Bostwick Inlet 1975 Part Deux

Soon after I had moved into the cabin at Bostwick Inlet, I began making improvements. Every time I flew into Ketchikan, in addition to picking up staples, I purchased a few items to spruce up the place. I stretched clear 5-mil visqueen over the window frames and hung curtains in the windows. The curtains were not cosmetic—even though the cabin was set behind the tree line, the midnight sun easily found all the openings, even the chinks between the logs. These I filled with a combination of hot pitch from coniferous trees and moss from the bases of deciduous trees. This mixture filled the holes and acted as insulation. I brought a mattress and bedding and put them on one of the steel bunks the miners had left behind. I built a table and chair out of local materials. It was beginning to look like a home.

The most ambitious project I undertook was the construction of a fireplace and stove pipe. Up until this time I had been cooking over an open campfire a few yards from the cabin. Local rocks seemed the ideal material for the fireplace. All I needed was mortar to bind them together. Mortar is a simple mixture of lime, cement and sand. I had plenty of sand on the beach. I could get cement in town. I remembered having read something in Thoreau about making lime by burning the shells of mollusks. The beach was a renewable resource of clams and cockles. I had to try it. It takes a lot of white-hot fire to reduce seashells to lime but it works great. The fireplace was a solid piece of work with a fire box, a 3/8" solid steel cooktop and a crude oven, regulated with a simple damper. The oven baked perfect bread.

I had to cut a hole in the roof for the zinc chimney. This was separated from the cedar-shake roof by a galvanized metal flashing. I was burning driftwood. I’d saw large rounds off beached logs and chop them into firewood. Now, as wood burns it produces gases that are released in the smoke and when the smoke cools to 250 º F the gases liquefy, combine and solidify into creosote. Since driftwood contains more water than dry wood, burning it produces steam. This steam cools the stove pipe and chimney. Creosote quickly built up in my stove pipe. Creosote is highly flammable. One day I returned from a water run to find part of my roof on fire. I had two buckets of water. I threw both of them up at the fire. The fire continued to burn. The tide was out. Probably more than 50 yards out. No chance of getting any water from the inlet. I couldn’t call 911. I was gripped with an almost crippling sense of panic. I had to settle down and think. Think!

Instinctively I scooped up a bucket full of earth and threw that at the fire. And another. After a dozen or so buckets the fire fizzled. It seems in retrospect I continued throwing dirt on my roof for an hour. I sometimes have dreams about chucking buckets of dirt at a fire. When I thought it was safe, I went in the cabin. The fireplace and everything around it was covered in a thick layer of dark soil. Up until this time I hadn’t really had much use for the broom I had bought on my first trip to town.