Three episodes land at once on Sat Aug 8, then one a week.
Tools, access, the fence, the permit, the logs, the containers — real events in the order the ground forced them to happen. The trip guide is already finished and it's the same country, so you can have the places before the episodes catch up to them.
7 Acres of Vacant Land
I bought 7 acres in Custer County, Idaho. No water, no power, and no way to drive a truck onto it. What I want out here is a log cabin — not a trailer, not a shed I bought at a store. The largest thing I have ever built is a deck.
The Fence Comes Down
Still no cabin. What there is instead is a fence running across this property marking a boundary that stopped existing years ago, and a pipe running under it that isn't mine — sitting in my neighbour's ditch. Technically his ditch. That's how it works out here in Idaho.
Don't Go In Without One
The plan for the cabin is logs — cut and dragged out of the backwoods. Which means going a long way into country where it's me and whatever else lives back there. What people up here have told me, politely and more than once: don't go back in there without a gun. Not to hunt anything. So I don't become something's problem.
Am I Even Allowed?
Today I find out whether my cabin is already standing in the woods near this property. A cabin the size I want is somewhere around eighty logs — dead standing, straight, twenty feet or better. I have counted those eighty logs on a piece of paper at my kitchen table. I have never counted one in an actual forest.
I Live in a Van.
Still no word from forestry on whether I can get logs from the area I checked out. What I know is that I'm out of food, and I've decided I'm going to Sun Valley — where celebrities hang out, not guys who live in a van. I also know it's one of the top mountain biking spots in North America.
Still No Cabin
Still no cabin, and still no idea where the logs come from. But today the approach goes in — a real driveway off the county road, culvert and all — and for the first time a truck can get onto this land. I found a really good deal on a container, and without an approach there's no way I'm getting one onto here.
Wrong Place.
Today the container comes, and the big question is where to put it. I've got seven acres of blank canvas with literally a hundred options, and once this thing goes down it is not going to be easy to move.
What Does It Cost?
The container is on my land and it is in the wrong place, which I'll be dealing with for a while. What it isn't is a cabin. So today I'm going to look at log cabins that real people built and real people live in — walk around them, put my hands on the corners, see how one actually goes together.
I Hit a Tree!
One option left. I can't cut logs out in North Fork, the area I checked out, and I can't build one from nothing — so I buy the logs, and the only place anyone's pointed me is Stanley, over the pass. What I know this morning is the name of a town and a road number. That is the entire plan.
I Bought a Cabin.
I'm not building a log cabin. I bought one. It's real, it's log, and it's coming tomorrow. Every plan I had this summer is crossed off, and the answer came from a direction I wasn't looking.