Log Cabin Fever

Log Cabin Fever

By Noel Laflin
12-18-01

            Like many people in this world, I take great satisfaction in completing projects.  I love to see final outcomes.  Whether this takes the form of a newly painted room, a redesigned garden, a freshly cut lawn or a just completed short story makes no difference to me.  There is great joy in seeing something through to the end.  Some projects, however, just take a little longer than others.

            Case in point: there are those who would contend that I was just a little preoccupied for a spell.  Others would be a bit stronger in their judgment saying that I was just obsessed.  However you look at it, I accomplished my goal.  I built my first house at the age of nineteen.  To be precise, the structure was started at nineteen and completed by my twentieth birthday.  It was a functioning log cabin named Lear. Whereas Shakespeare’s King Lear went mad for a variety of reasons - blindness being but one - I went a bit crazy over giant Lincoln Logs.  In the beginning I was also blind to my madness. Over time I came to recognize it for what it was and embrace it fully.  Only through blind madness can some things be done.

 A fellow staff member, by the name of  Bob Kirkpatrick, first gave me the idea back in the summer of 1969; I was sixteen and he, a few years my senior.   I don’t remember the exact particulars of where we were or how the subject came about.  What I do recall quite well, however, was his passion on a project he had always intended to start but never got around to.  He wanted to build a log cabin as a pioneering project at Camp Ahwahnee.  Every kid who helped in its construction would be a proud participant, he mused; carving his name or initials in the logs and dragging his visiting parents to the site, showing off his wilderness skills.

“Hell,” Bob said, “those kids will bring their own kids to see that cabin someday; they will be that proud of it!”  He was indeed passionate on the subject.

 No power tools would be allowed, he continued - only saws and axes, just like in the old days.  I can remember Bob sighing with regret that he never took the initiative, or perhaps the time, to get the thing off the ground.  He left us halfway through that summer, after some unremembered dispute with the program director.  I never heard from him again.  We had been friends for three years and I always looked up to him as a mentor of sorts. His unfulfilled longing became my secret for the next three years.  When I suddenly landed the job as Camp Craft Director in 1972, I knew what our first pioneering project was going to be.  Little did I know that it would be the only project on my mind for the next full year.  Now, thirty years later, I feel the need to put that crazy project into perspective.  The perspective is now this: it was one of the best times of my life.

Every project needs its materials.  The only thing we had on hand at the start of this Daniel Boone endeavor was a small flat space of land located to the edge of the camp craft area.  It was the former site of numerous monkey bridges and rickety lashed towers.  Large oaks and sugar pines provided some filtered shade.  A small creek ran in front of this piece of land.  This would do, I thought, as a fine site for a log home.

         What I had always dreaded, however, was the securing of the timber needed to build a cabin.  Although our Scout camp was situated on four hundred acres of prime forest, the mere thought of cutting down thirty to fifty trees just to build a small structure seemed both daunting and wasteful.  It wasn’t until I was scrounging behind the camp’s warehouse one June morning and literally tripped over a few discarded telephone poles that a new light suddenly dawned.  Telephone poles, of course!  Neither chopping down of innocent trees nor drying time needed for those trees would be required.  Future dry rot and bugs would be eliminated because of the creosote injected into each pole.  I secured a camp truck and we absconded with those few precious black logs. My major partner in crime was fellow staffer and friend, Peter Backlund. Peter really had the smarts, which really came in handy over the next two years of building.
          The shortest one determined the length of the proposed cabin; it would be approximately eighteen by fifteen feet in diameter.  Finding more poles was now my quest.  My small staff and I hunted the property up and down, liberating the future cabin walls here and there.  Cars would never again bump harshly into the former phone poles laid prone in the upper parking lot, once we made off with all of them one night.  A few precious others were located throughout camp.  We had twelve altogether.  This would be enough to layout the basic design and take it maybe three feet high.  We were in need of at least eighteen to twenty more to complete the walls, however. Then there was the ridgepole and rafters to consider.  Since they would be smaller in diameter, I planned on using the natural white fir trees in camp.  They were our most plentiful trees, and weeding out could be justified.  But that could wait.  What I needed now were more phone poles.  As it happened, someone knew someone at Southern California Edison and they offered old poles to us, free for the taking at their Covina site.  We made plans for a flat bed truck.

Meanwhile, the cabin took shape.  With old two-man saws we scored the ends of the logs.  We then turned them on their side and chipped out the large notches with hatchets struck by mallets. It was with some trepidation that we tested our first notched logs.  They fit beautifully.  We were off and running.  There was always tinkering of some sort.  Deepening or widening of a notch could be maddening, but necessary.  Chain saws would have made a big difference too, but we adhered to Bob’s rule of long ago: no power tools.  We never deviated from that rule throughout the entire project.  Our tools were simple: axes, hatchets, bow saws, two-man saws and mallets.  Later, we would be in need of bark scrapers for the fir rafters, and good old hammer and nails for the shingles.  But that came a year later.  The trip to Covina was first.

            We had a hell of a time loading twenty more poles into the old camp flat bed truck.  We had an even tougher time trying to keep that old beast moving up the mountain with its heavy load.  Each pole weighed between five and seven hundred pounds.  But up we steadily climbed, waving cars backed up far behind to pass us on the straight-aways.  When we passed Running Springs, we knew we were on the home stretch.  We made it to camp before dinner.  We were notching away two hours later well into until dark.

            The whole project seemed to take on Tom Sawyer-like qualities.  Kids were nearly willing to pay us to help with the building.  Originally, I told the Scouts signing up for the Pioneering Merit Badge class that they would be expected to contribute at least one hour a day to the cabin.  Most of those guys stayed all day, foregoing other merit badges and free time.  Their buddies also came to help.  Bob was right - these kids did bring their parents to the construction site every Saturday before they left for home.  The only thing he was wrong about was the urge of boys wanting to carve their names or initials in the logs.  It seems that they grew to respect the project too much and did not want to detract from the old-time look it was rapidly taking on.  Over a hundred and fifty Scouts helped that summer.  It was both overwhelming and gratifying.

            By the end of that season the walls were up.  Camp closed.  The staff, as well as our camp ranger and his wife all left.  I stayed for an extra week on my own and laid the cobblestone floor of the cabin.  I had some help for two of those days, but worked solo most of the week.  Down into the creek bed I would run with the wheelbarrow.  Twenty scoops of sand would be shoveled in before I would push and pull the sucker back up to the site.  Cement and hand-carried buckets of water would be added, as I would mix it all manually in the wheelbarrow before pouring the next section.  No power tools - how I sometimes hated my adopted rule.  Nonetheless, I stuck to it and finished the floor in six days.  It was four inches thick.  I wanted to make sure it would hold up to the harshest of winters, which did hit at sixty-seven hundred feet.  It was September, time to finish up and head for home and school.  The nights were cooling down rapidly.            

But I will never forget those long, quiet days when I had the entire camp to myself.  Deer returned.  Shadows of low, swooping hawks would startle me while I wedged smooth river stones into the quickening mixture.  I would collapse at night and only hear the sound of the creek and coyotes in the distance.  You could touch the stars at night.  I was in heaven.

I was antsy as all hell throughout that winter.   I longed for the snow to melt and Spring to return to our camp.  You could find me up there nearly every weekend throughout April, May and June working with friends on the cabin.  The young white firs were cut and stripped of their bark.  They were notched and readied as the supporting rafters.  The day the ridgepole was put in place was a day of celebration, indeed.  I believe we all got drunk that night.

By the time the ’73 season started in late June, the roof was ready for shingling. Real cedar shakes were used.  High side shutters were constructed of natural incense cedar we split by hand with axes.  A large door was built and hung.  Bunk beds and a sleeping loft were installed.  I found an old iron-framed bed behind the warehouse and hauled it into the cabin.  The camp craft crew moved in.  We were finally home.

Pete Backlund and I lived in that cabin for two summers, always tinkering with household improvements.  Ironically, I developed sever allergies to creosote and had to give up my residency there for the last two years of my staff tenure.  I believe I inhaled just a bit too much sawdust from those giants during its construction.  But I did not mind.  Others fought over the right to stay there each summer and that alone made me proud. Kids, returning year after year, came to visit Lear, touch the wood, check out the chinking inside and brag about just how much time they had spent in its creation.  Everyone had bragging rights and justifiably so I thought.

Two more cabins were planned, but never completed.  The next one dubbed Romeo got his start during the Bicentennial summer of 1976.  We only had time to raise the walls and prepare a wooden floor before materials and time gave out.  Juliet was never started at all.  It was my good friend, Fred, who christened the three cabins.  I am only sorry that we did not get a chance to complete them before our youthful time gave way to careers and we had to move on with our lives.

By the 1980’s the Scout Council was looking to sell the camp.  The Boy’s Club Camp across the valley was interested in buying the log cabins.  Each log was numbered and taken apart like a giant Lincoln Log set, put into trucks, hauled seven miles away and reassembled.  I was told that the BSA council got a thousand dollars for Lear and the uncompleted Romeo.  I had the receipts for both cabins’ expenses.  They came to less than twenty-five dollars.   I was impressed with their monetary worth.  As sad as I was to see them go, I knew that they at least were going to have a good home.  We used to drink with the Boy’s Club Staff on many a night.  They appreciated well-built cabins too apparently.  I paid a visit to Lear after his sale and reassembly.  They did a good job.

By the early 1990’s Camp Ahwahnee had been sold to Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana.  I paid one last visit to my old haunt in the spring of 1993.  Some nice guys gave us the tour.  All the old structures from the fifties and sixties had been razed.  In their place were new, beautiful cabins . . .  beautiful log cabins.  The church folks, along with several millions of dollars at their disposal. definitely knew what they were doing.

My parents and sister were with me that Spring day as we toured the old camp craft area.  Where Lear once stood, a new staff quarters was being built, all out of highly polished logs from Missouri.  A pile of dirt lay to one side of the new building.  This area looked very familiar, I thought. 

        Something caught my eye.  I dug through the dirt and found what I was longing for.  It was a chunk of cobblestone flooring, weighing no more that a few pounds.  It was all I could find. Although Lear had been sold and moved years before, there was no way to take the floor, of course. Apparently the new owners had bulldozed the area to make room for the new log housing. I don’t know where the rest of my floor went.  I took the one and only found chunk home with me that day.  It rests atop my fireplace.  An old penned sketch of Lear lays framed nearby.   

          Thirty years have nearly passed and I can still smell the creosote calling me.  One of these days I’m going to take my daughter to visit a hand-built log cabin.  It’s in a different location now, but on the same mountain, sharing the same cool air of three decades past. I feel a spat of bragging may come over me when I begin to describe basic building concepts. Some memories of projects never end.  God, I hope not.

                                          



Spring 1973 - Setting the ridge pole in place.