The lumber for the first tipi deck got here!  The truck left at 3:45.  It was too dark to see to work at 4:46. In that hour,  I got the Pressure-Treated Southern Yellow Pine (PTSYP) 20-foot 2x8s in place sitting on the footers, and I got a pair 2x6s set on them just to check for square.  Nothing is nailed down yet; it’s just sitting.  Do you have any clue how heavy one of those puppies is?  I carried the first two . . . I dragged the other six.  My poor, tired rear-end had to chase us down the road to the gate to catch the pickup after we left to go to dinner.

But it is looking so good already.  I wasn’t able to rent a nail gun, so tomorrow I’ll be genuflecting over the nails and the deck in Thanksgiving.  And, really, I will be grateful to have this next step done.  Grateful all the way back to those Norse  Heordwicks stacking stones and logs and peat to build shelters for the stock and their families.  I was down on my knees in the cool damp dirt shoving big pieces of building stone around.  Very fulfilling.

 Then, Friends, when you are in Neosho for lunch after dropping your kids at WindWalkerCamp, stop at Pad Thai on Neosho Boulevard.  “Oh, heavens; they’re tasty.”  I had the Three Flavor Spicy Fried Catfish.  It rained down fire from Heaven upon my lips.  The lips are still smoldering an hour and a half later, “but it’s a good kind of hurt.”

We do have photos, but they are winzipped, and I can’t get ‘em out.  I’ll post them next week, when we’re back. 

 That’s about it for today. 

 Thanks for reading.  Stay pressure-treated, my Friends.

 Uncle Pat

 Rates and dates and other stuff at www.windwalkercamp.com.

 What the hands learn the mind cannot forget.