Continuing the good life, alone and deep in the Chugach mountains!

For most of the time before hunting season I lived alone in the cabin, but on occasion I had visitors. On one occasion Mike flew in Mark Fink, the young son of Tom Fink who was the mayor of Anchorage and Alaska's biggest city. He stayed with me for about a week and took this photo of me on one of our adventurous day hikes into the high country. One of my most dramatic visitors was the pilot of a huge helicopter that kept getting closer and closer to the cabin one day, then landed the bird in a small meadow about 75 yards from the cabin. It turned out that he was shuttling geologists into the backcountry and kept seeing smoke in my chimney so decided to meet me. We had a great conversation and got to be good friends. But it sure was strange seeing such a big piece of machinery land in my yard!

There was a small clear stream with the sweetest water near the cabin where I got my drinking and cooking water... and yes, brushed my teeth! The contraption covered with canvas was my refrigerator which kept perishables very fresh, but I had to seal the odors in to keep bears out of camp.

When I got caught up on chores then I had time to work on the fun projects that I wanted to do, like building neat cabin furniture. Here is the "cadillac" of all chairs that I built.

Here is the finished product and there isn't a single nail in this chair, mainly because I didn't have any nails so I had to cut and shape my own wooden dowel rods to attach the pieces together. I only had an ax, a hand-powered drill, a hammer,and a machette. It's amazing how resourceful that you can become when that's all you have!!

Here I am one evening after a tough day reading in my chair beside the fire. I read and re-read "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau during my stay.

Here's a few more chairs that I built, not quite as elaborate but different.

I know that I'd been living alone in the backcountry for quite a while and look like a mad man in this photo, but rest assured I was mostly sane most of the time!!

I also built a new latrine and had to once again fashion my own dowel pegs.

Here's one side to that new latrine.

On the next page we move further back into the mountains, to Camp Glacier...click on to page 6!