The long and winding road

The team didn't reassemble again until late Wednesday and on Thursday Kyle and I planed off the rough from the joists that will support the upper floor (too difficult to explain to Canadians that the second floor is actually the first floor in England - a bit like trying to explain cricket). It took a long time and it was hard work and I don't think Kyle is going to volunteer to work with me again but, our efforts now will pay dividends in the long run because it would have been much more difficult to do this work once the joists are in place. We worked a full day on Friday and got the first posts and beams in place and the cabin interior is continuing to shrink as we put more into it. Mark had a very nasty attack by a flu virus and so we were a man down for two and half days and because of his prodigious work rate he was sorely missed.

On Wednesday, two weeks of clear skies and sunshine were forecast and so it was no surprise when I woke up this morning, expecting to get straight out to the cabin to sand off a few beams, only to find 4" of snow everywhere.  It took me an hour to clear it off the floor, hampered by all the wood now sitting on it ready to be cut and put in place for the upper floor. Fortunately, it was also minus 8 degrees C and the snow was dry and powdery and didn't start to melt until after mid-day, which gave me plenty of time to get it cleared. I also left the basement window protectors off overnight so some snow got into the basement as well, but this will evaporate away in a couple of days.


It is getting to the stage now where I can do useful work contributing to the build by myself at the weekends and towards that end I have moved most of my tools from the lockup in Cranbrook into my trailer. Luckily, I brought with me to Canada some plastic shelving that I had in my garden shed in the UK and I have assembled this in the trailer for the tools. The challenge now is to work out how to rig up some wiring so I can use my 240 volt power tools here (the Canadian electric system is primarily 110 volts). I know just the man who can help me with this little challenge.


I have started a nice winter broth to keep me going all week. This will ensure I get a decent meal every evening for the least amount of effort. It sure beats the hell out of snickers bars, peanuts and biscuits (even if they are cooked twice).

Well the forecasters got the blue skies and sunshine right, they just forgot to mention the snow.  Michael Fish would be OK here.

Looking down at the property over my neighbour's driveway.

Standing in the prow looking back towards the front door.

Looking from the front door through and across to the study area.

From outside the front door - you can see the first stud wall that will partly shield the stairs to the upper floor.

Last Sunday I zero'd my two rifles. I had forgotten just how much fun shooting is. I managed to get a nice half inch grouping at 50m with the .22 and but didn't do quite so well with the .303 at 100m. Anyway, I am now content that at least I can hit a barn door if I am close enough. I wanted to go out again today but really needed to sand the beams that we have already put up, before the joists go on top of them and make it more difficult to get at them - maybe next weekend. I did however manage to take the quad out for a short ride mainly, if I am honest, just to give it a run because it has been sitting in the trailer all week and its small battery will go flat if it is not used regularly in these temperatures. I went up to see Ron Cavers who is house sitting in the other log cabin here, had a beer and came back down the cliff hanging on like grim death.


With Christmas approaching, I realise that I have been here for nearly five months and with the slow pace this week, there was time for some reflection. On the surface here you can be forgiven for thinking that you live in a modern, developed part of the world. The infrastructure is good, there are towns with all the trappings of modern life and society, ski resorts, schools, colleges, golf courses, hospitals, TV, internet, mobile phone networks, even quirky groups of middle class liberals and green coloured tree huggers. 

But you don't have to scratch far beneath the surface to discover that there is still enough of the old frontier wilderness to make you feel as if there is some distance here between you and true civilisation. You don't have to go far off the beaten track to find yourself in real grizzly country where, without your rifle, you are definitely not at the top of the food chain.

And with this wilderness comes the people, mostly men, who still make up the frontier folk. The black sheep, the misfits, the outcasts, the broken men, the adventurers, the gold diggers, running from their shame, working out their own atonement, grimly living down the dead past, seeking excitement or fortune. All are looking for something in these mountains and forests that they cannot find in the city or where folks wear fine clothes and men shave daily. Quietly spoken men, reduced to few words, each in his own way fits, more or less, comfortably into this environment, in a parallel universe to the rest of society.

Men like John, the homeless man, who will live out this winter in a tent, or not. And Randy, my part (Red) Indian next door neighbour at the cabins, who gets up at 2.30 every morning to drive his logging truck 90Kms up the Bull River Forestry Road, up into Grizzly Country to pickup a load of logs to bring it back to the mill down the road from here. Men like Mark, who builds homes for other people but has no home of his own. Young men like Kyle who before long will have leathered skin and wrinkled eyes. Men who find more comfort in nature, the bottle or God than they do in humanity. These men are the modern Canadian equivalent of the old pioneers, lumberjacks, trappers, mountain men, all are frontier men - men without women, who follow the long and winding road of life alone. Men who look up at the night sky and think of the men they might have been, or want to be.

And slowly I noddingly acknowledge to myself that the men who come here, these men, are men like - me, because all the reasons above are, in part, the reasons why I have come here and that makes me a frontier man. So my transformation has turned once more, from middle class man about town to trailer trash and now to frontier man and very content to be so, thank you very much.