Planning
The winter of 2002-2003 began serious plans for the business and my life was more hectic and stressful than anything I'd ever like to put myself through again.  I spent every 15 minute break at work, every lunch hour and most of my free time researching everything I could think of to buy, build, or create.  Cabins, floor plans, incorporation/licensing, land lease, furniture, propane appliances, drinking water systems, waste water systems, permitting, boats, etc.  By the spring I was running myself to exhaustion trying to put everything together.  I found cabin kits in British Columbia, hired an engineer to design a lodge, worked with the City to procure a building permit and conditional use permit (see photo below of the public notice sign posted at Douglas Boat Harbor), hired another engineer to design water treatment systems, looked for tour boats, hired a lawyer to put together a lease for the land, incorporated as an LLC, bought a business license, wrote a business plan, and so on.

It doesn't sound nearly as onerous written out that way as when I was doing it; every step was a trial.  I went through serious negotiations with the City for several months about the first cabin kits I located, but in the end they turned out to be too small to be considered habitable.  I considered platforms and wall tents, but nixed the idea.  The next set of cabins I found were more substantial, but required review by an engineer.  In order to release the plans, British Columbia manufacturer StarTek required a $1,000 down payment which theywere reluctant to return in the event that the engineer wouldn't approve them.  We worked that out and with some modifications an engineer signed off on the plans and I ordered four kits after weeks of back and forth on the specifics of the building.  The kits are designed without a floor so the same engineer designed a foundation/floor system out of pressure treated lumber. 

Then I tried to send money to Canada to purchase the kits, which proved surprisingly difficult.  My bank wouldn't do it, nor would the money sending businesses in town.  I eventually gave up and agreed to FedEx a cashier's check from Key Bank. 

On top of all this I took two evening classes spring semester from the University of Alaska Southeast to better prepare myself for my business--Diesel Engine Repair and Basic Construction Techniques.  I excelled at neither, but the construction class gave me the background to design and build my own outhouses and a core of knowledge that has proved invaluable since.  Though I grew up in the wilderness, I had steadfastly avoided learning about tools, boating, cutting trees, plumbing, and all the other sundry homesteader tasks that my parents had mastered.  It all seemed too daunting as a kid, so much knowledge and experience that I didn't think I'd ever be able to absorb it.  The idea that I was incompetent--dependent on other people for any complicated task--haunted me for years.  This project, however, compelled me to learn dozens of new scary skills and forced me to confront my ignorance and admit it to those who could help.  It's been a tremendous lesson in humility and a great confidence builder.

When classes were over I got busy after work and on the weekends preconstructing foundation feet for the cabins and designing and building outhouses for assembly on site, all of which were meant to go on the landing craft.  The foundation feet the engineer designed to support all the buildings are constructed of lumber.  I wanted to prefabricate as many as I could in Juneau to ease construction on site so I bought a bunch of pressure treated lumber and bolts, borrowed my parents' huge drill to make the bolt holes, and overcame my deep terror of chain saws to cut the lumber in my driveway.  Though manlier people make fun of me for it, my little green Poulan chain saw from Fred Meyer's is one of my most prized wilderness possessions.  My engineer developed the foundation design with lumber because I dreaded the idea of hauling down and mixing concrete in a completely undeveloped land and digging holes three feet deep or more (the required depth to prevent frost upheaval).  The feet are made with two 2X12 boards sixteen inches long side by side (the foot) crossed and bolted together with a 4X6.  Rising upright from this is a 6X6 post attached with a bracket.  I made enough for the first two cabins.

The foundation feet were frustrating, but ultimately satisfying; the outhouses, however, are my pride and joy (see photo).  I began constructing them one wall at a time on the garage floor, moving them outside to fit them all together.  A great deal of thought went into their design, with their pressure treated foundation, the perfect toilet seat height, and the gable roof.  I built doors out of 1X6 pine boards, joining them with the classic "Z" on the inside, and heavily staining them with a pale stain. I picked out attractive, rustic hinges and bought Navajo red paint for the exterior walls and clear corrugated roofing to let in light.  After assembling both, they were partially dismantled for transport.

As an aside, I had a series of somewhat amusing experiences in hardware stores during this phase due to my gender, coupled perhaps with my age and evident ignorance.  I went to Western Auto in the spring to pick up a cordless drill for outhouse construction and when I checked out, the fellow at the counter smiled kindly and said, "Father's Day present, eh?"  I was momentarily confused.  At Valley Lumber when I bought 4X4 PT (pressure treated) and 2X4 regular lumber for the outhouse, the guy at the checkout counter asked politely if I was building flower boxes.  At Good Hardware I came in for a pickax and a tape for digging foundation holes and a helpful employee asked if I was looking for gardening equipment.  I learned to find this all amusing rather than offensive.

In May I made my way down and began to get a feel for the land, digging a few test holes to see how the foundation work would go.  Here's a tidbit that describes my reaction:

5/16/03
What a marvelous place.  I am at Snettisham camped on Otter Point [the rocky point] and my fingers are starting to warm up after brushing my teeth...I was greeted at the greening beach by a big vibrant golden plover which I soon discovered was surrounded by eight or so small gray mottled shorebirds.  A pair of [teal] has been around the place all afternoon.  I watched the pair at low tide snooting around in the mud...

So I was shocked to find that the water around here is quite shallow!  At the base of the rocky point the mud began to show around 5:00 as I was lighting a fire for dinner (beach grass and dry sticks).  By 6:30 I could almost walk across the inlet.  I could go straight out perhaps .5 mile or so, and I walked at least a mile and a half upriver until I finally was met by the river cutting against the bank.  Marvelous!  A regular, dramatic SE AK shoreline with steep rocks, towering spruces, crags, Stika alders, but with a flat, sandy beach at the foot to peruse it!  I never would have guessed.  Fry and larvae in the back eddies and "tidepools," American pipits, varied thrush, Wilson's warbler, Townsend's, hermit thrushes singing, gulls on the sandbars and circling, bald eagles.  Back at the homestead Barrow's goldeneyes, buffleheads, Arctic terns diving just offshore and a dozen harbor seals slapping and diving and maybe resting on submerged sandbars across the river.

The Start of Construction
A few weeks before the landing craft trip was scheduled, my parents took their boat down with a load of foundation feet to start the first cabin floor.  When faced with the plan and a shovel, I was at a complete loss.  Thankfully, my parents were not.  Under my dad's guidance, my parents and I dug eight foundation holes, placed my pre-constructed foundation feet inside, and slowly worked our way toward a foundation (see photo--Mom, Dad, Rosie at the first hole).  I had cut the 6X6 upright posts three feet long figuring that this was ample height.  Unfortunately, the land on site was not flat, and we discovered that several of my pre-cut posts were simply too short to make up the difference between the downhill holes and the uphill holes without digging the uphill holes impossibly deep or the lower ones too shallow.  We excavated as much dirt as we thought prudent but ended up leaving the site in frustration, having no tools to cut additional posts. We pulled anchor and grumpily sailed north, the first of many such frustrations and delays. 

Landing Craft
The day finally came for the landing craft, and all miraculously went smoothly.  I rented a U-Haul to carry the outhouses, foundation feet, and miscellaneous lumber to Auke Bay; Alaska Marine Lines, Don Abel and Valley Lumber delivered the rest.  My mother, Larry and I spent less than two hours on site while captain Paul loaded his landing craft the Lightweight.  Hardly an apt name, the barge was huge, and my load took up only a minor portion of the bow.  

While the Lightweight was underway, the three of us flew to the property and spent a few hours with clippers and a chain saw clearing the brush from in front of the lodge site/storage area.  This area became known as "Home Depot" during the construction phase.  Of course, to enter the forest, one first has to traverse the marshy beach.  Marsh marigolds, shooting stars, and wild irises bloom there in the spring, testimony to the wetness of the ground.  The Lightweight's forklift delved deep ruts in the black mud which grew deeper and more treacherous with each load.  First the outhouses came off, then the lumber and building kits, all tidily bundled on pallets.  The muddy forklift struggled and spun in the muck, overheating the engine as Paul made trip after trip between the shore and the treeline (see photos below).

When the final load was at last delivered and the forklift was making its way back to the barge, a back wheel sank into a deep natural hole and spun.  No amount of effort would draw it out (see photo below).  I watched as Paul struggled with the machine, committing myself to the inevitability of replacing it should he fail.  His wife moved the barge closer and they attached a winch to the forklift and eventually pulled it out, much to my relief. 

Larry rode the barge back home and my mother and I camped on the point for the night.  That afternoon, as we laboriously hoed at the deep ruts worn in the soggy ground in a futile effort to fill them back in, I looked up to see two orcas crossing the inlet from Gilbert Bay, a large male and smaller one.  I also strained my back in the effort, causing chronic pain down my right leg ever since.  But at least all my building supplies were on site.

   
Construction Again
A few weeks later I managed to get back down there, with longer posts in tow.  First I began work on digging holes for the second cabin and did a variety of other odd projects.  The second cabin site was bordered on one side by a stand of closely grouped, second growth-type trees that suggested to me that the saltery may have had a building there; judging by the many artifacts I found (including colored glass, ornamental pieces of metal, tools, etc.)  I began to wonder if it was a midden. 

Once my folks showed up we started back at the first foundation and I remember clearly my utter bewilderment as my father demonstrated how to arrange the posts and square the building while keeping the correct dimensions.  Once the foundation feet were in and the posts ready we had to cut notches in them to fit in the rim joists (the boards that form a box around the outside of the posts).  Still a little unsteady with the chainsaw, my dad was good enough to cut them for me.  We attached the rim joists, then hung the floor joists, again having to excavate dirt on the uphill side (see photo below).  The next morning I learned how to glue and nail the floor, my mother and I proud of ourselves when we didn't miss the joists as we nailed (see photo below).  

Once the floor was in place, we thought we'd begin the real fun--putting up the cabin itself.  No such luck.  The bottom "board" of the walls is a 2X2 cedar strip in eight pieces, four short and four long that are meant to fit together in a rectangle.  We spent some time in various combinations of pieces, but none of them fit the floor we'd just built.  We repeatedly consulted the instructions that StarTek had sent.  Then we consulted the plans that had come with the kits themselves, which were alarmingly different.  After much trial and error, reading and rereading the instructions, we finally came to the conclusion that the building was several inches longer and wider than it was supposed to be; the floor, laboriously built, was simply too small.   I had checked and rechecked with my contact at StarTek as to the dimensions of the building specifically to make sure that the foundation I built was the correct size.  He had been wrong.  My father finally solved the problem by simply nailing two extra pieces of pressure treated 2X8s to the outside of one of the rim joists.  Unattractive and unprofessional, but functional. 

Then we started the Lincoln-log type assembly of the walls, which was mostly fun in the beginning.  We added the tongue and groove "logs" (2X6s) in a circle around the building.  The rain had started in earnest during the afternoon so we spanned the walls with a ladder and covered the building with a blue tarp for the night (see photo below).  My folks returned to their boat for the night and I returned to my tent, pitched in the driest spot on the property where the dry campfire would later reside near the point.

At eight in the morning I wandered down to the beach to meet my folks for breakfast, but discovered not only no tender to bring me over, but no boat in sight.  I had a moment of panic imagining that my parents had left me there but quickly decided they must have gone sightseeing early.  I was hungry and a little grumpy, but within an hour they steamed back into sight.  Apparently the anchor had drug in the night and they woke up around the corner in sight of Stephen's Passage.  The edge of the sandbars drops off precipitously into deep water and the falling tide had sloughed the anchor off the bottom and set the boat adrift.

The rain continued steadily and soon everything was covered in mud, the walls slick with water, muddy dog prints covering the floor (see photo below).  It was sloppy work and we ran into another major obstacle before we finished the walls; we were one log short (or, rather, one of the logs was the wrong length).  Thankfully, we had three (theoretically) complete kits to dig into.  I broke into the next kit on the stack and laboriously measured accessible logs until I found one that matched the required piece.  Once this problem was tackled and the walls were up, we were faced with another deficiency.  In order to support the walls, eight "redi-rods" (pieces of rebar) were included with the kit and the logs had holes cut through them to allow the rods to slide from ceiling to floor.  Bolts on the top and bottom were meant to be tightened to hold the walls together. 

Unfortunately, half the bolts weren't included so we placed the rods in the walls with the bolts on top with the intent to come back later and add the bolts to the bottom and tighten them.

All in all the learning curve was steep. The damp logs took a great deal effort to whack into place, but we persevered.  By the end of the day the walls and gables were up, but  we were forced to return a few weeks later to put the wooden roof panels on.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to install the metal roofing so we left it with a tarp over the top until we could return.  Despite the frustrations and the weather, the cabin was adorable and the inside (other than the muddy floor) was stunning pale pine boards and cute windows (see photo at bottom). 

Here's a journal entry describing the weekend, which gives a flavor of my mood:

8/6/03
The weather did cooperate or a few days, but I worked so much that there was no time or energy for catharsis.  I got much work done, digging the four corners of the second cabin and nearly squaring it, (finding treasures all the way including a 5' crosscut saw, more metal pieces, and a perfectly intact sarsaparilla bottle dead center under the moss of my last hole).  The first thing I'd done was clear a wide trail connecting the first cabin site with the stockpile.  I was rather proud of it and my heroic use of the chain saw to accomplish it.  I also moved most of the stack of lumber in the bushes in order to give it more support and unearth the 2X8s for the floor.  The first frustration was discovering that Valley Lumber had failed to include any of the supplies to finish the little cabins.

I also dug a two foot hole to get started for the first outhouse and, on Saturday morning, started the generator and assembled more foundation posts.  Things went downhill when my folks arrived in the afternoon.  The weather turned to rain and by that time I'd done so much cutting, hauling, chopping, digging, hoeing, and grasping that my right arm was injured and swollen and remained gimpy the rest of the trip.  We cut the 2X8s and fitted them fairly easily into the brackets [for the floor joists], we cut all but one piece of plywood before dinner, and I learned my lesson about not using the archaic 19.2" on center because you have to cut every piece of plywood to get it to rest on a joist!  Next morning before the rain started we glued and nailed the floor on and I started sifting through the first cabin kit while Mom and Dad had breakfast.  Beautiful wood. 

As we started assembling the floor the real problems began. It was hard enough to follow three conflicting sets of instructions but then we set up the bottom logs to find that it was too big by 2.25" in width and 2.5" in length!  They screwed up!  And [my StarTek contact], when I told him last week, had the nerve to suggest that, after all, they did urge me to buy their floor system!  I explained how that would not have helped and haven't heard back.  Anyway, we spent a good time wasted while searching for PT 2X8s and scabbing two on the right and back sides.  Then screwed together the cedar strips [bottom logs] before dinner.  We got about four layers [of logs up the walls] and the door dropped in before quitting for the night.  I stayed, added a few more, supported the door and threw a tarp over the whole thing for the rain.

Next morning it poured and never quit all day until we pulled anchor.  It was miserable work.  My arm ached, I could hardly pound, we were soaked, mud was splattering onto the walls on the inside, the new floor was warped and squishing, the pieces around the windows hard to get in--and I smashed my thumb.  The last problem was that the two bottom side pieces were 138" and 144" and, well, clearly didn't fit together [they should have been the same length]!  We put a plain 144" piece in and stole one from another kit to make up for it.  By two we got all the walls up to the gable.  Pretty cute, really, but I walked away disheartened, discouraged, and thoroughly unready to return to work next day.

Setback
Then I nearly died.  After the chaotic and stressful spring and early summer, I was beyond exhaustion and constantly pushed to the end of my rope.  On top of long hours and tons of errands, everything I did was out of my realm of expertise, or even basic knowledge.  By the time August rolled around, I was thoroughly ready for a long-awaited dive vacation to the Bahamas.  This in itself was very stressful as Larry and I had chartered the boat and found it uncomfortably difficult to fill all the rooms and recover costs.  On the fifth day of the charter I came down with bacterial meningitis and wound up unconscious in the hospital on the brink of death.  There is no explanation for why I came down with meningitis (it was not dive-related) but I am convinced that my state of stress and exhaustion was the primary cause.  Two weeks later I made my way home, too weak to walk more than 50 feet by myself and still a month away from returning to my desk job.  Needless to say, this badly curtailed further construction that season.  In early October, when I was still weak, my folks and I returned and installed the metal roof on a cool, sunny day and buttoned the place up for the winter.

    Cottonwood Cabin and the tree shed

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2001-2002 Report