Gifts from God, Lessons for Me

I wrote this two nights ago. We did not have Internet for a while so I could not post. I wanted to write it while it was still very near to me, and hopefully the feelings come through.


Gifts from God! Blessings in disguise! Two lessons I hope I learned. Two near tragedies, both will turn out OK, one already has.
I received this email from a neighbor a couple of miles away, this morning. I had also received a couple of phone calls before this.


Missing anything? Andy says he retrieved your boat as it drifted past his place this AM.... I advised him to bring it over to our lake for safe keeping till the water goes down a bit. Looks like we had at least a 3 foot rise overnight.....
Tom 733-2716 or 863-5428 cell


As you may have guessed, our boat came loose while we slept and it headed down river, all by its self. This can easily turn very bad in a hurry if it gets caught on a tree along the edge of the river or goes into a gravel bar, the fast current can easily overturn it and sink it. Andy owns King Bear lodge across from Lake Creek about 6 miles downriver from us. They saw our boat drifting about 6:15am and called us as they headed out the door to go get it; we slept thru the phone call. Andy and his son got our boat and luckily I had left the key in it so they could start it. They don’t have a boat big enough to tow our boat in high water and they would have had to just tie it to shore somewhere. Anyhow, they got it and brought it up to Fish Lakes Creek, which we can drive to on our ATV’s, over at Bentallit Lodge, aka the air strip. Tom owns Bentallit and shot me the email you see above. We went down to the river at our landing to look things over, the rope that we tie onto was fine and the anchor point was good. The river was indeed, over 3' higher than when I tied the boat the previous evening. We went to check out the boat and the other rope that we use from the boat to the shore rope was good. Conclusion, I did not tie a good knot when I got back from fishing. It was raining like heck, I was in a hurry to show Myra I was the great provider and had caught my first Silver and I did not tie it right. The boat was un-touched, not even a scratch. This is our first gift from God. PS: We left the boat in the lake until this water level goes down some. There are many floating trees coming down the river and no sense in giving one of those a chance to catch on our boat. We received a second call about 2 hours later that another boat was floating down river and did we know who might own that one. We didn't!

Gift number 2! Over the last week I have jacked the cabin up to with-in a few inches of the final desired height. Today I was taking it up that last few inches, nearing five feet high on the down hill side.




I had taken the picture above about noon, before I started lifting the cabin today. I had taken the cabin up the first lift and was half way through the final lift, it was going to be as high as it is going; when the supports let loose and the cabin fell. It went five feet west, two feet north and about five feet down. It crashed hard!

With all the rain we had yesterday the ground had softened and I was obviously not taking the right precautions with how high I had the cabin in the air. It is right now (as I type this) setting flat on the ground and debris, tilted about a foot down hill to the south (above picture). Here comes the gift part. Myra was outside, she had been moving dirt around getting started on the root cellar and using the dirt to level the trail to the boat. She had finished for the day and had just decided to watch me finish the last lift. The dogs were under the cabin while I was lifting it, as they usually were. I had lifted one corner a little and was walking to the other corner when I stopped to talk to Myra. Jeff came out from under the cabin toward us. We spoke for about 15 seconds, I don’t remember what about, and all of a sudden the cabin took off on its spill. We saw Hans run for the back of the cabin toward us, the cabin went forward and crashed. Hans had slid into one of the holes I had dug to get under the cabin when I first started the project. He slithered out from under and took off down the trail. It took us 3 or 4 minutes to get him to come back, but he did. No ONE hurt. The cats were shook up, mentally and physically, but OK.
The cabin was a mess inside with things thrown all over. Only one broken dish and it was one that was left here by the previous owners.

No windows broke, the door still opens and no holes in the floor where it crashed down on things. The little generator is under the cabin but I can see it and it looks like it may have survived, time will tell. I am typing this on Word and will have to cut and paste this into the blog (obviously have). We do not have satellite at the moment; Ya think the dish might have moved a little?
By the time you read this, I will have already leveled the cabin and begun to pick it up again. I won’t reset the dish until the cabin is level, just too much hassle. I will have found a new way to set the cabin temporarily, as I lift, so I don’t have to depend on the same system that just failed. I don’t think I want to do the same thing over again and expect a different result. I will do it different.
It was a day full of lessons, followed with blessings. The weather was gorgeous, the boat is un-hurt, the cabin will survive and no one got hurt! I have learned a few things today. The lessons may be tough to receive but I obviously needed them.
I am Grateful for many things today and I am glad to be able to share with you!
Thanks for being here with us. (and yes, I cried a little too) Roger

I need to add a few more notes, It's a day and a half later now: The cabin is on it's way back up. I have got some things out from under it and still can't get a couple of things. The little generator still runs but looks a little worse for wear. The gas tank is a little smaller now because it got crushed a little.

I have not been able to get a few things out yet. This is a tote and other things still under the cabin (below).

This is the new support system for the cabin going back up again, and the cabin on it's way back up; To stay this time, I hope and pray. This is a very long post, Thank You for taking the time to let me share. I truly am blessed to be here today.

Roger

Now that I am finally done shaking and can breathe again I just have to agree with Roger that we are truly blessed. What could have been a horrible tradegy wasn't. It has been a real rollercoaster ride the last couple of days emotionally and hopefully this particular ride is coming to an end soon. I am truly grateful and blessed to be typing this today. Blessings to all of you, Myra

Home from town

Hi Everyone, As usual it took longer in town than we anticipated. We still have not adjusted to what it takes to get everything in an orderly fashion in a single pass thru town. While we are at home we make a list of everything we are going to town to get, then we add to the list on the way to town (it takes 4 hours total to get there so we might as well do something). Of course there is always that thing that you think of while in town, then when I buy something for the cabin it needs install parts or supplies that don't come with it and the place I bought it is out and then, and then, and then.
So this trip here is the short list of what we did: Laundry (we hauled it to town for the first time instead of doing it by hand) We sold the truck in Anchorage an additional hour away, We bought 4 ea 530 amp hour batteries for the cabin - they weigh 113 pounds a piece, we purchased a used On-Demand water heater from a very talkative lady (on craigslist), we bought a Toyo fuel oil furnace for back up heat for the cabin, we picked up a "fixed wireless" phone system from the phone company for the cabin, we got the ATV part, we bought groceries, a pressure tank for our new water system, propane parts for our new water heater, chimney parts for the new furnace, and on, and on, and on. Oh yea, we also had dropped off and picked up the boat from the repair shop and I added a 28 gallon auxiliary fuel tank to the boat myself, while in town.
All in all it was a very boring trip, can you tell?

Now I gotta tell you a true story. We went to look at a freight sled that attaches to the snow machines (cause we will need to go to town in the winter also) that was listed on craigslist. We followed the guys directions to his place down the end of a dirt road (not unusual around here). This was on the way to drop off the boat at the repair shop so we still have the boat. We get to the end of this dirt road and here is a "salvage yard" full of stuff. There is a $40,000 camper in the middle of all this stuff and that is the guys home. There are tires and trailers and snow machines and trucks and scrap steel and you name it, stacked everywhere. We are at the end of a road that stabs right into the middle of this stuff and there is nowhere to turn around a pickup truck and a 22' long boat. NO WHERE! We look at the sled and it is a good one but not the style I am looking for so we gotta get out of here. We start backing down the road, we go about 500 feet and there is a little turn off, it is tight but I think I can get turned around. I pull into this drive and dropped the boat in a small ditch. It is not a big deal, but it is too tight to back back out so I have to pull on through into the driveway. There are no trespassing signs posted every 10 feet and I am not kidding, but now we are into it. The driveway is so narrow that the weeds and tree branches are rubbing the truck, and it is curvy. The boat is rubbing on everything and I can't help it. We look up at this house once we go up this driveway and Charles Manson is standing on the top deck looking down at us. UH OH. Then pit bulls are running around all over, and then They show up, 2 people and one tooth. We are in the middle of the forest in a clearing near a house with pit bulls, Charles Manson and the zombies AND no where to turn around again. We just started laughing. Long story made shorter, We made the right impression in our old pickup and my long beard and hair and just coming in from the bush we fit in go figure, (see the picture of me fresh out of the shower). After talking to them for a minute the one with a tooth started to lead us on a path that circles the house and back to the driveway. After much jockeying around and tearing the front plastic valance off under the front bumper we got around their place and heading out the driveway the right direction. The one with no tooth lives in a truck camper that is setting on the ground with "sexy senior citizen" sticker on it, the one with a tooth lives in a broken motor home on the opposite corner of the clearing and Charles Manson apparently lives upstairs only, in the house, as the down stairs appeared to all open for the pit bulls including the ones still in cages and the fighting ring, from what we could tell. What a neat experience. Goes to show you that you can't judge people, they just want left alone to live their way and since we weren't hurting them, they chose not to hurt us. Whew!

We got back to the cabin about 8:00 last night (Friday Night) and hauled the stuff in that should not stay out in the wet. That means we hauled the new furnace, the water heater, the telephone system, the laundry, and the groceries. Two trips and another hour and a half later we started making popcorn for supper.

Another interesting side bar. On the way home I told Myra I had a very uneasy feeling that we had bears visit the cabin while we were gone. I was right but they did not do any real damage. The burning barrel is knocked over and has been worked over and dug thru and there are 8 piles of bear scat around it. From what I can tell it is a mother (very big) and at least one cub and probably two cubs. This is all judging from the size of the scat and the tracks. We are not in the habit of taking pictures of poop but this is by far the biggest pile I have seen out here. The good news is it is full of berries so it looks like they have plenty to eat.

Now there is a ton more work to do here. With all of the stuff we have purchased I will be working on plumbing, heating, electrical and telephone, besides, cutting wood, installing pilings (if it ever quits raining) digging the root cellar, building an Arctic porch, fixing an ATV, thinking about a real workshop and OH SCREW IT, I think I'll just go fishing.

See Ya, Thanks for reading!

Roger



Whew am I glad to be home! Those trips to town are exhausting and they seem to create an awful lot of work! LOL! Just have to keep reminding ourselves that some of this like putting in the fuel oil furnace and water heater are one time things (I hope!) and we won't have to do them all the time. Some things like cutting wood will be constant but hopefully we won't be playing "catch up" all the time.
The "turn around" experience was definitely a "trip" all of it's own. Glad I didn't have to get out of the truck while we were there! That toothless "sexy Senior citizen" was the scariest!
Oh one thing Roger forgot that we did in town was take Hans to the vet. He is good and healthy and already weighs 30# at 3 months old! The vet even said he is interested to see how big he gets. Hans does have HUGE paws and joints! We may have to add on to the cabin just for him. (Guess you will have to come back from fishing Roger).
Don't let Roger fool you either. The picture of him just shows what going to town can do to a person!!!!!! Even Jeff and Hans are glad to get home. Right now they are on the couch with me trying to play and making it very difficult to type. Creating some good laughs when they fall off though.
Well not much more to add at the moment. Guess I will have to get to work now. Put away the groceries and laundry,  make the bed, cook something for lunch and supper, help Roger with pilings (if no rain), and bringing the rest of the stuff from the boat, need to make some fire weed honey before the fire weed is gone. The locals say that once the fire weed has bloomed all the way to the top the first snow is only 6 weeks away and it has already bloomed a little over half way now. And the rose hips will be ready soon to make into a vitamin C rich jam. Oh yeah and need to clean inside, the dirt and dust never seem to end around here even with the rain.
OK I am with Roger, screw it let's go fishing! Oh poo that means cleaning the fish and getting them into the freezer (oops got to pick that up in town yet) and the beat goes on and on and on and on. It's all good.
Blessings and thanks for reading, Myra

Our Walk to the Boat

Every day at least once and sometimes twice I or We must go to the boat and check on it. We decided to take our cameras along tonight and show you a little of the trip. There are two reasons for the trip to the boat. Number one and most important is because the water level on the river changes so dramatically. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the river level can fluctuate 14" in one day, maybe even more but I have not put out a measuring stick and don't want to tell you wrong. With this much change in depth the boat ends up setting on the bottom, or floating to high against the shore. It Literally has gone from floating in the morning to me struggling to get it off of the mud in the afternoon and back to floating loose on the rope the next morning.
The river is fed from a glacier and if the sun hits the glacier or it gets real warm the glacier melts and the river goes up real quick. If it rains alot in the valley the river raises slowly. If It only rains a little or it is cool and cloudy the river drains just as fast as it goes up. I have set in the river with the GPS unit in the boat and drifted as slow as 3 MPH and I have set in the same area of the river and drifted as fast as 8mph. That is an amazing change and it can happen in under 12 hours.
So anyhow, I - We walk to the boat once or twice a day to tie it shorter or push it off the mud and let rope out or just do nothing depending on the river. Reason number two to walk to the boat twice a day is to check and see if bears have decided to visit and tear things up. Not that we could do anything about it by then unless we catch them in the act, but if we go there often it tends to keep our scent fresh and the bears away.
The dogs are hiding from us along the side of the trail. They do this then jump out at us, or come out behind us and run up on us. It is a neat game.

Myra is walking off to take a picture of the flower you see up close. Look at the height of the flowers compared to her. NO SHE is NOT that short.

The brown strip is the trail that we cut in for the ATVs and us, the weeds in the middle just insist on growing even though we travel this trail multiple times a day.

There are other wild flowers that I failed to take pictures of while they were in bloom and we will be making Jam from one of them, we will show you pictures of it when the time comes.

The mess in the yard behind Myra is from Peeling the logs for the Pilings. We only have a few left to do.

It is a great day to be alive,

Thanks for sharing this with us,

Roger

The walk to the river/boat is nice. There is always something beautiful to see, even if it is just the way a tree twists and bends or the bees gather pollen from the wildflowers.

I am looking forward to getting the pilings done as then maybe it will seem like things are moving a little quicker. At least there will be "visible" progress i.e. building the back porch, putting in the door to that porch. I am ready to get things "organized" LOL. At least somewhat.

Guess that's about it for me today so Take care and we will do the same.

Blessings, Myra