July 19, 2014,     Waiting

It is a rainy day. Nothing to do now but wait it out. I walk to the Home Depot to look at toy chainsaws and axes for the weekend woodsmen. I study the Dominion Seed Catalogue and You Tube videos about solar power and how to cut down timber. The bank is supposed to have the money for us on July 30. The closing is not until August 7. After that the land will be ours...but not really. You cannot own the land really; land is something shared with the past and future.

I know if we go into the woods attempting to tame it we will not succeed. That is a wild place and although only 28 acres it is large enough for us to get lost in it. Our monuments to human ingenuity will disappear in time and the makers will be forgotten.

August 09, 2014,     Going Green

We finally made it! The land and cabin are ours. Here are views up and down the river. We have more than 1200 feet of shoreline. There is a lot of brush to cut as no one has been using the land for years however we have a choice spot on the river. It is wonderful for swimming and I caught a big Walleye on the second cast. The 28 acre forest is quite tall with many very old trees and a wide assortment of ferns, mosses and maple saplings. Plenty of deer tracks. On our way home we had to stop on the road to wait for a moose who looked at us then calmly walked away.

August 16, 2014,     Spent the Weekend

Slept overnight at the cabin. Most of the time we were clearing overgrown brush all around it. This time I wore long pants and saved my legs from serious scratching. At night there were millions of stars and it was very quiet. The river at sunset was steaming and its surface reflected the clouds.

Cabin in the Woods

Magnetawan River

Needle Eye Rapids

August 25, 2014,     The weekend was mostly spent clearing brush. We can now see the river from the cabin. The weather was lovely. We walked to Needles Eye Rapids and enjoyed the forest. The river was at least a foot or so higher than it was last week.

Perhaps ten years ago several large trees were cut to provide a view of the river. After that I don't think they spent an hour clearing with the result that many saplings have grown up to obstruct the view. Any salvageable deadwood will be cut for firewood. Meanwhile the saplings will be removed along with weak lower branches of the mature trees. After we clear the obstructions and find a natural trail to the lagoon we will focus on the moss and many types of ferns. Wild irises are already growing so we will supplement them with a colourful assortment of wet land bulbs along with many Hostas.

Clearing Brush

Clearing Brush

Walking Trail to Needle's Eye

Resting at the Needle's Eye Rapids

September 07, 2014   Work Started on the Road. Ongoing Plans

We spent a short weekend from late Saturday until about 5:00pm on Sunday working on the land. We had fine sunny weather, about 70 degrees F. The river was very beautiful on Sunday morning because it was all steamy in the cool. Marisol and I tried our hands fishing but we were not lucky so breakfast was bacon and eggs.

Javier moving in

The dirt road from our property line to the cabin is over 1600 feet. We have been using the wheelbarrow and dolly to move in. We need to fix the road so the car can get all the way to the cabin.

Repair to the access road began in earnest. Javier began filling in the pot holes while I tackled the big pile of pre-hardened cement. The previous owner left a skid of about 50 bags of cement but these were out in the rain for a half dozen years or so and are as hard as...cement. I wheeled the 30kg bags one at a time with the wheelbarrow up the road from the cabin to wherever Javier was working. I removed the plastic covering from the bags of cement and pounded them over and over with an enormous sledge hammer until each bag was reduced to gravel.  This was added to the road to provide traction and to help prevent erosion. We are about 1/3 done. We need to put in a culvert and were fortunate to find one left behind by the previous owner.

Meanwhile Mari and Marina, armed with their trusty machetes continued to chop away at the brush. We brought a few bunches of Hostas and purple Irises from the city and the girls transplanted them at the entrance way to our road.

In the morning the river is warmer than the air so it steams.

This is a view from the Lagoon up to the cabin. I think we have removed enough of the live trees. We still need to clear out the deadwood and stumps. Cottage Life says you should not just put a long stairway down to the beach. There should be some sort of transition. The large windows on the right of the cabin are really a door. On this side of the cabin we will put on a deck/porch/another room the width of the building, coming out about 12 feet. This will be about 3 feet lower than the doorway. After that there will be a small stair leading to another deck in a shady area, perhaps 12' x 12' just below that stump in the upper middle. That will lead to a trail that will lead off to the right and come back to about where I took this picture. There will be a campsite / deck here and it will lead to the suspension bridge just behind me. There is an abundance of ferns we need to add irises and some shade loving colourful perennials along the trail. I hope that will transitional enough for Cottage Life.

 September 01, 2014    Enjoyed the long weekend working at the cabin. This week we continued to clear brush down the hill to the lagoon. Directly in front of the cabin there is a forest lagoon that is under water each spring. The river is also subject to fluctuations and when it goes up a foot or so like it did last week the water makes the forest quite soggy. It is a lovely shaded spot with a floor of ferns, driftwood caught in the spring floods and crouching old trees.

Lagoon Forest

View from Lagoon Forest to Mainland

View from the mainland to the Lagoon Forest

The first image above shows the trail coming down the ridge. Currently it is necessary to swing away from the water to reach the river. It can flood up to ten feet in spring so a dock or a boardwalk across the marshy section will be problematic. I think a suspension bridge would be neat. There is a spot with several sturdy trees lined up at a perfect spot just down the hill from the cabin. A three or four stage hanging bridge made of sturdy nylon, floor of nice 4" maple poles hung six feet or so off the ground should work. Here is the proposed location of the bridge.

Proposed location of suspension bridge

A different angle

Of course we will have to clean up all the deadwood. What cannot be salvaged for firewood or furniture will be returned to the soil as compost or left as is to provide homes for whatever creatures might be using them now. Just on the other side of the Lagoon there is a ridge and perfect spot for a camp. Beautiful river breeze and wonderful view. Fine sheltered harbour for a canoe or three. Solid granite floor for nice clean swim. Fishing is good also. On my second cast I caught a very good bass which was delicious.

Fishing

It is very nice to swim in a river. The current pulls against you and you can swim slowly for as long as you like and be in the same place. I worry about weak swimmers though. It gets very deep very fast.

Taking Pictures

A view from the cabin to the river September 01, 2014

Clearing around the cabin continued. There was about 10 years of saplings that had to be removed to get some light and a breeze. We cut only a couple of trees. One was leaning over the cabin and did not appear structurally sound. A couple others were removed to improve the view and to provide a space for a little vegetable garden.

As we clear the brush the deadwood is being cut into firewood which is stored for winter. There is a nice little wood stove which should keep the cabin cosy. So far we have not experienced a cold night. The stove was lit to make sure it worked (it does) and to take away some of the dampness.  With all the saplings and overhanging trees the little house was quite wet. Here is a picture of a mushroom that is growing out of our picnic table. (neighbour Ray says it is a very good year for mushrooms)

A Touch of Red

September 14 , 2014   Teresa Visits the Cabin

We could not come up on Saturday so we had only a few hours on Sunday. We brought Teresa up to visit the cabin for the first time. It was a bit chilly so I made a fire in the wood stove and very soon the place was nice and cozy.

It rained for the most part of last week and the road in to the cabin was more flooded than it was last week. I did not touch it.

Instead I used the chainsaw to cut firewood logs from deadwood down in the lagoon. Each spring when it floods trees floating down the river get trapped and hung up on our lagoon. A lot of the lumber are off the ground and by the look of the wood they are several years old and quite dry. I hauled several dolly loads up the embankment to the cabin. I used a big old tire to set the logs in for chopping which works quite well because the tire holds the logs up and you can split five or six without having to lean over and place them up individually for splitting.
Andrew came up for a visit and he kept busy helping plant perennials. I want to introduce oaks and was thinking acorns. Instead Andrew found an old oak on the property and dug up some seedlings. These were transplanted near the cabin. He did the same for some pines and later taught Marisol the good places to plant the Hostas and other plants we brought up from the city. I appointed him head gardener.

Joel borrowed the neighbours canoe and went fishing. He had several strong bites but did not land anything. Next time he will bring the net.

September 21 , 2014   Planting in the Rain

It rained all weekend, sometimes heavily but we did not care. Andrew brought Franny and some boxes of perennials. He and Marisol planted them (not Franny just the flowers) around the cabin. They also found some pine and oak seedlings in the deep forest, dug them out and transplanted them near the cabin. The garden is starting to look great and the soil is very rich. The plants put in during the last two weekends are still fresh and green and so far apparently undiscovered by the deer.

Javier enjoyed the heavy rain because it helped to plot the watershed on the road. He dug one crossing to put in a culvert and was pleasantly surprised to discover an old culvert already there. That was cleaned out and put along with another. I carried bags of hardened cement with the wheelbarrow from the cabin up the road and dropped them one by one along the way. The sledge hammer got a rest until next weekend. I dropped about 15 bags before calling it a day.

It is too late in the year to season green wood for the fireplace but we need wood for winter. I concentrated on big deadfalls and river wood that got hung up on the lagoon during the spring floods. Many of the logs are bone dry and almost ready to burn. The chainsaw made short work of them but it was still quite a chore hauling the wood up the ridge with the dolly. The last 40 feet are almost vertical and the mud slippery with clay in the rain.

Marina found legs and a second drawer in the cedar chest. Javier repaired the hinge and Marina organized the cutlery. It seemed that the colours are changing by the hour. It was a nice weekend. A weekend with miserable weather in paradise is still a weekend in paradise.

Planting in the Rain

Mushrooms

Flooded Trail to Cabin

Road to Cabin September 21, 2014

September 28 , 2014   Left the Camera at the Cabin

Oops left the camera at the Cabin so I was not able to upload any pictures. I did take some time to take a few photos but that had to wait a week. The weather was beautiful and we had a lovely time.

Morning Mist 1 to 3

Sometimes in the morning I am a little sleepy and things like checking the focus do not occur to me. However I like the moodiness of this. Some of the soft focus was because of the mist.

Sitting Around the Campfire

Forest Canopy September 28, 2014

The leaves are changing rapidly. It seemed by the hour to us. The forest floor is carpeted with leaves however quite a bit of green remains.

Magnetawan River

October 5, 2014    Another Rainy Weekend

It rained most of the weekend but we kept ourselves busy fixing the road and the body heat generated by hard work kept us warm. Marisol could not come and we missed her but we had a nice time anyway. Marina brought a lovely soup base made with squash and two kinds of juice made with her magic blender. I brought Pizza from Tre Maria Bakery and we heated it on the wood stove.

After dark it rained really hard and it was fun to sit in front of the wood stove listening to conspiracy radio beaming through the internet and broadcast on the portable speaker through Blu Tooth, the cabin lit by the soft light of candles and naphtha gas. We are cowboys living in the woods but with technology. For the last two weeks I have been afraid to burn green wood in the woodstove because of the risk of a creosote fire so on the way up I bought bags of wood from the general store much to the consternation of Javier who declared it a waste of money. This week I brought along a moisture meter and learned that the general store wood is soaking wet! The stuff I cut from deadwood hung up off the ground is perfectly acceptable....live and learn.

Meanwhile another lake in the middle of our dirt road was filled in. Only three rough spots to go. For pictures I experimented with the 10mm fish eye. That is why the trees seem to bend. The forest floor is carpeted in leaves and the canopy is bare compared to last week.

Forest Floor

October 13, 2014    Autumn Water Abstracts

I heard that when the group of seven painters showed their works many dismissed them as being too bizarre, too abstract. Such crazy colours and shapes! Yet in reality it is all there. Here is a larger shot of the fall colours being reflected on our river. Then I focused in with the 55mm lens on some close ups of the water.

For thanksgiving we roasted a big chicken over the fire. The battery powered turner seized up because of the heat after an hour. The bird had to be given a 1/4 turn every few minutes or so by hand after that. The meat eaters in the group said it was delicious.

The roadwork continued and very good progress is being made. Where we worked the last few weeks is quite dry in spite of the rain. We have three good culverts draining the swamp 24 x 7 and we just might be able to drive the car down next weekend. Javier's plan is to use the big flat granite pieces (of which there are a lot scattered all over the property) as pavers. He has excavated the trail and in the low areas carefully laid the stones along the wheel ruts then filled it in with a mixture of sand and clay.
My fear is that the first heavy frost will heave everything up and create a transmission ripping obstacle course for the car. We shall see. Meanwhile I admire his endurance and strength.

Granite Pavers

Here is the exit of one of the culverts. There were three that we found. All of them without maintenance for several years resulted in both ends completely plugged. This allowed the water sloping down from the swamp to engulf the road. Once excavated a bit the water now flows down little streams to eventually join up and drain out to the river. That is a lot of water constantly flowing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

As it gets cooler the insect population is reduced. No more mosquitoes hurray! But instead,  Javier's traipsing around in the bush rustled up swarms of little flies. They don't bite too much (they do bite if given a chance) but they do swarm in the thousands and get into your eyes and mouth. Here is a dragon fly resting in the sun. The dragonflies are much more sluggish now that the high temperatures are only 8 to 10 degrees C.

Dragonfly

As the end of October approaches the forest spirits become more apparent. Stripped of their summer dress they stand naked for those with eyes to see.

Forest Spirit Disguised as a Tree

Forest Spirit Disguised as a Tree (With flying Bat-like Sprites)

The forest is a living thing. Everywhere life in many forms quietly grows, lives, reproduces and inevitably dies. That means that the forest is also a place of death. Sometimes by natural life cycle, sometimes by violent surprise, death is here too. One cannot escape it by fleeing the city.

Tombstone

Magnetawan River Upstream

October 19, 2014    Roadwork Continues

This weekend the girls stayed home and so it was just Javier and me. The river is higher than I have ever seen it so our lagoon is quite flooded and the little isthmus in front of our property is now clearly an island. The weather is distinctly fall-like. It rained all week so everything is quite soggy but on Sunday the weather was clear and sunny.

Although the thermometer read only 4 Celsius it was surprisingly warm in the forest. After an hour of digging it was necessary to remove our jackets. I suppose it is the high relative humidity and absolute lack of wind.

It was great news when Javier discovered sand pits on the land quite close to the road (on the road actually). He was digging down to remove a big boulder and struck sand. The farther down he dug the purer it became. We seem to have an endless supply which will be spread over the squishy parts of the road.

Meanwhile now that the culverts are working my task was to follow the streams up and down, clearing the fallen logs and leaves that keep the streams from flowing and result in bogs and swamps. We have a natural slope from the swamp and it should be possible to trace the original watercourse and create a lovely stream and walking trail. The water table is very high. When Javier dug into the sand he struck water right away. I hope we can lower the water table a bit to eliminate some of the mosquito breeding grounds. Also having the water moving should keep it cleaner.

I finished planting the perennial bulbs. I got a big box in the mail from Veseys Seeds in PEI. Said to be shade loving, deer resistant, butterfly attracting beauties. We shall see in spring.

October 26, 2014    Roadwork Continues

The roadwork continues. Javier continued to dig away at the sand mine. He reported that the deeper he dug, the better the quality of sand. He excavated a trench about 3 feet deep, 3 feet wide and 9 feet long. The sand was piled in a low, very wet area of the road. I brought a dozen or so wheelbarrow loads down the road and spread the sand on another wet area with little effect.

Later I discovered the source of one of the streams which is the back end of the swamp. I started to clear the creek of leaves, branches and probably hundreds of years of root filled compost that forms the top foot or so of soil and completely blocks the natural flow of water. I believe if we clear the watercourse we should be able to drain the swamp. I won't completely drain it as there is a lovely pond which could be preserved for frogs and such.

We explored a bit more of the forest as we traced one of three natural creek beds upstream. I discovered a very nice stand of birch trees and also the source of the little creek that drains the swamp.

The weather is a lot cooler but we were able to keep the cabin quite warm with another log on the fire before bedtime and another in the morning. I put the coffee on the stove when I went out at dawn to fish and it was apparently ready about 5 minutes after I let. Perhaps I will stick around next time. Working outside in the cold is quite pleasant. No bugs. The denseness of the forest, even without leaves is a natural wind break. The relative humidity is also quite high so after a half hour or so of heavy lifting I was able to work in short sleeves quite comfortably.

We played dominoes at night to pass the time. (My team was beaten decisively two out of three games) Food was good. Oatmeal in the morning, potato soup and fire roasted quails for the meat eaters. The fruit and vegetable smoothees brought up from the city provided a lot of energy. 

Walking the Trail

November 02, 2014    First Snow!

Friday it was raining and then overnight the temperature dropped and there was a heavy snow that stuck to everything including the sides of the trees. It was just Javier and me this weekend. He continued to slug away at the road which was particularly difficult because you could not see the road because of the snow.

I sawed a number of logs into chop able sections for firewood and spent some time taking pictures. I tried shooting star trails at 3:30 in the morning after the moon set. It was ten below zero (Celsius) but surprisingly it did not feel too cold. The cabin of course was very snug and warm. We cracked open a pouch of survival food which to my palate was almost inedible because of the very high salt content.

Down by the lagoon the snow on the branches began to melt and fell to the water resulting in musical notes that flowed out from the impact as music and circular waves. Remarkably beautiful in the stillness.

There were a number of fresh deer tracks in the snow. They do come close to the cabin.

November 09, 2014    Digging, Chopping and Staying Warm by the Fire

We passed another nice weekend at the cabin. It was warm and rainy all week so we were fairly confident we could drive the car all the way to our access road. After that it is only 1600 feet to the cabin so we can walk in from there. But it is clear that winter is arriving quickly. On the highway it was snowing heavily, the temperature was at the freezing mark and passing was a white knuckle experience.

The access road is not ploughed and soon we will have to park at the farm house about three kilometres from the cabin and hike in. With snow piled up to eight feet with drifts we will need snow shoes. Javier found a big plastic sleigh which came in handy to haul in supplies from the car.

The girls spent the weekend cleaning the cabin - we left it messy last week. The survival food that I found too salty last week was supplemented with cooked hamburger and freeze dried corn. Not too bad. I chopped up all of the logs. Later Javier and I worked on the last flooded section of our road. We excavated a river leading from our road to the swamp. It was back breaking work because of all the roots but below the first six inches we hit sand and gravel.

The only time we saw the sun was for about 45 minutes at sunrise so I went down to the river to get a few more photos. I did not bring the telephoto lens. There was a pretty big beaver. Every time I moved it slapped the water with its tail and dived. I cropped the photo heavily so you can see it is an animal.

On Saturday night we played dominos until almost midnight. The fire keeps the cabin very nice and warm. Our team narrowly won four out of seven games. We played music from the iPad via Blue Tooth to the Beats Pill until it died then we used the Sony speaker with a fresh set of 4AA batteries. I introduced the group to Frank Zappa.

View From the Trailer

Pine Tree