12/21-23/09 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

It was a clear, beautiful drive over. All the cascades along the road were frozen solid into beautiful frozen waterfalls. Gorgeous. I arrived at 11:30. There had not been much new snow since last week, but Mike had evidently been there and plowed out the previous snow most of the way to the trailer. I had to use 4WD to drive the last bit, but I was able to park up at the trailer again. The temperature was about 34 degrees.

Bert and Ernie were there for their hugs and biscuits by the time I was parked. I built a fire in the cabin stove right away to start heating the place up. Then after lunch, I got the wheelbarrow out and moved all the firewood from the stack by the privy and stacked it on the back porch. The wood was mostly the vine maple but there was some other, older wood too. The plan is to use this when the family comes up for a visit. That visit is now scheduled for this weekend, right after Christmas. The maple burns nice and hot and having it right outside the door will make it easy for me to keep the stove going all night. We plan to have the little kids sleep in the loft which will stay nice and warm.

While I was out working on the firewood, I was visited by a fairly big flock of gray jays. There were times when I could see as many as six birds so the flock was at least that big. There may have even been a few more than that. They were obviously a new flock to me because it took them a while to approach me and learn that I dispensed peanuts. It didn't take long, though, for the more aggressive birds to land on my hand and show the others how to take the peanuts. Soon, the entire flock was eating out of my hand. I figure the birds must migrate around because the familiar birds disappear after a few months, and new flocks like this one periodically show up. Anyway I was very glad to see them and I hope they stick around until next week so the kids can see them.

With the firewood all laid in, and the cabin all warmed up, I went to work on the 8th tread. I retrieved another blank from the woodshed and discovered that it was too wet to plane. It had been snowed on and the snow had melted and soaked in. I stood the blank up on the floor next to the stove to heat it up and dry it off while I got the tools out and did other work in preparation for installing the tread. I removed the bottom two temporary treads I had installed so that I could install the 8th permanent tread and I re-built the tread-holding jigs for the proper height for the 8th tread. By the time I quit for the day, the tread blank was warmed up and pretty well dried out. I left it standing there by the stove when I went in for the night.

On Tuesday morning the tread blank was nice and dry so I proceeded on through the steps to make it into the 8th tread and install it in the staircase. It is really great fun to go through those steps now that the kinks are all worked out. It is a simple matter to do the planing, sawing, chiseling, scraping, drilling, and bolting that is required. The previously installed steps make a comfortable platform to work from on the top, and now that the treads are higher up, it is more comfortable working under the stringer to counterbore the holes and install the nuts and washers. On the lower steps, I had to scrunch down or lay on the floor. Now I can keep my back straight during the whole process.

Bert and Ernie came to visit me again and we had a nice hug-and-biscuit session. At one point I was also visited by one of the new gray jays. I didn't stay outside long enough, though, for any of the others to come and find me.

On Wednesday morning, I decided to buck up all the old logs that were stacked by the privy. I had uncovered them from the snow last week to buck up a couple of them, so I figured that if I didn't harvest them now, they would be covered back up and would be harder to get to later in the winter. I used the wheelbarrow to haul the bucked sections down to the cabin. I stacked them under the eaves so now I have a nice supply of handy firewood in addition to the maple on the porch.

Bert and Ernie paid me another visit. I was also visited by the new flock of gray jays again. In fact, I had three of them eating out of my left hand at once. That is pretty unusual. I frequently have one bird in each hand, or at most two on one hand, but these guys are from a different flock. I hope they stick around for a while.

I also had another treat. While I was feeding the birds, I noticed a bird on the ground where I split my firewood. I thought it was one of the gray jays, the lowest on the pecking order, so when all the rest of the jays had their beaks full of peanuts and had flown away, I expected this last one to come over. They always follow a strict pecking order which determines who is first and who is last.

But instead, I saw that the bird was a woodpecker that was busy pecking at the firewood. I was ecstatic and happy to see him (her). The reason is that I had split up a lot of firewood that was infested with big hibernating carpenter ants. The ants had infested some old log remnants on the upper roadway and last fall I had cut these into sections and hauled them up to the woodpile up by the privy. I had used ant killer to kill the ones that came out of the wood and were crawling around, but I knew that the sections were still infested. My plan was to leave them be up by the privy until winter, and then when they were hibernating and frozen I would split up the wood and burn it.

That is what I have been doing so far this winter. I have burned up a lot of sleeping ants. But when I split the wood, lots of curled-up hibernating ants dropped out on the ground and on my chopping block. I have been hoping that the birds would find and eat these ants, but up until now I couldn't really be sure if they had. Now that I saw that woodpecker poking all around the ground and on the wood scraps, I knew that the ants were serving the purpose I had hoped for. It's too bad that I have pretty much used up all of the ant infested wood that I know about. But if I find more, I'll serve up more ants for the birds.

Finally, I re-installed a temporary tread right above the new 8th permanent one, put away the tools and cleaned up the cabin again. It was a lot easier and quicker this week than last. Then I applied a coat of varnish to the top four treads. After I washed out my brush, locked up, and had lunch, I left for home at 1:15 feeling more ready than ever for the family visit.