In its last days:
Oh, the slides I took of that shelter! I need to scan some. In mid-November, when the snows came, and the heat inside would melt the lowest layer on the roof and cause it to drain off the back, what fantastic icicles! I was snowed in there once by a Nor'easter, my car stayed in camp for eleven days. I had a six-point hanging from the beam out front, and plenty of propane. I would chop wood just to keep warm, and to keep from sitting inside burning propane. I stayed there when it got down to 15 below. Hard, hard cold with trees making loud pops in protest of it all. The whole world seemed brittle.
During the thunderstorms, it felt so safe in there, the solid logs and thick log beams felt as though they would protect me from any tree that might give up it roots and fall. Cozy, as long as it didn't leak, and as long as the propane held out. Many a wild night I would have to get up and find a way to patch a leak in the roof or wall. I brought tarps, and plastic sheeting, a hammer and nails. Duct tape for reinforcing where I drove the nails in the plastic. Come time to leave, all that stuff came home with me, to use again next year.
There were names and dates carved all over the walls, inside and out, going back to 1933. People pounded pennies into cracks, shell casings into the ends of the logs, and I put my carved eagle feather on the back wall, with the year of my first hunt there, and then my first deer, and then my second...
All gone now. Many nights I slept there, me and the mice, and all those whispered names.
Killdeer
Topic: About to go (Read 3367 times)
