#17 That Darkest Hour Thing

Cliches become cliché because they are so often true. "The darkest hour comes before the dawn": Does it have scientific truth? I don't know, but the emotional truth seems obvious, the anxiety that builds while waiting all night for the light to return and being plum worn out with whatever keeps us up and exhausted.

For me, the physical renovation of the cabin has been nearly three months in the making, not interminable compared to constructing a whole house or renovating a building larger than my 600 square feet, but made more difficult for me by not having electricity, heat, or indoor plumbing at home for the duration. The process has reached a contradictory climax in the last two weeks: The end seemed nearer because the walls were freshly painted (by Miguel and me), beautiful trim graces the windows (thanks to Tom, Chris, and Mike, featured right) and light fixtures gave the place a finished look inside (the work of Ralph and Jeff, below).


Meanwhile, outside all hell broke loose.

The septic tank going in behind the shed (see photos below of the tank arriving, the Really Big Hole dug by the backhoe and its placement) meant having the excavator and backhoe ripping up terrain in what was essentially my front yard and outdoor kitchen area. It only lasted a few days, but the open trenches were an open wound when I was already weary of coping with carrying water. The resulting dust—and when it rained lately, mud—from the newly churned earth were not much fun.

The contagiously cheerful and splendidly helpful “Septic and Big Equipment” man, Beda, made enduring the havoc pleasurable. As he looked at one open trench for the phone line and another for the water line, with the excavator poised for replacing the shed, he commented, “It’s really coming together!” Yeah.

True enough. I mean, this trenching means that the connecting energy sources of the cabin will be conducting their forces soon, like the nervous and digestive systems of the body. The water, gas, electric and phone lines all converge and soon will spark and flow.

In the meantime, I keep my weariness at bay, my brain juggling new understandings of all these systems. I work this job from 7 am to 4 pm, then race down the hill into town to get online and deal with other projects and responsibilities, then back up hill while it's still light to clean up the newest debris or otherwise trying to make order out of the chaos of construction. The debris, dust, noise and garbage seem endless (see some piles, right).

During this whole process, I keep renewing my faith that at the end of each day or after a few days, the latest stage will reap benefits and ultimately order.

For example, on Monday, another Mike (left), the brother of Chris the carpenter, arrived and with Miguel, helped transform the stack of tree rounds into useable firewood. I now have about two cords of wood that will keep me (and you, when you visit) warm for a couple of cold winters (below, right). Mike used a wood splitter, a gas powered machine that supremely simplifies the work of heaving an ax over and over again (so my ax wielding lesson will have to wait). I learned about such obvious basics as 2-stroke versus 4-stroke machines; using an oil-and-gas mixture; that gasoline comes in red cans while kerosene comes in blue; and that a cord of wood is 4’x8’x4’ (the latter is valuable knowledge for me, since I had to buy a cord at the beginning of the winter but didn't really know what it should look like). After Miguel, Mike, and I all donned earplugs, we spent a couple of hours cutting and stacking. The end result of this hugely loud process was this amazing pile of wood. Now to cover it and keep it from getting wet and moldy in the winter…

Bats in my belfry I haven’t wanted to mention some of the more unpleasant aspects of living in the shed, like finding mouse poop on my bureau after I’ve been absent for a day or so. Also disturbing is listening to the mice scurry in the wall behind my head at night when I’m trying to sleep. Earplugs work well for that little problem, though getting a “mouser”cat is recommended for the long term. One evening I saw a bat fly above my head in the shed, rather startling. I thank Mike (the carpenter), an eternal optimist, for pointing out that the bat will take care of mosquitoes. So yeah, I stopped worrying about any nefarious impact of bats. Besides, I don’t have enough hair for them to mess with, should they even try to live up to their reputation. I’m good with mosquito patrol. After a few months of all this home havoc, it might drive one a little batty.

Who knew that I could ever miss a cold, wintry night? But now that the summer is setting in, mosquitoes can plague the evening with their insistent buzz. I keep thinking about the saying in Minnesota that their state bird is the mosquito. At least ours are still small. I strive to work that “eternal optimist” discipline, too. It sure creates far less anxiety and resentment.

Lessons learned

So all of this web-log is about sharing what I am learning as a neophyte in the woods and getting a chance to exercise my sense of humor under often challenging moments.

As the renovation process comes to its gradual close, I see reinforcement of lessons learned along the way. One is the warning that Nancy, the architect, and Tom, the contractor, offered at the beginning of the process: It is usually better to tear down a dysfunctional structure and start fresh. So far I am glad I didn’t, but I understand now much better why they would advise such a seemingly drastic approach.

For example, Tom had Chris muck around under the house to inspect piers and posts that form the funky foundation after we had the humongous support beam go in under the loft. Chris showed me one of the posts he had replaced: it was “mushy,” he said, and I was horrified to see it broken in two pieces like mere cork. They also found that the floor of the loft was not well supported (here Chris shows the horrifying hole in the floor that one might have fallen through had there not been a chair in that corner all these years). Thanks to all of them, I have a fairly well supported house now. Since I’ve now got a beautiful home, I want to insure it will last longer, so a future urgent project is to get a continuous foundation poured under the perimeter of the cabin.

I also keep returning my lesson about the way the mind sometimes only opens when forced to see new possibilities as the old version of reality drops away. We are sometimes forced to lose someone or something, perhaps due to neglect or to some force beyond our will and control. We grieve, we mourn, but soon we can begin to see new opportunities that arise from that vacancy, perhaps a way of being for ourselves that could not exist because of the predominance of whatever was there before.

That new possibility was true in a very physical sense for me in this project when the closet came down. It once dominated the cabin, dividing it into two semi-rooms, and because the cabin had always been that way, I was attached to The Way It Was. We can convince ourselves of the inherent value of The Way It Was and thus perpetuate the past, unwilling to adopt or even think about change. However, when change happens (such as the closet being ripped out), we can even feel some relief.

In the same way, I experienced that breath-giving change when the tool shed got dragged from its previous location—an amazing process in itself, requiring Beda, Chris, Mike, and Tom to make many calculations of how to use the excavator, chains, and skids to get the shed off its post and piers and out of the way for the septic tank to get put in, and then return the shed to a post & pier position. The problem was worthy of a high school mathematics study brought to real life. But once the shed was moved, I had the opportunity to think about permanently relocating the tool shed, rather than just putting it back where it had been. In fact, it was better to move it further away from cottage shed (where I am currently living, and that will one day be a guest cottage).

Finally, I keep learning over and over how electrifying it is to try out new skills. Here I am with the "whacker," compressing soil after the new phone-line conduit trench was covered up again. I don't have a driver's license for this machine any more than I did for the excavator, and I nearly lost control of it, but I had fun trying.

Next week my sister Chris arrives to teach me about tiling with her help in the bathroom--it will be so great to have family here and have help from a friend! One more week to go and then a little celebration with the cabin 95% done. The light is coming.