Alaska Wilderness Mom

Some dreams are soon in coming. For others we have to wait a long, long time before they come to pass. When they do, it is a moment in time of unsurpassed marvel.

I stood in the kitchen of the country club breakfast room, a young teen and at one of the first jobs I ever held. It was 5:00 AM, bright and early. The first tee off time for golfing began in 30 minutes and anxious, pushy customers wanted their breakfast, and they wanted it now.

Various brands of high powered, freshly applied cologne wafted around the breakfast room while I bustled about taking orders and feeding eager, hungry, demanding golfers who dreamed of that elusive hole in one, wondering if today would be the day.

My main orders were toasted bagels and salmon lox. While I waited by the bagel toaster in the kitchen, I took out my waitress order pad and sketched scenic mountain vistas with meandering quiet streams flowing by a little cabin tucked within dark shaded evergreen trees. Every free minute I had at that job I was sketching wilderness scene after scene, all with a tiny cabin nestled amongst the vast, wide, sweeping landscape blanketed in endless miles of nothing but nature.

I have been dreaming of having a cabin in the middle of nowhere for over three decades. Last summer this dream became a reality. Join me through this post and discover the cabin building journey to a dream fulfilled.

Building anything in a bush community has its challenges. Take that one step further by building even further out, and during Covid supply shortages and the logistical challenges exponentially grow. All of our supplies were mailed or air freighted out to McGrath, then loaded in a boat and transported two hours away to the cabin site. That meant everything ordered had to fit in our boat, an 18-foot aluminum skiff. It also meant we had to haul it in the boat and out of the boat using our own two hands with good old fashion manual labor-no forklifts, no super heavy items, no easy shortcuts!

We began in early May, right after the winter river ice went out on the Kuskokwim River. On our first trip to the site, we set up our sleep tent, cook wall tent, and hauled in basic tools and a chainsaw. We cleared a cabin site from large old spruce trees, cottonwoods and willow and alder. Next, we needed to smooth the site – large tussocks and humps, dips and old rotten fallen logs needed to be removed so we’d have a relatively level site. This was all done with a chainsaw, shovels, pickaxe, and a lot of sweat. Josh chain sawed the tussock tops off which made it easier on us pickaxers but hard on his saw for obvious reasons. He also cut the foundation pads, which were three feet by three feet in dimension, out with his saw.

Once the ground was mostly level, we began hauling gravel. This was done by boating ten minutes upriver to a shale rock bluff that was sloughing off shale pieces. We used 5-gallon buckets with dirt shovels to fill them, loaded them into the boat, drove back to the cabin and hauled them up to the pad sites.

Pressure treated wood and copper coated wood slabs were used as the footings and 6″x6″ diameter spruce beams were cut for the posts. Since the ground at each pad varied in height (remember no bulldozer to level the site) each post height needed to be determined and calculated with the help of a laser mounted on a tripod. Some technology was useful!

We then laid twenty foot long, 6″x6″ diameter beams on top of the leveled posts, secured the floor joists, placed the plywood on top and had a beginning of a cabin. The floor was done!

Next, we began building wall number 1 followed by walls 2, 3 and finally wall 4. Getting the walls up was super exciting because it went fairly quickly and that made it feel like we were making such big strides and progress towards getting the cabin up. While the rest of the family built, along with our carpentry friend, I was running loads of building supplies from McGrath to the cabin site. In two weeks, I’d put 60 hours on the boat running loads! Thankfully, Benjamin had bought me air pods, and I had podcasts and groovy music to keep me company on the longs boat rides.

After the walls were up, we began on the roof. Aluminum tin roofing was placed over a roof shell structure of rafters and purlins with joist supports. I wasn’t a big fan of watching the roof job being done as Josh perched upon it screwing on the roof. Safety was a big part of our everyday work-falling off a roof is bad anywhere- but being located over 200 miles from the nearest hospital makes a person respect gravity all the more.

With the roof installed, we put in the windows and door. The deck and stairs were built. We brought in a wood stove and plumbed the pipe work. Back up on the roof Josh went to put the cap on.

Next summer we’ll put on exterior siding. Most of the interior work still needs to be done- insulation, siding over it, cook range install, some cabinets and counters for cooking.

Just in time for our fall moose hunt we had a cabin done enough to use for moose camp! Gone are the days of trying to cook some grub under a makeshift tarp structure that crumbles down on my head with the mere puff of a breeze. Gone are the days of lugging two extra dry bags of gear for the kids so they have dry clothes when it rains-now we have wood heat to dry out….what a concept.

It will take some getting used to having the luxury of a cabin…….but I’m willing to try. It’s a dream come true.