cabin – Hindsight

Rafters

Early 20th century painting — *“Woodpecker,” 1912, by Theodor Severin Kittelsen (1857-1914)*

OLD TORGON PATTERED UP THE FOREST PATH, her grandchildren trailing behind. Birdsong rang into the early dawn, twining with the youngsters’ piping voices.

“Hush!” Torgon hissed as they broke into a clearing. “The tusse-folk hereabouts no longer put up with idle chatter.”

“Did they once?” her granddaughter asked. A basket of cloudberries swung from her arm.

The old woman nodded. “My good friend Maren would jest with them all day long, but then, she also showed them the proper respect. As shall we. Come along.”

“But everyone else is going up the other trail,” the grandson said. He climbed a stump to watch the procession of men with axes.

“We’ll go there next. Do you still have cream, or have you jostled it into butter?”

The boy slid back to the path with the crock held high. “It’s still sloshing.”

Torgon led the way to a hulking, gnarled oak. She set down a bowl on a smooth granite slab between the roots.

The boy filled the bowl with the traditional offering to otherworldly folk.

19th century painting — *“Under the Oak Tree,” 1858, by Hans Fredrik Gude (1825-1903)*

Then the three hurried along and caught up with the work party. In a clearing higher up the mountain, the men stopped to gaze at yesterday’s work, all torn down and strewn around.

Søren Oleson, the new owner of Uvaas lands, had laid stone slabs for good footing. Next he’d affixed massive timbers as a base for the cabin. He’d built the walls with finely set logs and started on rafters. Started more times than he cared to count. But every night the angry tusse-folk had thrown down the timbers and uprooted the flagstones.

Torgon and the children settled on a log to watch.

Søren ordered the men to task. “If we can build it to the rafters in one day,” he declared, “and hang a cross, surely it will stand against mischief.”

“That’s the man,” Torgon told the youngsters, “who didn’t believe in tusse-folk at all when he moved here. Now he challenges them outright. Hiring an army of helpers!” She tut-tutted as she spread a blanket, set out her stack of flatbread and a tub of butter.

The granddaughter placed her basket of cloudberries. “Hungry helpers!” she giggled.

Torgon sniffed. “I warned him it was a useless endeavor, but he insisted. At least he paid in advance.” She jingled her money pouch.

Through the long day the old woman fed hungry lumbermen. The cabin grew before their eyes. Chest-high. Head-high. Loft-high. Rafters went up, then the roof structure – slats, thick layers of bark, strips of sod.

As daylight faded, Søren went to nail a cross under the roof’s peak.

The ladder broke, tumbling him to the ground. The cross shattered. The head flew off the hammer.

Twilight turned eerie, threatening. Men backed off, muttering and making countersigns against evil.

“Time to go,” Torgon chirped, leading the children home.

That night, once again, the mountainsides echoed with the clamor of timber and stones flung around.

Søren gave up at last and moved away.

folktale from Uvaas farm, Hjartdal, Telemark

artwork: 19th and early 20th century paintings. Public domain info here.

Outgunned

SONDRE SKIED UP TROLL-BOTTOM ROAD, hunting musket slung at his back. Hazy green curtains shimmered above the mountains, Northern Lights drowning the pale evening stars.

The spruce forest opened onto Napen farm and a view of Quarrel Peak, looming 150 meters above the slanting fields to the northwest. Sondre Hasleviki bellowed greetings, and grinned at echoes ringing back from mountainsides. He wasn’t a quiet man, except while on the hunt.

The cabin door opened to spill golden light over the snow-packed courtyard. Sondre’s brother Andres held arms out. “Glad Jul! Did you remember to bring your bear gun?”

“Ja, and plenty of powder. But only three balls. Thought I had more than that.”

“Three will be plenty. Come in.”

Sondre greeted the family, and sat down to a merry Christmas Eve feast.

At meal’s end, Andres brought out a jug. “Let us drink to the turning of the year. The darkest day is past.”

Andres’ oldest son pushed back from the table. “But first, Father, let Uncle shoot in Jul for us!”

“Ja, ja!” the other children clamored.

Sondre made a show out of priming the pan of his musket, pouring powder down the barrel followed by wadding and a lead ball. He tamped with the ramrod, then cocked the flint.

Nieces, nephews and servants flocked out the door. Sondre tromped after them, aimed his musket high over the fields, and pulled the trigger.

The flint struck. The bear-gun thundered, spitting sparks and a tang of sulfur. The bang echoed from the hillsides like a return volley.

Youngsters whooped and clapped, then hurried inside to warm themselves while Sondre reloaded.

Halfway through, there came a boom that shook the cabin.

Sondre paused a moment while everyone else huddled, clinging in fear. He took a swig of ale from the cup Andres had just poured, and went on loading. He stalked outdoors, cocked and fired.

Again the crash of powder in the musket, the answering barrage of echoes. He stood there, silent, listening.

Once more came a horrendous boom but twice as loud as the first. Ashes fountained from the chimney, and snow avalanched over the cabin’s eaves. Everyone still inside shrieked.

“Ja, ja, boys!*” Sondre yelled into the night. “I have one shot more to answer that!*” He tromped indoors to find the folk of Napen dusting themselves off and gazing at the ceiling where the boards gaped and let chaff sift down.

“It came from Quarrel Peak,” he told them. “Tusse-folk, sparring in light-hearted quarrel.” He primed the firing pan, loaded the barrel.

“No,” Andres said, clapping a hand on Sondre’s arm. “Don’t rile them.”

“My turn to salute. All in good humor. Jul greetings, nothing more.”

“Twice is enough.”

“Thrice is better.”

“Do you want to bring down the roof?”

Sondre saw how the children quaked with fear. Chuckling, he set the bear-gun aside. “I’ll admit, they outgun me. Must have cannons up there.”

Throughout the rest of Jul, peace reigned over Napen farm in the shadow of brooding Quarrel Peak.

* dialogue straight from the folktale, coming from Napen, Telemark, Norway

Quarrel Peak is my renaming of Napanuten; “nappe” means quarrel; “nute” means peak.

artwork: 19th century century paintings. Public domain info here.

Burlap Bag Christmas

MY FIRST MEMORY OF A HOME, back about 1933 or 1934, was on what was called a desert improvement claim. This was in western Wyoming, twenty miles or so south of Thermopolis, and the homestead ran up into the hills in rugged wild country. On the hilly east side of our property there was a cutting for the railroad.

A crew had gone up and down the tracks, taking out the ties that were beginning to deteriorate and putting in new ones. They just tossed the old ones over the side, to be burned later. Dad got permission from the foreman to salvage them.

Dad used those ties to build our cabin. He dug it right into the hillside that protected it on the west and north sides from the cold winter winds that blew through there. The area lived up to its name of Wind River. There was a wind blowing most of the time, and during the winter that wind would be thirty below zero. I don’t know what the chill factor woulda been.

The cabin had three rooms, the kitchen in the middle, Mother and Dad’s bedroom on the east, and another bedroom on the west. Off the north side of the kitchen was a small cellar to keep stuff reasonably cool, like vegetables, potatoes, and, when we had it, meat.

The roof was made of ties laid at a slight angle covered with sheet metal found in the town dump, laid up sort of like shingles. Over the top of that was clay, about four to six inches of it, and then sand on top of that. This carried away almost all of the rain. Now and then in a bad storm we’d get a few leaks.

Sounds crude, don’t it? But it was warm in the winter when those cold winds blew across the river and up through the trees. We had plenty of firewood there, and we had a wood stove in the kitchen, and in my mother’s bedroom a fifty gallon barrel with the doors-and-all of a pot-belly stove riveted to it. You could lift the top of that and put in a great big chunk of wood on top of a hot fire and that wood would burn almost all night, kept the place nice and warm.

Dad and my brothers would gather deadwood, split it for firewood, & take it to town to sell it to get the money for flour and sugar and lard and gasoline.

As for clothing, my mother made most of our clothes on a foot-treadled sewing machine. The bags that the flour came in often had patterns printed on them, and she made shirts for us boys and dresses for the girls, and cut down discarded clothes for our trousers.

19th century painting of barefoot boys playing near a cabin — *“Snap the Whip,” 1872, by Winslow Homer (1836-1910)*

My brothers and sisters and I had discovered a lookout point up on the hillside, where we’d have a great view of the train coming through the cutting. We could look right into the cabin of the engine when it passed.

The engineer enjoyed breaking the monotony of his day, too. He’d see us coming, he’d salute us with his whistle, wave to us as he went by, and we’d wave back and watch him pass, then go back down to the house.

Currier and Ives illustration of a steam locomotive — “The Night Express,” by Currier and Ives (from 1857 to 1907)

One Christmas he tooted long and loud. We ran up the hill to our lookout. There came the train. We saw the engineer swinging a burlap bag out the window, around and around, winding up. As he approached the cut, he tossed the sack.

That bag was just full of toys and clothes and stuff that we couldn’t afford. That was like Santa Claus riding a train. After that, you can bet we never missed waving to our friend, the engineer!

memoir: by Norval Simonson as told to Joyce Holt

artwork: 19th century painting. Public domain info here.