Making Home My Home

After the first night in the lodge, I was faced with many tasks in a quandary of what to do. My first thought was the venison I left back at the river. Leaving at dawn, we made it back to the river by early afternoon. The meat was safe in its high perch and I carried it back on my travois. Rocky carried some sundry other things that I had stored under the aluminum canoe with his. But our loads were much lighter than two days before, so we made it back to that first night's camp again before it got too dark to see. It felt good to be in familiar territory and we weren't hassled as we slept the sleep of exhaustion.

The next day arriving home, I focused on the greenhouse. While the acrylic plastic had held up well against the onslaught of many winters and summers, there was a bit of patching of the framework to do here and there and the solar panels needed to be cleaned so they could operate again. Inside, was an overgrown mess infested with mice that gave Rocky a great day of hunt and kill as I pulled weeds and even saplings that had somehow been carried in by the pack rat nature of mice and chipmunks and planted.

But the soil underneath was still rich and, being fallow for so long, ready to plant as soon as I got all of the roots of the various invaders removed. By the end of a long hard day's work with spade and rake, I was ready to plant. The irrigation system needed to be repaired to work from a cistern off the roof of the lodge but that had to wait until I had time.

Knowing I had less than two months before the very cold of November would hit, I planted lettuce, radishes, onions, carrots, beans, peas, squash, corn, cabbage and tomatoes. I wasn't sure what kind of crop I would get, but I knew that I would be able to survive the winter regardless because game and wild rice on the lake were very plentiful and easy to harvest along with several wild plants like nettles for greens.

So I harvested. I grew and I harvested. Berries were first, because they were getting near the end of the season. There were blueberries, blackberries and some black raspberries and raspberries to be picked very close to the lodge. I harvested nettles, cattail hearts, and wild rice in the meadows and water around the lake. I caught and smoked about 100 pounds of fish very easily from a lake that had not seen fishing since I threw a line in it 23 years before. I caught a lunker with almost every cast. Mostly northern pike, but walleyes were the best eating.

Ducks would swim very close to the shore and grouse would wander into the grounds and even sit in the trees nearby waiting for me to bring them down with my crossbow. I fashioned a light rope to bolts that had the rope attached so that I could shoot for at least 20 feet, make a kill, and then reel in the rope and not lose the bolt or the game. When game would appear like a rabbit or squirrel while I was gardening, the crossbow was always nearby so that I could easily harvest it. I was not being greedy, but stocking up for the eight months of winter I expected ahead.

The climate had become quite temperate rather than Arctic. The boreal forest was gradually giving way to mixed conifer and deciduous hardwood trees like maple, birch, and oak. All of the seeds were being brought by migrating squirrels and birds, in the amazing migration of plants. The plants in my greenhouse with the August sun and the irrigation I provided grew quickly and grew bountifully. Before long I was canning much of what I grew and eating the rest fresh from the garden.

Rocky relaxed and watched me work while he guarded the perimeter and told me if any offending critters were about. He was restrained except for weasels, mice or moles, to wait for my command before barking loudly or driving off potential food for both him and me. He seemed to understand and would look at me intently and tilt his head in a listening posture as though he knew exactly what I was telling him. It worked. For the most part, Rocky was very helpful and behaved. But the howling of wolves always got his back up and he would cringe, shake and growl at the thought of having to fight them again.

The cabins and sheds were also infested with mice and squirrels, so gradually, I got into them, one by one, and begin cleaning them out and making them useful for whatever purpose I wanted. The boathouse had some usable equipment, but the mice had chewed on electrical wires making some of the equipment unusable until I replaced those wires. There was fuel that I tested and tried to make work. I finally got a chainsaw working and it became very handy for putting away firewood for the winter and building. I didn't know how long I would be able to run that chainsaw and knew that eventually I would have to do it all by hand tools--axes and saws. They were available although some of the handles had been chewed by rodents to get at the salt in the wood. I would do some handle making in winter.

There were several boats in the boathouse and I managed to get a 35 horse Evinrude motor running. But I had to conserve fuel, so I didn't use it if I didn't have to. I preferred the wind anyway after learning how to sail. The lake wasn't that big that I couldn't get home by walking around it in a day or two or paddling/rowing when the wind died.

I worked very hard on getting the windmills turning again and the solar panels cleaned and working to provide me with enough electricity for all of the components of the lodge, the kitchen, lighting and all of the battery charging devices that were now very old but still operating by my diligence of keeping them charged almost daily.

There was a lot to do, but it was more relaxed than on the road. I knew that eventually all of this would quit working and that I would have to resort to more primitive methods of doing things. I wanted to continue to lead the lifestyle I had created as long as I could. Winter was coming. I had to be ready for it.

Gradually the autumn came into play with beautiful sunlit days followed by cold fronts that came through and dropped the temperature overnight to below freezing, sometimes with rain or even snow flurries. I had harvested almost all of the crops except the sweetcorn, squash and cabbage. The greenhouse kept them from freezing and I felt that I might even be able to grow into the winter until there wasn't enough sunlight during the day to keep the greenhouse warm enough to fend off freezing. I foraged for mushrooms and found several edible varieties, along with some herbs and spices that grew wild in the changing forest.

The day that I was harvesting the last of the sweet corn, I looked out and saw a huge bull moose intent on mating with a female by challenging another moose that I heard nearby standing in my yard. Crazed with testosterone, he didn't even notice that I was there and that Rocky was by my side growling softly. While I had my 357 Magnum on my hip, my rifle was in the gun rack in the lodge. But I always kept the crossbow handy for a tasty chicken dinner from some grouse wandering into range. I thought, what the heck? And picked up the crossbow, mounted a bolt, and carefully took aim.

The moose was only about 30 feet away so my first bolt found his heart with ease. His brain cage was so small and hardened by both antlers and bone, so before he realized what was happening I sent another bolt into his lungs. He hesitated a bit, snorted loudly, and then took off at full tilt towards the sound of the other bull. I had my pistol out and the safety off as I saw him run past the sheds and out of sight--almost. He was already nearly out of pistol range when he went down front haunches first in a pile in tall grass. Ending up with his legs kicking the air a few times before he bled out.

That was such good fortune. With that moose kill I had six months of meat. As with the venison, I'd already constructed a bear proof platform, 30 feet high with aluminum sheeting on the poles so that bears could not climb them. Meat cut up in manageable pieces for freezing could be placed on the platform to freeze in the cold nights that were already upon me. To keep the ravens away, I had built a couple of moving wind driven animated owls that looked very realistic and even at times drew owls in to commune with them.

Covering the meat with tarps also helped small scavengers from getting to it. I had a removable ladder and a pulley system for raising and lowering heavy pieces. The moose took about a half day to butcher but it was well worth it. I was fixed for winter meat and would need no more until spring. There was a freezer in the lodge that I had cleaned out and sealed before I left. With electricity working, I got it working again. So I had a ready place for frozen meat at hand and didn't have to go out to that platform very often in the dead of winter.

The cold and snow gradually forced me inside and I settled in for one of those long and dark winters that occurred at this latitude on the planet. I was pleased how prepared I was after arriving so late in the year. I had many projects to do and was using them to overcome the loneliness and possible cabin fever that would set in during late winter. Rocky was a blessing to always be there to talk to. Attentively listening.