A Man Apart by Peter Forbes

Author:Peter Forbes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2015-01-16T17:04:50+00:00

Bill, who I can only guess is embarrassed by this oversight of not having ordered enough material for the sills, tells me and Scott to “put it in the back of the yurt and the client won’t notice the difference.” I know what just happened, a barb in the form of a joke, and when I glance up at Peter I see that it sunk deep. I’ve seen this side of Bill before, his dismissal of someone’s intelligence and care, and I am left trying to understand where it’s coming from now. I also want to ask Bill what we will use for the base of the bedrooms since we are already short on beams, but—cowardly or wisely—I decide to pick a different time.

By the end of the day Scott, Jen, and I have laid out the two massive crossbeams along with others that are cut to a point and notched into each of the four corners at the center. Still more beams link them at the perimeter to make an octagon. We spend a lot of time with a tape measure, a level, and a long piece of scrap lumber that we nail to the center of the circle as a diameter jig and swing around in all directions, trying to get all eight sections even and on the same plane. We measure and adjust in one direction, only to find it’s slightly out in the next. We shift a beam ever so slightly to align it with the others, then find that we have destabilized the pillar of rock beneath it. Finally, incredibly, it seems as close to perfect as we can muster. I stand up on the tripod where each day Peter is taking a time-lapse photo of our progress, and I can see the footprint of the yurt laid out on the ground below my boots. Here it finally makes a mark, a circle of our intention. I turn in each direction to orient myself from this center point: tide rip to the south, bare bedrock to the west, fir woods to the north, scraggly larch trees to the east, spreading their misty green limbs against the sky like cormorants drying their wings before making ready to fly.

The weather has turned gorgeous as we work, the late afternoon glowing with the amber light of late September. Scott, Jen, and I head down to the tide rip, where Taylor has already jumped in for his second swim down, dark sleek head bobbing like a seal. I find Wren and Clara on the rocks, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder. They have returned from Bill’s guest yurt across the water where they go to do their school lessons, when there isn’t too much mud to get there. I ask Wren how she likes the kind of school that is open only when the tide is right, already knowing the answer. This fall of adventure as home school is her ultimate heaven.

* * *

Over the next two days most of us work on putting the deck—or floor—together.

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