Mary had come to see the paintings during my ‘Open Studio’.  We finished looking at the canvases and together were re-stacking them.  Suddenly, strong wind swept through from open studio and bedroom doors swirling loose papers from the work table and billowing the tail of a batik hanging. I ran to close the bedroom door, Mary the studio door, then        we hurried downstairs and onto the deck where the tomatoes and petunias were flattened and swaying grotesquely over their containers.  We pushed them back into a tight cluster close to the wall where they would support each other.  Now rain came like a tropical deluge.  Simultaneously a blast of wind skidded the furniture  across the deck.  I rescued a chair which was momentarily hung up by a post.  Some instinct made me turn in time to catch a clay pot as it slid from a plant shelf which was being picked up and tipped like a kite.  As quickly as possible we battened everything down and—properly soaked—returned inside to watch the storm through a window.  Rain swept in great swaths across the mountain face and down to the river.  Fascinated, we watched whited-out strips undulating above the river like Northern Lights.  The gale was fierce but short. It’s suddenness had caught us off guard, but when it calmed in half an hour no great harm seemed to have been done.

…Next day Ralph discovered the top half of a tall, large diameter, old Aspen had snapped off and dropped onto the cabin roof, crushing the chimney like an accordion.  The trunk now lodged lengthwise across the roof peak between the chimney and the air vent for the compost toilet, seemingly equally balanced on each side of the roof with the bole hanging over one side and the branches lopping over the other.  Ralph cautiously trimmed the top branches little by little to reduce the weight on that side so the trunk could clear the as-yet-undamaged toilet vent by flipping up and over the ridge.  After much cutting, there still was no movement. Ralph took a long pole and pushed the trimmed end gently, then harder. It shuddered.  Very slowly  the weight shifted to the butt of the tree and the whole tipped above the ridge cap, then rapidly scraped down the side of the roof to drop without further incident to the ground below.  Big sighs of relief.  We were very grateful that the friend who initially started the cabin had hewn a huge beam for the ridge pole. There was no structural damage to the building.  We considered ourselves lucky having only a section of ridge cap and the chimney to replace.

….While the chimney was disconnected, we decided to change the brick platform on which the stove stood.  Our daughter was home and all three of us took part in the jacking up of the old-fashioned heavy iron cook stove. Amber was on her knees peering under the stove and positioning the dowels by which we were going to roll the large patio blocks under the jacked-up stove.  “Do you remember the day we moved this stove in?”  brought chuckles all around…

It began in early morning.  The same friend who built the cabin had been immensely creative in ‘building’  from a conglomerate of available objects—tiny wheels and pipe—a two wheeler.  This was used to tote bulky materials along a narrow and bumpy path through the forest to where the cabin sat in it’s tiny clearing.  We used the same two wheeler.  The stove was loaded, Amber took position at the head to steer and pull.  Ralph and Lisa positioned at the back to push.  I went ahead, clearing fallen branches and trying to smooth bumps and from time to time walking beside to keep the wide load from tipping.  I have watched ants struggle with loads much bigger than themselves over a maze of grass and sticks. Our situation seemed a fitting parallel.  We struggled—slowly—and were almost to the cabin when the handle of the two-wheeler broke!  (groan) But by night we had the stove inside the cabin with no other mishap—and a great deal of tired satisfaction.

Today the path is only slightly wider and the bumps worn smoother.  The cabin is a retreat surrounded by forest in a slightly larger clearing due to windfall and necessary culling.  It is not unusual to be awakened by the hammering of woodpeckers on a window pane and one may startle various four-legged critters in an early morning foray to the deck. And a hosteller has recently proven that the oven of that old cookstove can still turn out an amazingly crusty loaf of bread—with practice or luck!