5/22/07

This fact was excruciatingly obvious today.

The fifteen foot beam dropped like a sprung bear trap and roughly tapped me on the shoulder.  I crumbled to the floor of the unfinished yurt, writhing and moaning in the manliest voice I could muster.  A few inches to the left and I would have taken it right on the noggin.  Something tells me that my paint-stained cap would have done little to deflect the impact.

We spent the morning assembling and erecting our communal eating/ relaxing quarters. A Yurt.  Our yurt (made with a synthetic shell, not to be confused with the wool felt used by the Mongolians) is a large round tent with a clear Plexiglas nipple on top. An engineering degree would be recommending for the construction of this edifice and since all we have are fishing guides...well you get the picture. The wind was blowing a steady twenty miles per hour which didn't help us while trying to erect our frame. This process required a stepladder set atop a pick nick table with Paul sliding fifteen foot 2X4s into small slots above his head. The other ends of these 2X4s got screwed into different ten foot 2X4s that were standing strait up on brackets. The theory here is that once you get enough wood applying opposite pressure, it creates structural stability. Until that stability is created you simply have lots of heavy beams placed precariously at high altitudes.  The result was me on the floor trying not to look too much like the skinny kid who took a dodge ball in the solar plexus during recess.

I spent the afternoon building a table. One might question why it takes a person an entire afternoon to build one small table. Firstly, as I said I am fishing guide not a carpenter, second, you must consider the source materials. In this case wood that has been left to sit on the ground uncovered for an entire winter through sixty below temperatures and then thaw into the mud. In case you're wondering this causes plywood to curve like a question mark. Thirdly I was building this table into a round wall with nothing but a skill saw to make my cuts. Given the circumstances I think I did alright.


5/28/07
A break in the weather...and my luck.

Woke today to a strange sound. Actually it was the absence of a particular sound that has been constant recently. There was no pattering on the roof this morning, just scattered clouds and a bright object that looked suspiciously like the sun.

After breakfast we began working on the new guide housing. This year we have been moved up the hill, a solid three hundred yards from where the clients sleep. This may have had something to do with our consistent evening urinations out the doors of our weatherports, or perhaps our drunken bets on who could do the best Survivor impression at three am.  I did not win.

Around ten we get a call that the boss was on his way from town with the new boat. The water has come up and he just couldn't stand the idea of that brand new tractor sitting idle in town when it could be at camp working.  If he were to wait a few days, there would be plenty of water and no stress about piling the brand new boat with the brand new tractor on a gravel bar but patience is not Chris' strongest attribute. Because he was nervous about driving a seven thousand pound boat loaded with a five thousand pound tractor through a narrow series of braids, he sent a team of us down river to dig out the shallowest channels with shovels and rakes. If you've never stood there scratching at the river bottom with a garden rake trying to alter the flow of an immensely powerful river, you've never experienced true futility. The new boat for which we are preparing is a monstrosity. A twenty eight foot dual 350 inboard jet with a drop gate on the front. A diamond plate landing craft that will allow us to storm the tundra with our new bright orange assault vehicle and force the earth to bend to our mercy.
 
At three thirty we could hear the roar of the engines raging upriver, ten minutes later it actually arrived. Chris barreled into the boat slough and dropped the gate carrying all the supplies I have been missing, plus all the beer I left in town. He was like a short, balding, overweight fairy godmother in neoprene waders driving a V hull aluminum chariot from hell.

In the evening, I skipped out on dishes and snuck away to fish for an hour. The weather was perfect, cool with scattered clouds and hardly a breath of wind. I hooked four fish and landed one in an hour, including one absolute hog (twenty seven plus) that I jumped and lost. Trying to ignore the incessant babbling of my temporary roommate (god I can't wait for those weatherports to be finished) I reflect on a day that is appreciated for being truly magnificent, we got the boat to camp, we got our houses halfway built and I even got to fish. That's more than I can ask for.