We are building a wall

* IT'S KAROL TIME AAAHHHFUIHESGHDLK. This week's title is a reference to a Down I Go song titled Poseidon, part of a short album about Greek mythology. It's one of my favorite albums and it's only four songs – it's a lot of fun to listen to. Also I'm glad we're now managing to keep up the schedule of new post every Tuesday, though next week we'll be in a different place - hopefully that doesn't set us back more than a day. *

d48 (Monday, October 17^th)

We started this week with a nice day.

We decided to spend the morning cutting some more hickory trees down.

When we went inside for lunch, we also started some water kefir! Marcia got us a nice little kit with dehydrated water kefir grains that we just had to put in some sugar water and leave sitting for a few days. We brought it upstairs where the temperature was (mostly) a constant 70 degrees because the kefir grains need to stay within 68-85 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeeeaaah weird yellowy shit with a coffee filter on top held on by a broken rubber baaannd.

At lunch we were both tired of doing hickory (by now we've cut down so many of them - sometimes it's a few days in a row, and at least a few hours each week) so we went down to help Nathan and Paul with the wall. The one column to help with water drainage had been completed last week, this time it was replacing wood walls that were old and rotting. They had been leaning over for quite some time.

I split almost this entire load by myself!

Charlotte supervising. (She thought she was out of the picture. Hah.)

We worked for a while, but there's only so much you can do in a day (actually I just can't remember why we stopped – we either ran out of mud (concrete/mortar mix) or the wall wouldn't handle more weight on it). We went up to the retreat to finally deep fry the green tomatoes Ed had given us last week.

Flour, egg, bread crumbs! (It's like Dora the Explorer)

After deep frying some crappy squash (this was leftover squash that we just hadn't cooked well last week, I think we just seasoned it and baked it and it didn't come out so well), we emptied the pot of the dirty (read: black) coconut oil and put some fresh oil for more potato chips!

We first did regular potato chips, then sweet potato chips.

The potato chips obviously were delicious (especially with copious amounts of salt), but the sweet potato chips actually ended up kinda hard. They weren't pleasantly crunchy unless they were very thin (which was harder to do with sweet potatoes cause they were harder cause... I don't know, are they starchier?). Anyway. We saw Paul up near the workshop and sent him back to the cabin with some deep fried green tomatoes and the rest of the squash (Nathan later agreed the squash wasn't great) and we headed down for our first carving lesson. Charlotte wasn't particularly interested in carving that night (or just embarrassed) so I just soaked up what I could. I learned some axe wielding techniques which I really needed (cause I never really used an axe before, except to split wood and also hurt myself really badly (that was when I WWOOFed here a few years ago!) – luckily it didn't go so badly this time) and then began carving with my morakniv. We moved inside after it got too dark to see outside. Nathan showed me a bunch of different knife techniques and this is what I ended up with after too many hours!

It's just a piece of firewood. Cherry.

49 (Tuesday, October 18^th)

Finally looks like fall around here.

Pancakes and eggs for breakfast (thanks Charlotte!) before cutting some hickory. Now I remember, Nathan went to town to get... uhh, maybe this was the day he actually went all the way to Elkins to try to find some map gas for his forge... to make some more tools (at least another hooked carving chisel) later in the afternoon, so we sat on the balcony carving some of the hickory we have been mercilessly butchering for weeks. I decided to try some kind of... like a fencepost top thing, kinda like a spear top whatever nonsense.

Charlotte's going at it with her mermaid knife!

Nathan got back around noon, so we had some lunch before I went down to help some more. Charlotte stayed up at the retreat this time, made some delicious butterscotch brownies and carved some more.

Getting closer to completion!

We went back again for some more carving time. Nathan hadn't managed to find any map gas unfortunately, so no tool making. This time I managed to just about finish the spoon (just needed a bit of light sanding cause I wasn't quite using the hook chisel correctly, surprise surprise).

Nathan also showed me how to make gypsy flowers on the other end of my weird spear stick!

This time we left right after it got dark (and I could no longer see what I was doing sitting outside (maybe part of why I didn't do a great job scooping out the spoon bit)) and went up to the retreat for some delicious dinner (no I don't remember what we had, maybe just some fuckin pasta, who gives a shit).

50^th fuckin day (Wednesday, October 19^th)

In the morning I don't quite remember what we did, I think maybe some more hickory cutting, while... Nathan went to town to get rebar and more concrete mix? Idfk. Anyway, Richard asked us to come with him to the bus, to help him empty it of water. So we went.

Richard took us to The Upper Inn for lunch (fucking delicious again) though this time I asked for regular curly fries instead of sidewinder fries. I learned my lesson – no snakes involved in those things. We had a nice chat with a bus driver from Delaware who had been carting tourists around since Monday. He won't go back home until Sunday, I think. Bellies full, on we went to the bus!

Obligatory insanefaceinareflection picture (I have no shoulders aaahhh).

After that was done, we headed back up the mountain. This time, we went up the way we normally go (we went out the other way because there were people FINALLY working on the road (this Old Turnpike was originally laid in the late 1800s...? and hasn't been maintained very well – this is the first time anyone has worked on it in probably 15 years or more) and there would have been no way to pass with the grader pulling the ditch and moving dirt around). After the 6 mile drive up the mountain, about 100 feet away from the entrance to their driveway, we found out the workers were still there... Luckily, after Richard went out to talk to them (and probably because it was already 3:30), they let us pass and I think made their way back down the mountain.

That's the grader. Surprisingly quiet yet quite imposing.

Then I helped continue building the wall.

Charlotte played the psaltery (or mountain dulcimer as I remember Marcia calling it...) and I came back to the tail end of her conversation on the phone with Ian (it was nice to hear from him). After a quick snack, I went down to start my next spoon. I got there without bringing any wood (though I wanted to) because Nathan mentioned wanting to get off the mountain for a bit that night, but I ended up running back up to the retreat because there were only firewood-length pieces near their (workers') cabin and I wanted to make a spoon with a longer handle. I brought a thick hickory log down and Nathan basically said here is an axe, have at it. I pretty much just panicked, I couldn't think at all, I didn't know whether to split it down the middle or what the fuck. Paul saw my face and told Nathan I was completely lost so he gave me a few nudges and eventually I pushed away some of my worrying and focused on "making it look like a spoon," as he kept telling me, without worrying about ruining it, cause there's always more hickory up the mountain. So this is what I came up with:

A shitty spear.

51^st (Thursday, October 20^th)

The wall was really close to being done so I went down to help shortly after nine. It was luckily another nice day, and we were hoping to finish before it rained or anything like that. I had my hoodie and was pacing about as close to the sun as I could (for warmth) and I looked up to the retreat, noting a view I had maybe never taken in:

Makes it look really narrow, like a big column.
Well, the retreat was built on top of an office area which was built on top of a cold cellar, so it is actually just a continuation up of existing structure.

Charlotte covered the terraces we weeded when we first got here with more straw because stupid grass had grown (I realized the day before that that was pretty much because we covered it with hay – which is just big bunches of cut grass, containing tons of seeds – which meant that we pretty much planted grass all over the terraces). (Some long parentheticals in this post, how about it.)

I wonder how long until more grass grows through the straw...

There was only really an hour or so of work to be done on the wall, so we finished that rather quickly (just a few capstones to put, and then brushing the concrete joints such that water runs off them instead of pooling) but there was still dirt to add into the terraces. Richard asked us to get leaf mulch to fill in where we had worked and ultimately we ended up getting all of the leaf mulch to fill in some of the other spots that were very low. After that, we sweeped (Charlotte says it's swept, but what do I know? I'm just an immigrant) the stones again and I sweeped the stairs, and the wall was built!

Can you tell where pre-existing walls are?

We also replanted some herbs and garlic that were in the terraces to begin with. The last plank in the bottom step had to be replaced because it finally gave way after about 18 years – Paul and I were ironically carrying a relatively small rock when it broke. Off in the distance, at the top of the wall, by the furthest tree at the top of this next picture is where the column for water drainage is. 

It's all just mud and rocks.

After we finished the wall, I went up to the retreat. Valerie was on the phone this time (we missed her call the night before because it was like 12:30, jesus Valerie some people sleep at reasonable times, dontcha know) so after Charlotte was done, I got to talk to her for a little while. Marcia came up during our conversation and suggested to Charlotte that we take a trip down to the battlefield before Friday's rain and wind and potential freeze knocks all the leaves off the trees. We had lunch and I was almost falling asleep for a while before we left (Charlotte was getting antsy to leave and I was just so comfortable on the couch...).

This is how we drive on mountain roads.

Tons of people died here, apparently, a long time ago.

It's still barren, but that's mostly because this is where people let cows pasture. Is that the right word? Pasture? Is that a verb or just a noun? Man, I don't know, this isn't like fucking encyclopedia brittanica or whatever. If you're interested in that, just ask my old coworker Karl, he and his neighbors bought the whole like 500 book set like a decade and a half ago.

Ahem. 

More pictures!

  

Charlotte's goin' to war.

Again: hawks, not a dirty screen.

Charlotte the groundhog predicts no snow any time soon (spoiler alert: she's wrong).
Also, this is a battlement (I think that's the word), where gunners would lay, hiding, and shoot down from.

Here's.. a big tree and some little trees (no, they're just far away).

We walked down the hill through fucking acres of brambles.

Just a big pile of rocks at the bottom, then a creek further down that way.

I don't know, some old war building? Ex-building? Old ex-war ex-building?

After we got back I did a little more carving on my spearoon while a new batch of (hopefully) better sandwich bread rose in the bread pan.

Charlotte is alarmed that the wood is blue here.

Success! (For real this time, it tasted good).

I made some mothafuckin meatballs and pan fried two clises (YEAH IT'S A NEW SPELLING, WHAT OF IT) of the bread to make a sandwich (Charlotte had one on untoasted bread) with mozzarella. The ranch was actually unnecessary.

So good, you don't even know. Unless you do. In that case, sorry.

Richard called at some point before dinner to let us know that the space station was gonna be visible to the south at 7:19 (it's very punctual, he said). It was visible from the southwest, heading southeast, about 41 degrees up and it looked just like a UFO which was exciting cause it was more like an IFO. Identified Falling Object (not flying but literally falling, just also going to the side fast enough to make it stay at the same height above earth). Actually I really have no reason to believe it was the ISS, it might have been ISIS for all I know, but I guess I believe Richard cause last year Charlotte and I saw Mars through his binoculars while we were here for vacation in July... Or did we?

52^nd (Friday, October 21^st)

Rainy shit day so we thought we might just play video games and kinda sit around especially cause I think it was also windy since Thursday night, but Marcia came up around 10:30 (right after I finally decided I would play some Witcher 3) to ask if we would cut back some of the herbs in one of the planter boxes and also transplant a planter box of the echinacea down to the terrace gardens near their house. We had to do it today because there was supposed to be a frost overnight and maybe even some fuckin snow (whaaaattt? groundhog Charlotte said no snow though!). So we got our rain shits on and got ready to head out.

I forgot it was an actual jacket and not just a shitty poncho. That is my happy face.

Charlotte, trying not to laugh.

This is what the planter box looked like after we took out the echinacea roots

What you don't see is that we actually had most of the dirt up on the side of the box, trying to get some of the long, deep roots like a foot or more in the middle of the box. It took us like an hour just to clear the box – first of weeds, then carefully pulling up the echinacea roots. This was also the box of shitty echinacea they planted – Richard had no idea so much would grow there.

This is the neighboring box of echinacea – we had a little less than that plus long, thorny weeds.

We cut back and harvested some swiss chard, kale, and parsley (yes, in that order).

Charlotte with echinacea sead (I can't spell) pods, almost like bunches of flowers!

Richard told us to scatter the seed heads (or whatever you wanna call them) undisciplined up on that path. They will supposedly grow (at least some of them) and propagate down the hill. After that, we had a quick lunch before driving down to their terrace gardens in the Kubota to plant some of the roots in the top tier and some in the lower areas that Paul and I filled with mulch. Richard drove some topsoil (after we weeded it) down to the top terrace with his tractor. We shoveled the dirt out of the bucket and spread it around.

Sorry, the only picture I had of the top terrace where we spread the dirt is pretty much garbage so, confusingly, here's a different one!

You can't see the echinacea, it's buried. TOO BAD FOR YOU.

Then, pizza.

Ranch as the sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, meatballs, and a fresh green pepper Charlotte finally remembered to pick from one of the planter boxes.

Charlotte says this facial hair makes me look like a punk ass.
Like someone who races cars and probably steals shit or whatever.

53^rd (Saturday, cOcktober 22^nd)

It fuckin snowed. Thanks groundhog Charlotte. More like Lieground Charhog.

Well this was gonna be our day to stay inside and do naught but play video games and whatever. In this case, the whatever was bagels! We used some recipe Charlotte found in Joy of Cooking by whoever. The recipe said we'd have 18 bagels, but they'd have to be tiny pinky ring bagels...

Yay dough toruses! (Torusi?) ...tori? Really? Whatever.

While we waited for those to rise, we finally strained the water kefir grains from their original life-giving bath, putting them in fresh sugar water.

It looks like the kefir grains peed in their water...

That's what they look like. Weird lumpy rice.

Then we boiled some dough rings!

We took them out of the oven when the recipe said (spoiler alert: they were still raw).

We baked the shit out of them and they were no longer raw anywhere.

After hours of video games, I decided to carve inside (cause, lest you forget, there was windy ass snow outside that I wasn't about to sit around in). I hadn't wanted to before because it would make a mess, but I finally admitted to myself that I can easily just sweep that shit up when I'm done, so there I went, carving away.

The handle is now round! Also, really crooked. Now it's a crooked shitty spearoon!

Now, I just have to carve out the bowl and eventually sand the hell out of it (cause maybe I'm terrible at it, maybe cause it was a small log and the grain is bendy, maybe it's Maybelline, but there are basically fibers sticking up all over the handle). I'm thinking I might try a spatoola (or a fork, maybe a small butter knife) after I'm done with this, maybe some time Monday or Tuesday whatever. Depends how long it'll take me to carve out the bowl of the spearoon.

Anyway, that was while we were preparing some dinner: more BYOS! We didn't have meat this time, partly because lazy and partly because lazy. But mostly because we didn't really think about it, probably because of like lazy or whatever. Charlotte was cutting carrots while I was carving; maybe she was actually thinking about including meat cause we almost got a chunk of her thumb with the carrots. Wubalubadubdub!

It's all good, doctor Karol patched her up.

Carrots, onions, chard, kale, rice, and parsley with our chicken broth! 
Also Sierra Nevada Otra Vez (sour beer) is our new favorite beer.

After (and during) dinner we watched some Rick and Morty and then I put on two movies back to back – the new Fantastic Four (it was good until like halfway through when they sort of rushed through everything... I was willing to sit through another hour of that, you bastards) and then Captain America: The First Avenger (man, he really handled it well when he ran out into Times Square and found out he was asleep for 70 years).

It was still super duper windy when we went to bed.

54^th (Sunday, October 23^rd)

We lazed about in bed a little (I woke up around 6:30 to write down a dream I had in which I was working for Schmidt, the red skull of Hydra – I was helping him make his manufacturing more efficient by planning out an automatic tube that moved around red tanks (full of gas I guess) by automatically opening a trap door thing under them when they were heavy enough) (this actually made me think of Tesla's gigafactory that I'm going to work in sometime in 2017 or whenever we get there) and finally got up to get bacon started!

Delicious fried egg, cream cheese, and bacon on pan fried bagel sandwiches.

Charlotte said my facial hair (what I had sans mustache) made me look like a hoodlum, so I wondered whether I could make it better (and also how much worse I could get it) so here we go:

Does this make me look less like a rude boy?

Does this make me look like a proper gentleman?
Charlotte says I look like I listen to Limp Bizkit... still.

I'm keeping that look for as long as I can stand it. We're going to dinner in town at Station 2, hopefully people only stare and don't yell obscenities at me. Though, that would be funny too. I kinda fucked it up a little, but I think that's also the light that makes it look like the right side is choppy. This also reminds me of a facial hair style Tyler had when I finally saw him again earlier this year. Still don't know whether he was serious about that facial hair or what was going on.

So right now we're at the Station 2 restaurant, full as (and now OF) shit. I just finished uploading pictures and copying and pasting all the text I had (left this spot open for whatever we eat/do here). We shared mozzarella sticks and broccoli cheese bites for an appetizer - they were both delicious. Then I had a chicken finger plate and a deep-fried bacon wrapped hot dog with french fries and delicious slaw. Charlotte had a proper dinner - pork chops with mashed potatoes and green beans. Now we're just kinda sitting around, digesting. I told Charlotte to watch the music video for Down I Go's Poseidon (the song from which the name of this post comes (it's the first line of the song, in case you can't tell what he's saying)) and she enjoyed it. It's a pretty ridiculous puppet theater thing.

Boy how lucky am I to have met Nathan. Right after I decided to give it a rest with computers (I had decided that computer science was what I wanted to do with my life without allowing myself a romance period with the (fucking enormous) field itself, then tried to force myself to learn Java because I decided it was the only way I was ever going to be useful to Tesla or SpaceX), I meet this mountain man who comes from a family of stone masons and has been carving wood since he was like 12. This week I realized that it's pretty appropriate for me to have stopped worrying about programming and sort of dive into some stone work and wood carving. I've started my skill-acquiring by focusing on wood (which Nathan said was a great place to start – it's where he got his start) and I've also gotten to work with stone a little. Hopefully next week I'll get to see and help Nathan make tools (and maybe I'll even get to make something for myself), so I'll have wood, stone, and metal working experience all in a matter of weeks. I'm pretty floored that I have these opportunities so early in our adventure – I only dreamed of meeting someone who makes their own tools let alone someone who actually also made his own forge, all of his own wood carving tools, has lived off the land for years, and completely supports himself with wood carving and stonemasonry.

This is the life.