Mother hen

Warmer, drier (low 40s)

I wandered down to Uncle Toby’s at the end of my work day, and holy smokes, the roof is gone! I don’t just mean the shakes; they also took off the boards. It’s great—from Raker you can see right down in there. It’s amazing how much is happening to that building.

It’s also amazing how much of a mother hen I’ve become about it all. I didn’t go to camp here as a kid, and I don’t work here every summer, but the meaning of this place is beginning to sink in. I don’t know why, but I’ve been finding reasons to stroll by Uncle Toby’s every afternoon after work. I tell myself it’s for purely constructive purposes (i.e. to see how they’re doing the construction), but I’m finding more and more that it has something to do with making sure they’re doing right by my building. My building? I don’t own the place. No one owns the place. I don’t even really enjoy watching skits performed in the building. But it’s come to mean something to me over the years, and when I walk down there, I see all these construction people who have no idea what the building means, who don’t start every little project by looking around wistfully.

I found out tonight that Slanty was built in 1947. I guess we celebrated its 60th anniversary by putting a ceiling in.

I’ve taken out five spindly green spiders tonight. It seems they moved in over the weekend. Hmph.

R2 and me

Warm, wet (low 40s)

I could stare out Slanty’s windows for a whole day, I bet. Watching the light pass through the forest, and the fog roll in and out, is pretty amazing. I keep thinking one of these days I’ll see a herd of elk down below, but so far they’ve eluded me, and that’s okay. I like the view, even without charismatic megafauna.

Today I finished vacuuming heaters, replacing smoke detector batteries, and putting up refrigeration temperature charts. I like going into every major building in camp, but I could do without the heaters. By the end of the day I was dragging that ShopVac around as if I had walked a thousand miles with it. When it rained, I stuffed it into the passenger seat, and for a moment pretended I had a little R2 unit riding around with me. But I couldn’t muster up much affection for the thing when it kept blowing dirt in my face.

Well, it’s weekend time. Woot!

Ancient ruins

Cool, damp (low 30s)

My last service project of the winter! We took out an old Suzie behind a lodge, ripping out old toilet holes, old pipes, old concrete, and bits of an old septic tank. It was supremely satisfying. I think that in total, today, we busted out about twenty old toilet holes. Woo hoo!

And now I’m tired and damp, and ready for bed.

Short, unlike the rain

Cool, rainy (high 30s)

Woo, is it pouring! Today was nice; I enjoyed the dry, overcast morning, puttering around doing all sorts of stuff. When it started to rain, I moved inside to vacuum heaters and replace smoke detector batteries. Yee-haw. However, it was better than working outside in the rain, which I’ll be doing tomorrow, winning some more teenage friends with adventures involving pouring rain and abandoned bathroom pieces.

That is all.

Nitty gritty

Cool, rainy (mid-30s)

Every time I see the warning label on a little wall-mounted space heater, I think, Yeah, of course you would be able to clean this thing out every six months. How hard is it to remember to prevent fire? It’s clearly a good priority. And really, vacuuming out a little heater isn’t a big deal. All you have bring is the vacuum, extension cord, and appropriate screwdrivers. Then you unscrew the cover, blow the dust out of the parts, vacuum up some of the dust, and put it all back together. No biggie, right?

Yeah… for the first one. Maybe even the first five or so. But there are forty-four of these tasks distributed throughout camp, and many of them are accessible only by ladder. Blowing them out means blowing nasty brown dust right back into my own face, and coming out of the whole adventure with black snot. It’s pretty awesome.

As you might predict, I only found time to clean six of these heaters today; after a few, the rain stopped, and I made it outside to work on some prettifying projects. This month is creeping up to be crunch time here; construction has finally begun on a few buildings, and we’ll also need to be getting ready for the rental season. It’s hard to fathom that the winter is coming to a close. I’m not really ready for it to end; I’m not eager to stop having evenings to myself, and I’m also not excited to see camp off just yet. I guess it’s the nature of seasonal jobs, but that doesn’t make it easy.

Driving rain

Cool, pouring (low 30s)

I didn’t make any teenage friends today, that’s for sure. I would imagine it’s a pretty quick way to make enemies: Tell a group of people they’re going to spend the day fishing old pipe out of the woods while getting soaked to the bone and cold to boot. It was a lot of work, but we pulled the plastic pipe out all the way to Walker Creek, and much of the metal pipe out as well. It was pretty delightful for me, seeing all that pipe come out of the beautiful woods, but I don’t think it had the same significance for the kids who didn’t want to be here, doing the work.

I don’t understand what compels people to toss garbage in the woods. It’s an enduring and maddening mystery at my job here; it drives me absolutely crazy. I don’t understand how you could abandon a water system and then not take it out. I don’t understand how you could put tractor parts out in the elements and watch them get covered by blackberry brambles. I don’t understand how you could leave rusting metal or open septic tanks. But these are the things people do. It’s bizarre and troubling. Someone should do a study, and then come up with some way to prevent this sort of stuff. Sheesh.

Revenge of the rodents

Cool, rainy (low 30s)

Hoorah. Let’s all throw a party, shall we? Someone make little paper hats. Food? Yeah, bring along some insulation, or a few chips, and the guests will be fine. Yes, let’s have a rodent party. My house, 10:00 at night. Perfect time.

I am not pleased about this party. I thought they were gone. I’ve seen a few mice flitting about the room recently, and while that didn’t make me ecstatic, at least they aren’t big and hairy. (They’re just little and hairy.) I can’t believe the nerve these mice have, by the way, darting right in front of a big, nasty predator like me. Why, I ought to run over there and… catch one, with my bare hands. Yeah, right.

The troubling part isn’t the mice. It’s the thumping sounds coming from my kitchen ceiling, thumping sounds that are suspiciously like the sounds I used to hear when an entire family lived in there. This makes me sad. I just noticed the other day that when I walk in, Slanty smells nice, like food and woodsmoke and cedar, whereas it used to smell like rodent urine and little else. So I would like it to continue to smell good. This would take a lot of work. It would require somehow filling in the gaps in the door. I think, ironically, that’s where the mice are getting in. It would also require getting up on the side of the building again and trying to figure out where large rodents can get in. For Pete’s sake. The smell of death emanating from the bathroom has just finished. Could I get a week of peace from the rodent world? That would be awesome, guys. Almost like a party, but without your whiskered little faces.