Day 11

Yesterday, I had my first shower in ten days. It felt like the warmth of a thousand sunny afternoons seeping into my bones.  Though I’d generally been lucky with the weather, it had still ranged from early summer sun to driving bitter rain. I’d dodged into town to use the shower of someone I knew, Andrew Merilees, a long-time resident and standup guy, who happened to be away. I bumped into another off-gridder, Chris, who had been doing his laundry and showering at Andrew’s for the past two years.

That was followed by an Americano at The Ground, a fantastic newish café, and a testament to the real importance of a good coffee shop for a healthy community.  Their espresso is strong, just like their Internet connection.

I did some grocery shopping at the Coop, gunning for enough stickers to trade in for a paring knife (although I might hold out for the large Santoku). Following my mentors’ advice, the backbone of my diet is now steak and eggs.  The other stuff is for colour. I still eat a lot of granola and chocolate, though I’ve eased back on the SideKicks considerably.

Today, I took time off from the building (floor girts are in) and bucked a couple of the snags that Rich had fallen, which could have possibly blown over in the future and hit the cabin.

A few days ago Rich had given me a lesson on how to sharpen the saw, today he walked me through how to buck a tree (having almost been killed by a widow-maker himself cutting down a tree last fall he wouldn’t have me drop the trees).  After he’d left, I overfilled the chain oil, then overflowed the gas, and with the greasy, highly flammable saw gunning, proceeded to forget half of what he’d told me.  I’ll learn.

Once I’d stacked the freshly cut rounds in the woodshed, I cleaned up for another run down to Abfam. This time I was looking at 60 – 2x6x16’s and 20 – 2x6x12’s. Enough for rafters and siding girts, the amount Rich and I added up while leaning against the poles and doing some rough mental math. I really had no concept exactly how much wood that would be.

After running a few errands I showed up at Abfam less than an hour before closing.  By the time I had found the appropriate piles and was done loading the 2x6x16’s, one by one, it was 5pm, and Rhonda, one of the Abbots, came by to see what I was up to.

The last time I’d bought lumber I’d kept her late.  But she’s appears to be an imperturbable woman. Wearing glasses and a worn Goretex jacket, she seems more like a professor from a liberal arts college in New England than someone you’d see feeding timbers into a wood planer.

She arrived to find, not only the tailgate of my (Rich’s) truck, sagging dangerously. But also the whole load teetering on the brink of dumping out.  Clearly the butt ends of a 16-foot log make it a different beast than straight 16-foot planks.   And I still had the 12-footers to load.

She regarded the situation coolly. “Pine’s slippery,” she said, “Once it gets going, it really gets going.” She slid the top planks experimentally in a friction test.

Once again, she stayed afterhours, expertly piloting the forklift to get me sorted. She lifted one end of the load, while I scrambled about the bed of the truck, shimming out the bottom to try and change the centre of balance. The tailgate still looked like it was about to fold like wet cardboard.

She offered that I might want to leave some of the 16-footers for another trip.

As I unstacked what I’d just stacked, she pulled around the back of the warehouse and reappeared with my 12-foot boards.  And so an hour and a half after the other mill workers had left I was finally out of her hair and back on the road.

I believe that I owe her one of those Friday special Gas Plus burgers.