SKINNING TEEPEE POLES

We began three years of mountain living in an aging hand-built 15' x 15' log cabin perched above the highway surrounded by a grand stand of lodgepole pines. Those pines, so aptly named for their contribution to innumerable cabins throughout the Rocky Mountains, sang in the winds, and bent gracefully to accomodate the storms that passed through. Standing not more than three feet from one another,about 8" in diameter at the butt, and rising to a 1/2-inch spire 30 feet off the ground, they looked to us like a quick fix for teepee poles, so we could finally start living on the earth.

Jack, our host, was a tall, slow talking logger with a college education and a trust fund. His day started at 4 AM, and his feet went into his heavy logging boots before they hit the floor. Three steps into his morning routine and our baby would wake up, since she was tucked into a cardboard box on the floor of the cabin. We'd haul her into our sleeping bag and I'd nurse her back to sleep, while Jack stomped around laying a fire in the wood stove, and fixing food for his sunrise to sunset day. Finally he'd leave in his little truck. Not one for company, he'd given us a deadline: three weeks.

We started scouting for level ground near water, relatively close to the highway, where we could pitch a teepee. As greenhorns, it all looked possible: thousands of acres of property, numerous logging roads to explore and lots of live water. With Jack's permission we began felling dead lodgepole from the stand behind the house and built sawhorses to lay them on. He loaned us a "draw" knife, built specifically to take bark off logs. The 12-inch-wide arched blade was sharp, with handles on either side. It looked easy, just draw it against the grain of the wood, and off came the bark. And it was easy, essentially, but we needed 26 poles, each 25' long. The days dragged on peeling in the evenings, after my partner got home from work, and on weekends. Our backs ached and we built blisters, and then calluses, on our California hands.

We found our new home near Rainy Lake, 17 miles north of Seeley. It was Forest Service land, level, shade and sun, and the lake was easily accessible for our water needs. We were north of a campground, and although it was public land, few visitors wandered in the little dirt road into the meadow. Best of all, a family of loons lived on the lake. The teepee went up on a stunning June day, every step followed faithfully from a dog-eared copy of Laubin's book, the Bible of teepee living. A Forest Service employee came to check us out within about two weeks. He welcomed our enthusiasm, gave us some pointers, and said he'd be back every other Monday to take the garbage! Our dreams were coming true.

The daily routine tasks were anything but boring. Getting water could lead to spotting a fawn, or the loons. Building fire meant putting our daughter on my back to collect "squaw" wood, noting the 3-petalled creamy white trillium in blossom, smelling the lemony oregon grape flowers, or conversing with camp robber jays. It was early June. The woods were finally warming up, and the balsam fir offered an incense better than anything I'd used in our previous life. We'd dreamed this picture, and manifested it.

All was well until the rain started. We didn't know June was the rainiest month on the year. And we didn't know our teepee was not waterproofed!

MOUNTAIN TOWN

It was 1973 when we pulled into Seeley Lake in our yellow pick up truck. The baby was under a year, we had a teepee, a 100# bag of wheat, and one hundred dollars. We never would have found this little gem if our friend, whom we thought were going to live with, hadn't pawned us off on another friend. He'd promised us a job and a place to stay in Seeley, and he came through with both, then left, never to be seen or heard of again.

Seeley had 300 hearty people in the winter and 500 in the summer. The logging truck traffic had begun to slow down from the sixties, when a truck left the mill every 10 minutes of daylight. The valley lays almost due north-south, so in the winter you were lucky to get home from a day job before the sun went down. It's a narrow valley, about 70 miles long, hugging the mountains, skirting the Clearwater River. You couldn't walk far before heading up. Sledding was great, especially down the dirt road from the high School Road, right into town. We had spotters at the bottom of course, but traffic wasn't all that much a problem.

The loggers still ruled the town, and the trappers. It was a man's culture, right down to the two live mountain lions caged at the bar. Dog sled races, pool tournaments, and ice skating made the California culture we arrived from look down right frivolous. This was a tough life, five foot snow on the level where you learned to put on chains in the dark if you had to, and I quit singing while I drove so as not to end up in a snowbank.

Oh but the beauty! Arriving in May, bear grass in blossom, green pastures with plentiful deer and elk, I thought I'd finally made it to Barbara Stanwyke's Big Sky Country (a walk-in movie I'd seen as a kid in Napa, California. The lake itself was one of a string, like blue sapphires on a green chain. Narrow enough to walk across in winter to get your mail, and long enough to give a good workout in a canoe. Not to mention the fish; summer or winter they were a lure to most men and a lot of women living in the mountains. Lots of old refrigerators sat in back lots rigged up for smoke houses. There was salmon then too, spawning in the fall, green as moss.

More on Seeley Lake as time allows!