malformed; the part of the paw where the missing claws had been was truncated, as if chopped off by an ax, or the steel jaws of a big trap. The other print was human. It was small and slender and delicate, and shallow.
It appeared to be the track of a barefoot woman.
To get a better look at them, I swept them free of dirt and debris, and rubbed some goose grease into them to give them better definition. They seemed to come alive, as if they had a story to tell. Since the slab would be below the sills and girder, I decided to leave it intact. The prints made it special, and having it anchored in the earth beneath my cabin would, somehow, bond my new structure to the old – validate it by tying it to the past. Had I but known.
After the gin pole and chimney were gone I nailed on the roof decking and laid down the roofing felt and the tarpaper. That only took one day; it wasn’t a big place, after all. I had a little trouble with the flashing for the stovepipe. The pitch wasn’t quite right, and I hadn’t brought along any tin snips. But, necessity is the mother of invention and, using a hammer and wood chisel, and proceeding very slowly, I was able to cut and reshape the flashing to fit the slope of the roof as if it had been special ordered. When that was done, I came down off the roof, dragged the ladder back to the cache, and called it a day. All I needed was one good rain to see if the roof had any leaks.
With the cabin shell complete, I decided it was time for a day off. I’d been going at it without a break since Haywood left. The next morning I lingered over my breakfast a little longer than usual and noted that the fox family, across the creek, seemed to disapprove of my laziness. I could almost see them checking their watches – why isn’t that guy working on the cabin? It’s nearly nine o’clock. After a bit they gave up on me and went about their business. The kits were ranging off on their own now and the vixen had her hands full keeping track of them. She didn’t have time to worry about me.
By ten o’clock the day had warmed nicely, so I took all my laundry down to the creek and gave it a good wash, and left it to rinse in the current. I anchored each item with a rock in the shallows, and set about building a sturdy drying frame out of lodge poles and willows. This wasn’t for the laundry; I already had strung a line between two poles for that. This new rack would be used for drying moose and caribou quarters. The season would begin soon, and I wanted to be ready. I built the rack down by the little stone smoker, far enough away from the cabin that it wouldn’t bring bears to my doorstep, but close enough that I could keep an eye on it and fire a warning shot if something was bothering my meat.
When I finished the drying rack, I fetched my laundry out of the creek and hung it to dry on the clothesline. By then it was lunchtime so I made up a bag of crackers, cheese and salami, took a bottle of beer out of the creek, and spent the afternoon paddling the canoe up to the burn and then drifting back down again. I took my fly rod along and dragged a spinner behind me on the downstream run, hoping to catch a pike. Again, no luck. That night I spent a couple of hours updating the journal, drank two extra whiskeys, and turned in early. I’d had my day of wicked idleness, so tomorrow it was time to get back to work.
The log work was finished; now it was time to mill some lumber. I needed enough two-inch planks to build the porch, outhouse and cabin floors, as well as the door and shutters for the windows. I set up the Alaska Mill, and after three straight days of ripping logs into lumber, I decided I had enough boards. Before I started laying the floor, I took time to dig out an Alaska cooler in the soil under the porch end of the cabin. This is nothing more than a hole in the ground, deep enough to take advantage of the perennial frost line that lies a foot-or-so beneath the surface in the arctic latitudes. I had used one in the tent all summer, to keep cheese and leftovers from spoiling. For the cabin’s cooler, I fitted some short boards together to make a box; the floorboards would serve as a lid.
When I was finished building the cooler, I installed the floorboards and built the porch. What a remarkable difference a floor makes! There were a few gaps here and there, but I had been pretty consistent on the thickness of my planks so there weren’t too many high or low spots. I hadn’t walked on a hard, level surface all summer and I found it to be most pleasant, not to mention, it would give me something to stand on when I cut out the rough openings for the windows.
Next, I spent a couple of days building myself an outhouse. I had several long, slender lodge poles already cut and drying up at tree line. I dug a pit back there, downwind of the cabin, of course, and downstream and down slope from the spring. I dug down as far as I could until I hit permafrost, built a plank floor with a hole in it, and erected the lodge poles, tee pee fashion, around the pit. They could dry just as well standing up as lying down, and this structure would serve until I could build a proper outhouse. I covered the tee pee frame with a big, blue vinyl tarp and left one end loose so I could use it as a door flap. Not pretty, but very serviceable, and I was tired of looking for a new spot in the woods every day.
***
It was time to address the door and windows. I didn’t have to cut out the rough opening for the door, as I had built a door frame on the right side of the creek-facing sill before constructing the wall. I had taken pains to keep that frame square and plumb while butting the wall logs against it. So, the door itself was not hard to make or install. In fact, contriving the lift latch and the locking bar was the most difficult part of the whole operation.
The windows were another story altogether. To begin with, I’d wanted them to be small – too small for even a very small bear to come through. This made keeping everything square a bit difficult. To make matters worse, I had forgotten to make the slots and install the splines after I cut out the rough openings in the walls. I had the first two window frames already nailed in when I realized my oversight and had to go back and tear them out. Then, I ran out of gas for the chainsaw half way through cutting the slots for the splines. I’d used a lot more than I had anticipated while ripping the planks for the door and floor. I thought I was out of business until I remembered that Coleman stove fuel is nothing but white gas. Fortunately I had three small cans of two-stroke oil left so I mixed up a gallon for the chainsaw and went back to work.
It took me two full days to set the three windows, and one more to build and hang the shutters. When the last shutter was hung, I stood back and admired my work. I had done it. I had built a cabin, complete with gabled roof, a porch, a solid door and three windows that opened and closed. All that remained was the chinking. I’d already laid a layer of moss between each course of logs as I was building the walls, but I still had to go back over the whole thing and stuff in more, then finish it off with mud. But, to all intents and purposes, The Varmitage was complete.
That night, as I lay in the tent I could feel the chill in the air that marked the end of summer. I’d sensed a subtle difference in the weather with each day of that past week. The animals sensed it too.
Autumn was just around the corner
and it spiced the air with a subtle urgency. The caribou had started moving down from the high country, and the Chum salmon had begun their run. The bears went at their fishing with more determination now and they seemed more intent than they had been during the Chinook run. There were fierce fights over territory and they appeared more aggressive and menacing than they had in midsummer. I began to see more moose in the meadows and along the creek – wolves too – probably following the caribou down from the high country.
The next morning, as I emerged from the tent, I was greeted with the first real frost of the year. As I stood at the Coleman waiting for the coffee to perk, I looked across the creek and saw the willows were showing their first hint of yellow. I thought back to my musings of the night before. Autumn wasn’t coming – it had come. It was as if the summer had died in the night. In another week we’d have the full moon that heralded the new month and the colder weather. It would also mark the beginning of moose season. I looked forward to that. I’d seen enough good bulls in the vicinity that we wouldn’t have to go too far afield for our meat. It promised to be a good year; perhaps our best ever.
With the heavy construction behind me, I spent the final week of August putting the finishing touches on the cabin. The first thing I tackled was the stove. Fortunately, it came in pieces so one man could manage it. I’d kept all the parts wrapped in a tarp behind the tent throughout the summer and I’d forgotten how beautiful and green and shiny it was. I had stubbed in the stovepipe earlier, when I was finishing the roof, so installing the stove only took half a day. I assembled it in place, centered on the back wall, which, being the north wall, had no windows. After I had it all put together I was glad I had chosen it over a barrel stove. It was magnificent. With its cook-top and oven and boiler, it transformed my summer cabin into a home.
I spent the afternoon building a plank counter along the rear half of the east wall and cutting the rough opening for the sink Haywood had donated. He’d torn it out of the guest bathroom when he was remodeling and had never thrown it away; he never throws anything away. It was a small, round, stainless steel basin that had seen better days, but it was perfect for The Varmitage. However, once I started cutting out the hole in the counter top, I wished it were square. It took a little more profanity than usual, but by late afternoon, the counter was finished and the sink installed. I even bored a hole in the floorboards and fed a drainpipe down through it.
The following day, I ran the black plastic pipe from the spring down to the cabin. I left it dry until I had the garden spigot plumbed in above the sink and tied into the main. Then I went back up to the spring, filled the pipe with a dipper so I could get a siphon started, and submerged it in the water and anchored it in place with a big rock. That was that. Fifteen minutes later, I turned on the spigot over the sink, and I had a steady stream of running water. I had a kitchen! I spent the rest of the day moving the furniture out of the tent and into the cabin. I set the bed up back in the northwest corner, as far from the door as possible. I placed the table and chairs, more or less in the middle of the room, but closer to the front wall to allow enough floor space between the table and the stove for the bearskin rug. When everything was in place it looked pretty good, although devoid of anything resembling decoration. I solved this by setting up the chess board on the table as a centerpiece. It was perfect.
The days grew shorter as autumn settled on the Moose Jaw country.
The sun rose around six in the morning and set about nine in the evening. With the darker nights, I knew I’d need more light than the candles could provide, so I hung two kerosene lamps from the roof beams. When they were in place, I lit a fire in the cook stove just to try it out. The directions warned me to keep my first few fires small to allow the metal and enamel time to “cure”. I was glad I’d read them – the terrible metallic fumes coming off my curing stove were enough to drive me out of the cabin. I seriously considered spending one more night in the tent, but after an hour or so, with the windows and door open, it was bearable. That night, as I sat at the table, in a straight back chair, sipping my whiskey and admiring the clever details of my chess pieces, I realized the set was, once again, short a pawn. There was no need to count them; I had set them all up on their designated squares. The white pawn that had occupied the queen’s pawn square was missing. Something cold brushed the back of my neck. I turned, but of course, there was nothing there. I looked under the table for the missing pawn, then expanded my search. I looked under the bed, under the stove, and in the boxes I had stacked along the back wall. No pawn.
I returned to the table, topped off my whiskey, and tossed it back in one gulp. Again, I considered spending another night in the tent. But, no, that would not do. I built this cabin, and I was damned well going to sleep in it. If someone, or something, was messing with my chess pieces – fine. I could play that game too. I removed one of the dark pawns from the board and set it off to the side of the table. Then I blew out the kerosene lamps and went to bed. I confess, I did not go to sleep immediately, but eventually the whiskey did its job and I drifted off. In the morning, the table, and the chess pieces were exactly as I’d left them before retiring.