July 12-14
Evening at the homestead
Snettisham
2013 - 7: Girls Weekend
July 12-14
Evening at the homestead
My aunt was in town for a week, so she and my
mother came to Snettisham for a girls weekend. Aboard the Kathy M (my
boat was
still not seaworthy), we left the harbor at 3:30 on Friday, fueled up,
and headed
south
on relatively calm seas. With us was Cailey were two unusual
passengers. Gwin and
Hansel, fledgling violet-green swallows, had been in my care for a
little over
a week and still needed regular feedings and room to learn to fly
before they
could be released. They made the trip on low branch perches in a
cardboard box,
sometimes covered with a towel. They weathered the trip in stride and
we
stopped to feed them twice along the way. We saw no whales or other
wildlife to
speak of and arrived in time to have a reasonable beach landing
(hurried
because of the falling tide) and an early dinner. We lit a fire for the
first
time since early June and relaxed while the swallows vigorously flapped
in
their box in the back of the lodge.
Exhausted from being up early to feed the swallows
every day
for over a week, I went to bed relatively early and let my mother and
Vicki
chat into the evening. Hansel woke me up singing at 5:30 a.m. and I
spent the
next hour trying to feed them enough to quiet them down (though I don’t
think
hunger was the primary driving force). I got up at 9:00, had a snack,
transferred the swallows into a large bird cage, and set up a habitat
for them
in Cottonwood. I draped everything with a sheet of a piece of plastic
to protect it from droppings and stuck a variety of elderberry sticks
all over
the cabin
at various heights to encourage flight. Neither seemed particularly
interested
in flying on their own, but both proved to be strong fliers (making
laps around
the room) when encouraged by bouncing them on my finger. Landing was
more of a
problem, and they often wound up on landing on the curtains and
flapping up to
perch
at the top (those curtains will need to be washed).
After that I tried to fix the filter
system on
Cottonwood, having pilfered one of its housings to use on the one that
broke at
the lodge. I had a perfect replacement for the original (broken) lodge
filter, but had trouble
budging
its temporary replacement, so I tried to 
use
it on Cottonwood instead.
Although
the
filter there had barely fit the lodge’s original filter head, it
apparently
didn’t work in the opposite direction. I believe I finally stopped to
eat and
get some strength before manhandling the filter off the lodge,
replacing it,
and returning the other filter to Cottonwood. I was able to verify that
the
filter made a seal, but the valve in that system leaks so badly that it
would
be non-functional anyway.
We visited more in the morning and ate quesadillas
for
lunch, followed by an afternoon chatting and taking the “tourist test”
produced
by Wilderness Awareness
School. It’s meant to gage one’s knowledge
about the
wilderness around us and we had mixed reactions from pride in our
knowledge
to shame in our ignorance to bafflement at questions we didn’t even
know there
were answers to (or exaclty what they meant). I also worked a little on
the finishing the sliding
door to
the shed, enlisting the help of my mother and Vicki in removing the
door from
the track (since it wasn’t sliding). I drilled holes and bolted the two
brackets to the door properly and managed to hang it again, but it
still didn’t
roll
smoothly. My mother helped me get it down again and I left it for
later,
choosing instead to enjoy the sunshine on the deck with the others
before the
sun went behind the mountain. The day had been overcast so far, with
some rain
mixed in, but had cleared off and was hot and lovely with a breeze that kept the bugs off. We chatted
more, listened and watched for birds, and discussed more of the tourist
test.
My mother and Vicki were in charge of dinner, so
after the
sun went behind the mountains and they retired inside, I returned to
work on
the door. My theory was that the distance between the rollers and the
top of
the door were just slightly different for the two brackets, causing
them to
jam, but I was unable to alter that while the door was hanging. Down on
sawhorses I tried to put the nuts that attached the rollers to the
brackets in
exactly the same place, and low and behold it worked. That door is a
subtle
thing of beauty!
Of course, on and off all day I visited the
swallows in
Cottonwood, fed them, and encouraged them to fly. I was always happy to
find
them in new places, which meant they’d been exploring on their own. We
ate
fantastic salad and bison burgers for dinner and I again wandered off
to bed
much earlier than the others.
The next morning Hansel again woke me up (I’d
brought them
to my cabin for the night in the cage), this time around 6:00; his soft
singing
was very different from his begging calls and, as neither seemed
interested in
eating, I put them on the front porch so I could get a little extra
sleep. I
was back up at 9:00, this time anxious to see whether my strategy for a
bridge
railing system was practical. For a few years I’ve had five pre-cut
railing
posts from my feeble attempts at building railings on the lodge and
Cottonwood
porches. What if they worked on my bridge? They have a notch cut out of
the
bottom (about two inches deep and four inches square) to snug onto the
bottom
of porches (plus notches for top and bottom railings). The trick is
that the
log is round, which doesn’t leave much contact for bolting the post
down. I’d
talked to a friend about creating flat notched sections of the log with
a
chainsaw, but
wondered what I could do with a hand saw
and chisel. I measured the logs (about 24’) and eyeballed where I
wanted the
first post to go. It was a little awkward cutting, as the log is on the
ground
there over some rocks and I could only use the very top of the saw for
cutting.
Nevertheless, in remarkably short time I had two cuts about an inch
deep and about
3.5” apart, which I chiseled out nicely with a hammer and chisel. The
post
snugged up quite nicely. I repeated this process for the three other
posts on
the same log, measuring the distances between them to make sure an 8’
2x4 would
span them, then tacked them all in with a nail. They’ll need some
refinement to
make sure all the rails are at the same level, but I 
was
able to more
or less
see that they could be plumb.
By that time, the others were up and breakfasted
and the day
was beautiful, so we took a walk down to Garnet Rock and lingered there
a while
in the sun. When we got back, my mother and Vicki worked on a fancy
bean/corn/chili salad for lunch and I cut the four 2x12s into three
foot
lengths to lay them out on the bridge and see what they looked like.
The
answer? Fantastic! Well, the’ll need to be trimmed to fit around the
posts, but
in general I think it’ll look great. The bridge is not quite level on
the far
side, so we might have to adjust the position of the logs, but I think
it will
come together fairly quickly now.
We ate a delicious lunch, then took a tour of the property, replaced
the memory
card in the motion sensor camera (which had yielded nothing), and
started to
get ready to go. At about 3:30 I fetched the Kathy M and brought her to
shore;
while doing so, the others saw one of the eagles land in the water and
swim to
shore with a fish. We hoped it would still be there when we motored by,
but the
eagle took off and flew into the tree just downriver of the lodge,
giving us a
wonderful view of bright red flesh against the green tree. Before we
got
underway, it took off again, this time making her way into the nest
itself.
It was a good start to the trip. We ran
into some
uncomfortable chop in the Port and took some shelter against the far
shore on
the way out. Thankfully (mostly for the sake of the swallows), the seas
were
coming from the south despite the fair weather. Around the corner from
the port
we encountered one of the densest clusters of gillnetters I’d ever
seen. There
were at least 32 between there and Taku Harbor and I had fun weaving
around
their nets. For the first time ever, I saw gillnetters pulling nets
with salmon
in them—and not just one, but three of the boats we passed close to
were
hauling in one or more fish every few feet. Very exciting! It was only
about
4:00, so they couldn’t have had their nets in the water for more than
four
hours.
We stopped briefly at Grave Point to check out the ribbon kelp (still
in poor
condition) and feed the swallows, then continued on to Juneau. The next
day we
released the swallows into a flock of their kind downtown (probably the
one
they were born to), one of the best releases I've been a part of.
 Starting a notch |
 The worksite |
 Testing a notch |
 Tacked in to test |
 Proof of concept |
 Eagle with fish |
