This trip to the East Pole so far has been one to tax the problem-solving capabilities. Nothing seem to work on the first try. So far I haven't gotten all the way to Plan D or further as I mentioned in a post a year or so ago, where as you try Plan B you should already be thinking about Plan C and so on.
It started with the new snowmachine which to my mind broke down and proved unusable for almost a whole
week. Though I am not a mechanic, I confess to falling victim to the mechanic's
mentality in that when something goes wrong I immediately assume it is the
worst possible failure. I mentally went through tearing apart the whole clutch
assembly and drive chain looking for the failure. What it turned out to be was
much simpler, in fact it was so simple I am saying it happened but not what it
was. Sufficient to say everything's running smoothly now.
With the snowmachine running, other
projects looked more doable. The first was to put a couple of shelves up in the
kitchen to hold spices and other stuff that would clear some counter space.
Now, I have written before about the lists of tools I made before I went
off on this adventure. I built this cabin pretty much by myself. I have been
coming here for the past 30 years and almost every time performed some sort of
carpentry task. Given that history you can imagine my surprise when I searched
the house and could not find a level to put up those shelves. There wasn't
one anywhere in this cabin. How could that happen? I mean a level is the
third thing on the list after a hammer and a saw. But I didn't have one. It
does explain a lot of things, like why the gravy always flows into my green
beans and why I often have to chase a rolling pen across the desk.
Shortly after I built
the cabin I mentioned to a friend that I had some difficulties with square and
level. He said he had built his house 30 years earlier and there was nothing
square or level in it. Now that I am at the 30-year point (I moved in Feb. 6,
1987) I guess I have reached some sort of notable milestone. I know that place
of my friend's is still standing so that's 60 years out of square and level.
Not bad. So that explains the title and the picture.
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This is the upper half of the
cut. It is
upside down. You
can see the angled wedge cut
and the horizontal back
cut on the right. That thin,
ragged ridge between them
is the thread that
was
holding the tree together.
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The next one was bigger
than the other two and more threatening and may have been resolved by
divine intervention. This is firewood season and I went down the hill to begin
cutting. I approached another large birch that has been interfering with my
Denali view for years. I did what I always do. You figure which way you want
the tree to fall and you cut a wedge out of that side of the trunk. I had
chosen the direction by the way the tree seemed to be learning. Once you cut
out the wedge you go to the other side of the trunk and make a horizontal cut
above the wedge cut. In variably the tree falls away from you in the direction
the wedge has indicated. Only this time it didn't. As I was making the back cut
all of a sudden the saw stalled, stuck by pressure in the tree. What had
happened was instead of falling in the direction it was supposed to, the tree
came back and clamped down on the saw, squeezing the bar and chain tightly
under maybe a ton of pressure. As you can imagine, this is a very
dangerous, unstable situation. Now I had a tree cut nearly through leaning in
the wrong direction and who knows where it could fall.
After some
consideration, and assured the saw was embedded deep enough to allow this, I
drove a wedge into the cut. After a few sharp blows, the tree gave a little and
I was able to pull the saw out of the cut – one problem solved but there was
still this huge tree sawed almost through and hanging on by the proverbial
thread.
I hiked up the hill, collected a come-along
and a length of rope. I attached the rope to a nearby tree and the come-along
cable around the trunk of the tree that was ready to fall and started cranking.
I will tell you that assembly came up tight. I kept cranking, the pulls more
difficult with each yank. It reached a point where it was so tight you could
have played a tune on it. When things get that tight, you begin to wonder
what's going to give way first, the tree? the rope? the come-along? I had a
vision of that metal hook on the cable flying at my head fast enough to take it
clean off.
As it was getting late
and dark anyway and tired, I decided to give it up for the night and try the
next day. Keep in mind through all this I kept a wary eye and ear tuned to the
tree in case it started going and before I did anything I analyzed potential
escape routes depending on which way it decided to go. With that in mind, I
took one more crank on the come-along and heard wood crack. I took a step back,
but the tree wasn't moving. Tired, I decided to leave it and try the next day;
in the back of my mind the hope it might fall during the night was entertaining
if nothing else.
That's where the divine
intervention came in. When I went back down the hill next day, my mind
entertaining plans D and E, the tree had fallen, and not only that, it had
fallen exactly where I had intended it to – divine intervention indeed. Some of
it is now already under the house ready to split. Some days the medicine DOES
work.
Sometimes you have to take a step back in
order to see the spirit of a situation, rather than the nails and the 2x4s. My
friend Joe May does that better than I do. This was his comment:
Joe
May Old cabins have a soul, and each its own
character.
With age they settle into the
earth from whence they came.
With
temperature changes they creak and groan and shift,
seeking comfort, like duffers
in rocking chairs.
Rehabilitation is a study in
patience, frustration, and eventually...satisfaction.
Crooked windows, crooked
doors,
crooked walls and slanted
floors.
Original builder unaware,
of plumb-bob and levels,
and framing square.
JM
