Uninvited Guests

The week started tragically, for the town of Cranbrook.  At about 2 o'clock on Tuesday morning, the last remaining wooden buildings on Baker Street (the old city's Main/High Street) burnt to the ground. There were three or four of them together at the western end of the street and they were over a hundred years old. That's old for this part of Canada and they were the last original buildings, built in the old wild west style with high flat board frontages. One was a second hand shop that was an absolute gold mine of memorabilia and junk. I had spent several hours strolling around its many nooks and crannies eyeing up things for my cabin once it is finished. You know the sort of thing; animal skins for the cabin floor; stuffed elk and moose heads for the mantel shelf; old black powder musket for the rifle rack etc.

Fortunately, no-one was either killed or injured although, there were several people asleep upstairs above the shops when the fire started. At least one was trapped by the fire and had to be rescued by the fire service when it arrived. The cause of the fire is unknown but most bets are on either an electrical fault or lightening, there was a tremendous thunderstorm over the city on Monday night. It is a great loss for the city of Cranbrook and for the individuals directly concerned. I understand that the owner of the second hand shop had no insurance and therefore, not only has he lost irreplaceable items but, he will receive no compensation.

Two days after the blaze - not much left to salvage.

The one remaining wooden building, that looks like it is still intact, is so badly damaged it will have to be pulled down. I wait with interest to see what will now go up in the place of these splendid old buildings. I have a sneaking suspicion that they will not be rebuilt but, some horrible concrete monster will rise from the ashes, as it has done everywhere else in the town. Actually, there is no real reason why they could not be replaced with similar buildings. There are plenty of examples where old town centres have been preserved and still have their old wild west appearance. Whitefish, across the border, in Montana is a good example where this has happened.

As I have started on the G1/4 stuff I might as well continue and leave the G3 stuff to the end this week. John Shepard, the homeless man, was moved from his camp site beside Highway 3 to his new home on the Haha Creek Road on Tuesday. In the event, there were more than enough people to move him and neither Ron nor I were needed. As it transpired however, I wish I had been there.


John was moved by the man that owns the camper and a few other local people who make up John's support group. As far as I was aware all went smoothly but, late that evening I received a call from Ron who told me that he had John with him at his home and needed my advice.  Apparently, while they were setting John and the camper up in the new location, a local man appeared and hurled unrepeatable abuse at them and at John in particular, accusing John of being a worthless vagrant and threatening to shoot him. Real or not, this was understandably intimidating to John, who is neither mentally nor physically robust. To make matters worse, the man returned later when most people had left and repeated the threats. When Ron visited later, John was in such a state of fear that Ron did not hesitate to take him away. To me the correct action was very simple, it was time for the Mounties to get their man and so I told Ron to report the incidents to the RCMP immediately, which they did. It is still not clear to me why someone had not done this earlier.


The Mounties went to visit the abusive man the following day and so far this has been enough to deter any further incidents. However, it is still a concern and I suspect we have now discovered who it was that made the complaints about John camping near the highway. I have dropped in to check on John a couple of times but he was not in on each occasion and so I left some groceries in the camper. I did, however, manage to speak to him on the phone and was very pleased to hear that he had landed a few days work in Cranbrook doing some yard work for someone, who put him up while the work lasted.

John's new home, much nicer than the camp site by Highway 3.

His view looking west over the Haha Lake.

In other respects, it has been a good week. I have been fortunate enough to discover four eagles' nests with sitting birds and I shall watch them all with interest as they incubate their eggs and bring up their young. I have also been lucky to receive several trout from Tex and Kevin who have been fishing in the evenings. One was a rainbow trout, which was delicious and was still wriggling when I received it from Tex. It was nothing, however, in comparison to the three Steelhead (I think) trout they gave me on Thursday, whose flesh was an orangey pink and tasted more like salmon than trout. They had to wait until Friday to be eaten because on Thursday it was Ron's birthday and I joined him and his family and a few friends from Wardner for celebrations in the evening. It was heart warming to see Ron's friends and family around him.

I have been promising to tell you about wood licensing in BC and now is the time. One can download from the internet, at no cost, a fire wood licence. It permits you to collect dead wood on Crown land, of which (as you are now aware) there is no shortage here. The only restriction is that you can only transport lengths up to 4 ft long. This is no real inconvenience other than the requirement to cut it on site if needs be. This restriction is to prevent the commercial exploitation of resources for purposes other than for fire wood. The great benefit of course is that there is an endless supply of winter fuel, all you need to do is to go and collect it. The benefit to the forest is that it helps clear the forest floor of dry dead wood that, if it is not removed, presents a serious fire hazard.

There is also another type of licence available to the general public that permits the collection of dead wood, standing or on the ground, up to 12 ft (3.60m) in length. For this license you have to pay a small license fee of about $12. There are restrictions about where, what and how the wood can be collected but these are easily accommodated. This license is very useful for people, like myself, who want or need wood for projects such as mine, furniture making, wood hobbies etc. On Thursday I had a fascinating, educational day with Kevin, who took me out into the forest to look at and for wood with a view to me applying for one of these 'wood salvage' licences, which I did on Friday, requesting up to 50 cubic metres of Lodge Pole pine. Kevin showed me how to identify the different types of wood and what to look for in order to get suitable wood for spindles, railings, furniture etc.  I can now identify fir, from pine, from larch etc and know what diameters I need for the various things I want to make. We also identified several areas where there is, frankly, so much wood that I could harvest it for my requirements for years without making much of an impression on it. Apparently, you can have several of these licences, covering different areas, running concurrently.

On the current ops front it has been a slow week. We had to wait all week for the replacement rafters from the Indian Reservation Mill but they were available on Friday and we went down to collect them and took them up to the site ready for putting them in place next week. Most of the week therefore was spent on less glamorous work, such as trimming the final gable ends to match the 12:12 pitch of the rafters and putting in place fir blocks under the sub-flooring.

This is one of the valley rafters that was rotten. Looking at it now it is easy to spot but, when it was wet, covered in snow and under all the other timber, it was less easy to see. Anyway the mill manager, Raymond, came out to the site on Monday, inspected the rotten timber and agreed to replace it, free of charge.

The four replacement timbers on site. Now we can finish the roof framing and make a start on some of the other, remaining tasks.

Cutting the gable ends was not easy. I had been waiting for the rafters closest to the gable to be removed before attempting this with the chainsaw. In the event my own chainsaw proved too light weight to handle the task. I think the motor is now well and truly knackered and the chain needs replacing. I just hope that there is enough strength left in the motor for fire wood cutting and collecting the 'salvage wood'. I had to use Owen's, larger, saw and by the end of the job his chain was also U/S and will need shortening or replacing.

But, the job is now done and as you can see here the gable end now conforms to the line of the rafters and the SIPs will sit comfortably on both. The SIP panels have been ordered and all that remains for us to do now is pass the final measurements to the supplier who will cut them, so they can be lifted into place without further cutting on site. They should be with the supplier in 3 - 4 weeks and then a couple of days to cut them and they should be ready for collection/delivery. I am impatient for that to happen, in order to get some protection over the structure.

Beneath the sub-flooring I have been busy cutting, rubbing down and fitting blocks of fir to fill the gaps between the beams and sub-flooring. I will need to do this in several places and have been using left-overs from the rafters. I estimate I will just have enough wood to complete the job without having to buy any more wood.

I have also had a few uninvited guests. On Thursday evening on my way to Ron's I was showing the house off (I am sure she didn't mind) to Susan, a friend of Ron's parents, when I noticed a bird's nest on the beams under the sub-flooring. As I removed it, we noticed a North American Robin coming in with some more nesting material. She waited patiently on the gable of my bedroom dormer, mouth full of more grass, for me to leave and watched as I destroyed her day's work. When I returned on Friday she had replaced the nest and there was the beginnings of a second beside it. I removed them as well but on Saturday I found another, in another corner which, I also removed. I guess they will eventually get the hint. At least they are not woodpeckers.

I may be a little late publishing my blog next weekend because I have agreed to attend a trade show in Cranbrook in support of my contractors, which runs from Friday through to Sunday. So I am planning on publishing late on Sunday evening.

Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the gate:

The industry show/exhibition in Fort McMurry (I was right) went remarkably well and my contractors landed a number of contracts for providing wood packages for people to have their houses built with. They travelled back on Sunday evening, an 11 hour drive, arriving back in Jaffray at about 0600 hrs on Monday morning. So I was alone at the property on Monday and because the forecast was for rain and grey skies all week, I thought that it was the last good opportunity I was going to get, before next winter, to burn some of the rotten wood that has been sitting idly by since I started to clear the land.

The threat of forest fires is a constant danger here and therefore burning has to be done under tight control. So I connected up one of the pipes I used last year for running water to the trailer and started by thoroughly soaking the ground around the wood piles. I then lit one end of the pile and used the hose to restrict the size of the burn and to control its spread through the pile. It worked remarkably well. Most of the wood was pretty wet anyway and I had no difficulty in controlling the fire. On more than one occasion I was nearly too zealous with the hose and was in danger of putting the fire out. Better to be on the safe side though.

Really, I don't know why I even bother to listen to the weather forecast because a forecast week of rain and grey skies blossomed into the best week so far this year. The temperatures rose to the mid 20s degrees C and the sun shone almost all day every day. It's amazing what a few days of good weather can do. The last of the ice has gone from the foundation holes for the decking; the ground is drying out and firming up; much more is achieved in work terms at the build, and; morale is improving correspondingly.

I started the fire at about 0830 hrs, controlling the burn with a water hose. 

By mid-day most of it was gone with only a few large tree stumps smouldering on. While I was standing guard over the fire a herd of about 20 deer wondered on to the property to graze the new green shoots appearing everywhere, seemingly oblivious to either me or the fire. One even came to within about 10 ft of me while I was sitting on a tree stump eating my lunch and didn't seem to notice me until I reached for my camera, at which point she took off. 

It was after 2100 hrs in the evening before I was happy to leave the last of the smouldering remains.

By the end of the week there was virtually nothing left and the drive onto the property looks much smarter now.

The rest of the week we put to good use continuing the process of putting the heavy rafters in place.

When we finished putting in all the 'common' rafters we started on the 'jacks' which go down to the valleys. Here on the front of the house where the garage roof meets the main cabin roof. Getting the angles right for these cuts was quite a challenge but I was very pleased with results - for these two anyway.

Next up were the 'jacks' for the 'Dodgy Valley' seen here from inside the bonus room above the garage. The more eagled eyed will have noticed that the 'jacks' sit up on the valleys. This is to ensure that SIP panels sit on the centre of the valleys, thus maintaining their angle and hence support.

We also put in place the 'lock' or 'key' block for ensuring the beam that goes out over the great room prow remains in place. I don't think there was much chance of it moving anyway because it has several large bolts and screws in it but, the 'key' block sure looks neat.

Finally, on Saturday, I put up the first of the internal stud walls up stairs. This is the wall at the south end of the landing with the master bedroom on the left and the 'en suite' on the right, on the far side.

From the other side. I'm waiting for the prow rafters to go in before I can put the wall in on the other (right) side of the beam.

Before I left the site yesterday I took this photo to show what the place now looks like from a distance. Again, the eagle eyed may have noticed that the two rafters closest to the gable on the south (right) end of the main cabin are no longer there. It was decided that these were not need and would be better used elsewhere.

We are still waiting for some heavy timbers from the Indian Reservation saw mill, to replace ones that we discovered had some dry rot in them. before we can complete the roof framing above the prow. This is the final bit of the roof framing to do before the roof is ready for the SIP panels. I have also started to clear out the garage in readiness for pouring concrete there shortly and I must start thinking about rendering the ICF blocks showing above ground level, before we start to put the framing for the decking in place.

On the G1 front, manpower resources are stretched. We have lost Mark (again), who has decided to do something else, I know not what. He will be sorely missed as he was a good worker but, he wasn't happy and so I wish him luck in his next endeavours. Kyle, however, finishes his carpentry course at the end of next week and so he may soon be back. Tex has been away too, for a few days helping out a friend in desperate need of assistance with a project but, he should be back by the end of the coming week. Byron is no longer with us and I don't think will be returning in the foreseeable future.

On the G4 front, I was hoping to be living in the cabin by now, or getting close to it at least but, I can't really do that until the cabin is finished to 'lock up' and there is water and electricity.  This is still some time away yet. I shall therefore be staying where I am in the cabin in Jaffray, where I have been all winter, until the work to 'lock up' is complete. I was also hoping to host my nephews here in June, when they break up for the summer holidays, from their school in Kansas. I am not going to be in a position to do this now and therefore I have reluctantly had to delay their visit and hope they will be able to come up in September time.

On the road into the development there is a cattle grid (Texas gate for my North American friends). Ever since I have been here there has been a chipmunk who, save when it has been seriously cold, greets me most mornings and ducks down below the grid as the jeeps goes over the top. I have come to see him as the gate guardian into the property and a while back gave him the name Janus, after the Roman god who was the guardian to the gates of heaven. Recently however, I have noticed that Janus is not alone and that he has two friends, a red squirrel and a grey and they each seem to take it turns to guard the entrance to the development. So, I have decided to name the three Horatius, Spurius Lartius and Herminius, who defended the bridge into Rome against the forces of Lars Porsena of Clusium. What else could I do?

Not to be discouraged .......

Well, it's Sunday again and time for the blog. I have decided not to start off bemoanly, complaining about lack of resources slowing progress or bad weather delaying things. Easter Monday, of course, was a holiday for everyone except me and so I made good use of it uncovering the foundation holes for the decking to allow them to start to thaw out and clearing up some of the mess left over from last week.

My Contractor had an industry show/exhibition to attend at the end of the week, where he had a stand to advertise his company and what they can do. Therefore, the crew spent Tuesday and Wednesday building new exhibits and refurbishing old ones and on Thursday they all travelled up to Fort McMurry, I think, to attend the show. I'll find out how it all went when they get back next week. Talking to my neighbours, my experience with my Contractors is not unusual - for BC.

So I was alone on the site this week. I spent it digging ice and rocks out of the decking foundation holes that I started airing on Monday and doing all those small jobs that I have been putting off because they were either too tedious or too difficult to do at the time. Often these have been little things that went wrong at the time of doing them in the first place and I said 'I'll fix that later when I've got the time (and the inclination)'. Well, there was no shortage of inclination and I certainly had the time and no excuses not to get them done. Actually, they were quite satisfying and the opportunity do get them done was fortunate because some of them needed doing before more progress can be made. I lost one day due to bad weather.

I have decided to spare you the photos of clean foundation holes, replaced lag bolts and log screws etc and have decided to give you a look at some of the larger jobs undertaken this week.

I cut a 'jack' rafter for the 'dodgy' valley but, it was too heavy to hold in place with one hand and secure with the other. So putting it in place will have to wait until the team comes back and until then it is sitting, waiting, on the scaffolding.

Using the chain saw, I trimmed the end of the beam coming in from the bonus room above the garage. A rafter will come down from above it and a stud wall will go up beneath the beam and contain a stud post to support it, at which point the temporary post (on the right) can be removed.

I also put in the thin strip you can see here. Previously, there had been support only under the joists, where the vertical lines of nails are, but building codes require solid wood along the whole length. Putting the new strip in was easy. Getting the old, smaller, supports out, which were nailed from top and bottom, was the difficult bit.

The bonus room from above.

Looking the other way.

And out over the second bedroom.

As it was raining, I decided to take my admin day on Thursday this week. That freed up the weekend for doing some more kitchen and bathroom research and I took Saturday off to go down to Eureka just over the border in the good old US of A, to visit the builders' merchant there again, in order to talk to the kitchen and bathroom man. You will recall that I last tried to visit this place on a Sunday only to find it closed.  Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that the Kitchen man works every day, except Saturdays.

Not to be discouraged, I thought I would make good use of my time by visiting the local shipping agent to arrange to have things delivered there, that I order online from the States. This saves the hugely more expensive cost of shipping things directly to me in Canada and, as it is not much of an inconvenience to nip over the border to collect things, it is well worth the trouble. Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that I had visited the agent on the one Saturday of the month when the office is not open.

Not to be discouraged, I decided to visit a little, er, shall we say Bistro for a bite to eat, that had been recommended to me by a friend. I had been informed that it was 'the best place in Eureka to get something to eat.  Much better than MacDonalds, A&W, Burger King etc.  The burgers are real and the BLT's to die for'.  Imagine my disappointment therefore to be served up with a tasteless BLT with burnt stringy bacon.

Not to be discouraged I decided that, as it was such a lovely day, I would drive over to see the southern end of Lake Koocanusa and here my luck changed, for a while at least. I drove over to Rexford, about 10 miles to the west of Eureka, a settlement of about 20 wooden buildings including the post office, pub and general store. The rest of the place is a trailer park for about 300 holiday homes, most of them permanently established, well situated and cared for.

On the way to Rexford, I passed this little bridge and couldn't resist taking a photo. For some reason it reminded me of the 'Bridges of Maddison County.' I felt a bit like the character, played by Clint Eastwood, who was a photographer but, I couldn't see any trace of a lonely housewife (Meryl Streep).  Anyway, I was in Lincoln County not Maddison.

Koocanusa Lake (resevoir) is lowered during the winter in readiness for the spring thaw and where I am, at the north end of the lake, it is just the main river channel that has water in it at the moment. Down at Rexford however, there is water, which by the way is already starting to come up.

I spent a few moments beside the lake contemplating the meaning of life when I thought that it was too early to go home and that a nice drive down to the south end of the lake, to see the Libby Dam, was a good idea and from there take a look at the map to decide a suitable route home. Just south of Rexford is the only bridge in the USA that crosses the lake and, so I thought, it presented a good option for the return journey.

I was rather hoping to see some bears and possibly a cougar but, these mountain sheep, quite a rare sight, literally hundreds of deer, a few eagles and a few dozen turkeys were a good bag for the day.

At the dam I got out of the car, stretched my legs and took this photo. Interesting to note the high water marks on the dam wall.

The Dam, from the other side. The Dam is run by the US Army Corps of Engineers. From here I decided to continue on to the town of Libby, about another 17 miles down the trail.

Libby is the 'City of Eagles' and the good burghers of the town are proud to display them ......

..... wherever they can. 

In Libby, I wisely decided to fill up with fuel. I had noticed on my drive down from Eureka (about 50 miles) that there wasn't a single filling station, or for that matter a house, and I met only two cars coming the other way. It was a very pleasant drive but not the sort of road you want to run out of fuel on. I also had a look at the map and decided on a circular route back to Eureka via Yaak, deep in the mountains of Northern Montana, a journey of about 150 miles. This route, I thought, would give me the best chance of seeing a bear or a cougar and it looked remote enough to be a bit of an adventure.

The road up to Yaak from Libby quickly deteriorated in size, quality and condition. After a few miles it reduced to a single lane, hemmed in by deep snow banks on either side. In the 50 miles or so up to Yaak, I met only one car coming the other way, but, fortunately, in a place where one of us could pull over. The local homes and huts also started to deteriorate the further up into the mountains I went and images from the film 'Deliverance' began to cast their shadows over me. A sign warning visitors that this is a "Grizzly Habitat" even gave me hope of seeing a bear. Eventually, the road itself was covered with snow and I began to wonder if I had missed a sign saying the road was closed. After I traversed the pass at the top of the climb the road began to wind its way down to Yaak and slowly it improved.

Now Yaak is rather odd, but I suspect not a particularly unusual community for these remote back-woods parts of the country. I am sure there was some sort of a community here long before the 60's and 70's but, at about that time the hippies and draft dodgers discovered that it was a place where they could escape to. There is a bar and a general store there, but little else other than a number of scattered dwellings hidden away from the road in the woods.

 A yurt dwelling in the woods at Yaak...

.... and a teepee were but two of the odd variety of dwellings that exist up here. Most were rather shabby wooden sheds seemingly put together with very few resources.

Yaak sits on a T junction of the road from the south, that I came in on, and an east-west route (508) that should have provided me with a route back to the bridge over Koocanusa Lake. So I turned east and headed up, deeper into the mountains once again. After a few miles steady climbing, the road narrowed and snow banks once again began to hem the road in. The dwellings ceased and there was a shabby sign at the side of the road on which I could just make out that, the road was not maintained from this point onwards.

Not to be discouraged, I reminded myself that I've been in worse situations than this before and so, confident that my winter survival kit, complete with axe, machette, snow shovel etc, would get me out of most situations, I decided go on. The thought of retracing my steps and taking the long way back was enough to disuade me from turning around and besides, if I was going to see a bear or a cougar this was the best chance I was likely to get. As I continued, the forest on either side became more and more primordial and after a few more miles there was a large snow pile on the road baring the way.

Not to be discouraged, I could see that the road was relatively clear on the other side and so I got the snow shovel out and, with the help of the axe to cut the ice, I cut a path through to the other side of the pile. The jeep had no difficulty in negotiating this and, after about half an hour, I was on my way again. The road continued to climb and the conditions got worse and worse until eventually, in about 18 inches of old snow the wheels began to spin.

Not to be discouraged, and with a steep drop on one side of road, I decided it was time to put the snow chains on. For this I had to back down the road a short distance to a place where the ground was firm enough for me to work with the snow chains. Backing down the slope was interesting enough but, I managed it OK after a couple of pushes forward to straighten up the line. 'Well', I thought, as I lay in the snow wrestling with the snow chains, 'this is the time for a grizzly or a cougar to appear.'

With the snow chains on, I resumed my attempt to get to the top of the pass, which I thought couldn't now be very far away. I managed to get another mile or so up the road before the snow just got too deep and I ground to a wheel spinning, ignominious defeat. At about the same time it also decided to snow.

Not to be discouraged, I thought - 'hey, that was fun, it's about 6 o'clock in the evening so lets go back to the pub in Yaak, have something to eat and find out what Yaak is all about.' Getting back down the slope produced more adrenaline than going up it but, I managed it eventually, got the chains off and drove all the way back to Yaak where the barmaid, herself an old hippy who had left Chicago over thirty years ago at the tender age of 23 to come to this remote place to live, cooked me a real burger and told me all about Yaak. I eventually got home via the western route at about midnight, having had a thoroughly good day, despite not seeing a bear or a cougar. Now don't you just wish you had been with me?

Far from the madding crowd

The weather forecast for last week was pretty awful and therefore the contractor laid his boys off for a week. They hadn't had a break since Christmas and as a break for Easter was due anyway, it was a fair call. Of course, that didn't take into account the reliability of weather forecasters and, true to form, last week the weather broke early and for most of the week it was fantastic.  By Wednesday, I finally put away my long Johns and stripped down to a T shirt and had my faithful old Slouch hat on, on most afternoons.

Mark was the one worker who didn't go away and so I managed to pull him out to the site on three days.  Owen and Kevin also came out on Friday and we managed to get two of the large valleys in place including the 'dodgy' valley, as it has become known, on the rear of where the garage and main cabin roofs meet - see the photos, its much easier than trying to explain. We also put in all five short rafters from the main beams down to the dormers and with those in place and the final sanding and replacing of the screws on the gable end, the framework for the roof above the bonus room (garage) is now complete - hurray.

There is still a lot of work to do to finish the main roof and on Friday we discovered that one of the valleys for the prow has a lot of rot and therefore will have to be replaced before we can put it in. We may also need some more timber, especially for the 'jack' rafters which go down to the valleys.

The first and ....

... second short rafters down to the dormers in the bonus room, which together with the finishing touches to the gable end render the roof framing above the garage complete.

Next up was to put in a short rafter above the prow beam and ......

.... and one down to the beam that comes in from the garage to show us where the tops of the valleys are going to be.

Then the north gable of the main cabin was extended down to meet the roof above the bonus room and we were ready to put in the 'dodgy' valley which ....

... after much fiddling about to work out the angles, went in surprisingly easily.

Finally for this week, we put in the valley on the other side of the 'dodgy' valley and Bob's your uncle, as they say.  Actually, this was easier said than done as the valley was very heavy and four of us were required to carry it into the great room from where we pushed it up onto the top floor. My back, bye the way, is much better and I hope it will not be long before I can pull (carry) my weight again.  So I should say it took three and a half men to put these valleys in place. 

I had an admin day on Saturday and got in some much needed groceries.  In the evening Ron phoned and invited me to join him and some others from Wardner to go out to the mud flats and watch 'a bunch of rednecks' (his words not mine) bogging their trucks in the mud on Sunday. This, I was reliably informed is an annual ritual, and is a great spectator sport.  On Saturday, apparently, there were several hundred participants and spectators and the partying went on until two o'clock in the morning. Today, Sunday, there were fewer people but is was still fun and we drank sodas and beer and cooked hot dogs over a camp fire while we watched all the lunatics doing their thing. 

There were some serious .....

.... and some not so serious vehicles on display.

Sometimes, even the serious ones managed to bog themselves in, .... 

... much to the appreciation of the onlookers.

On my way back from getting my groceries yesterday I saw John Sheppard, the homeless man, on the side of the road outside Cranbrook and gave him a lift back to his camp site. I felt guilty that I hadn't bought him any supplies. He is planning on moving in about two weeks time and, as he hadn't seen it yet, I drove him up to the place where he is moving to, so he could see what it is like. It is a very pleasant spot facing south west, overlooking Ha Ha Lake (actually a large pond) across the Ha Ha Road. It is four kilometres from the Highway but it is a much nicer spot than he is in at the moment and he won't have to go into town everyday to get water. Ron is also going to lend him a bicycle to use to get from his accommodation to the Highway, from where he can hitch a ride into town. As I said to him. Every cloud has a silver lining.

I thought that this week I would publicly answer a question that has been posed to me privately by several friends in recent weeks. The answer, I am sure, will be of wider interest because I imagine there are many others who, have been thinking the same question but, have been too shy to ask. Am I still enjoying this project or, is it becoming a lonely chore? Let me be very clear about this. Building this cabin in the wilderness of British Columbia is one of the best, most enjoyable, interesting and stimulating projects that I have ever undertaken. It combines a number of themes that, coming together, are providing me with the opportunity of achieving something that, for me, is quite special.

Building a log cabin was a dream, the origins of which go back a very long way but, which had faded as the years rolled by and was in very great danger of being lost on the pile of things that we are going to do 'someday' but, somehow, we never actually get around to doing. So too with the desire to live closer to nature. And not the nature of neatly manicured pastures and meadows or rough moors of the English countryside, as beautiful and wonderful as they are. But, the nature of the wilderness, of mother earth before man stamped his indelible mark on the land. Nature, where you can still feel the rhythm of the untamed wild on a scale so vast that it is humbling just to look at it. The nature of a wilderness where living in close proximity with the flora and forna is not with the comfort of being at the top of the food chain.  Where feeling alive is in harmony with your surroundings and peace is found far from the madding crowd. A wilderness which is receding every year but which is still here for us to enjoy.

True, there are challenges, worries, frustrations, mistakes, lessons learned. True, there is a price to pay, and we are not talking money here. True, it has taken me out of my comfort zone at a time in life when many are thinking about settling into easy retirement. True, the path that brought me here was a painful one. True, there are risks and fears. True it is taking longer to build and costing more than I planned. True, I miss Sarah and the children. True, there are feelings of guilt.

But. Challenges bring out the best in us. Nothing worth having comes without a price to pay, and we are not talking about money here. Stepping out of our comfort zone means we are experiencing something new in life and isn't that what it's all about. In every adversity there is an equal and opposite benefit, it only needs to be found and with every crisis there is an opportunity. It is not what happens to you in life, it is how you deal with it. I expected delays and anticipated cost over-runs so, disappointing and frustrating as they are, they are not a surprise. As a product of the English boarding school system from the age of eight, I have been well prepared to face solitude and there is so much here to keep me amused. Guilt, you will appreciate, is between me and my maker.

So the answer to the question is, an unequivocal no, it is not a lonely chore.  I am thoroughly enjoying the experience of building the cabin and I look forward to enjoying a new lifestyle close to the wilderness when it is finished. It is also a source of great pleasure to share this experience with you through this blog and it will be a greater one to share this wilderness with you in the future.

It never rains but it pours...

A very disappointing week. We lost two days to poor weather and another two to no generator.  It rained so much that water somehow managed to get into the generator fuel tank and contaminate the fuel.  This is despite the fact that the generator has been sitting under cover in the garage. Not that we realised that this was the problem when we couldn't start the generator but, after a few hours of diagnostics we eventually narrowed it down to the fuel supply.  We thought it was a problem in the carburettor but when we took it in to be fixed the professionals discovered it was contaminated fuel.  It was quickly fixed but we still lost two working days.

Having said that, we did manage to put the remaining valleys in the dormer roof frames and added the short rafters for all of them as well.  They went in very quickly and just shows what could be achieved if only the weather would let up, which it is forecast to do at the end of the coming week.  So hopefully only another week of frustration to cope with.

The arrival of spring and warmer, if not nicer, weather has triggered the genetic spring cleaning clock in me and this weekend I had a sudden urge to clean things up around the property. I have done some yard work clearing off cuts from the building lumber that have been gathering in the garage and stacking them on the firewood pile.  I have also been collecting rocks to line the driveway banks. This is tiring work and there is still lots to do but, at least I have made a start. I have also taken the chains off the quad tyres, now that the snow has gone and what more falls will last only for a few hours.  I have, however, decided to leave the blade on the quad. I might need this in a few weeks time to help smooth out some of the ground around the cabin.

Here you can see some of the problems that all the rain is causing. I have since drilled holes in the floor to let the water drain through the floor, siting them where the water can go down harmlessly into the garage below. The basement has half an inch of water in it as well but this always dries quite quickly and I am less concerned about it.

The dormer over the en-suite bathroom now complete with valleys and rafters.

The same for the dormers in the bonus room, ......

.... the second bedroom and ...

the master bedroom - not that it is any larger than the other bedroom.

The beams jutting out from the bedroom dormers have also been trimmed and shaped.

Haven't shown you this view for a while.

While the generator was away being repaired, we decided to make use of the time, back at the contractor's workshop, making spindles for the deck and banister railings. The process started here, where the spindles that I had cut two weeks ago out at the property were cut to size (33") by me on this chop saw. When we ran out of the spindles that I had cut we used wood that Kevin had found and cut on Crown land. More about cutting and collecting wood on Crown land later.

I passed them over (bottom left) to Tex who stripped them and shaped them.

He then passed them to Byron (a poet in another life) who trimmed the ends ready for putting into the railings. Note the spindles top left, peeled and shaped by Tex. The finished article bottom left.

I took my turn on all three tasks and managed to cut the cord to the planer but, we quickly fixed it.

Sorry about the quality of the last few photographs. The camera on the iPhone didn't seem to like the dark light in the workshop.

On the G1/G4 front there have been some hits as well. Poor John the homeless man that I have told you about has been told by the Forestry Service that he must pack up and quit his camp. They have given him a month to get out and have said that they received a complaint from someone. They wouldn't say what the complaint was or who complained, only that there had been one and he must move. All of us who have been helping John are very angry at what has happened and last week Ron was going to the office of the local MP to complain. I haven't had any feedback from this yet.

I really don't understand what there was to complain about. John keeps a very clean and tidy little camp which is hidden away in the forest on crown land and he is as quiet as a mouse. He really isn't a nuisance to anyone and therefore I am finding it very difficult to understand what there was to complain about.  There is a law about camping on crown land which specifies that you are only allowed to stay in one place for two weeks but this is really intended to stop people building permanent residences or occupying popular sites for too long and denying them to others. John was doing neither of these things and someone is being very small minded.

On the bright side, it is rumoured that, someone who has a small out-house on their property may offer it to John, while he tries to find an alternative site or accommodation.  Anyway, we will do what we can and Ron and I, and probably one or two others, will help him move.