Log Cabin Building with Thor Nordwall
Chapter 1. Meeting Thor
Thor Nordwall and I first met in the summer of 1975 at Camp DuNord outside of Ely, Minnesota. Ely is north of Duluth in the part of the state called the Arrowhead - the triangular region of Minnesota wedged between the north shore of Lake Superior and the Canadian border. Camp DuNord is only a few miles from the pristine woods and lakes of the BWCA - the Boundary Waters Canoe Area - where no motorized vehicles are allowed.
Thor was the former chairman of the St. Paul YMCA DuNord Board of Directors and helped establish the camp in the early 1960's. He worked as an engineer for Bell Telephone in St. Paul. Thor was born April 7, 1921 - he was exactly 30 years and 30 days older than me, as my birthday is May 7, 1951. He lived through the Great Depression on the East Side of St. Paul, Minnesota, and served in the Army in World War II. He went ashore at Normandy several days after D-Day 1944 and later fought in the Battle of the Bulge. At the time I met him, Thor had already raised four children who were young adults, and he was at that time a single 54 year old engineer still working for Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in St. Paul. Thor wanted to retire early and build a log cabin way back in the woods, a few miles from DuNord. During the summer of 1975, he was spending two weeks as a guest resource staff member at DuNord.
In the spring of 1975, I was just finishing my first year out of college, having worked that year as a Head Start teacher in St. Paul. That spring, I was hired as a senior camp counselor for the summer at DuNord. For years I had wanted to live and work in northern Minnesota. While the DuNord position was just for the summer, I was hoping that some other opportunity would arise for me to stay in the Ely area after the summer.
Looking back on the situation, there were some unusual aspects of what we implicitly agreed to and how we agreed to it. I didn't ask to be paid for my work, and I don't recall Thor offering. I'd be living rent free in a remote site in the woods of northern Minnesota. There was no discussion at all about health coverage, insurance, compensation of any kind - or of what would be done if I incurred an injury of some sort. It didn't even occur to me to consider those issues - it was something neither of us discussed. For myself, I saw this as an opportunity to do something I had long wanted to do. For Thor, he was glad to have the help and was happy to have someone on the site throughout the week, since he was still working full time at Northwestern Bell and could only come up from St. Paul on the weekends. I'd be on the site each day till winter hit.
In the end, Thor and I agreed to give this a try. Thor would drive up from St. Paul for the weekends, from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, and I'd work at the cabin site by myself during the week. I don't think we even shook hands on this - we just came to an agreement. I'd be alone at the cabin much of the time. On top of all this, I didn't own a car, the nearest telephone was 2-3 miles away, and I'd be alone most of the week. This was fall of 1975 - several decades before the availability of cell phones.
It didn't even enter my mind to be concerned about safety or isolation. I'd be living deep in the woods - a dream situation for me. In the naivety of youth, I had a simple confidence that this was going to be good.
Chapter 2. Starting the Log Work
A lot of work had been done on the cabin by the time I arrived on the scene in mid-September 1975. Thor had a “crew” which had helped him get the cabin started - his sons Kurt, Karl, and Kris and their friends, along with family friends - who were all just as intrigued as I was by Thor’s dream of building a very solid log cabin way back in the woods. They had helped in numerous ways - cutting down the white pines, hauling them with a tractor to the site, stripping the trees of their outer bark, positioning them off the ground on cross-beams at the cabin site to dry out for a good 1-2 years, and establishing the cabin's foundation and flooring while the logs dried out.
Many of the those in Thor’s crew were people and names I can’t identify - plus I’m reluctant to make a list, because of the certainty that names would be left off. For all the hands that helped cut down the pine trees and get the logs out of the woods and up to the site - they were young men (and at least one woman) in their 20s who enjoyed being up in the woods and were just happy to be there helping this man who had a dream.
My focus for this account will be on what was done from the time I came on board until the roof was finished. But I happily acknowledge the efforts that were made before my time. If you are reading this account and you helped in the prior stages of the work, I wish I could name every one of you. Thank you (you know who you are) for the work you contributed to this dream that we were all a part of.
For the foundation on which log walls would rest, Thor had positioned a handful of pre-cast concrete bases that were each roughly 2 feet by 2 feet by 1.5 feet. These concrete bases were cemented to the outcropping of bare bedrock granite at the site to establish the cabin's foundation. Then joists and flooring were set in place atop the concrete bases. After that, logs were placed at the flooring level to start the walls. A log cabin's walls, of course, are built from the bottom up. When I joined the work, the interior walls were already about two or three logs high.
This photo above shows an exterior view of the cabin in the early stages. Thor had already completely finished the stone fireplace in the background.
Here are the logs that had already been felled and stripped of outer bark a good year and a half or two before my arrival. These logs are on the order of 35-45 feet long. They lay here to the side of the cabin foundation drying out (it was called "seasoning"). Support logs, laying crossways beneath the lengthy timber, kept the big logs from direct contact with the ground. We used a chainsaw to cut these logs to the needed lengths for the different horizontal portions of wall. Some wall sections were only 10-12 feet in length (or even shorter) for log segments between gaps in the walls from doors and windows.
Chapter 3. The Swedish Method for Cutting and Shaping Logs
There are a number of ways to cut logs for a log cabin. Some methods leave small gaps between logs - along the entire length of the logs and in the corners. But then some sort of firm, flexible material - called chinking - is required to close up those gaps in order to keep out drafts, moisture, and pests. Thor wanted no gaps at all, so he adopted what’s called the Swedish method, which I will describe throughout this chapter. It takes more time, since the logs are cut in a clever way that requires careful, fairly precise cutting to create very tight fits from log to log. This method leaves no gaps and needs no chinking. With my background in mathematics, I very quickly saw that we were applying principles of 3-dimensional solid geometry to how we would be cutting the logs. That was a cool connection for me.
We used the above tool - called a draw knife - to remove the inner bark. I enjoyed using this tool, as it was a nice change of pace from the heavy log work. The draw knife worked kind of like a potato peeler - except you pulled the sharp blade edge toward you - as we stripped off thin layers of the inner bark, while straddling the log in a seated position. The outer bark had already been removed shortly after the trees were felled. The shavings of the strips of inner bark were a convenient and constant supply of kindling for cooking meals at the fire pit.
Read this carefully: the above photo shows how we traced the already-in-place lower log’s top surface onto the upper log's bottom surface. This created the outline of the corner notch for the upper log.
But I went on to earn my stripes as a reliable, skilled, efficient - and safe! - log worker. That minor cut was the only injury either of us incurred in the months and months of working the logs. My wife tells me I still have the scar.
The next step is shown here, where I'm using a mallet and a half-round chisel to gouge and smooth out the interior of the corner notch.
Here Thor is using the log scribe - a tool that was crucial to how we were able to fit the logs so tightly with each other. A log scribe is pretty much a large iron tweezers with two bent sharp tips (or tines) where - read this slowly! - the lower tip of the tool traces along the top surface of the lower log - bump by bump, dimple by dimple, knot by knot - while at the same time, the upper tip of the log scribe digs a continuous and "parallel" groove on the bottom surface of the upper log. This procedure is repeated on the other side of the two logs.
After the upper log had been marked by the log scribe with a continuous groove on both sides of the upper log, we turned the upper log over and marked the two separate log-length grooves with a black magic marker. The black lines were much easier to see than just a groove in wood, and we used the chainsaw to cut out what's called a V-notch the entire length of the log. If you imagine looking at the butt-end of the log, cutting the V-notch was similar to cutting a slice of pie out of a circular pie - except the vertex of the V-notch didn’t have to penetrate all the way to the center of the log. But the cut-out V-notch wedge did go the entire length of the log.
So we removed the meat of the log-length V-notch. Then we turned the log back over, resting it on top of the log beneath it, with the V-notch now facing down. Imagine an upside-down V resting on the letter O beneath it, or an inequality sign (the < sign) pushed flush against the single letter O, just like this: <O - except the < sign was on top of the letter O - and then this <O arrangement went the entire length of the two logs.
This photo shows the V-notches of some of the logs. Note that V-notches didn't have to penetrate all the way to the center of its own log.
The linear 1-dimensional edges on both sides of the V-notch of the upper log now made a fairly close fit against the 2-dimensional surface of the log beneath it. Inevitably, there were places here and there along the length of the two logs where the fit wasn’t tight. These were the spaces where we still had to file away those spots to let the entire upper log come down a bit further to rest snugly against the lower log.
At the places where the fit of the top log against the bottom log wasn’t completely and tightly flush along this edge, we could see gaps where the the upper log's bottom-facing edge of the V-notch was close to - but not touching and resting on - the top surface of the lower log immediately beneath it. So we used a short, narrow, flat saw called a keyhole saw to essentially file down the places of the upper log's V-notch edge that were touching. In this way, the gaps of the entire upper log would little-by-little settle downward, and gradually the upper log - by fractions of an inch at a time - would get closer and closer to being an almost perfectly tight fit with the surface of the bottom log. At that point, here's where my knowledge of solid geometry was helpful: little-by-little, we were making the bottom edge of the upper log - essentially a one-dimensional edge - rest flush and tight against the top surface of the lower log - essentially a two-dimensional surface - with no gaps at all.
With the first few levels of logs we worked on - the lower part of the log walls - the fit of the upper log against the lower log wasn't as refined and tight - after the first go-round on a log. Sometimes we had to flip the upper log over (so the V-notch faced up) two or even three times to re-cut the edges of the V-notch. But we got better at this. Eventually, we got so good at carefully and more exactingly cutting the V-notch well enough in the first place that we did the whole fitting process on the first try - no more multiple flips of the upper log. The fitted 1-dimensional edges of the upside down V-notch of upper log against the top surface of the lower log eventually fit so tightly that it was hard to get a knife blade between the logs. Hence, there was no need for chinking between the logs. The photo below shows the tightness of fit for several log levels on the interior side of the cabin on the windowless northeast wall. The distance from a log's visible bottom edge in the photo to its own top edge varies from 10-15 inches (so the diameters of the actual logs are greater by another 2-3 inches).
This photo at right shows the tightness of fit of the logs at an exterior corner. Note and compare the indoor surfaces of the logs (above) with the more weathered and treated outdoor surfaces of the logs (right).
Once an upper log had a sufficiently tight fit against the log beneath it, we would use a hand mallet to hammer a large 10-12 inch lag screw (with 1/2 inch diameter) at each end of the upper log (like the corners shown here). The lag screw secured the just-finished log to the log below it. This was always a very satisfying task. It meant one more completed step in getting closer to the roof and finishing the cabin.
Chapter 4. Building Higher: the Block-and-Tackle
As the log walls were getting to about chest height, Thor and I were reaching the limit of our physical ability - our combined strength - to raise the logs manually with just the two of us. The logs were always heavy, of course, but when we were placing them at lower levels, we were able to drag and grunt and lift the logs into position.
We needed something mechanical to lift the logs to their necessary height - eventually heights that were well over our own heads. I was wrapped up so much in enjoying both the woods and the log work that I didn't even think ahead to what a possible solution might be, plus I didn't have the engineering background to think about mechanical solutions.
But Thor did. He had thought this through. All along he was planning what the next few photos show.
In the photo above, Thor was setting up what is known as a gin pole, to aid in lifting the very heavy logs as the cabin walls progressed upward. We would attach a block-and-tackle rope setup at the high end of the gin pole.
Thor secured this gin pole in a small hole we dug in the earth at the base of a nearby tree. About a third of the way up this tree, a chain secured the gin pole to the standing tree, allowing the gin pole to swing left and right with its bottom in the hole at the trunk of the tree. At the far upper end of the gin pole, we attached the block-and-tackle device which included the standard pulley and rope. So we had what was essentially a manual crane. The pulley ropes in the block-and-tackle gave us a mechanical advantage, as I recall it, of 7-to-1, but ropes in this and other photos show that the ratio would be 5-to-1. But whatever the mechanical advantage was, if we pulled down on the pulley rope with 100 pounds of force, the block-and-tackle's mechanical advantage transformed our effort to 500 to 700 pounds of lifting force. With the block-and-tackle's mechanical advantage, we could lift all the logs for the walls - except for the gigantic ridge pole, which would be placed as the peak log of the roof. The ridge pole's diameter was at least 2 times the diameters of the other logs. This meant the ridge pole was on the order of at least 4 times as heavy - and possibly as much as 6 to 8 times heavier - than the longest, heaviest wall log we were able to lift with the block-and-tackle. While the block-and-tackle device had been a welcome and useful tool, we knew we needed something better to lift the ridge pole.
Here the gin pole is ready to go, with the block-and-tackle hanging secured near the upper end of the pole. Guess who had to crawl up the slanted pole to both position and secure the block-and-tackle in place - a 55 year old engineer, or a 24 year old kid just out of college? A close examination of the photo shows the single rope hanging down from the gin pole to the block-and-tackle, with multiple ropes hanging down from the pulleys.
The photo below shows the gin pole with block-and-tackle swung to the right to position a log over the doorway.
Chapter 5. The Site, the Bunkhouse, the More
This photo below shows the bunkhouse where we slept. By my memory and estimate, the bunkhouse was about 6.5 feet high at the peak toward the right (I had to duck a bit to get under the little porch overhang), by 7 feet deep (front to back), by maybe 12 feet long (left to right). For me, this was the box I lived in for two months, mostly alone, in fall 1975. By the time April 1976 rolled around and it was time to head back to the cabin site, Thor was retired from Northwestern Bell, so there were two of us in the bunkhouse that spring.
There was a very low bunkbed - a bunkbed! - at the shorter, left end of the unit (the bottom bunk was on the floor). But that fall, before he retired from Northwestern Bell, Thor was usually gone from Sunday afternoon through Friday afternoon, so I was a one-man crew on the site during the beautiful autumn weekdays in the fall of 1975.
At night, it was a bit scary, being alone and in the dark. But I loved the stars and the night sky. Moonlit nights were great. At new moon (when the moon doesn't show itself at all), the darkness was extremely dark. But I had an astronomy guidebook with me, and I learned the constellations very well.
At this time in the mid-1970's, there were no cell phones. So I was very all alone. No porch lights at night. No yard lights. No street lights. Deep in the northern Minnesota forests. Three miles to the nearest landline phone. One mile to the nearest human. Crisp, dark autumn nights. Way back in the woods. All by myself. Solitary Just me. Alone. Solo.
It was one of the best times of my life.
It wasn't just the physical challenge of working the logs and building a cabin, although I relished both so very much. There was also the mental challenge of being alone so often. I had become a Christian the previous winter, in February 1975 [for the story of this tumultuous time of my life, go to bobhazenstory.blogspot.com], so I was just beginning to see the beauty of nature not as an accumulation of the undirected processes of mindless, purposeless, particles-to-people evolution but as the craftsmanship of an intelligent, personal Creator. Nature and beauty had meaning and purpose. And looking back on the perspective I had during this time at the cabin site, I realize now that I had such a sense of purpose then and there - that working on this cabin deep in the north woods was where I was meant to be at that time, that God had guided me to be here immersed in the woods, surrounded by this healing, comforting beauty.
I remember at the end of one day in particular, as sunset was just beginning, the entire sky behind the tree line was lit up with those beautiful oranges and soft reds and brilliant pinks. So I grabbed a fistful of raisins and a hunk of cheese and walked the Old Coxey Pond Road toward the westering sun. My first autumn out of college - a year earlier in the fall of 1974 - had been a difficult time for me. So this time in the woods was a pause from that, a time where a lot of healing began - a season of hope and affirmation - a period of belonging, accomplishment, acceptance, and appreciation - as well as the beginnings of a stirring hunger for life, for truth, for light - for more. As beautiful as the northern Minnesota woods and lakes were, there still seemed to be something else - something beyond the beauty - something or someone calling and whispering to me - something "beyond the 33rd of April and the 41st of May" as poet-musician Rod McKuen sang. That's what I was really after - that more was what I really wanted.
Chapter 6. Jälmer’s house
Jälmer - pronounced "Yalmer" - was the guardian of the dutch-door, two-seater outhouse. I wasn't the only person - upon first opening the upper half-door of this biffy - to jump a bit in surprise at this unusual character inhabiting the premises.
We would reference Jälmer throughout our day at the cabin. Rather than mentioning a bathroom break, one of us would say, "Gotta visit Jälmer."
The biffy was perched at one of the higher points on the site, and at that time, there was minimal undergrowth between the cabin and Old Coxey Pond Road below. It was possible to peer eastward across the forest below and see bits and pieces of nearby Burntside Lake through the trees. So visiting Jälmer also meant enjoying a beautiful vista before returning to work on the logs.
Chapter 7. Historical Note and a Winter Shut Down
On Sunday, November 9, 1975, the temperatures at the cabin site were unseasonably warm for anywhere in Minnesota - and even more unseasonably warm for this northern part of the state: temps were in the mid to upper 70’s. Thor wasn’t there for that weekend, and I was working on the logs by myself all morning. When I took my lunch break, it was so warm that I stripped down to my birthday suit to work on my tan for about half an hour - on November 9! - as I lay outside on the bunkhouse deck.
Then I went back to work on the logs. As the afternoon unfolded, the temperature started dropping rapidly. Soon it was snowing heavily. I realized this snow storm marked the end of our work season that fall. So I oiled the tools that needed oiling, then put everything in the tool shed and locked it up, and went into the bunkhouse to have supper and gather my things for departure the next day.
When I woke in the morning, there was a foot and a half of snow on the ground, the roofless cabin was inundated with snow - and the radio was saying that the Great Lakes tanker the Edmund Fitzgerald was missing. The same blizzard that shut down our work season at the cabin on Sunday also swept easterly over the arrowhead region of northern Minnesota and then across Lake Superior to sink the Fitzgerald in Superior's eastern waters during the dark early morning hours of that Monday, November 10.
Our work on the cabin was over for the fall. One strange thing was that I still had no car, but I trudged down from the cabin and somehow made my way to the Twin Cities for the winter - but I have no memory of how I did that.
Thor and I would return to continue work on the cabin in April 1976.
Thor and I would return to continue work on the cabin in April 1976.
Chapter 8. Winter Interlude
Both Thor and I spent the 1975-76 winter months in the Twin Cities. He was finishing his last few months of work before early retirement. For me, I visited friends and meandered around St.Paul-Minneapolis, eventually buying a used VW that I took back to Ely in the spring. More importantly, I also got connected with a church in Minneapolis. There I made a bunch of friends, including one guy, some 7-8 months later in October 1976 - well after Thor and I were done with the cabin - who would introduce me to a sweet young thing named Sarah Hein. Over the subsequent 3-4 years, I would get to know Sarah much better.
Chapter 9. The Spring Return
Thor and I came back to the cabin in early April 1976. Thor was now fully-retired, so we were both at the cabin site for the remainder of the spring. When early June would come around, we both were committed to working full time as senior camp staff at Camp Du Nord. So the DuNord summer start date was kind of a deadline hanging over the work. Neither of us thought we would have time to break away from the very busy summer at the camp to try to do any more cabin work.
April in the northern woods of Minnesota has some very intriguing and changing weather. One sunny morning as we were working the logs, the sun quickly disappeared, and it snowed for ten minutes. Then the sun came out for ten minutes, and then it hailed for ten minutes. Then the sun came out again for ten minutes, then it sleeted for ten minutes. All of that in the space of an hour. I remember saying to Thor, "It's like nature just can't decide what season it is."
The photo below is my favorite photo of 'em all - from later in the spring of 1976. There's a certain grandeur to the cabin at this point - large and open to the sky and sun above.
After some four months of building the cabin from the floor up, I found I was so accustomed to being in a very open cabin - with only the sun and sky above me - that when we got the sod roof in place, the cabin felt weird and dark and cramped to me. But I got used to it. Eventually.
Chapter 10. Building Higher: the Gear Box
Here is an inside view of the southeast wall, one of two opposite walls upon which the ridge log would have to be placed.
This photo shows the huge problem we faced: how do we get the enormous and very heavy ridge log up to the height where it had to be placed? Unless we had ten strong bodies to pull and heave on the block-and-tackle rope - and there was no way that many people were going to show up - we needed something better. The block-and-tackle didn't give us enough mechanical advantage for just the two of us.
So we visited some neighbors down the North Arm Road to inquire about borrowing any kind of device better than the block-and-tackle we had. We found nothing that would work. Then we meandered down the Echo Trail where a very elderly gentleman - I think his name was George - let us borrow a device called a gear box. Thor was familiar with gear boxes, but I'd never seen or heard of such a thing. This gear box was an enclosed metal case about the size of a kitchen toaster. Although we didn't (and couldn't) open the metal case, Thor explained that rather than having pulleys and ropes like a block-and-tackle, a gear box had interlocking gears inside the case. If we pulled on one end of the chain, that applied force got multiplied by the interlocking gears inside the gear box to create a mechanical advantage many, many times greater than what a set of ropes and pulleys could.
The photo below isn't what our gear box looked like - this is a photo of the inside workings of a commercial gear box that I pulled off the internet. But the insides of our gear box must have been something very similar to this, except that for the one we had, its surrounding metal case was old and rusty and encrusted.
About all I really know about the gearbox we used is what we were able to do with it. The ridge pole, remember, was 2-2.5 times bigger in diameter than the biggest log we had placed in any of the cabin walls. By my estimate, it weighed 6-8 times as much as any other log we had moved. Previously, it had taken both Thor and me pulling with all of our might to lift the biggest wall log with the block-and-tackle.
So we removed the block-and-tackle from the gin pole and hung the gear box in its place. Then we rotated the gin pole over to the stack of logs so it was closer to where the huge ridge pole lay. We used the gin pole to drag the ridge pole closer to the cabin.
So we removed the block-and-tackle from the gin pole and hung the gear box in its place. Then we rotated the gin pole over to the stack of logs so it was closer to where the huge ridge pole lay. We used the gin pole to drag the ridge pole closer to the cabin.
Then we secured a rope sling around the ridge pole. Logs aren’t perfect cylinders - they taper from one end to the other, and they are bowed and bent and curved. So it took a few attempts to find the ridge pole's center of balance for the rope sling. Once we found that balance point, we looped the other end of the rope to the hook of the gear box. Then we pulled down on the lift rope - and we were simply amazed: with the gear box in place, individually, either one of us alone - just one of us! - could pull down with just one arm and lift the ridge pole. It was astonishing. Wow!
Here the ridge log rests in place.
Here is another view of the ridge log resting in place on the southeast wall.
The photo below shows a portion of the ridge log resting on a short vertical log support, which itself is resting on the cross-beam log. The left end of the cross-beam (off-camera) in turn is embedded securely atop the rock-solid rock fireplace.
Chapter 11. The Roof
After the ridge log was in place, we cut corner notches in the roof line, to allow for support logs which were parallel to the ridge pole.
These support logs are called purlins rather than rafters. A rafter lies perpendicular to the ridge, whereas a purlin is parallel to the ridge. I joked with Thor whether anyone would steal a support log - if anyone would "purloin a purlin."
Once the purlins were secured, the next step was to set the roof in place. Thor had ordered tongue-and-groove boards to place for the roof's main layer. Given that the cabin site was about a mile from the nearest gravel road, via a very rocky, older, ascending roadway called the Old Coxey Pond Road, I was surprised when Thor told me that a local lumber company - Kainz Lumber in nearby Ely - had agreed to deliver the tongue-and-groove boards by truck.
Sure enough, one day we heard the start-and-stop revving of a truck slowly making its way up the very rocky road downhill from us. The driver drove around the back entrance to the site, backing up pretty close to the bunkhouse. There the driver used a small onboard crane to offload the lumber. From there, Thor and I hauled the boards into the cabin to lift up to the roof.
I noticed that some of the tongue-and-groove boards were bowed - they had a very noticeable bend to them. Thor basically said, "No problem." From the tool shed, he pulled out a device - he called it either a jack or a come-along (there are two different kinds of come-alongs that we used). The device had a hook and a wench with which we could pull a warped board straight and then screw it in place into the purlins and ridge log beneath. It took me a while to realize that wood isn't permanently rigid. The warp in a board can be - for lack of a better word - "pulled out" of it by what Thor was doing.
On top of the full array of tongue-and-groove boards, we laid down various layers of waterproofing. I've lost track of which order we laid these materials, but I think the sequence was like this - first, tar paper on top of the tongue-and-groove boards; second, 30-inch by 30-inch aluminum printer's sheets; third, plastic sheeting.
On top of all that, we brought up small sections of sod from the surrounding ground to cover the whole roof, placing the sod sections as close to each other as possible. So the final layer of the roof was the 3-4 inch depth of sod that we laid.
Thor pointed out several features of a sod roof. First, as rain falls on a sod roof, the sod's grass sends down roots that interweave with each other to create an increasingly tight layer of 3 to 4 inches of grassy, compact soil.
Second, as snow falls in winter, the accumulating layers of snow serve as insulation. In this part of Minnesota, there could be 1 or 2 feet of snow on the roof for weeks (if not months) on end.
Third, unlike a frame house, a log cabin has a sufficiently strong walls to hold not only the considerable weight of the sod itself - but also the added weight of rain and the additional, enduring, season-long weight of the snows of winter.
In the various stages of building walls higher and higher and then completing the roof, I've lost track of when Thor's good friend Ben Pawlak installed in the doorway the beautiful solid oak door he had built. Ben also carved into the outside of the door the following words from the English poet and playwright Samuel Johnson, so that every visitor would see the wisdom that served as a guiding principle for Thor in his quest to build his dream:
In the various stages of building walls higher and higher and then completing the roof, I've lost track of when Thor's good friend Ben Pawlak installed in the doorway the beautiful solid oak door he had built. Ben also carved into the outside of the door the following words from the English poet and playwright Samuel Johnson, so that every visitor would see the wisdom that served as a guiding principle for Thor in his quest to build his dream:
Nothing will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Chapter 12. The Cabin Since
From this point forward, I have no more photos of the construction process - just more photos below of the finished cabin at various times since 1976. Here is the main bedroom of the cabin.
These next two photos show the entrance to the cabin. The snow on the right in the first shot covers an entrance roof that Thor added after we completed the full roof.
The blue and yellow flag represents Thor's proud Swedish ancestry. He was born in Sweden. As a young boy, he and his parents immigrated legally to the United States. All his life, Thor was fluent in both Swedish and English.
The blue and yellow flag represents Thor's proud Swedish ancestry. He was born in Sweden. As a young boy, he and his parents immigrated legally to the United States. All his life, Thor was fluent in both Swedish and English.
Below the three flags and to the right of the wood pile is the "bear-proof" freezer. During the cold winter months, the freezer was a storage box sitting out in the frigid cold. For the rest of the year, Thor had to bring in ice for perishables.
The main room of the cabin is shown below - the stone fireplace on the right, the dining room table shown in the foreground, and the bunk bed on the left. Through the large sliding window is the deck Thor added on the southeast side of the cabin.
13. Epilogue
We completed the basic work on the cabin in early June 1976, in time for both Thor and myself to join the summer staff at nearby YMCA Camp DuNord. My time at the cabin was finished that June of 1976, although Thor went on to do more work here and there at the site as time went on, since he was living at the cabin much of the time once summer ended. He treated the exterior surface of the logs with a preservative that darkened them. He added a deck off the main window of the southeast wall and built a roof extension over the only door to the cabin. He brought in a table and chairs along with a rocking chair, his ham radio, a classic old-fashioned propane stove, a wood burning stove, and other basic furniture. He also added a kitchen cabinet with a sink (with tap water drawn from a nearby 8-foot diameter, 6-foot deep metal barrel for catching and storing rainwater), built a master bed in the bedroom, added a bunkbed in the main room, and did other little things as time went on to make the cabin and the site more livable.
But as my second summer at DuNord wound down, it was clear that for me, I had to pursue the next season of my life back in the Twin Cities. About a month into that autumn, as I mentioned earlier in this account, in October 1976, I met a woman named Sarah Hein who became a good friend and eventually my beloved wife. We were married in August 1980. Our two sons were born in 1984 (Brandon) and 1988 (Trevor). In 1986 I went back to school at the University of Minnesota to acquire my teaching credentials. I taught secondary mathematics in the St. Paul area from 1988 through 2015, finishing my Minnesota teaching career at Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, a first-ring suburb of St. Paul.
Of course, I have been to the cabin numerous times since Thor and I finished our work together, bringing friends and family to this special place fairly often over the years. Sarah and I spent a few days of our honeymoon at the cabin - as shown in the photo below, where we're perched on the cabin's sod roof. As our family grew, our sons got acquainted with the cabin as well.
Thor and I continued to see each other at the cabin and in the Twin Cities on a regular basis. As I wrote earlier, Thor was 30 years and 30 days older than I was, and so we often got together for breakfast or lunch somewhere between his April 7th birthday and my May 7th birthday.
Working on the cabin was an adventure for me at a time in my life when I was seeking adventure. Working on this particular adventure with an older adult male who treated me with respect was refreshing. Although as an engineer, Thor of course knew so much more than I did about construction and tools, in regard to cutting and shaping the logs, he and I became peers (and I eventually got better and faster than him at shaping the logs). All this played a big role in some maturation that I so very much needed. So it didn't surprise me how much I bonded with Thor. What did surprise me, for some reason, was how much Thor bonded with me. Apparently, we had a mutual admiration society, as my dad used to say.
But it took me a while to realize how appreciative Thor was of the role I played in seeing his cabin dream become a reality. It was probably 20 years later, in the mid-1990's when we hadn't seen each other for a while, he asked me at breakfast, with some wonderment, "How was it that you came to be at DuNord in the very time when I really needed someone to work on the logs, in those months before I could retire in spring of 1976?"
So I told him my story and the events of my life prior to coming to DuNord that summer of 1975 [go to bobhazenstory.blogspot.com to see that tale, which I've mentioned before in this account and is much too long for any detail here]. It was at that breakfast that both of us started to see how much God had truly orchestrated the crossing of our two lives.
One of the benefits of growing older is that there is finally enough personal history behind oneself - so upon looking back, it's easier to see the lay of the land - the shape of the path one's life has taken, with its patterns and trends. It's also easier to recognize which people and events had a greater impact than what may have been first realized.
As time went on from the two summers at DuNord and the offseason with Thor, I began to realize that the impact on my life of my time at the cabin with Thor was far greater than I had thought. I saw with more clarity how much I had matured in the two summers at camp, how much confidence I had gained working on the cabin, how satisfying it was to see the finished and ongoing result of our time together, and how enjoyable it was to have a positive, solid relationship with an older adult male. Thor had been like a father to me. I also saw how doing, working, and adventuring builds bonds, especially between men.
Even after Sarah and I moved to west Michigan in 2015 to be near our grandkids, I still kept in touch with Thor. He was at the top of my "must-see" list when I visited the Twin Cities for various reasons. Whatever we'd do - have lunch or go for a hike or look at photos from the cabin years - there was always that deep, settled bond of appreciation and friendship that we had forged - a bond which seemed to get even stronger as the years passed.
The last time I saw Thor was July 2019, the summer before the covid pandemic. He was living in a retirement home, and we spent time outside in the fresh summer air.
I spoke with Thor for the last time by phone the following spring, in early March. Sarah and I were driving home from visiting friends in Florida. Thor's health was declining, and he wasn't physically able to talk, so his wife Audry held the phone for him as we spoke. I told Thor how much he meant to me, that I loved him, and that he had been like a father to me. Audry said Thor smiled at hearing my words.
Audry called the next day, March 4, 2020, to say Thor had died that morning. She also told me that before he passed, Thor said he wanted me to speak at his funeral. It was an honor to do so. My eulogy for Thor can be found online at www.ThorNordwallEulogy.blogspot.com.
Post Script
Living now in west Michigan makes it difficult to get to northern Minnesota as much as I would like. But several months before putting the final touches on this account in late 2023, Sarah, Brandon (center), and Trevor (right) surprised me with a wonderful four-day getaway in mid-September to the cabin for us three Hazen men. Spending four uninterrupted days with my now-adult sons was a highlight of my life in itself, and to spend those days at a place that was already a highlight of my life made our getaway even more memorable.
Living now in west Michigan makes it difficult to get to northern Minnesota as much as I would like. But several months before putting the final touches on this account in late 2023, Sarah, Brandon (center), and Trevor (right) surprised me with a wonderful four-day getaway in mid-September to the cabin for us three Hazen men. Spending four uninterrupted days with my now-adult sons was a highlight of my life in itself, and to spend those days at a place that was already a highlight of my life made our getaway even more memorable.
Closing
I close this account with a poem that I wrote during Labor Day weekend 1976 at the end of my second and final summer of working at Camp DuNord. My several seasons of working and living in the north woods were coming to an end. As we began to shut down the camp for the fall, families and staff one by one were saying goodbye and departing from DuNord. And I knew that I myself was also taking leave of the north woods, the camp, and - most of all - my time with Thor at the cabin. It was a bittersweet moment. Yet still, that upcoming autumn of 1976 - and in some ways, my entire life - loomed and stretched ominously but warmly, invitingly, and promisingly in front of me.
Autumn steals so silently
Its way toward the falling peace -
Autumnal sighs in autumn eyes
Breathing sadly summer's cease.
Its way toward the falling peace -
Autumnal sighs in autumn eyes
Breathing sadly summer's cease.
Pathways fill with leaf on leaf
And coat the earth in autumn face.
Portends of forever still,
As time renews and leaves its trace.
Footsteps sounding autumn crunch,
Autumn winds blow autumns past,
And the changing days of falling stray,
As autumn fades as autumn grass.
"Autumn" by Bob Hazen ©1976
*****
Readers - I invite any corrections you may notice (typos, spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, etc.). An online account like this is a flexible document that is easily emended! And I invite your comments as well, using the blue button below.
May all who read this account be blessed in seeing the beauty of nature which reflects the faithfulness of nature's Creator. And may this infinite-personal Creator God further reveal to the reader the faithfulness and kindness of Jesus, the Son of God, who is coming back one day to restore the beauty of this world to an even greater beauty - and to remove all sin and heartache, all death and disease and decay in order to restore the entire physical universe to a cosmos of wonder and adventure far beyond anything we can ask or imagine. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be nor more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying or pain any more" (Revelation 21:4).
There are more words and one more invitation to mention. In John 5:24, the Bible records the words of Jesus: "Truly I say to you, he who hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life; he does not come into judgment but has passes from death to life." Then later, in Revelation 22:17, Jesus issues this invitation, "Let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the water of life, without price."
- Bob Hazen, December 2023
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