The very happy part;
It had taken me probably a little over a year to get to this stage of putting up my first cabin that actually belonged to me.
Up to this point all the cabins I had worked on had belonged to someone else.
I had learned a lot, but had nothing of my own to show for it.
Now, after a year plus of taking down two buildings, hauling 20 plus tons of stone, having had the foundation dug, I was finally to a point where things were going up, instead of down.
I had hauled all the logs myself on a trailer behind my truck. Some logs weighing in at around 800 pounds.
Each cabin had over 70 logs.
I also hauled away as much of the old lumber from the house as I could that I thought I would use again. Much of it has been used again.
In this photo you can see seven of the nine logs I had to hew for this building.
But at least things were going up.
I had turned a corner.
The fear part comes in when I would think about spending all day hauling three pickup truck loads of stone and late in the afternoon I would stand back and look at the pile and it didn't seem very big.
Or at the end of a long day maybe I had only got one more row of logs up, four logs. Moving them from the pile of stored logs, to the ramps and back again to get another log.
And I would stand back and think I would never get this project done.
I loved (love) working with the old wood. But the project seemed too big for one person at times.
My friends at the time were not people you wanted working around sharp tools or heavy logs. If I asked for their help I would spend more time worrying they would get hurt than working.
And, truth be known, I like working by myself.
But still, when tired, it can seem too much.
Somewhere around this point I learned a big life lesson. Or at least a big log cabin life lesson.
Don't know where it came from, log falling on my head, wind in the trees. Doesn't really matter. I was just glad it came.
At some point on a project of this nature, a project that will take you a very long time, you have to stop looking at the big picture, how much you still have to do, how many logs still need to go up.
You have to just start looking at what you did that one day.
Remember that it really is a big accomplishment that you got four large logs up two feet above your head.
There was a point as I approached the second floor that I no longer could figure out how I was going to get the logs up any higher by myself. Had I reached my limit?
I made an appointment with a man's crew who did this for a living to see if they would do the work and how much it would cost. We came to terms.
But as the appointed time drew closer for them to come out and do the work I started to feel real bad and questioned my decision.
If I let them do the work, it would no longer be my baby. It would no longer be something I did.
Still not knowing how I would do it on my own, I called and cancelled them coming to raise the logs.
Eventually, as shown in the previous post, I came up with a way to do it.
I remember, although still a long way to go, on the day I got the last log up, on my way home, I stopped and bought a bottle of champagne and opened it with a then girl friend in celebration of another big step finished.
Sometimes in life you have to look at the big picture.
But other times you just have to look at just a small section of it.
Richard Proenneke, of Alone in the Wilderness fame, said in his diary (not a direct quote) "that part of the problem with much of our society now is that the young workers are not taught to see a job through from start to finish. So much of what we do is just one small part of a process."
I am proud of the fact that on this cabin, and now several others, I have seen the project through, start to finish.
Log Cabin Life Lesson101.
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