Cabin Fever: A Building Story

I was trying to figure out what I was going to write about today while I was doing chores. This winter has been relentless, not so much as in Wis consin and the Northeast, but it is nevertheless beginning to get old. As much as we hate to admit it we do need the winter and we do need the snow but this years freezing temperatures have herded most folks indoors and has caused no shortage of cabin fever.

When I thought of the term “cabin fever” I remembered this book I read years ago about a frontier family being snowed in for nearly a week and how slowly everyone began to go mad. Then I remembered the cabin we had built last summer for the Artist Ride. It’s small, probably 10×12, the same size as the one in the book so I can only imagine how one would go crazy!

I wanted to share a little bit about our little cabin by the river. Cute little thing it is. Built entirely of cottonwood logs, it was quite a process, but well worth it. We started with the idea that it was going to be put together rough, whatever logs we could find that were long enough we’d use. After all, beggars can’t be choosers!

So, on a spring day in March my uncle and cousins and some friends cut down a few cottonwoods for the “foundation.” We used a set of construction I-beams as a template for dimensions and a way to move it once we had it finished. Chainsaws buzzing, sawdust flying, we notched the logs to fit together like Lincoln Logs. The notches were perfect, only….they were on the bottom instead of the top…oops! Aw well, we’ll just roll ’em.  About five of us grabbed the log and gave a mighty shove… nothing…again, with gusto!….nothing! So… we might have underestimated the weight of our logs a bit! Enter the backhoe, thank the Lord for the backhoe!

Several hours pass while we determine which end goes where. You see you have to alternate small logs with big logs otherwise one wall rises faster than another and it looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright experiment.  After several hours of chainsawing and more sawdust and with some help from the backhoe we had the foundation. It was maybe a foot and a half tall….hmmm…we’re going to need more logs, quite a few more. Find out the conclusion in Cabin Fever pt. 2!