Wild Logs

[trapperjack]

We walked into a ravine there was a Brooke lined with stones. There were trees lying on the ground every where from a storm. The fall morning was crisp and frosty. Our fingers were stinging as we started cutting and dragging logs to a moss covered rise just above the creek. The bark stripped off easily as we scraped the poles with our axes. We notched and stacked the logs. The work warmed us up in the frigid shade of the steep mountain that rose above us. We cut poles for rafters and we split oak for the shingles. We overlapped them to make them water tight. Our hands ached as we packed the voids of the log stack with clay chinking. In the sunny afternoon we we rammed stones into the floor of the tiny cabin to make it dry inside. As the warm rays of sunshine doused us with hope the crickets chirped their swan songs before the cold freezes them into silence. When the shadows turned to twilight we lit a fire of the log scraps that we made that day. The bright stars, the intense cold , and the firelight shimmering on the wall of our cabin gave us a very remote sense of feel.
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[hunter63]

Good start....looks a tad breezy, yet?.......Nice job.
Love log cabins.

[Wildthang]

I feel like I just read a novel or something!!

[1stimestar]

Nice writing there Jack. Nice start to a pretty little cabin.

[Grizzlyette Adams]

More, please!

[randyt]

that's awesome

[randyt]

is that a photo of the herb drying shed you and Mad Dog built in one of the episodes?

[trapperjack]

yes its the herb shed. I would love to go out and build one anywhere. here we have poplar logs that are straight as an arrow and 70 plus feet tall. just my axe, a knife and some logs out in the wild...... this is the stuff that great novels are made of!

[randyt]

tulip poplar are nice and straight. You ought to build a big one.

[trapperjack]

this story continues... As we fed the crackling fire we planned our hunting strategy for the next day. I wanted to set traps along the Brooke, we talked about spring poles at first. I busied my self by splitting some narrow planks out of a chunk of white oak that we froed the shingles out of. I was making bent stick deadfall triggers, ten traps is the usual number that I use on a single trap line. The fire baked my knees and the cold air stung in my nostrils as my friend made AtlAtl darts for his hunting effort, we wanted our pelts, but we needed to feed ourselves too. This was going to be a long trapping season and if we were going to survive it, we had to establish ourselves. I sat there thinking about the hunt with a knife in my hand.
One more chore before turning in was to set the pot of acorns near the coals of the fire, the tedious job of shelling the acorns was painful because of the strawberries on my fingertips from packing the chink with clay. The job was so important that I had to man up and take the pain. Before I realized it, we had been up working all night. Just before dawn my friend loaded his cap and ball rifle. He was adamant about stalking an Elk for the food yes, however we needed the fur for clothing even more. In the stark calm of pre dawn he shouldered his AtlAtl and went down to a clearing that had a service berry tree on the edge of it. There he waited in the blackness, in the cold he sat motionless almost breathless, waiting for the sunrise.

[Grizzlyette Adams]

Well done, sir! You write so well, it makes me want to stick my "quill (pen) back into the goose."

Have you thought about a blog? If you ever decided to go to market with your writing, it would be a good vehicle for promoting and selling your work.

Writing of that caliber with a bit of editorial polish could keep you in the dough for a while.

[trapperjack]

I write about non fiction mostly, illustrated documentary such as Ancient North American Stone Works. and other books about advanced technologies
EDIT: not published though....