Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [32]
I went down on my haunches, Gandhi-style, and took in the tableau of pond, beaver lodge, setting sun and serrated dark line of the treetops. November is a pleasantly melancholy month. The branches of the hardwood trees are bare, and only the beech leaves and clusters of a few stubborn papery oak leaves hang on. Underfoot, the red leaves of the maples are already purple and black and beginning to rot. The smell is pungent, fecund, nostalgic. There is always rain in November, lots of rain, though at that moment the sky was clear with a few high purple clouds. The alders rise from the muddy places as dark gnarled skeletons, their catkins dried up, and the woodcock have departed to the swamps of Louisiana. There is also a quickening in the woods as the animals prepare for winter. The bears range widely and forage for last meals before their long sleep, and the bucks are in their mating rut, lunatic in their pursuit of does. The broods of grouse have dispersed into singles and doubles, and the final flocks of blackbirds pepper the sky. The onset of winter is felt in the cold hardening ground and diminishing light of the afternoon.
All of this was on my mind, as a kind of fugue of sensations, and it made me reluctant to leave the pond. At that moment, my hesitation was rewarded with an astonishing sight. The setting sun flooded the pond with golden light, making it steadily brighter as the surrounding woods seemed to grow darker. It was as if all the light that had been gathering through the day in the nearby mountains was now answering the call of gravity as it drained down to the pond—rills of light flowing into brooks of light that were pouring over glowing rocks, making waterfalls of light, all of which was pouring into the pond, which was now a glowing bowl of light. It seemed on the point of ignition. And suddenly the moment passed. The sun slid below the mountain behind me and the pond went as dark as the hills.
Even though we hadn’t yet been able to schedule our first weekend of work at the cabin site, Paul and I were in close communication about the preliminaries, one of which was an important design question, involving the layout of the foundation piers. The piers needed to line up under the girders, which are the principal horizontal supports that run under the length of the floor. The spacing between the piers had to be right: too far apart and the girders would sag or break; too close together and we’d be wasting material and creating extra work. I had three choices for pillars: prefabricated columns, stacks of cement block or Sonotubes, which are cardboard tubes into which cement is poured. Sonotubes were the cheapest and in this instance probably the best choice because we could set them deep, below the frost line. Paul sent me this e-mail as we considered the options:
There are a couple of different ways to frame out the floor or how the framing relates to the Sonotubes. I will draw you a sketch and e-mail it to you tomorrow. We should decide on which method as it will determine the layout of the Sonotubes. I hope you don’t mind my thoughts on all of this. It’s the project manager in me. I’m used to breaking everything down into pieces. I think this camp and location is going to be a home run when it’s all said and done. I’m liking that area more and more.
I skimmed the note and lingered on the final sentence and especially the phrase “home run.” This was good. I was worried that I had put him in a position where he might feel trapped by the work and the extent to which I was leaning on him. The last few times I had talked to him he had seemed to be in a funk—more