RAIN~MARK~CHRIS

August 12 ~ Sunday ~ rainy in AM...cloudy PM.
Woke up to the plink...plink...plink of sprinkles on the roof, enough to make the chairs mighty damp for sitting, but by early afternoon only the clouds were here, so decided to cut tree roots in the newly dug up section. Decided to put rocks around the edge where the road/pad meets the dirt. When we come back this way before leaving we will scatter native seeds over this area...should be really pretty next year. Mark came over and helped Jack make a cover from slabs he has cut from logs for the outhouse culvert...so no critters or humans accidently fall in. After that we watched the camera videos Mark had taken that I had uploaded to the computer (has the same Kodak Easy Share camera we had previously)- of his three months alone at Bunco Lake, 20 miles from nearest road, taking apart and reassembling an outhouse/shed of friends that the 13 feet of snow had collapsed several years ago. His comment about a lot of things, “It’s hard to explain!”, explains it all...cutting snow with a chain saw because it’s packed together so hard...sorting thru all the items stored in the building...taking out ALL the nails...cutting trees to make lumber for rebuilding...bringing plywood from another location ON A CANOE from a mile away for the roof...melting snow for water for EVERYTHING...just interesting watching how he managed to do what he did by himself. SO...if he’s around when we are here again I know he’ll help us build whatEVer...
Chris came over in the evening for a visit...telling us of his trip back east last week...always interesting talking to him. We had given him the book, ‘Cheating Death’ by Larry Kaniut (also wrote ‘Alaska Bear Tales’, etc.)~ real life stories about near death experiences~ to read on the plane...got to the last story and discovered he works with the people in that particular survival story. So now we know someone who knows someone who... Really tho~it’s amazing how many people know someone who knows you. Mom used to say they couldn’t do anything when away from home that it didn’t beat them back. He also told us where we could get native seeds...and liked the rocks around the edge.