There's a mystery to good-burning balsam

 

I girdled these trees extensively two years ago. They still are not ready to cut down.

I have tried to solve this enigma for decades and still have no explanation. Why are specific dead balsam fir trees pretty good firewood when all the rest are just worthless?

I know what the trees look like on the stump: vertical, no needles, bark split or missing in patches. When the trees are cut down the wood inside is white, dry as a bone and light in weight. This wood will ignite easily, makes excellent kindling, and burns about as long as birch. It does not produce as much heat as birch but it has the advantage of creating little ash. Birch makes a bunch and it is always loaded with clinkers (charcoal) as well. 

Not every dead balsam passes the grade. If the bark is not split the tree will likely be rotten and wet inside. There can be a good firewood tree standing right next to a poor one. I have been trying to purposely kill some trees to see if I can get a handle on what is going on. Is it the length of time the tree stands dead? 

I girdled trees in two different areas in case location had something to do with it. In one place my girdled trees blew over in the wind well before the needles had fallen off. They are still standing in the other spot but even after two years, there are still needles on them. It looks like it will take at least another two years.

My guess about why firewood that died on the stump is so much better than green balsam cut and dried is that something chemically happens to the tree as it dies. Maybe it stores more sugar. It might also allow the wood to become drier. I just don't know.

The good news, in a way, is that lots of our balsam trees are dying. It is not budworm that is killing them this time (that happens about every 40 years); that's easy to see. The ends of the branches will be denuded of needles. Our trees have all their needles. 

I suspect they are simply dying from the drier and hotter summers we are now getting due to climate change. Birch trees are dying too.

The problem seems to only affect the adult trees. Saplings are still nice and green.

So, we should have a lot of balsam firewood in our future.

It's 'puzzling' why chickadees do this

 

Brenda likes working on jigsaw puzzles on a table in a south-facing window. Outside that window is a lilac bush which serves as bleachers for curious chickadees.

The bush an oasis in 'dog days' of winter

 

Dead, gray balsam in center should be good

A good workout for my body and a respite for my soul in mid-winter is to cut dead balsam trees for firewood. 

I snowshoe around on my trails and peer through the bush for the proper tree. It needs to be vertical with absolutely no needles - not even one ancient red one -- and have bark that is splitting. Frequently the trunk and branches will be covered with Old Man's Beard, a lichen.

As I find candidate trees I will at first mark the place with a piece of flagging tape. Later I will leave the easy-going packed trail to make a new one over to the tree. There I give the tree a closer inspection. I hate to cut down a tree only to find it is partially green inside. If it is, I leave it right there. It will be too heavy for me to drag out with my toboggan and won't be worth anything for firewood either. But if my eye is good, the wood will be sound and light and burn well.

Doc waits for me on the long trail back to the woodshed

It is cumbersome to cut down the tree, then cut it into four-foot lengths while on snowshoes but it is still better than sinking to my hips sometimes in the deep snow. I can drag out most trees in two or three trips, each one taking a half-hour or so. 

Tucked back into the bush the way I am the temperature never seems cold. As long as it is sunny, it feels great to be outside, even if the thermometer reads -20 C (0 F).

The whitetail deer know what I'm doing and come running when they hear the chainsaw. By the time I make my second trip they are standing around the tree munching on the Old Man's Beard. 

Chickadees and nuthatches always investigate the activity as well. Flies and other bugs under the bark can come spilling out on the snow as I work.

No dead balsam here but those birches will be what I'm after come spring

Separating the impossible from the free

 Let's say I'm going to take a road camping trip. I've got all the equipment and the vehicle, just no money. Is that possible? Well, this is Canada and there are lakes filled with fish everywhere. I could just eat fish that I caught myself. Also, depending on the season, there are berries and other vegetation to eat. If it was fall, I could hunt. Sure, I could possibly feed myself on this trip. Since I am an Ontario resident, I could camp on Crown land without charge, but not in parks. So, it wouldn't be as comfortable as staying where there are showers and flush toilets but it is certainly possible, maybe even desirable. 

Now what about fuel? I could fill up the tank with gasoline at home and go about 300 miles (500 kilometers). Then I would be out of gas. That would be the end of the trip. It would be impossible for me to create more gasoline without money.

Now what if my vehicle was electric? Could I possibly recharge it myself without buying electricity? As part of my camping paraphernalia I could have a raft of solar panels. These could be set up to capture the sun's energy and recharge the vehicle. It might take longer than I wanted but eventually the vehicle would be ready to move on and it would cost nothing.

Instead of taking a camping trip, I might decide to take a boat that I can afford and motor across the Atlantic or Pacific and see the sights. I've got a really good outboard on the boat. How much gasoline will I need to take? It turns out any boat in an ordinary person's price range cannot carry all the gas drums it would take to make the voyage, let alone pay for it all. On the other hand I could easily afford a sailboat that would make the voyage for free. 

You can sail on lakes too, of course, as well as paddle or row. It costs nada for fuel.

What else can we do for free instead of buying fuel? We can dry our clothes on a clothesline instead of in a dryer. We can walk to the store instead of taking the car. We could bicycle. You can pedal along quite easily at about 20 mph with a decent bike. 

Other than walking, you do need to buy something to start out but from that point on there is virtually no cost.

 

Let's get going again

 

I'm stuck in writing the next chapter of Yankee, so let's talk about something else for awhile. We're right in the middle of winter and that's a good time to muse about things. I did this on the old blog one other time. See Shadow. 

****

Want to reduce your risk from global climate change? Move! That's a joke.

Seriously, if you live in a community with river, falls, island, rapids, canal, creek, beach, bay, cove, point, lake or stream in its name, get out now. Head to higher ground but not to where there are trees or other vegetation that can burn. Don't go near the coasts. Better to stay where you are because the coasts will soon be coming to you.

Things could be worse. You could live in British Columbia. In 2021 that province saw record drought, record precipitation, record high temperatures and record low temperatures. In one mega precipitation event ALL of its highways were wiped out. The good news is...well, actually there isn't any other than they actually have traffic slowly moving again after months of around-the-clock repairs.

If we have learned anything from the fires, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes it is to keep a full tank of gas in your car and don't store valuables in the basement. No one is going to laugh any more if you have your tent, sleeping bags and camping equipment ready to go in the trunk or back of the truck. We need to be ready to move at a moment's notice and to survive for weeks until we can get back to what is left of home and make an insurance claim.

****

I would like to report that we have bought our first electric vehicle. I would like to do that but unfortunately, it wouldn't be true. Even if we had the money for one, which we don't, there are none for sale in Thunder Bay and barely any in Canada. I just read a survey that found 70 per cent of Canadians would consider buying an electric vehicle. The carmakers heard our plea and gave us gas vehicles with hands-free driving and really big computer screens on the dash. Pretty much the same thing, they figured. 

It reminds me of the energy crisis in the '70s. The public wanted small, energy-efficient vehicles and the North American automakers gave us little crappy cars that rusted-out in a year and got about a mile more per gallon. Pretty much the same thing. That's when we all turned to Japanese vehicles.

****

I've been thinking a lot about Cognitive Dissonance. That's the psychological term when you have two conflicting beliefs in your head. It causes you so much grief that you must choose between them. That choice could be to accept a new belief but it can also be to make absurd rationalizations to keep the old one. It explains why people can make so many ridiculous choices.

****

All around Red Lake, including right at our cabin, there are sections of the lake shore that are eroding. No one has a good explanation for this but one possibility is that the shoreline is still reacting to the higher water level created by a dam on the Chukuni River back in the '40s. It resulted in the lake being four feet higher. Whatever the reason, many of us with the problem would like to find a remedy. Plants with long roots would likely hold the soil in place but picking the plant is a bit of sticky wicket. It needs to be fast-growing, have long roots, and (here's the rub) be beaver-proof. 

After spending decades planting every native species of tree only to eventually see them all carted away to the big rodent's lodges, I came up with a new idea and it's one that should fit with the extreme drought and heat we are getting from climate change. Promise you won't laugh now. Cactuses! Or Cacti, if you prefer. I said don't laugh! I would like to see the varmints try to sink their buck teeth into these. For a fact, there are cacti that grow in Northern British Columbia that tolerate winter temperatures of -40. We're going to try a couple but as well we are thinking of planting some prairie grass species, like Little Bluestem. 

****

Speaking of the Prairies, shouldn't we be changing Woodland Caribou Provincial Park west of Red Lake to Prairie Dog Wilderness Park? It is perpetually on fire every summer. The Prairies are just to its west and with all the fires that prevent the forest from growing prairie species must be starting to take over.

Nice spot on a cold winter day

 We're getting some cold temperatures in Northwestern Ontario now. The low tonight is expected to be in the low -20s C. Red Lake has been even colder. There is a good wind too.

Doc and I just took a short snowshoe walk and purposely stuck to trails protected from the wind by trees. The bush is still heavily laden with snow from the last storm a few days ago. 

We now have about 16 inches of snow on the ground. That's enough to keep it from freezing and apparently also enough to make a cozy snow den for a partridge. We spooked him on our walk and he came blasting out from beneath the snow only to perch on a branch not far away, confident that his camouflage would keep him safe.

Merry Trails this Christmas!

 

And Hoppy New Year!

 

A Yankee ... Near-Disaster, then the Real Thing

My mother, Del, at the Pickerel River in Eastern Ontario

 Chapter 16

It was late August or early September and we only had one guest in camp. Mom and I finished the supper dishes and were eager to go fishing. We wanted to try trolling for walleye around the islands that lead into Trout Bay, just a mile or so south of camp. Dad was down at the boathouse, working on an outboard he had taken off a boat and put on a stand. Then the customer, who had already gone fishing, came back to the dock. He had a fishhook in his thumb.

"No problem," said Dad. "Let's go up to the lodge. I can take that out in a few minutes and you can go back out on the lake." 

"I would really rather see a doctor," said the guest. 

"It's not all that hard to get out," Dad said. "We'll just cut that one hook off the treble, then use needle-nose pliers to turn it back out through the skin."

"I REALLY WOULD RATHER SEE A DOCTOR! PLEASE!" said the man, his voice shaking with emotion. 

"OK, sure, we can do that too," said Dad, soothingly. "It's going to be a cold trip though so you had better go put on some heavy clothes. I'll do the same. We won't get back from town until after dark and there might be frost tonight."

I couldn't understand why the man wouldn't let Dad take out the hook. It was something he did just about every week.

"He seems like a squeemish type, " Dad explained. "Better to take him into town. We don't want him to go into shock."

I made a face. 

"Seriously," said Dad. "Shock can kill a person. It's not a joke." 

It would take an hour for them to make the trip into Red Lake and it would be done in our 18-foot cedar-strip skiff with no windshield. They would need to go to the hospital and hope there was a doctor on call. If not, they would have to wait until one arrived, get the hook extracted and then make the 20-mile trip home in the pitch dark.

Dad put on his long underwear, wool pants and a heavy parka for the trip. He got a couple of canvas tarps for him and the guest. These were for holding in front of them to break the wind. Dad took the gas can out of the boat to fill on shore while the customer settled into the front boat seat.

"You two may as well go fishing," he said to Mom and me. "Hope you get something."

We jumped in a boat and left. The sun was already behind the trees so we hurried to the spot and started fishing.

An hour later we started back, cold and fishless. As soon as we came past the islands we realized something was wrong. There were floatation seat cushions bobbing all over the lake. When we were among them I cut the engine, searching for an explanation.

"There's something over there by the shore," Mom said, pointing in the general direction of Cabin 10.

It was so dark we could just make out some movement. I raced the boat that way just in time to see Dad emerge from the water and crawl up the mud bank. It was obvious that his parka was waterlogged and weighing him down. He unzipped it and just left it there. The customer was trying to paddle the boat toward the dock.

"Help George tie up. I've got to go warm up," said Dad, heading toward the lodge.

After he changed his clothes and warmed up by the stove, Dad told us what had happened.

The 35 h.p. Evinrude on our trip boat had to be hand-cranked and could only be done from the standing position. The starting procedure was tricky as well. Dad had connected the pressure tank, pulled out the choke and taken a couple of pulls on the rope before realizing he had not advanced the throttle far enough. From experience he knew the motor would be flooded and that the only way to get it unflooded was to disconnect the gas line, then pull the rope several more times until the engine started which is what happened.

Dad then had untied the boat from the dock and headed toward the center of the narrows. He had only gone a couple hundred yards when the motor slowed down and stopped. He had forgotten to reconnect the gas line! He did so then and, standing up, tried a couple of pulls on the rope but the motor wouldn't start. He pulled out the choke and tried again. Still nothing. Now it could be flooded again so he took off the gas line and made sure the throttle was turned up. 

On the very next pull he suddenly found himself in the lake with the boat speeding away from him.  He had forgotten to put the motor in neutral and when he had advanced the throttle it was to full bore.

He immediately realized he had a big problem. The quilted lining in his parka had soaked up water like a sponge so much he couldn't even raise his arms to swim. He could just barely keep his head above water by kicking his feet. And then he noticed the boat. The tiller handle had swung to one side and the boat was circling right back toward him. 

George, sitting in the front seat, was looking ahead and had not realized anything was amiss until he saw something in the water up ahead. It was my dad!

He looked quickly to the stern to find there was no one back there. He was scrambling over the seats to grab the tiller and keep the boat from striking Dad when the motor died because the gas line was still disconnected. Dad was about 30 feet away and was struggling to keep his face out of the water. George realized how serious the situation was and grabbed a paddle but in his panic just paddled the boat farther away. Dad yelled to him to reach under the deck in the bow where he kept floatation seat cushions. George found these and flung them like Frisbees but they sailed all over the place. Finally, one was within Dad's reach.

He got George to calm down and gave him instructions on how to paddle. Couple strokes on one side. Now a couple on the other, etc., until the boat was alongside. Try as he might, he couldn't get the waterlogged parka off so that he could try climbing aboard. He was also going numb from the cold water. There was nothing to do but hang onto the side while the inexperienced George paddled the boat the hundred yards or so to shore. It took about 45 minutes. That's when we had come along. 

Back at the lodge George had us all laughing when he noted that during the whole episode Dad had kept his pipe clenched between his teeth.

"Well, it's my best pipe," said Dad, now placing it near the oil stove to dry. He took another off his dresser. "Are you ready to go?" he asked George.

"If you are."

They took off again, now navigating by starlight. It was well past midnight when they returned.

Dad had survived what was then one of the most common ways to drown -- starting the motor in gear.

When the motor was shifted to neutral, the correct procedure was to turn the throttle up as far as it would go. That is where the engine started best, at fast idle. But if you left the motor in forward and turned up the throttle the engine would start at top speed and pitch you over the transom. Many, many people died this way. 

One time I had a similar experience with a smaller engine right at the dock. I went over the stern too but had the additional problem of having my pinky caught in the boat gunwale. The boat drove itself up onto the dock and was roaring away with me dangling behind, just inches from the propeller. Somehow I managed to use the other hand and pull out the choke and kill the engine.

Today's outboards have a safety stop that prevents their starting in anything but neutral.

Despite his close call, Dad never did wear a life jacket although he was careful not to dress in insulated clothing when driving a boat. Wool, he pointed out, doesn't absorb water. He seldom mentioned the incident after that but if pressed to do so just turned it into a big joke. My mom, on the other hand, was terrified at what almost happened.

 Mom and Dad had shouldered everything in their lives 50:50 and she also had half the responsibility of running camp. Along with one young Ojibwe woman, Jessie Keesic, she did all the cooking and cleaning of the lodge and the four cabins. She took reservations, answered correspondence, and did the books. She sewed all the curtains and tablecloths and painted buildings. She doctored, bandaged and counseled. Most of all, she befriended everybody. My mother never met a stranger. 

The First Nations guides at camp loved her like they do their own aunties. Her poor and rural upbringing had much in common with native people in Ontario.

Mom and Dad both agreed that the guides should be fed the same meals that the guests received. When the guests ate steak, so did the guides. This differed from most of the other camps. Mom asked what they ate at these other places.

"Beans and wieners," said one to the laughter of the whole table. "Sometimes, spaghetti. And Jello."

The guides loved to eat lots of bread and butter with their meals and would always polish their plates with the last piece. One time we were out of bread so Mom made "fried bread" which was a dough made with flour, baking powder and salt and a pinch of sugar and fried in a pan with grease. It was a Southern Ohio family recipe. When she set a plate of these on the table the men all chattered excitedly in Ojibwe. After they had all taken a bite one of them said, "Del, this is good bannock!"

For several winters mom and dad ran the outdoor hockey rink at Red Lake. Dad looked after the ice and rink building while Mom operated the concession stand. The rink would close at 9 p.m. and we wouldn't get home until 10. One night we were driving down the Forestry Road and came upon a First Nations woman walking in her long skirt and leggings. It was probably 20 below Fahrenheit.

"Hey, that's Stanley's mom," said Dad. 

Stanley Keesic was my best friend and lived on the other side of the hill from Ken's Lodge. 

We stopped the car and I opened the door to the back seat. Mrs. Keesic got in and laughed. Mom laughed too and asked her something but only got another laugh in reply. It was obvious Mrs. Keesic didn't speak English. Dad eventually stopped the car at the trail that led down the hill to her home and Stanley's mom got out and said "miiquetch" which is thank you in Ojibwe.

About a week later Stanley came over to play and brought a beautiful pair of beaded moosehide slippers for Mom. They were trimmed with mink fur. Mom tried them on and they fit perfectly. She was astonished because she had very small feet and Mrs. Keesic, sitting in the back of the car, couldn't even have seen them.

Mom's winter mukluks

Mom just had to know how she did it and so asked Stanley to find out. The next time he came over he said, "She saw your hands."

Mom baked Mrs. Keesic a pie and this cemented a friendship between two women who couldn't even speak the same language.  Stanley's mom and also Jessie's would go on to make dozens of slippers that we sold for them at camp. We also bought slippers for Dad and me as well as outdoor moccasins. Mom even got a pair of mukluks that she wore in the winter.

Mom and Dad's closest friends in Red Lake were Ross and Ella Williams and Art and Gertie Larson. Ross and Art worked for the Department of Lands and Forests on Forestry Point, not far from where we spent the winters at Ken's Lodge. 

Ella and Gertie were super at helping Mom adjust to living in the bitter cold during the winter. She was at the Larson's one day and was astonished to see laundry hanging on the line.

"You've hung out your laundry! It must be 30 below zero!"

"Sure. It will freeze dry," said Gertie who was Icelandic. "It just takes longer -- four or five days. Try it." We did so, of course, and were amused at how jeans and shirts would freeze as solid as a board. A few days later they were fluttering in the breeze and took just an hour to "finish" draped over the back of a chair inside.

Like most Red Lake women, Ella and Gertie were expert knitters. Mom could crochet but not knit. By the end of her first winter, however, she was turning out mittens and socks for my dad and me and in subsequent winters produced sweaters.

Besides reading and writing letters to family during the long winter nights, I would practise my guitar and sing. Mom often joined in. She could play guitar too but I only ever heard her strum chords. One night she flabbergasted me when she expertly picked out "Under the Double Eagle." My Mom could play as well as those professional country music stars on the radio! 

When I became old enough for high school my parents decided they wanted to go back to Ohio in the winter. My sister Sandi and her husband, Cliff, seemed to be settled there, finally. They had rented a different home every year in many of the towns around Willoughby where we had come from but then had spent several years in the same house in nearby Kirtland. 

I could stay with Sandi and her family and attend Kirtland High School all four years. I would spend the summers at camp, of course. My parents ended up renting a basement apartment right beneath Sandi's rental house.

I thrived under this arrangement. Sandi's husband, Cliff, was like an older brother to me and Sandi and Cliff's four children were like younger siblings. I would get to spend four years at the same school, make friends, play sports and do all the things normal teenagers do.

Everything went well for the first two years. Then Bill Stupack went berserk.

 A young woman whose boyfriend was a worker in the area had pitched her tent beside Bill's house and Bill had quickly become infatuated with her. She also worked part-time as a waitress at camp. She told Bill that a customer at camp had "come-on" to her and this resulted in Bill coming over to camp and threatening to kill the man. (This may not have been an idle threat. We found out years later that Bill had actually shot a man back in the gold rush days for spending time with his "girl" or at least the woman he thought was his girlfriend. He was fined for that crime and forbidden to enter the Howey Mine gold camp ever again.)

 Mom suspected Bill was the victim of a scam and tried to tell him so. Her suspicions were confirmed when a day or two later Bill returned to say he was calling-in his mortgage. He wanted the balance in 30 days or he would take possession of camp. He would go on to buy the young lady a new car. 

After eating at least once a week at our dinner table for 10 years, Bill, my childhood hero, would never speak to us again. Somehow we had become the enemy.

About the same time my sister split up with Cliff and moved her four children to Red Lake to be nearer Mom and Dad. So now nobody was back in Ohio. I was determined to return so I could start Grade 11 or my Junior Year as they say in the States. So when September came around I flew back and set up in the apartment by myself.

Just a few weeks later came the real disaster: Mom died. She had a massive heart attack in her sleep while at camp. She was just 51.

Dad and Sandi flew back with her body so she could be buried in Willoughby, just down the street from what had once been her and Dad's dream house but which had been taken by the bank and creditors when several homeowners reneged in paying dad for homes he had built them. It had been the catalyst for us moving to Canada in the first place.

Dad and Sandi wanted me to move in with my Uncle Ervie and Aunt Ruth in Eastlake, about 10 miles away, but I convinced them I was OK. I had good friends and a girlfriend in Kirtland. I wanted to stay in our apartment. So that's what I did. I was 17.

...to be continued

More in this series:

Prologue

Rough Draft

Bad Ice

Why Here? 

A Gold Mine

Talking Bill into Selling

Red Lake in the '60s  

First Winter

Bullies
Wolverine

Roots 

Racism 

Animals 

Mentors 

School

Lots of Bugs

Hard Work

It is going to be a colourful winter

 

Evening grosbeaks, bluejays and pine grosbeaks liven up what can be a black-and-white winter landscape. I think I have referred in the past to the grosbeaks as 'resident birds.' If so, that isn't exactly correct as pointed out by local birder Brian Ratcliff who writes a bird column in the Thunder Bay newspaper. The grosbeaks actually breed farther north. They only come south in the winter. So they might better be called 'winter residents.'

We love to see them. There seem to be lots this year. Sometimes there are none.

Troubling chapters coming in Yankee...

 The next couple of chapters of A Yankee in the Canadian Bush are difficult for me to write as they tell of some terribly sad parts of my life. 

I could just leave them out but that's not my nature. I'm nothing if not honest and that means telling all of this story even if it hurts.

I also have another reason: a couple of years ago a young man who came to camp with his father from the time he was a young boy took his own life. Somehow I think if I had written about what happened to me it might have helped him. I'm not sure how, it's just a feeling. 

There is an epidemic of suicides among young people taking place in Canada and the U.S. and probably around the world. Why? I think I have an insight into this since I once stood on that ledge. In short, people end their lives when they despair that the darkness, the sadness, in their lives will ever change. They lose all hope. 

For me, it was the actions of a total stranger that is likely the reason I'm here today.

If you or someone you know is despairing right now, these simple words might help:

All feelings are temporary

If you want evidence that this is true,  think back to times you were extremely happy. Even those good feelings didn't last forever. The same goes for bad feelings. 

Be alert for the messengers of hope. They might be friends, family, strangers. They might even be animals or plants. They are reaching out a hand, maybe because they have been where you are.

Techniques I'm using to build cabin alone

Walk-behind Billy Goat brush mower is my tractor

Garden cart fitted with 2x4 braces carries 4x8 sheets

Two-wheel dolly lets me move a bunch of 2x4s at one time easily

 We started from absolute scratch at our retirement cabin on Red Lake. As Brenda likes to  relate, we had to machete our way through the bush just to get out of the boat. This wasn't a previous cabin site that had some cleared land. It was virgin land, and as far as I can see, was never even a campsite by any of the First Nations that lived in this area for 10,000 years.

It took us two weeks just to clear a place to pitch a tent and make a trail leading to that spot. We then lived in the tent for two summers while we brought in a dock, made a secure landing on shore for it, and built what we call a Dockhouse, since it is near the dock, but will really be a guest cabin. It gives us a comfortable place to live while we build the main cabin, something we could have completed last summer had we not got run off by forest fires for nearly a month.

I have done all the carpentry by myself so far and probably will finish the project the same way. Ironically, one of the reasons I am doing it like this is because I have a bad back. You would think that would make me want to lean on friends and relatives all the more but the truth is I can work without hurting myself best when I'm alone. I go at my own pace which is admittedly slower than other people. 

One of the big considerations in avoiding back aches was how to get all the building materials from the boat, up the hill and 200 feet to the cabin. It started by making a plywood sidewalk to level the area nearest to the dock. From there our son, Matt, with a shovel and wheelbarrow, two summers ago excavated a bit of the hillside where the cabin was to be located and used that material to level an equal distance with soil and rocks. So, we have a pretty level trail all the way to the cabin site. That means we can roll things, rather than carry them. In fact, after bringing in an estimated seven tons of building material for the entire cabin last fall, I can say I never carried a single thing other than a short distance from the dock. Lumber, 4x8 sheets, I-joists, steel roofing and siding, windows and doors, all were rolled. The only exception was the 32-foot roof trusses. For that I had the help of Stan, Jan and Ben from Eagle Falls Lodge who had brought these ungainly items out to us in their 40-plus-foot pontoon boat. Thank you, my new friends!

We also got a big help from our friends the Moningers when they let me use their approximate 26-foot pontoon boat to bring out the lumber and sheeting. Thank you, Bob, Rosalie and Tom!

We've also had help bringing things up the hill from our cabin neighbours, Lee and Dale, and from Brian over at the camp.

And finally, thank you to Northwest Timbermart who not only loaned me a work boat to start the summer but also brought their Zoomboom machine to set material from the lumber truck directly onto the boats. Wow, what a time-saver!

The actual building, however, I have been doing alone. I'm finicky about the foundation. If that isn't right, nothing above it will be either. Our cabin site is sandy and for those conditions I hand dug holes for 18 foundation posts set two feet deep. Eighteen-inch foundation pads were put in the bottom of each, all leveled. Above this I placed 6x6 preserved wood posts, with a nub carved at the end to fit into the foundation pad depression. I wrapped the posts with heavy plastic that prevents frost from gripping on the sides and also stops bugs like carpenter ants from climbing up. The pad depth is shallower than what I would do when working in clay. There I would have gone 3-4 feet. Clay is known for spectacular heaving by frost.

People wonder what the frost depth is at Red Lake. In cleared-off places like a street, it is about nine feet! But under a cabin, especially one where the snow will be undisturbed (we won't use the cabin in the winter) it is just a couple of feet. In sand, which drains easily, it should be even less.

Brenda has said she has stayed married to me for the past 47 years because none of my buildings have mice! I thought that might be a good name for a construction company: No Mouse Cabin Construction. The trick is to have a secure foundation so the building doesn't "walk" with the frost, pulling wall plates loose from the floor. 

Another trick I have learned is to skirt-in the foundation so that all the foundation posts are hidden from the sun. In the spring, the warm sun will melt the ground on the south side of the building first. If any heaving has taken place over the winter, the south side will drop lower than the north and the building will start inching downhill. I have seen buildings without below-frost foundations move about a foot per decade. 

My foundation should be below-frost but just to be sure, I skirt everything as well.

I-joists in place

Completed cabin floor and roof trusses are covered for winter. Sides have temporary skirting

Also built a shed last summer. It will become the site for solar panels and batteries, as well as generator seen here under overhang

Who's responsible? Who's to blame?

The answer to the first question is, "I am." It's the answer for me and also for you, no matter who you are and, curiously,  no matter what the question is. It is also the key to living a full and contented life. Intrigued?

We all feel the most positive about those things in our lives that are under our control, when we are the "captains of our own ships."  We feel negative when things are out of our control, when we are "victims." 

Now let's look at what responsibility means: response-ability -- the ability to respond. No matter what the situation is that we are confronting, the ability to respond is under our control, and that's a positive thing. When we accept responsibility for everything in our lives, we are sitting squarely in the captain's seat.

So, I am responsible for climate change and I am responding by replacing fossil fuels with solar electric as fast as I can, by telling my auto dealer that I won't buy another car from her until she has a suitable all-electric model, by preparing for the forest fires that climate change is bringing with increasing frequency and ferocity to my region. I have also written my Member of Parliament and told him we need the same bold action on climate change that we saw his government take on the pandemic. Let's go!

Oh, and what about that second question? Who's to blame? It is a meaningless concept and an utter waste of time. Blame is the assessment of guilt for something that happened in the past. Guilt is the cesspool of human emotions and the past is gone.

Yesterday's history.

Tomorrow's a mystery.

Today is a gift.

That's why it's called The Present.

How do you get a cat out of a tree?

 

And what do you do when that cat is a full-grown lynx?

This beautiful cat was patrolling around the bush line by our house today looking for rabbits when he spotted a red squirrel beneath our bird feeder. Squirrel and cat went 30 feet up a birch tree in a blink but then the squirrel leapt to a larger poplar tree nearby where it flattened itself and remained motionless on the opposite side from the cat. Eventually the lynx backed down and went on its way.

'Don't choose extinction'

 

That was on a sign that was carried by one of the thousands of young people who traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, last week for the COP 26 summit. It pretty much sums up the situation: change our system of energy consumption in a big way starting right now or perish. There is just no time left.

The world leaders at the conference seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation but the young people were skeptical and for good reason.  The same politicians have said the same thing many, many times in the past and then did nothing. 

Our choice couldn't be more simple: Do we want to start an Age of Enlightenment or a Dark Age?

If we choose Enlightenment the world as we have known it will be saved. We will begin to live within our energy means and eventually the atmospheric heat storm we unwittingly ignited with the Industrial Revolution and the internal combustion engine will subside. 

If we choose the Dark Age our world will be run by Feral Morons who will always act with mankind's worst inclinations. We will spiral ever-faster into the abyss.

Solar water pump worked perfectly

 

We connected the solar system to our Shurflo water pump this year and it worked perfectly, despite the dismal skies due to forest fire smoke.

The photo shows the solar panel fastened horizontally to a wood stand. The inverted black plastic tote contains a charge controller, 12-volt battery and the pump. The black box seemed at first to be too hot for the charge controller so we added some ventilation holes that let the heat out. We also put the charge controller under another smaller inverted box just so water could not contact it. Both boxes are simply set on the dock where incoming air can come easily through the cracks between deck boards.

The suction pipe shown here is one-inch but it had to be necked down to 1/2-inch to fit onto the pump fitting. Outlet is also 1/2 inch, Pex.

There is no pressure tank to this system, although it is possible to add one later if needed. The pump just has a built-in pressure switch. The pump instantly turns on when a tap is opened and turns off when it is closed. The pump provides four gallons of water a minute which will probably be adequate for the big cabin without needing a pressure tank. The shower, for instance, will require no more than 2.5 gallons a minute and we will likely use a water-saver shower head that uses just 1.8 gallons. 

The line from the pump to the dockhouse is 100-feet and there is lots of pressure at the single tap we have inside. It remains to be seen if the pressure will be the same at the big cabin when it is finished next year. It will be about 200 feet from the pump and, more importantly, will be perhaps 10-feet higher than the dockhouse spigot. The height from the pump to the final destination, called the head, is critical for pump performance.  If we find the pressure is too low at the main cabin we can always install a pressure tank somewhere in between -- like in the dockhouse or maybe in our new shed. Then the pump just needs to replenish the tank which provides its own pressure. It would be lovely if we didn't need the tank. It's just one more thing to have to plumb and to drain in the fall.

Our other solar appliance -- a Unique fridge -- didn't work as well as the water pump. We simply couldn't get enough solar charging through the heavy smoke for it to run without some generator assisted-battery charging. Two hours a day of charging seemed to do it. Early in the summer when there was less smoke the solar system worked fine. A lot of the problem is simply the orientation of the dockhouse and its position among the trees. The new main cabin will be in direct sunlight most of the day.

Wild things big and small seen this year

 

We had some interesting wild visitors at the cabin this summer, including this Goliath of a caterpillar. 

We also saw two black bears, a cow moose, a whitetail deer, a lynx and several grey-cheeked thrushes which used our clearing for a stop on their migration to the Far North. 

A really unusual feathered visitor that we heard, but didn't actually see, was a whippoorwill, right next to the cabin.

Before anything else, buy a fire pump

 

For sprinklers, attach pump to a large gas tank that will last days

We started planning for our cabin five years ago by buying a fire pump. It wasn't just a hedge against climate change but a tool that we would never think of being without in the Boreal Forest. We are in a sea of fuel and it can only take a spark to set it off. That spark could accidentally come from us -- from a chainsaw or other machine. And, of course, it could come from a lightning strike. The pump isn't for fighting a major forest fire; it's for preventing a little blaze from becoming an inferno.

Sprinklers at work on our dockhouse

We set up our pump on the dock as soon as we get to the cabin in the spring. I pile the hoses on top and cover the whole works with a plastic garbage can to keep everything dry. If the weather gets hot and dry I attach the hoses and stretch them out with the nozzle on the end hose. If we're past danger of frost I go ahead and prime the pump. We can be spraying hundreds of gallons of water a minute with one pull of the recoil rope.

After the fire flap of last summer we also have added a sprinkler system. We have two sprinklers on the gable end of each building. These are attached to garden hoses that are in turn attached to a fire hose fitting called a water thief. This fitting goes between the lengths of the canvas fire hose and has two places to attach the garden hoses. A handy configuration is to have 50-foot lengths of fire hose and 50-foot lengths of garden hose. 

When we fire up the pump the rotating sprinklers soak everything for about 50 feet around the buildings. It would be best if there were no large trees in that radius, especially conifers. It will be years before we achieve that but in the meantime the sprinklers give us some chance of surviving a forest fire.

During our years in the camp business we were fortunate to get some fire survival tips from NOTO, our industry organization that held an annual conference and trade show. A group called FireSmart had some eye-opening videos of how cabins ignite from forest fires. It happens well in advance of the actual fire. Embers from the main blaze come blowing along the ground at great speed caused by the wind that the fire generates ahead of itself. These glowing bits of wood go beneath the cabins and build up in the floor joists. If there is firewood or lumber piled down there then the embers ignite that as well.

They also hit the walls of the cabin and are funneled by the wind into the eaves and gables. They accumulate there like a glowing pile of barbecue briquets until the building ignites.

The lesson here is to enclose your buildings with skirting all the way to the ground and with metal fascia on the eaves and gables. 

This is what we are doing on our cabins and shed. And as an added precaution we are using steel siding and roofing as well. 

Here's what it is like to live near two half-million acre fires. It's 3 o'clock in the afternoon on what would have been a bright sunny day except for the dense smoke

 

Fishing was spectacular, at least for me

 

Here's what mega-fire Red Lake 77 looked like July 6, the day after it started

I was so intent on cabin building that I took little time off to fish; however, Brenda and I were also hungry for some fish dinners. On my first cast from the dock I caught about a 24-inch walleye. That's too big to keep for eating so I kept tossing out my 1/8-ounce Beetle Spin. Pretty soon I had two smaller walleye and kept them for the frying pan. Four or five days later I tried the same thing. In quick order I had a nice eating-size walleye and a northern pike -- all we needed.

After a week I tried again and this time got one pike. We needed another so I got in the boat and headed down the shoreline. To my surprise I caught an enormous smallmouth bass. I think it might have weighed four pounds.  I released it. Then I got the pike I was looking for and headed home. 

Another week passed and I decided to try fishing for pike right where I went daily to get cellphone messages, on the way to Trout Bay. One cast and I had a 24-inch pike -- all we needed. The next time we wanted fish I made a bunch of casts with the Beetle Spin and didn't get anything so I switched to a 3/4 ounce Five of Diamonds spoon. One cast and I had my pike. I started for home but part way back slowed down and thought I would troll back to the dock. I just let out the spoon behind the boat. I was in about 50 feet of water and didn't expect a bite until I got nearer to shore. Almost immediately I hooked something enormous. It was fighting like mad and with the deep water and all I figured it must be a lake trout. When I finally got it to the boat I couldn't believe it but it was a whopper of a walleye.

I carefully measured it without lifting it from the lake. It was 32 inches, by far my biggest. It had bit a five-inch long spoon on a six-inch steel leader. Without a weight to sink it the spoon probably was no more than six feet from the surface in a spot that was 50 feet deep. I let it go, of course, and just to see if this had been a fluke retraced my path and started trolling the spoon again. I was still letting out my line when another fish hit. This one seemed much smaller but I measured it anyway -- 26 inches. 

I only fished one more time after that, again in my cellphone bay. It was evening and the water was still so I tried a handmade jerk bait. I did so reluctantly because every time I have used these lures by Dwayne Kotala, my neighbour in Nolalu, I have caught a lunker of a pike. This time I wanted a smaller pike to eat and didn't want to risk killing a trophy-size fish. I picked a small version of Dwayne's pike-musky wooden bait. One toss and I had my eater pike but I wanted to fish a little more so I cast it out again. Sure enough, I tied into a 45-incher. It would have been over 20 pounds. Fortunately, I was able to release it OK.

All told I fished about four hours last summer and in that time I caught my largest-ever smallmouth bass (also my first from Red Lake), largest walleye and largest northern pike.

A summer of heat and fire but no sun

 

The dark clouds on the evening horizon, as late as Sept. 29 when this photo was snapped, were still smoke clouds

As I plugged away on building our new cabin at Red Lake this summer, the thought occurred to me that I might have made a mistake. Maybe we should have bought an RV for our retirement instead, something that we could roll to a more habitable place. This was the second time in three years when summer at Red Lake was something to endure, not enjoy.

Baking heat and choking smoke from forest fires -- again --seemed to say, "Welcome to the ghost of future climate change."

A million acres were on fire to our west in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park and just a bit farther, in adjoining Atikaki Provincial Park in Manitoba and areas to the northwest, a similar area was ablaze. These were the colossal fires but there were many others as well. In fact, at one time there were 100 fires going just in the Red Lake district. It was like Armageddon.

Remote northern communities were being evacuated everywhere. These were mostly First Nations. Summer evacuations have become so common for them it is getting hard to remember when they weren't forced to spend months in a cramped hotel room or on a cot in an arena. Red Lake was put on evacuation notice. Seniors and hospital patients were taken elsewhere. Sprinklers were put up completely around the town's perimeter.  Many residents stayed inside much of the time to escape the heat and smoke. The hardware stores brought in window air conditioners by the pallet-load. 

As bad as it seemed we knew we were fortunate. Out in British Columbia people were dying by the hundreds from the heat. One mountain town -- Lytton -- set a heat record for Canada at  49.6 C or 121.3 F. That was just before the whole place caught on fire and burned to the ground.

The fire season in Red Lake began in May and just got worse and worse. It was hot and dry from the get-go. By mid-June the smoke was so thick boaters were finding their way by GPS to the west end of the lake where we are building. You couldn't see the shoreline. It wasn't obvious where the fires were because we couldn't see a darn thing, sometimes not even a pale sun.

And in a really weird weather phenomenon, there was no wind, day after day, week after week. When you looked at the smoke forecasts on weather sites like FireSmoke.ca the smoke blob over the Red Lake area moved around like a lava lamp. The smoke blanket prevented the lake water from warming up as much as you would expect from the 36 C (97 F) daytime air temperature.

The smoke was so thick that water bombers and helicopters couldn't fly. Those enormous fires just west of us us went untouched for about a month, from the time they might have been extinguished until they had grown too large to control. It is a policy in Woodland Caribou that forest fires which start naturally from lightning should be allowed to burn. At least, that is the policy for some areas of the park. In other areas the new fires would be extinguished by the MNRF. As it turned out this year, the two mega fires began in areas that could have been fought. They weren't, apparently because firefighters were overwhelmed by all the other blazes. And it was too smoky to fly as well.

We never saw a water bomber this summer. Once the crisis had abated, at least somewhat -- we had one pretty good rain -- helicopters attacked the fire just beyond Trout Bay from before sunup to nearly dark for weeks. 

It was obvious to me that the situation this past summer represented a paradigm shift in fire intensity and in weather. We now need a similar paradigm shift in firefighting strategy. For starters, now that climate change is happening exponentially from one year to the next, we need to scrap the policy that lets fires burn anywhere in Northern Ontario, be they in the wilderness park or in the Far North. We just can't be sending billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere any more. This means a war-like expansion of our firefighting capability. We don't just need a dozen more water bombers and fire crews, we need hundreds, and they need to be positioned way up North as well as in road-accessible communities like Red Lake. 

Besides the CO2 liability, forest fires are killing us with their smoke. It isn't only people with asthma; it's all of us. 

Is this going to cost money? Of course, but there is no alternative. We have done nothing about climate change up to this point and this is the price we must pay. The Amazon Rain Forest was found this year to be a contributor to CO2 rather than a sink. The Boreal Forest is about to do the same and then we will have hell to pay.

Evacuated due to forest fire

We bugged out Monday due to heavy smoke and an evacuation order. There are two large fires in play, one coming from the southwest and the other from the northwest.