Five days ago, after a wonderful but unexpected two weeks in Trapper Creek being a badass with Alison and Matt, I went to Yukon Title and signed all of the required paperwork with shaking hands. I became a (slightly wobbly) property owner, just like that.
The lot was forested, accessible by road or trail but with no parking. I say was because it is all changing. As of today the lot features stacks and stacks of drying spruce, a clearing just the right size for a twenty-foot diameter yurt with a large deck, a cleared area ready to become a driveway, and a long trail connecting the two. Geoff, John and I have been earning our pizza (like ninja turtles!).
A plan!
Ripping logs for the trail
The deck site yesterday
The deck site today
We are cutting and stacking firewood as we go. With luck and planning, it’ll dry well. We’re piling slash to run through a chipper and use to mulch the trail as needed.
At the Fairbanks North Star Borough Community Planning office, I told the woman at the counter that I wanted to build a deck with a yurt on it.
“You mean a yurt with a deck on it?”
“No, that’s not really how it works.”
She looked at me like I was nuts, but she issued a zoning permit and a street address for me, so that’s something.
I guess what I am doing is a little different. Most people build where they have vehicle access for logical reasons. The neighbors up the road are building this summer too. Their lot is all dug up like a donut with a big hole in the middle, pretty much the opposite of mine. I like the privacy of my forested lot, and the mind-shift that will always be evoked by leaving the vehicle behind and walking through trees covered in snow or through horsetails and wild roses to the yurt whatever the weather – rain or cold or mosuitoes – I think it is important, so I am incorporating it by design.
Geoff, ever practical, points out that I will need a very long extension cord to plug in my vehicle when it gets cold. He suggests I get a generator in a locked box at that end of the property, warm that up with a cordless heat gun, then use it to heat up the engine block. Smartypants. I’ll figure that all out later I suppose.
This whole project is challenge after challenge. I went to the electric company yesterday and inquired about getting a hookup. Now I need to figure out how we are going to get a thirty foot power pole in there. And then how do we stand it up?
Then there’s the driveway. I went through a fear period where I was terrified that if we tried to do it ourselves, we would rent the little bulldozer thing, drive it off the trailer toward the driveway, hit the ditch, do a header, and everyone would get squished.
“Have you ever driven one of those things before?”
“No, but I have driven a tank.”
Helpful, Geoff? I don’t know.
There is a culvert to place and gravel to pack in. After we clear the organic layer, should we use that geotextile stuff at the bottom where it’s a little mucky? I am trying not to sweat it. It’s not a twelve-lane highway. We need the driveway, and soon, to stage the rest of the project. Besides, I’m sure the neighbors are getting tired of our truck (with attendant dog chained to the hitch and parts snowmachine crash-landed in the bed) being parked on the road. Everyone’s been nice about it, but it’ll be good to get out of the way. And to have a place to unload that dang sno-go.
Overheard in the saw shop: “you might be Alaskan if you’ve got a sno-go and a mountain bike in the back of your truck at the same time”
(Dude didn’t even comment on the goofy husky or the three chainsaws).
Passing bicyclist in a parking lot: “you still riding that skidoo? Hardcore!”
I am unexpectedly glad to be done with this phase of Project Treehouse. Most of the clearing is done, so there won’t be too much more cutting of live trees. I have cut and hauled plenty of loads of mostly-dead, dry firewood out in ANWR, but there’s something different about live trees in the very greenest weeks of spring. It’s a little sad. I don’t know what it is, exactly. Maybe it’s how they seem to fall so slowly (except when they go down wrong and they’re heading for your noggin). Maybe it’s how much the light in the forest changes with each felling. Maybe it’s just that they’re in my custody: my trees. I am glad to not have to do too much more of it, and I am glad we saved the lovely birches.
I am exhausted. We did laundry tonight and after all the sawing I could hardly lift the laundry bag. I have sap up to my elbows and across my face. I feel naked without my safety glasses and hearing protection. Thank goodness Carhartt was on sale at The Prospector for Father’s Day, because I am living in work overalls this summer. I have mosquito bites on my mosquito bites and bruises all over. I should be getting Geoff to help me clean and tune up my Stihl, which has been acting up a little, but I am grateful to have the following excuse: my dad, who is absolutely right, reminded me to write; there’s a lot I’ll want to remember.
chasing piggens 