11/14-16/18 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

Robert had called me earlier and told me he was going to be short handed on Wednesday. He asked it I could stop and help him on my way up to the Cabin. Before I left home, I tried to call Earl but there was no answer. I decided to skip visiting him this time and head straight for Robert's job site. When I got there, his loader engine was running but there was nobody around.

After waiting a few minutes, I got in my truck and backed out of the driveway. Just then, Roger drove up and told me that Robert was broken down in his dump truck a couple miles down the road and that he just stopped back for some tools. I told him that I was going to go to the cabin, have some lunch, and change into my work clothes. I said I'd come back.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 12:20. After bringing my gear up, hoisting the flag, building a fire, having my lunch, and changing my clothes, I took off and drove back to the Robert's job site. There was still nobody there. I drove down the road looking for the broken-down dump truck. I hadn't seen it by the time I reached Brown Road, so I gave up and went back to the cabin.

When I pulled into the driveway, I spotted a half-dozen big firewood rounds that the loggers had left at the entrance to the driveway. I decided that now would be a good time to move them. I loaded them into the back of the truck and then turned the truck around so I could back up the hill. That way, the rounds would be easy to unload and stack under the eaves. If I had driven in frontwards, I would have had a hard time stacking the wood temporarily so that I could get the truck back down the hill.

I had to use 4wd to get up the hill, and I made a half-dozen maneuvers, but I got up there and unloaded and stacked the wood. Then driving back down the hill frontward was pretty easy.

While I was walking back up the hill, I noticed another job that needed to be done. The shallow drainage ditch, that ran across the road to divert all the rainwater from the big roof over the side of the roadway, had been flattened by not only my truck, but the skidder traffic as well. I got a spade and restored the ditch so it will work again.

Next, since the weather was so good, I decided to buck up the big maple log Robert had skidded down for me to use as firewood. I sharpened up the chain on my saw, gassed and oiled it, and proceeded to buck the 42-foot log into 29 heavy rounds. The wood was so heavy that I am sure it was green and needs to be seasoned for a year or two before I use it. I decided to store it in the woodshed for that purpose and fortunately the log was lying just a few yards from the woodshed.

I got the wheelbarrow out and even though I didn't have much time left in the day, I hauled five rounds over to the woodshed, one at a time, and stacked them inside. I learned that it is a doable job for an old man like me. I wheeled one of the rounds back down to the cabin with me so I could test to see how easy or hard it was going to be to split them, and whether or not the wood would burn at all without seasoning.

On Thursday morning, Robert called and updated me on his truck troubles and his plans for the week. He didn't think he would get over to Camp Serendipity this week.

Dave called right after Robert hung up and we had another delightful conversation. Then I went out to work.

I started out by splitting the big maple round and found that it split reasonably easy with one blow of the maul. Then I split up a big fir round to give me enough firewood for the rest of the week.

Next I started a fire in the brush pile the loggers had made up by the privy. While I tended the fire, I started untangling the brush mess at the base of the high rock. It was a jumble of the limbs from the big trees the loggers had felled from on top of the rock, along with a bunch of smaller maple trees from up there. It was a mix of logs, poles, firewood, branches, and boughs all tangled up on top of rocks at the base of the cliff.

I used the wheelbarrow to haul the pieces I picked, or cut out of the mess, and loaded into the wheelbarrow. I used an axe to make the pieces fit into the wheelbarrow. I also stacked useable firewood and poles in separate stacks as I went. I took a break for lunch and a nap and was back out by 1:30. I spent the rest of the afternoon burning brush and made quite a bit of progress even though I didn't quite finish. I was super tired when I went in for the night.

On Friday morning, I went after the stack of poles I had accumulated the day before. These were 2 to 4 inches in diameter and from 4 to 8 feet long. I had thought through how to deal with these to minimize the effort and still harvest them for firewood.

I got three straps from the truck and laid two of them across the wheelbarrow. Then one by one I would lay the poles the long way on top of the wheelbarrow bed with all the butt ends even toward the handle end of the wheelbarrow. When I had what I thought was a max wheelbarrow load, I wrapped each of the straps around the poles to bind them together. Then I wrapped the third strap around the whole load to keep it on top of the wheelbarrow as I rolled it down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill, I turned the wheelbarrow so that the ends of the poles reached over the firewood stack. Then I used the chainsaw to saw through the entire stack to make firewood pieces that more or less fell right onto the stack. Then I would tighten up the straps as needed and proceed to cut through the whole stack enough times to reduce the whole thing to firewood which I then tidied up on the stack. Then I returned to the stack of poles and repeated the whole process until all the poles were gone. By then it was time to have lunch, pack up, and leave for home. I left at 1:00 happy to have laid in a bunch of firewood before the snow comes.