Several years ago on this date I put a canoe in the headwaters of the St John river and over the next three weeks canoed its entire length.
Today I finished the tin shed extension and cleaned up around the building, as if I am getting ready to leave for the winter. It’s a rough building but it only has to house building supplies.
Once I was finished that, a storm was starting to move in, so I cleaned up some other stuff that was in the yard and then as the rain began, I took apart my old ladder. I made that ladder when I first lived on the land in November of 2007. I was building the shack, a building I tore down two years ago, and I needed a ladder to complete the roof. I made the ladder so hurriedly that I didn’t even attach top rungs, since I didn’t need them at that point. The only trees big enough to make a ladder at the time, other than the fir, was white birch, so I used that. Since I didn’t peel it before too much time went by I had to strengthen it by adding some maples that had grown larger in the meantime.
Now there is lots of timber I can use, including straight pieces of solid maple. The trees have grown a lot in the last eight years.
Once that was done the thunder storm was in full force and it was raining much harder than my overflow system is made for. I’ve set up an overflow to carry the extra water, after the barrels fill, to the pond. It is only one garden hose thick however, so it’s not made for heavy rain. I should do some more work on it next summer and make sure it can carry whatever the storm can throw at it.
I made a video of the storm and then came inside to update my latest novel, Not Quite Dark, which is not at 22000 words, and then I watched a poignant Japanese adoption narrative 
called Bunny Drop or Usagi doroppu. Now that the film has ended, just as the computer ran out of battery, I have set down to write. I’ve solved some of my concerns for the next bits of the novel, but I feel there is still a blank area before it is done.
I wrote until two in the morning and then lay awake until five. A change of some sort is going to have to come.
