Branford Bike: Winter Construction Emigrant, Montana,MT

November 18th, 2006
Today is beautiful. The sun is bright and warm and feels wonderful. A few inches of soft, powdered snow covers the construction site but work goes on. Aaron and Justin wear many layers of clothing which they mostly shed by lunch time and then put back on when the sun dips over the western ridges a few hours later. The sun is a powerful and welcome solar heater in the thin mountain air. When a cloud blocks the sun's rays the temperature may drop 5 or even 10 degrees. As late afternoon rolls around and the sun disappears behind the Gallatin mountains to our west, the temperatures often plummet 20 degrees Fahrenheit within two hours.

Kitchen and Dining Room;
timbers frame the sky.

Who tracked in all the snow?

November 30th, 2006
I visit the site of my new home almost every day. It always feels good to walk on my own property despite the devastation wrought by the ferocious Big Creek forest fire. I often help whomever is working on the house. Since winter first announced its arrival in early November I volunteered to shovel the snow. I learned from almost my first day on the job that snow must be shoveled immediately after falling otherwise it turns to ice. After a day spent melting ice from the basement floor with a propane weed burner, I arrived early and often stayed late when snow started to fall. This afternoon I dutifully shoveled snow from my kitchen, living room and entrance way.

Note the symmetry, in the photo to your left, of the main entrance way. Eight foot tall doors will open from a columned portico into a 13 foot wide entrance hall. As you come towards the camera, you will walk through another set of eight foot tall doors to a hallway. Then you will pass under an eight foot arch and into a warm and friendly kitchen.

December 7th, 2006
Pearl Harbor Day. What better way to celebrate our God given, individual American freedom, than to work with friends and neighbors on building a new home? Were it not for the courage and sacrifice of my parent's generation, our country would have succumbed to the cruel, inhuman and barbaric rulers that threatened the world in the 1930's and 40's. After the war, my parents generation unleashed a wave of prosperity that was unparalleled in human history. Their generation's courage, hard work and sacrifice allowed myself and a majority of Americans today, to own homes, from where we are free to pursue our dreams.
Thomas Jefferson, our third president and the man who wrote in the Declaration of Independence, " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. " would be proud of the country he helped to raise, I mused.

Keith watches Justin mark joist positions

The roof trusses arrive!

December 7th, 2006
After shoveling snow I helped Keith carry 40 foot long joists and push them into position on the second floor. The joists are made from laminated particle board and feel like a wooden noodle when we pushed them on their side up to the second floor. Once positioned upright, they are lighter, stronger and more environmentally friendly than the old 2 by 12 inch Douglas Fir joists of my childhood.
Just before lunch a tractor trailer load of roof trusses arrived and Rich asked me to help carry some to the garage site. We shouldered the 150 pound trusses, trudged through the deep snow and slid down the hill to the garage. Several hours later the trusses were sorted and stacked. I headed back to my temporary home in the woods for a late lunch and a well earned nap.

December 8th, 2006
Several local land owners called in timber cutters to remove the burnt trees from their yards. Loggers cut down all dead trees, sold the larger ones to the local timber mill and burned the remainder. I decided to keep my trees after I visited Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone Park in October. A raging forest fire in 1988 killed the trees there. When I visited, most of the dead trees were still standing upright. Their blackened bark fell off long ago and was replaced by soft shades of grey and silver weathered wood. A thick and green undergrowth of shrubs and 20 foot fir trees surrounded the old and greying skeletons. Life had returned to the forest and was thriving.

Fire killed and scorched trees head to the lumber mill

December 8th, 2006
Beauty surrounds us in Montana but it is not always apparent. Nature's majestic beauty reaches thousands of feet into the bright blue expansive sky and often makes it difficult to see loveliness on a smaller scale. Last year I was too busy driving my packages from Branford Bike to the Post Office to notice the Bear Tree along the way. Lori, the always attentive postmaster, finally pointed it out to me.
Livingston, the town up the road from my home in Emigrant, boasts several beautiful buildings. Do you like the brick column, artfully carved column capital and lions head pictured to your right? I discovered it on the recently restored Northern Pacific train station in Livingston last summer. The entire design, except for the bricks, was first used in ancient Greece over 2,000 years ago.
The round ornaments on the brick column are called rosettes. Above the rosettes is a trim called "egg and dart". Above that are dentils; they look like teeth, do they not? Are the ornaments beautiful?

Classic beauty in Livingston, Montana

The sun rises while the moon sets over my new home

December 9th, 2006
I think that man first saw beauty in women and then in nature. Ancient Greeks modeled their buildings after the beauty they found in the human form and then added decoration from nature. Columns resembled a standing human. Decorations included plants, leaves, eggs and animals. I believe that ancient Greek buildings often appear beautiful to the layman's eye simply because the Greeks so artfully followed human dimensions and employed natural ornaments. Nature's beauty is often overwhelming while man's beauty is more likely seen in the details. Is it possible to improve upon nature's beauty? Is it possible to create a building that is at least as beautiful as the tall green fir trees that graced my property before the horrific fire, I quietly asked myself, while I watched God paint the morning sky before me.


Emigrant Peak sun rise