Building a Cabin in the Arctic | Life Below Zero
What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger. Good practice. Get knocked down, get right back up again, and get back to work.
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Just got the dogs out for a good run. I'm about to start working on my cabin. It's kind of been getting put off a long time; had a lot of other stuff on the plate. But the tent's kind of becoming undesirable to live in, and winter is extremely set in here. Winter's long, but the daylight's short, and it's been some 20, 25 below temperatures. Now the temperatures are really starting to drop. Nothing like some deep cold to get some urgency started on this cabin, you know, before the snow started flying.
I've got everything sealed in. I've got a solid roof on it, a solid foundation, solid walls. But what I need to do right now is get the roof insulated. The daylight's about to be gone. Limited daylight is about four hours. If I work four hours a day, nothing's gonna get done. So, I mean, I could be cutting wood at three in the morning, running dogs three in the morning, filling in the cabin at three in the morning—whatever it takes to get this cabin built just in time. The cold's really starting to move in here.
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Got the first sheet cut here. This is one of those things that would be real nice to have a second hand with, but this is where years of handling plywood comes into play. This is gonna be the part that's not very fun.
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Thank God I got some purchase on that one. Whenever I was 20 years old, living in a tent all winter was nothing, but I'm not 20 years old anymore. I don't recover; I don't bounce back as quick. A person needs to feel human. They need a place to have their own, be dry, be warm.
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Keep all their most important things out of the weather. It feels good to get some momentum back into this project. The hardest thing is to get going sometimes. If you're going to be efficient and effective out here, you have to figure out ways of killing two birds with one stone. You got to think multi-dimensional.
Okay, I got most of my plywood up on the ceiling. This area I need to leave open because I'm going to start setting my stove up here. This is kind of the exciting part. I'm really looking forward to getting this wood stove in here because then I can get myself a source of heat. I mean, I've been living in a tent all winter. I'm out here working in the cold all night because I want to get this done—get this cabin good enough that I can start moving my stuff in it tonight.
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