Sweetwater Days 01

Here I sit, my whole body is so sore it hurts when I walk.  When I sit down my back hurts.  When I get up from the chair, my knees cry out like rusty hinges and my legs ache.  It sounds like the perfect time to sit and write a blog post, but my right index finger has a blood blister and the fingernail is a dull, blue, painful bruise.  My left index finger has a tiny splinter in the tip that I just can’t tease out, and it sends a little jolt of electricity through me every few keystrokes.  Several toes make walking painful too, from being smashed and from walking on small, hidden rocks.

And I couldn’t be happier.

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Yesterday, Annie and I got up at 4 a.m. and drove our tightly-packed pickup across to the western part of Arkansas and, in just a few short minutes, bought Sweetwater!  It will be our get-away, home-away-from-home, and hunting camp.  Heck, it will be whatever we want it to be…because it’s ours!  Yes, Sweetwater is ours, and a lot of work (intermixed liberally with fun) lies ahead of us. 

After the closing was done, Annie and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up some food plot seed for me to plant and try to entice deer out in front of the blind.  Annie selected some sugary hummingbird feed and a pretty hummingbird feeder to hang on the porch in hopes of attracting the little hummers we have seen around the cabin a couple times.

As I’ve said in previous posts, Annie told me that one of my first jobs is to get running water to the cabin.  So, while she pushed the mower around the cabin’s rock-studded yard, I donned my Vibram Five Fingers (tight-fitting running and water shoes) and toted my chainsaw down into the creek that wanders in front of the cabin.

Many of the larger creeks we’d passed on the drive that morning had been bone-dry due to the last couple months of virtually no rain, but not our little spring.  Oh, no.  I couldn’t tell that there was any less water flowing out from under the layer of rock than there had been when I first saw it more than a month before.

Something else hadn’t changed in that time either.  There was a tangle of a dozen or more trees, mostly cedar, which had fallen over the spring, like a giant game of Pick-Up Sticks.  They needed to be removed before I could even start cleaning the spring out.

The chainsaw started with a couple tugs of the rope, and I picked out the trees that were sticking out of the tangle.  I would have to haul them out of the creek, so I cut most of them in reasonable lengths for carrying and burning in one of my next projects.  Although I have enough experience to drop trees and logs pretty much where I want them, some didn’t stay where they fell, and bounced or rolled.  Yes, a couple onto my toes…mainly the bigger logs it seemed.

You see, although Vibram Five Fingers are great for running on the road, and awesome for walking in the water without filling with gravel, they are not steel-toed…at…all.

Despite my colorful exclamations whenever I caught a log on my foot, I finished up the sawing pretty quick.  It took longer to move the logs down the creek, across the stepping stones, up the hill, and to the pickup, which I filled about halfway with the dense, heavy dead cedars and oaks.

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Back at the spring, and with a shovel this time, I cleaned out the area around the outlet, removing a bushel basket sized mess of muck, weeds, and rocks that had fallen in over the years.  The cleaning increased the flow of the spring a little.

Looking at the increased flow, I realized, if I can build a spring house without blocking the flow and killing the spring, it should easily produce all the crystal-clear, sweet water we need for cooking cleaning, and hygiene during our visits to the camp.

There is plenty of more work to be done before that will work, and more stuff I would have to buy or scrounge, however, so it was time to move on to my next project.

The bathroom.  The nasty, stinky, bathroom.

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Someone had poured Pine Sol in the toilet some time ago, I guess in an attempt to control the smell, but it had deteriorated and added a nasty odor of its own.  There was no place close to the cabin to fill buckets and climb out of the creek, so I tossed a couple five-gallon buckets in back of the pickup and drove down to the nearest accessible pool that was deep enough and filled them both there.  I struggled up the steep bank and hoisted the sloshing buckets into the back of the truck.

The trail back to the cabin was rocky and bumpy and about half the water splashed out of the buckets before I got close to the cabin, where I still had to carry them uphill and up the steps to the front door, then through the building and into the bathroom.  The water left in both buckets allowed the pot to flush twice.  Not enough. 

A couple more trips to the pool, this time without the pickup, so that I could deliver more water each time, and the toilet was clean enough to use, and for us to establish that the septic system was at least somewhat useable.  A couple more trips and I refilled the pot and tank for the next use and provided two full buckets for backup.

Each trip necessitated a climb up the steep bank with a five-gallon bucket of water in each hand, then another climb up the hill to the steps, which were another 45-degree, five-foot climb.  At eight pounds per gallon, that meant about 80 pounds carried about 30 feet in elevation over a distance of approximately 100 yards.

The little, old fat man was worn out by the time he finished.

At least I got the satisfaction of proving my cardiologist right; I probably won’t die of a heart attack…yet.

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The next project on my list was to build a temporary fire ring.  I first gathered all the loose stones I could find around the cabin, then started prying up some of the many rocks poking out of the dirt in the yard.  It didn’t take long to pile enough to stack in a more-or-less level ring.  Then I tossed in some of the trash I’d picked up while cleaning up the place.  A few sticks for kindlin’ and a few of the dry logs I’d sawed earlier, and my sweetie and I had the makings of a nice fire for roasting some ‘dogs.

OK, OK, they weren’t actually hotdogs; they were cheese filled Johnsonville brats.  Brats may not be true hotdogs, but they are shaped like them.

Anyway, a couple ‘dogs, I mean brats, roasted to perfection, nestled in some whole wheat hot dog buns, and drizzled with mustard (we’d forgotten to pack relish, dang it), and we had a meal fit for a king.

Fit for a king, yes, but it was eaten by a queen and her court jester.

Now, a campfire meal on a nearly 100° day, with nearly 100% humidity, might not be the most advisable choice, but I was already hot, sweaty, and dirty enough for two little fat men, so what the heck.

All the work in the heat and discomfort Annie and I had put ourselves through was worth it; we had three of our favorite visitors coming!

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I rinsed off in the frigid pool where I’d filled the buckets and Annie and I headed to town.  We hadn’t had enough room in the pickup to take a bed with us and Annie didn’t want to camp out on the floor before the place was cleaned up.  I have to admit, taking a hot shower and sleeping in an airconditioned hotel room was nice. 

A-a-a-ah.

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Next day:

After a day short of sleep and long on hard work yesterday, we slept in this morning.  Yep, we didn’t get up until after 7:00.  A quick pass though Mickey D’s to grab some breakfast and it was back to Sweetwater.

We started working on a few small tasks while waiting expectantly.

Then we heard it…a pickup in the driveway.  Andy, with his beautiful wife, Madison, pulled to a stop.

Now, I’m too old and fat to say I flew, but I don’t remember descending the steps down from the porch.  I moved quickly past the front seat passengers and yanked open the back door of the extended cab where my little cutie sat in her car seat giggling. 

“No hugs, Pa!  No hugs!”

I smiled at the obvious game.  “OK, then it’s TICKLES for Harper!”

Squeals of joy at my tickling fingers were followed with little arms reaching out to wrap around my neck.  When Harper released her hug, I said, “You’d better go say hi to Grannie,” and carried her around to my wife.

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After a tour of the place, while Andy and Madison sat by the fire talking to Annie, Harper tugged my hand, “C’mon, Pa!  Let’s go to the creek!”

In the creek she busied herself trying to throw all the rocks back into the spring which I had taken out the day before.  Later she started hopping from rock to rock in the creek.

“Pa, I love to rock-hop,” she repeated the words Annie had voiced earlier.

I chuckled, “Pa loves to rock-hop too, Sweetheart, but I don’t like to rock-flop.”  I explained that I meant falling on slippery rocks.

Harper continued her rock-hopping then, suddenly, slipped and fell on her little backside.

“You OK, Sweetie?” I asked.

Harper climbed to her feet, wiping moss and water off her hiney.  “Pa, I don’t think I like to rock-flop either.”

Unperturbed, she was soon back to rock-hopping with glee.

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I taught my beautiful granddaughter about some of the perils of being in the woods and how to avoid them, but more about the pleasures of being there.  I picked up a nearby walking-stick insect and showed her that the “scary bug on Pa’s hand” really wasn’t anything to be afraid of. 

I showed her a big spider web, woven tightly between branches.  “Wow, Pa, how’s a spider DO that?”  I gave her a quick rundown of how a spider excretes “silk” and climbs around sticking the strands in a particular order.  Of course, I broke it down into terms a little more understandable to an almost-four-year-old.

I was just starting to explain about the little crawdads and minnows she saw skittering around in the creek when my wife’s voice called out, “Who wants to roast hotdogs?”

My enthralled audience quickly forgot about the education she was getting and squealed with happiness, “I LIKE hotdogs, Pa.”  She took my big, rough, baseball mitt of a hand in her tiny, soft one and helped me cross the creek and climb the bank up to the yard and the fire-ring.

We let her roast her own hotdog while trying to make sure she kept the ‘dog over the fire, out of the fire, and from setting any of us ON fire.

Once her wienie was done to perfection, I found that Harper, who had just told me that she loves hotdogs, pronounced that she didn’t “like that part.”

I’ve never seen anybody skin a hotdog before.

It was soon time for our guests to leave and we had to promise Harper that she could come back anytime.

“Me, and you, and Grannie?”

“You bet!”

“And Opie?”

Annie and I exchanged glances.  We really hadn’t intended to bring any dogs to the place, as their barking would mar the quite of the woods.

“Sure Sweetheart, we’ll bring Opie with us.”

Annie nodded in agreement.

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As Annie continued cleaning up the yard, I spread my food-plot around the southern part of the cabin’s clearing.  After that, we finished cleaning up, repacking, and turned the truck back toward southeast Missouri.

We were both sweaty, dirty, and sore…and couldn’t be happier.

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