BUSY

Yep, same old story just a different month. Not sure why time is flying by so fast nor why I seem to be so busy anymore. It seems like I'm just going from 0600 to at least 1900 every day. But, it's better to be busy than to be bored. And a lot of the times after work, I'm grabbing the dog and a gun or two and heading into the woods for a couple of hours. Those little trips began as walking the dog. Then turned into scouting for good firewood, followed by firewood gathering...and then grouse hunting / big game scouting. Coming up pretty quick, it'll just be about big game hunting.


This larch caught my eye the other night

Well, over the Labor day weekend Sarah and I joined two others and made our way to the Gorge for a Dave Matthews concert. Little did Sarah know that I had been in communications with her good friends (friends since they were just little gals) and they were headed up to surprise her for her birthday. The surprise worked perfectly and we all got to enjoy the concert. However, it rained pretty good right before it got dark...so everyone there was pretty much soaked. Or drunk. Or high on something. It was a bizarre atmosphere but a beautiful venue. The "campground" was totally overpriced for what it was...a field. Just try and find a place to auger your car, then set up a tent within two feet of other campers. The concert was over at about midnight and the parties went on until about 0530. (We tried to sleep...didn't work well.) Well, we all made it through and jumped in the car with Steph and Dorey (sp?) who then stayed at our place for the weekend.


Camp looking northeast



Camp looking northwest

I have continued to see Lucca sneak in the woods. She's getting pretty good at it...I don't even have to say anything now! She'll watch my body language and either sit down and wait for me to motion to her to come, or she'll creep next to me. She even stops panting so we can hear better! It really is interesting to see. She darn near pointed a flock of grouse the other day, I swear she wanted to lift her foot!

Since we have a fireplace, I've been in the "man-nesting" mode. However, I think I'm doing something wrong...listen: First one was a decent lodgepole pine I managed to put down right on the road. Just bucked it up and put it in the truck. The second time out, I found some larch that was already down...right above the road. All I had to do was cut some lengths, push them down to the road and buck them up. Not too bad, but I was having trouble with the idle on the saw....so wore myself out keeping it wide open while trying to cut firewood-sized chunks. Finally got all that wood split and stacked and went back out to get some more. (This is over the course of a couple weeks.) I had managed to find a DANDY Douglas-fir pretty close to town. Quite a find! But I had given my saw to a guy I work with to see if he couldn't help me get it working better. He wasn't done by the time last weekend came around, so he brought HIS saw in for me to work with. Okay, mine is a Stihl 44 and his is a 66. Mine weighs only about 15 lbs and his is pushing 20 lbs with a three foot bar. It doesn't sound like much, but it makes a large difference! I went up the hill and dropped this big tree down toward the road. Well, then I cut it into two log lengths and drug the top end down the road a bit with the truck. Then I lashed onto the second log length, jumped in the truck and got NOTHING as far as movement. Hmm, so back up the hill (it was steep and brushy) to cut rounds and roll them down the hill. Now, we're looking at about 20 - 24 inch rounds of Douglas-fir that just had the needles fall off. Not very light. I found the stobs that had augured in the ground keeping it from getting towed off the hill. Anywho, so when rolling rounds down the hill they will typically get stuck under brush, wedged against stumps, branches, trees, etc. So you are handling these things about 4 times each. Then you finally get them to roll to the road and a couple go bouncing off over the other side and down...down...down. Once you get a bunch on the road and they are stopping the others...a car will come. Then you have to run down the hill and move them off the road. Then go back up the hill. Repeat. All this in one of the hottest days we've had so far in September...90s. Great.

I got so wore out by the time I got all these in the truck, split some to fill gaps, and lugging the saw around that my arm was seizing up! That little muscle on my forearm by my elbow was contracting causing my arm to bend up toward my chest...which caused my hand to do the same thing and cramp. I had to take a walk and relax for a bit to get THAT to stop. Then I would get in the truck to back closer to the rounds and my hip flexors would do the same thing causing me to lay in the cab and stretch my legs out the door...which caused my arm to spasm again...all in all, it would have been pretty darn funny if it didn't hurt so much!

I had the truck weighed down to the point where I was nervous about hurting it. So I crawled home on the back roads. I had to get Sarah to help me with the wheelbarrow because I couldn't throw some of these rounds again. I WAS SPENT.

So I went from easy-going, simple wood gathering to an experience that really made me wonder what I was doing. I'll be a little pickier from now on (I hope.)

All in all, I guess it's just that time of year. Trying to tie up all the loose ends before a.) hunting season and b.) winter all while still trying to get out and have some fun.

I'm still working on getting some photos of the house posted.