My Home in the Woods: Digging Day 1

May 9th, Sunday

I am borrowing a friend's car and dog-sitting, so I packed up Otter's things and drove up to Talkeetna today to get started on my foundation. I had gone to the hardware store and purchased a shovel, a maddock, and a rake and was ready to get to work.

---------------Otter! Such a great dog.--------------------------------------------------

I met up with Tim and we lined out where the foundation was going to go. So, the cabin is going to be 16' x 16' with a 4 foot porch. We decided on 8 concrete pilings with footings - 6 for the house and 2 for the porch. Each hole has to be 4 feet deep and 4 feet diameter in order to ensure a solid foundation. Tim spray painted an orange dot at the center of where each hole has to be and then left me to my work. As he left, he said to me, "Don't be embarassed to change your mind and have me bring in the backhoe; you won't have been the first."

------------------------------this is what the site looks like before any digging----------------------------

And work it was. After Tim left, it was just Otter and me, and Otter fell asleep in the sun while I picked up the maddock and started digging through the top soil. I started my first hole and thought to myself.... this is impossible. It was so frozen it was like chipping at an iceblock or worse, solid bedrock. The maddock would ricochet off the frozen clay and jar my arms and elbows. After over an hour, I had made zero progress and thought I was never going to be able to do this. I definitely thought about that backhoe!

But before completely giving up, I decided to try another one, and see if they all were frozen and needed that top layer removed so they'd be exposed to the sun more. Well, the second one was difficult but not impossible. I was definitely glad I had bought the maddock. Some of the ground was frozen and I wouldn't have gotten anywhere with just a shovel. But at least this time, the frozen clay chipped off bit by bit. I'd get so excited when I'd hit a sweet spot and knocked off a piece the size of a brick.... most of the chips were more the size of a snickers.

By the evening, I was sweaty and muddy, with chunks of thawed out mud covering my arms and face. It's like getting a mud facial and going to the gym at the same time. But I had finished my first hole and was half way through the second one!

I stopped around 9 or 10pm, ate a salad, some cheese and tortilla, and then fed Otter and crawled into my tent. I wasn't sure how Otter was going to be in the tent, but he settled onto his bed and passed out, somehow as tired as I was even though he hadn't lifted a paw to help.