We pull the logs up the hill using a pull-line running on the highline. The highline is anchored to a rock at the bottom of the hill and to a steel tripod I mocked up fixed at the top. The highline is about 150 feet long. The pull-line is 125 feet.

For pulling-angle reasons, the tripod is right at the top – not set back. For the same pulling-angle reasons applied to the winch, the logs can only get pulled up to within ten or fifteen feet of the top and so that is where I ‘drop’ them when they have come up.

The logs I have pulled up sit on a 20 degree sloped ledge just in front of the winch and tripod but, ideally, they would end up about 50 feet to the south where I buck and chop them into firewood. That 50 feet, the first few feet of which are at a steep angle, is the hardest part of the log hauling business for us.

Until recently, Sally and I have used a log carrier (like giant ice tongs) to grab the log, scramble for footing, dodge the tripod and various cables and anchors to drag the heavy pig of a log (each log weighs between 400 and 450 pounds) to the working area. We are both strong and healthy and we could do it. .

But it is getting harder. And I am starting to whine.

I needed to figure out a way to drag the log 50 feet south without breaking a sweat or a disc in my back.

For once, Sally agreed with me right away.

So, while Peter was here to give valuable aid and advice, I set about to lay my own skid road. It is not as easy as it seems.

I jammed some support beams between some trees and affixed some heavy, rough cut 2×6’s to them making a two foot wide wooden ‘slide’ for the inclined portion of the haul. Think of a small narrow ‘deck’ laying on the ground but not able to move around. That 16 foot long narrow wooden slide dealt with the worst of the ‘drag’.

But the rest of it is no piece o’cake. Once the log is ‘winched’ along and up the skid row/deck it is then teetering at the top. Still aiming up at the same 20 degrees as the inclined ramp it is on. At the top of the hill the ground slopes away at about 15 degrees so the log now has to ‘head down-hill’ with a 35 degree change in direction. The first one just tipped and proceeded to bury it’s nose in the dirt.

That is not good.

So now I am planning on extending the ‘skid deck’ to allow an easier slide for the next 35 or so feet. All this is being done, of course, with scrap wood, log ends, big spikes and an engineering plan drawn up from watching it fail a few times before going on.

Peter was here for the fun part. But, once all the frivolity and fun had passed, he and Sarah set sail for points south and I am left alone with the ‘failure-method’ of getting on with things. Sal will deign to join me when we test-pull another log. She isn’t as keen on the ‘scraps-and-cobble-method’ of engineering as I am so she is baking muffins.

And I am not as keen on it as you might think. Oh, it’s all fun and all. No denying the enjoyment in winching logs through dirt. But all this stuff weighs a ton. I am constantly moving heavy things in and out of the way. And that is the point of this off-the-grid vignette: irony. Irony in spades! You always have to work like a pig to make something work so that you don’t have to work like a pig.

There doesn’t seem to be another way.