Old times

New feelings.

Two months ago, we broke ground on a cabin build, on the site where our previous cabin stood (then smoldered).

Having gotten into the swing of things, I wanted to talk a bit about what that process has been like.

For starters, it’s been a lot of work, which technically started over a year ago.

A ton of trees died in the fire in 2020, some of which we then felled, or came down in storms. A year back we milled several of them with an alaskan chainsaw mill, with the idea that they might be used as lumber for a rough idea of a cabin build I’d been mulling over.

That was just a loose idea at the time, but for the past six months, I’ve really been itching for a bigger project, so I put my energy into fleshing out that cabin.

Once we felt confident enough in the design, the next step was preparing the site. Lots of dead trees loomed over it—a hazard to any future build. So we spent a few weekends felling, chipping and burning. We also rented a stump grinder and put a hurting on our chainsaws (and bodies), demolishing a giant madrone stump that stood in the way. This was in October.

We then broke ground in earnest. Digging and pouring footings. Sacks of concrete trucked to the land and hand-carried to the site, holes dug both with a rented auger and by hand. Then framing and sheathing the floor.

Once that was was done we used a large beam saw to slice our milled redwood and doug fir slabs into usable lumber, carrying each piece up the hill to stack on the cabin pad.

Finally, we started cutting and erecting the frame, and last week, we finished standing it. That’s where things are at now.

But, that labor (which I’m glossing over like 90% of) has only been part of the challenge. For me anyway.

The first few months of this work I struggled to enjoy the cabin-sized project that I had thought I’d been craving. A weird feeling for me. I love a project.

This caused some perplexing depression to ripple out into the rest of life. I needed a project to get excited about and had started one. Yet, for some reason, the joy wasn’t to be found. A now what? cloud hung over me for a period, despite doing work I’ve previously relished.

Time spent felling trees was eliciting more of a it never ends dread than any sense of satisfaction. Excitement at progress and an eagerness to unlock the next phase wasn’t present. I struggled to invite friends to join in, and spent a lot of time flat out denying that a cabin was definitively in the works. I wouldn’t allow myself to settle into the fun of it, and went the extra mile to dampen other folk’s enjoyment as well.

At the time, I wasn’t exactly sure why and honestly, I’m still not positive. Though I have some ideas...

I suspect I didn’t allow myself to get excited because the property no longer felt like a safe space to pull the trigger on a bigger project. It’s one thing to throw up an A frame or an outhouse in a weekend or two. But a project that will take months leaves so much room for things to go wrong. Floods and mudslides. Bandits. Trees crashing down. Another wildfire, of course.

It might seem obvious from the outside that we’d have some hesitance reinvesting in a property that’s burned before and may well burn again. But it’s not quite that. I personally don’t mind that risk. And this cabin is significantly more humble than the previous, for those reasons. No electrical, plumbing, or insulation, and a tiny budget. It’s more an exercise in design and creative woodworking than it is an effort to re-build a home.

I’m good with the scope, the investment, and the risk of losing it. I can accept all this effort as practice. It’s ephemeral. A mandala. But… I’d really, really prefer tragedy to strike after I get to see the project through.

That is the crux of it, I think. I really (really) need to complete my projects. And I fear I won’t be able to with this one because it’s going to take months, and the idea that something unfortunate may happen between now and then is a fear that’s grounded in fiery experience.

Maybe that’s the reason. I dunno. But I don’t really need to unpack it all now. That I’m affected and perhaps a bit traumatized by a catastrophic loss is not exactly a shock. “Duh”, I assume a therapist would say. What I do with that—or in spite of that—is probably what matters most.

To that end, I (with a lot of help from Molly) rationalized that if I pushed through and put one foot in front of the other, I likely would find my way back to the usual excitement and fervor brought on by a good project. And if we brought friends into it and made it feel like a party, it would eventually become one. Fake it until you make it.

One really wonderful thing Molly did was gift me an “I’m your huckleberry” Google calendar where she’d been secretly compiling months of our friend’s available weekends, so that I could easily schedule build parties, in spite of my personal reluctance. One less hurdle. She even prodded a few to book flights.

It’s helped. Weekends got scheduled. Progress has been made. And sometime over the past month I found my anxiety giving up ground to excitement and feeling thrilled at the prospect of making headway and sharing those achievements with friends.

This past weekend cemented those budding feelings, and was a crescendo of gorgeous weather, sixteen or so friends and family, and a joyous few days where many hands made light work of all the walls and posts and beams and a building began to take shape. Felt like old times.