Living in the forest for the next two year's, aboriginal style. Is it unpractical to

doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
Alright I knew that was coming!lol!

I guarantee I had a pinch of Copenhagen, in every one of these pictures! lol!

peace
doublejj
 
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phatptrck1

Well-Known Member
awesome pictures...what more could you ask for in life? love the trout as well, but they look like cutthroats to me :)
 
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phatptrck1

Well-Known Member
you may very well be right. rainbows out there look far more colorful than what we have out here. ours are a lot more silvery. but nobody beats our brookies!
 
Red1966

Red1966

Well-Known Member
When I was 19, I spent a summer in a 100 year old log cabin in the mountains in Kentucky. There was bear droppings and fur in the cabin when I got there. Never saw the bear. Birds were flying through the roof, but not that much rain came in. Supplies weren't that far away, but took all day and a night to get and bring back. Had to carry every thing in. Woke up to a deer inside the cabin once, raccoons and stuff all the time (no glass in windows, just waxed paper, 4" gap under the door) Had to build a outhouse. Bathed in a spring. Had fun, great experience, would have frozen to death if I stayed the winter. Wouldn't do it again, too old now. Bugs are worse than you would think. Air mattress gave out after two weeks, but still used it to keep off the dirt floor. After a while, sleeping on the hard ground doesn't bother you. After 10 days of hard rain, I gave it up and went back to civilization. Slept on the floor for years after that, until I got married.
 
wheezer

wheezer

Well-Known Member
I too, had a wilderness experience once, but when the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ran out, I was headed home!
 
doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
We couldn't live in the cabin the first winter. So we rented a house near town & I got a job at the local sawmill for the winter. I could buy lumber for cost. So every friday (payday) I had them take out enough for 1000bf of 2"x6" tongue & grove decking. I had 11,000bf when I quit in the spring. You can see it in the pictures. That cabin is so strong you could raise elephants in there!lol!
I loved it up there, but my wife wanted to go to nursing school. So we moved to Seattle, I intended to keep the cabin forever.
But, shit happens!

peace
doublejj
 
Budologist420

Budologist420

Well-Known Member
doublejj said:
After a tour of duty in Viet Nam as a Combat Medic, I returned to a US that I didn't fit in. So I decided to go live off the land.

I was discharged from Ft Lewis Washington in 1970. I had inherited enough from my grandparents to buy 40 acres of forest land in NE Washington state. Right on the Canadian border. He are a few of the pictures I could find of the log cabin I built in the forest.
These pictures were taken in 1971-72-73.
Cut all the logs myself & peeled them. The was no electricity, 4 weel drive road 5miles to get there. I did haul in some milled lumber, but all of the logs came from the land. Built everything without a crane or any power equipment, all done with rigging & block&tackle. You can see it in the pictures. I did use a gas chain saw.
I thought I was 'Jeremiah Johnson'! lol!

Raised our own food, hogs, chickens, garden, wild game

You could buy all the private land in that county & you would only own 3%! It was 97% Colville National Forest & Colville Indian Reservation land.

You could walk from the cabin about 20 miles into Canada before you got to a road.
peace
doublejj
P.S. I'll post some comments between the pictures.


Peeling logs:


First layers of logs:








What a pair!lol!





If you look close you can see me at the lower left:


The creek about a mile behind the cabin had rainbow trout like this:


I case you thought I was a cowboy with 'all hat and no cattle'. Here's 'Rosie' our milk cow! lol!


Learned to hunt deer with a bow:


Caught this boy in the pig pen, (going after the hog feed actually), but the hogs didn't know that! 30/06!
Click to expand...
all i can say is wow.



thats probably the coolest thing i've seen on this website.




you remind me a lot of my grandpa, jj.

got mad respect for you, the world needs more real men like you.


hope that didnt sound homo hahha


but really that cabin is amazing i cant believe you built that without any type of machinery. you should write a fucking book or something u got a lot of stories that people like me would love to here.
 
doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
Well, that's kinda what I'm doing here. Unloading a bunch of baggage. I don't want to write a book, I'll just tell you guy's! lol!

This has actually been very good for me, thank you all!
peace
doublej
 
L

lthopkins

Active Member
u remind me of my grandpa he was a gold miner in alaska built his own cabin hunted and fished for food he is passed away now but he owned one of the bigger mining companys and logging way back in the day
 
doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
Thanks guy's life is all about what you make of it.

Try to do something positive, pay it foreward. Leave a positive mark if you can!

This young man in the pictures is my foster son. He was a 'teen-in-trouble'. City kid never been to the outdoors. Never fired a gun, never been fishing. He was running away & getting into trouble in Seattle. So we became foster parents.

He fell in love with the woods & I never had one problem with him. He's all grown up now with a family of his own. But I guess he remembered a few things. You should here him tell the bear story, hilarious!

Here he was then & last year!

peace
doublejj


Biggest elk shot in Nevada last year with a bow:
 

Attachments

BeantownBotany

BeantownBotany

Member
Double JJ, when's the last time you were at the cabin? Does it still exist? That would be pretty amazing to go back there 40 years later to relive those memories.
 
C

Chicogabb

Member
Awesome -

I started reading this thread and was wondering on about page 5 what I was doing here. I carried on through, and am soooo glad I did. JJ that was one of the best things ive seen for a while, and loved it! It's one of those amazing things that we can do, any of us, just head out and do what ever it is we want to do. Can often take some serious planning, depending what it is you want to do, but everything is possible. I am from UK, and after finishing uni, didnt want to get a job in an office, so headed for the hills of southern spain - Best thing I ever did, and can even grow my own pot in the garden!

By the way, did the guy who started this thread already move into the sticks, as he didnt come back....! Maybe he ran out of peanut butter too and was too embarrassed to come back..??

Easy
 
doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
I sold it in 1980. A wealthy rancher in the area bought it as a gift for his daughter who lived in Seattle. They were using it as a vacation cabin the last I heard, maybe 10 years ago. It's an awesome area for snowmobiles & cross country skiing in the winter. They improved the road so it's not 4 wheel drive any more, you can drive a car to the cabin. They also brought elect in. But they don't live there year around.

I'm sure biulding the cabin & subsistance living like we did, helped me clear out a lot of baggage I had to get rid of.
It was just what the dr ordered at the time. Doing something like this will test your character. I needed to feel successfull

I actually toyed around with teaching a 'log cabin building class' at one time. Anybody wants to build a log cabin in the wilderness, hit me up. I had never built anything before I did that, I had to learn how to do everything, teach it, & do it, all at the same time. There were sooo many obsticles to overcome, things I never thought of.

In the old days this was common place, a right of passage for young men to go out & challange themselves & survive on their own.

The main ridgepole going down the middle was 40' long, 18" across and probably weighed 1000 lbs. Imagine lifting that log & setting it on top of 3 support poles, 28ft in the air! You could really hear the rigging groan as we got it to the top! I had a pucker factor of 10!

You'll get more sense of accomplishment from building a cabin, than you will ever get from any college course.

Come on guy's, get out there & challange life!

I'll conduct an on-line distance learning, log cabin class, free

peace
doublejj
 
Budologist420

Budologist420

Well-Known Member
doublejj said:
I sold it in 1980. A wealthy rancher in the area bought it as a gift for his daughter who lived in Seattle. They were using it as a vacation cabin the last I heard, maybe 10 years ago. It's an awesome area for snowmobiles & cross country skiing in the winter. They improved the road so it's not 4 wheel drive any more, you can drive a car to the cabin. They also brought elect in. But they don't live there year around.

I'm sure biulding the cabin & subsistance living like we did, helped me clear out a lot of baggage I had to get rid of.
It was just what the dr ordered at the time. Doing something like this will test your character. I needed to feel successfull

I actually toyed around with teaching a 'log cabin building class' at one time. Anybody wants to build a log cabin in the wilderness, hit me up. I had never built anything before I did that, I had to learn how to do everything, teach it, & do it, all at the same time. There were sooo many obsticles to overcome, things I never thought of.

In the old days this was common place, a right of passage for young men to go out & challange themselves & survive on their own.

The main ridgepole going down the middle was 40' long, 18" around and probably weighed 1000 lbs. Imagine lifting that log & setting it on top of 3 support poles, 28ft in the air! You could really hear the rigging groan as we got it to the top! I had a pucker factor of 10!

You'll more sense of accomplishment from building a cabin, than you will ever get from any college course.

Come on guy's, get out there & challange life!

I'll conduct an on-line distance learning, log cabin class, free

peace
doublejj


peace
doublejj
Click to expand...
give me a few more harvest to finance and buy the land and all the parts and i'm in. i would love to do something like that.
 
wheezer

wheezer

Well-Known Member
I can only try to imagine the "baggage" that came from being a medic in Nam.....that cabin prolly literally saved your mind huh?
 
doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
Yes, Nam it was the worst time in my life, waking up every day was the worst part, I knew I had to do it, all day again!
It was my worst nightmare, every day. I have the utmost respect for those that have done it.

I only mentioned it to put the cabin into context. It's still not something pleasent for me to talk about.

Emersing myself into the cabin, helped me clear out many of the visions & faces that kept playing thru my mind.
The best & bravest, die first!

peace
doublejj
 
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