Today was an early start as I got to work tearing down the walls of the current bunk room in the cabin. These walls only go up about six feet and are open at both the top and bottom—roughly the first two feet from the floor are wide open, presumably for ventilation. That may have been fine for a bunk room, but not for a future bathroom. So down came the bunk beds and the makeshift walls. It all came apart pretty smoothly, though now I’ve got a decent pile of lumber to figure out what to do with.
Today was also the day for the Hammond Lumber delivery. I’m chalking what happened next up to karma. All morning, I kept working while staying alert, waiting for the call from the delivery driver. He had to drop the load off near the intersection of Democrat Ridge Road and Old Mill Road since he couldn’t make it down the disrupted section of Democrat Ridge. I knew I’d need to meet him there with the truck.
Something in me said, “Go.” So I rowed over to the mainland and parked at the head of the new driveway, figuring that would be close enough if the call came in. But after a minute or two, I felt this strong pull to go out to the meeting point directly—and right as I started driving, the phone rang. It was the driver. Karma may not hand out winning lottery numbers, but apparently, it knows when a lumber truck’s about to arrive.
It took several trips to shuttle the lumber back down to Joe’s property and then across the pond by rowboat to the cabin. On those trips, I was struck again by the sheer scale and speed of the logging operation on Democrat Ridge. The transformation since I arrived is staggering. What was once a narrow, overgrown road where branches scraped the sides of the truck is now a 20-foot-wide corridor, with massive clearings that look more like open fields than forest. The staging areas for the machinery are expansive, and the machines themselves are something to behold—grabbing, cutting, and hauling trees with terrifying efficiency. One tree every thirty seconds, easy.
Later in the afternoon, while I was ferrying lumber across the pond, I spotted a bald eagle perched high in a tree on the island. A huge, majestic bird. I reached for my camera, but he took off, circling the pond before disappearing. Even without the photo, the moment stuck with me.
That’s it for Day 12. Hope you all had a good day too.