Day 1 - Getting to know my new home...

Spent 4 days camping out on my land in Talkeetna... more to follow...

20 June 2009
Finally made it up to my home in the woods. Took me 50 minutes to walk the Comsat Road portion, with a medium heavy backpack.

Decided I liked the idea of the path entering from the smaller road, Golden Pond circle, and worked my way inside looking for a reasonable place to pitch my tent.

I'd forgotten that there was a clearing in the upper middle portion of my land. After minimal clearing, I pitched my tent on some bumpy vegetation, guyed out the fly, and crawled inside. I'd woken up at 5:30am and wanted to sleep in, so at 11am I napped until around 3pm. Dreamy. (Dreamt about a grizzly, but that's a separate story.)

Once I was awake, I spent the afternoon semi-clearing a trail from my tent to the side road. I hadn't brought any tools, but at least I had my work gloves, and I cleared dead branches and tore out a lot of shrubs with viney roots - mostly rose and another one with slightly fuzzy, beautifully aromatic leaves.

.....................................................Photo at left: Bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata)

In a few hours, I had the beginnings of a trail, and I went to scope out the water situation. On my side, there was about 15 feet of swamp and mud before getting to water deep enough to collect. About the same on the opposite side, but there was a downed log that let me access water that was clear enough to drink. After I returned to my side, I got the idea of dragging a log down to make my own log pier and 2 hours later, with sore back and arm muscles, I'd managed to move a birch trunk from above the pond, about 30 feet, down a small rise and out into the water - it also took me walking calf-high into the muck. I now have a birch bark plank that leads to the log so I can easily collect my drinking water.

I tried to sit outside to eat, but the mosquitoes are really bad, so I cowered in my tent. I hadn't even realized it was the solstice and was asleep by 9pm.