By Joe Crain
As the rest of the country was beset by heavy snow and ice storms all the way down to Texas, we here in the far Northern Wisconsin continued our snow drought. Instead, we were treated to some rather extreme, though far from record setting, cold. Things went from abnormally mild here to downright frigid in a matter of hours on the 4th of the month. We started the day off reaching a high of 32 degrees that fell through the afternoon bottoming out at nine degrees. On the 5th I had to check my trusty garage thermometer a couple of times to see if it had broken, because all through that day the needle didn’t move off of nine degrees! But that night the needle started to move again when it sank to zero overnight. And then again on Saturday, I started to wonder if it was time to take a trip to “Thermometers-R-Us” when the needle again refused to budge from the zero degree reading. But that night the needle started to move, down to a bitter -15. It wasn’t the direction I had hoped the needle would move but at least it was working. And then on Sunday the 7th, when the needle moved up again and stopped at a high for the day of only -4 degrees, I was assured that the problem wasn’t with the thermometer — it was with the weather! For the next eight days the needle never reached above five degrees for a high and we saw lows reaching down from -18 all the way to -36 on the 15th of the month. Thankfully the 15th was the worst of the super cold and by midday on the 16th we reached a high of 14 above. Although we did see a couple more overnight dips into the -20s our days reached back up to the more seasonal highs of the upper teens. And just as abruptly as the cold snap had started back on the 4th and 5th of the month, on the 21st it all ended with an overnight low of -17 degrees, warming to a midday high of 32 degrees! Things have gotten down right spring like ever since with highs hovering at or near 40 degrees and overnight lows only reaching down to the mid to upper 20s.
All of that cold and dry weather (we have only had about 6 inches of snow this February a month that on average receives 16 inches) hasn’t kept us from preparing for the warm months of camp ahead. This month, we kicked off our biggest shop project of the winter to build 32 new picnic tables for this summer’s COVID-safe al fresco dinning hall. Of course, as the saying goes, there’s not need to reinvent the wheel. We decided to use the tried and true picnic table design that the Lumberjack village uses for cabin cookouts out on Lorber Point. The tables are big, with a 3 foot by 8 foot top, and very sturdy with their 2X6 construction that all adds up to a hefty table of about 200lbs a piece! The design has also stood the test of time, having withstood every sort of abuse that rough and rowdy boys from 3rd to 9th grade can come up with. These tables have lasted all of my 25 years at camp and I-don’t-know-how-many-more years before I arrived as a caretaker!
Well, after receiving our shipment of green treated wood for the legs and plain pine wood for the benches and tops, we encountered the only problem the frigid weather presented to the project. The green treated wood had been shipped directly from the factory and was still very wet from the treatment process; high temperatures in the negative to single digits and soaking wet wood in a stack don’t go well together! Or I guess they go to well together: stuck together with ice that is. We had to beat the piles apart with chunks of 2X4’s! Also, all of that moisture locked up into the frozen boards made for some back and wrist breaking hauling into the shop. We had to scrape frost and ice off of each board before we could cut them to length, and wore our winter gloves throughout the prepping process in order to avoid frostbite from handling the super-cooled wood. The tables out on Lorber Point that have been dried completely from years of summer warmth are heavy to lift for two caretakers. Lifting new tables built with fresh, frozen, wet green wood? Forget about it! We somehow managed to move the first eight tables out of the shop and into the Big House side yard by hand. The next day, we came back to work exhausted and sore and decided we would be moving the remaining 22 table with the tractor and some ropes from the shop driveway to the Big House side yard. Well, the build went well and took about two and a half weeks and only a couple of rounds of ibuprofen each to complete.
Excited to see the 2021 campers distantly assembled for their first al fresco dinner on the brand new picnic tables, it’s Caretaker Joe at Camp.
