Emil's Cabin V - Lumber

     Emil again:
     "Never was one to put off 'til tomorrow.  Especially now.  At fifty-nine a man doesn't know how many sunrises he has left.  The war set that nail deep.  Don't want to say any more about the war than life's a gift.  Pure and simple.  Never regretted a moment of what I'd done in the past.  Yeah, I'd stumbled my way through a lot of things but regrets?  What good would they do me?  The way I see it, the past is the past.  Once done, learn from it and move on.  And do your best to not hurt anyone on the way."
     "I know, blah, blah, blah.  But I was sneaking up on a time where I could barely put in a full day's work.  Short and sweet, the clock was ticking.  Come fall I wanted a roof over my head and a fire in the wood stove.  My plan was to work the kid like a slave.  At eighteen he could sweat from sunrise to sunset and eat like a horse along the way.  A good night's sleep and Archie'd be ready to go at it again.  Only hoped I could keep up."
     "Before buying supplies we stopped at the sawmill atop the ridge above town to settle the bill and arrange delivery of my lumber."
     "Over the fall and winter I'd given a lot of thought as to how my cabin would look and how it'd be built.  A log structure appealed.  Log cabin in the woods alongside a stream sounded about as old school Minnesotan as all get out.  Maybe even hew the logs square and dovetail the corners like the Finlanders (or was that the Swedes?).  But given a moment of thought I decided this should be my own building as much as possible. Logs brought in outsiders with the skills to turn an idea into reality.  Had I been younger, a lot younger, I'd've had time to learn.  The gray hair on my head told me to do otherwise.  Heck, what I wanted was a place to live from ice out to ice up, not a philosophical statement.  Frame house it had to be.  Already knew how to build a stud wall and owned most of the tools."
      "I could simply've headed to the lumberyard, given them a supply list and written a check.  Easy as pie.  Except that again brought in other people from start to finish.  Their lumber, their machines.  As for me I didn't have the machines but I did have sixty-two acres, most of which was forest, a fair amount mature.  A lot of birch, mountain maple and big, big pines.  Some cedar along the brook.  Sure didn't like the idea of felling any of those trees but as I looked around one day in september, I realized the cabin was already standing around me, just in another form.  All I'd have to do was rearrange the shape of the trees."
     "First off was clearing a driveway and building site.  Thought I could do it in a few days.  Spent half a month at it.  In places the woods was a jungle-like thicket.  Good news and bad news.  No matter how the driveway was shaped, a few trees had to come down.  But those trees figured to near enough lumber to frame the cabin.  Had to bring in the Andersen's and their D-9 Cat to pull stumps and drop in fill to make a drivable track.  As to the driveway's course, I tried my best to follow what nature offered on the way to my building site.  She ended up as a shallow double S-curve close to a quarter mile long.  Still had a few rocks to move but that was where my nephew and his young back came in.  Also had a two ton come-along."
     "Over the months I'd felled enough extra timber to build a thirty-two by twenty-four foot, one story cabin with a little twelve by sixteen foot observatory centered atop.  Couldn't see a need for a basement so the building would rest on concrete piers and wood posts.  Figured on a lot of windows, 'specially up on the second floor.  Put a window seat/bed, desk and a few shelves up there.  Catch the breezes and watch the stream work its way to the sea.  Read and write surrounded by the peace of the northwoods."
     "Dropped the trees with a new yellow McCulloch chain saw.  Shortened the logs to eight and a half feet, peavied them to piles near the clearing or driveway.  Had the mill send up a boom truck and skidder to gather and bring the load down.  Yeah, there was no way of getting around the mill.  They had the machines and knowhow to do what was needed.  But at least the timber came from my little piece of the world.  Once there, the logs were turned into planks, studs, boards, paneling and flooring.  Next came the kiln for drying.  Finally the lumber was stacked and stored to await my call."
     "So that's why me and Archie were there.  I wanted to say hello to my wood.  Let the stacks know it wouldn't be long before they could go home.  I was itching to get started but we had a lot to do before the lumber was needed."