Let's Build a Treehouse!

It started with a dream. A dream of being warm and dry during the spring field season. Now, after several weeks of miss-cuts, splinters, and scrapped plans, we have a real cabin at the Koeye River weir camp! Well…..almost. We didn’t quite finish putting up the batons and we didn’t have enough time or resources to put a real roof on it, but we have walls! And a desk! And bunkbeds! Which I think is pretty good, especially considering the vast majority of the build I performed by myself, a biology graduate student with no training in carpentry besides middle school shop class. So, yes, some things that should be straight have a bit of a lean and describing the cabin as drafty may be a kind of an understatement, but it is certainly a significant improvement over the wall tent. We have considerably more room for gear storage, a desk for doing data entry, shelves for storing our dishes, a table to eat dinner at, twin sized beds for truly restful sleeps, a new bigger wood stove to warm our bones, and so much overhead space for drying that the morning ritual of putting on still wet clothing will be a thing of the past! The new cabin is far from perfect, but, even so, the increase in daily comfort it brings will no doubt improve morale during those cold, wet April days and hopefully make the transition from city life to bush life that much easier for our technicians. I’m proud of our little treehouse and I can’t wait to truly finish it next season!