Preparing to build in Unalakleet: Marking where to dig

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Myra walking down from where the house may go (the small stake seen behind her to the left)

“See if you can find someone to dig some test holes for you.  You’ll want one where you might put your septic, one where your house will be, maybe one for your shop to get an idea of what the ground is like,” Dave Cunningham told me from his office at West Coast Aviation.

            Dave wears many hats, and though I ran into him out at the airport, I was asking him to wear his West Coast Construction hat… not to be confused with his fuel tank farm hat.  In all actuality, Dave is semi-retired which means he is down to probably only working a little over 40 hours a week if I had to guess.

            “Lee has some equipment up there already.  I’d ask him first,” Dave recommended.

            We spent some more time talking some vague logistics of what needs to get done in order to get a house built on the hill: things like we can’t handle 40’ connex containers in Unalakleet, how to get the road finished, Bering Pacific is the cheapest and earliest barge to ship materials on, and now is not starting too early to get everything lined up.

            Dave did not have Lee’s number and so my own digging started.  Life was so much easier when people had land lines and phone numbers in a book, or back when a quick internet search would find you a number rather than a company offering to sell you the number.  The school secretary, who stereotypically knows how to get a hold of everyone, didn’t have it, but gave me the number of someone who might know someone who had it.

            Three days later, and I had Lee on the phone.

            “Who is this?” he asked confusedly after not recognizing my voice or my name.

            “I’m Myra’s husband,” I offered my old standby that has never failed me in the Norton Sound.

            “Who?”

            “We have the piece of property just up the hill from your duplex.  The one with the shed on it,” I offered hoping for a bell to ring.

            “Oh, that Myra.  What can I do for you,” he happily asked.

            I explained our situation and what we were trying to do and found out that Lee would be out of town for over a month.

            “I’d happily do it for you it I was there, or even just let you borrow my hoe,” he said referring to his backhoe.  “But it needs some work.  If you are still needing it done in the spring, I can help you out then.”

            I thanked him and returned to the drawing board.  Waiting until spring means that we would be waiting an entire extra year to order our building supplies.  Everything has to be gathered for shipping in Seattle, packed into a 20’ container, and barged up the inside passage.  Then there is the extremely tight window of decent weather to build in as well as freedom from my time intensive job.

            I moved down the short list of people with heavy equipment.

            “Have you called Lee?” I heard from the other end of the phone.

            I sent Myra a text message with a link for Craigslist to a John Deere with low hours that would fit on an airplane for shipping.

            “That is a great price,” was the initial response that she sent.

            Myra was responsible for the maintenance department in Galena at the Fish and Wildlife station.  She knows equipment and what good stuff costs.  I did a little dance in my desk chair and watched the thought dots come up on the texting window.

            “Ask Dave one more time if he can dig the holes for us.”

            We both want a tractor, but we were hoping to wait until after a couple of other financial irons were off the fire.  Guess we were still waiting.

            Thankfully, Dave responded that he would try to get an excavator up there to dig some holes for us.  We just had to mark where things would be.  It is not guaranteed.  Dave’s equipment is heavy and a little overkill for this job which requires some off road, soft ground driving.  It was enough to get us out putting stakes on our property and discovering where the property lines are though, and getting a tractor of our own is still riding in our back pocket in case Dave’s equipment can’t get up there.  Renting our tractor out could help us pay for it if we have to go that route.

            We had been getting pretty discouraged in our search just to figure out how to get a couple of holes dug.  It all started looking gray… stuff is not cheap out here, nor is it cheap to get stuff here. 

            “Maybe we should just build a little cabin up there for someplace to get out of town,” we started thinking.

            Then we walked it again.  It is only an acre, but it is an enormous amount of space for us who are literally right on top of our neighbors with no yard, no storage, and no shop.  We started seeing where a greenhouse would go, the raised beds, the house, the shop, maybe a high tunnel, and we looked off over the ocean just down the hill to the west.

            “I don’t want to move,” Ellen reminded us.  “I want to stay in our house now.”

            “We would still live in Unalakleet,” Myra comforted, “we would just have a house here.”

"I don't want to move..."  

            “You’re building a new house here, Dad?” Ellen asked looking up at me.  “Ok then,” she responded to my nod.

            We climbed back into the car with the hurdles looking lower, the road to be completed looking shorter, and the payoff looking bigger.  It is a very small step, but the stakes are now in marking where to dig.

Looking to the west out over Norton Sound with the town just to the south.