I had a couple of sawmill trainings scheduled when I left for the NWT in late June. My plan was to do the trainings, hope for a few more to come about, and to visit communities, make friends, and see who might benefit from my assistance getting a mobile sawmill operation going for years to come. I planned on returning in the late fall—and that’s what worked out.
The odometer of my old 1997 Ford 4-wheel drive work truck read 313,335 miles when I left and 319,881 when I returned. 6546 miles (times 1.6 is about 10470 km)—and well over 1000 km of those were gravel—some very muddy, others extremely dusty! The 30-year-old diesel 7.3 liter motor worked so well—once I replaced 2 sensors! It was adventurous to suddenly have the accelerator pedal free wheeling from the vehicle for a few seconds on several occasions.
My living quarters were even more vintage than the truck—1972 airstream trailer is more than 50 years old! I put new tires on it a day before I left, and they did so well, especially over a couple of huge bumps and dips that I slowed down for but could have slowed more. One bridge deck was about 4 inches lower than the gravel road, and the seatbelt held me down—but stuff in the trailer went sailing and distributed itself equidistant all over the floor!
Amazing Gravel roads: Now most of the gravel roads up north were amazingly smooth—with very little rainfall there are not many potholes. So different from the rain-drenched West Coast gravel roads where washboards develop in a week! I was told Calcium Chloride was put on the roads to keep the dust down—and it did! Amazingly! You could sail along the wide gravel roads at 80 km/hr dust free (and be passed by many trucks doing far more than that!) The downside was that when it rained, it was not just ordinary mud—the anti-dust road coating became goopy gray sludge on your vehicle that dried to a cement-like coating—until the next rainfall. (I was once pondering how and when to wash the trailer—then I drove through significant rainfall, and it cleaned a lot of the trailer!)
Dust INSIDE the trailer: the old trailer allowed dust to billow up into the inside of the trailer. Mostly in the bathroom in the back, but from there it penetrated all the way to the front. My main protection was to pile stuff on the bed, then throw an old sheet over the bed—that way I had a clean place to sleep. I could wipe the kitchen dust down, and a quick sweep on the floor—and just shutting the bathroom door was my strategy as I knew I had a lot more gravel road to go, right to the very end of the trip. Been home a week now, I am thinking about cleaning the bathroom—but not today.
A hundred hours of driving at least: a usual drive from Victoria to the NWT is about 24 hours. A bit longer for me if I drop by to see family and friends enroute. 10,000 km of driving at 100 km/hr is 100 hours! It was OK, I stopped by the roadside and had short rests. I aim not to drive too far in a day. The longest day was about 10 hours driving as I recall, I did very little night driving, just a few hours on going through Banff National Park and then spent the night in a rest stop in Field. My old eyes just don’t like night driving!
Communities I visited:
Abbotsford: to see our daughter and family
Airdrie: to see our son and family
Grande Cache, Alberta: to begin a sawmilling course for inmates at the correctional institute there.
Dawson Creek BC: to visit old-time friends and install new sensors for the truck motor
Paddle Prairie, Alberta: a rest day in a friend’s yard, they were away, hope to see them next time.
Hay River, NWT: Touch base with some old friends, and plan the next step.
Whati, NWT: to see old time friends, and see about a training down the road. I had done 2 mobile mill trainings there when it was a fly-in community in 2014 and 2017. We did do a training, and the lumber went to building fences and garden sheds! Hurray!
Fort Providence NWT: I was invited to do 2 trainings this year! And it was great to see their enthusiasm coupled with growing skills. It was great to touch base with friends there, and to see great gardens being grown, especially in raised beds. We began making raised bed containers from the slabs from the sawmill, bark side in they look really great.
Saint Jean Marie NWT: Got to visit this small community. They have a community sawmill, but it has not run in several years now.
Fort Simpson NWT: The big takeaway for me this year was a 5-minute visit with a busy chief! I mentioned sawmill trainings and he said,” I woke up thinking about sawmills this morning! What about if we look a sawmilling through the Lense of mental wellness?” That one statement was so worth the 5-hour drive to get there! The intention being that meaningful, creative work with your hands will help to build and rebuild more healthy men (and ladies too!) I wonder what is ahead for that community!
Yellowknife NWT: a day trip that included seeing a Whati friend in hospital.
Wrigley NWT: you should look this one up on maps.google.com! Fort Simpson is out of the way, and you cross a river on a ferry to get there—in the summer! Wrigley has another ferry in the summer, ice road in the winter, and Wrigley is 200 gravel kilometers past Fort Simpson! In Wrigley I got to camp by a lovely lake, eat some freshly caught fish, and watch the Aurora Borealis and make some friends too! Now driving to Wrigley I saw something I had missed all summer—Mountains! Most of the NWT where I was is flat! The more remote the community, the more value mobile sawmills can bring to it. Most communities have lots of trees, though small, and have housing needs and community projects.
Then, at the end of the summer I came down from Fort Simpson to BC a new way I had never been before—
Fort Liard NWT: Several hours of gravel road, very muddy road with a driving rain. I was able to touch base with the First Nation Community there, and continued down into British Columbia
On the way to Fort Nelson, I spotted a hastily spray-painted sign that noted “smoke!” they could have made it bigger! Soon the smoke was thick. Not flames, just smoke. Eventually it was so thick that I could just make out the white line by the side of the road, and the dotted yellow line! The edge of the road I could not see although it was just a few feet away. I noticed my breathing change as the dotted line was there—then (gasp) it wasn’t, then it was there, then (gasp) it wasn’t. Now, of course I knew what was happening in my mind, yet I was amazed how my breath changed when it wasn’t. Can you imagine how thick the smoke was at this point—now double it! Slowly I made it through several patches of several kilometers of very thick smoke.
Fort Nelson BC: I had cooled my heels here last September as I waited 10 days for a transmission to be shipped for my 2004 Yukon, and I had touched base with Chalo School, a first Nation school with say 100 plus students. I spend a little time there, then continued an hour to….
Prophet River First Nation BC: A couple years ago I had done a training here, and I was so delighted to see that a couple of fellows were still doing some milling. They had about 170 hours on the mill, good for them! I stayed one night, did a refresher course for them, and continued on to …
Fort St John BC: Here I stayed with some of my wife’s relatives overnight, it was great touching base again and by morning had decided on my next stop about 8 hours driving away.
Stoney First Nations close to Williams Lake BC; just past the reserve some friends of ours had “retired” to a 300 acre ranch with about 20 horses! They recently purchased a used Woodmizer Sawmill. Attended a memorial where about 15 horse riders showed up as an integral part of the gathering. Then it was on to….
Armstrong, BC: to see our daughter and her family for a couple nights, then on to…
Airdrie, Alberta: to visit our son and their 4 children, mom is expecting the fifth! Enjoyed a meaningful visit with grandkids we don’t see all that often.
Not far away from Airdrie is where I would do my final training on this extended trip.
The O’Chiese First Nation, Alberta: I spent a couple of days here doing a one-on-one training with a Woodmizer LT70 Super, I had owned an LT70 for about 10 years, a very good high production mill. The super meant that it had two joysticks to operate it, with a trigger and three buttons on each joystick. I had operated one of these about 8 years ago for a few months, now I hoped the muscle memory would come back, and it did for the most part! I got to camp out right where we were sawmilling, and after the training drove my final bit of gravel, dusty road for the trip, and camped out in a rest stop in Field BC, the next day a trip to Abbotsford again, and then home the next day.
The trainings….
I am looking forward to imaging mobile sawmill trainings with key people in these remote first nations and more… with the focus being on mental wellness for the community members. This is very different from the production model of seeing how much can be cut each day! I envision growth in wellness for those who work with their hands on the mobile sawmill! Who would have guessed a humble sawmill could benefit wellness! Trainings went well overall, some new trainees got excited over creating some usable lumber for community projects. Some returning trainees applied themselves to learning more, and soon, hopefully, they will be training new people themselves. There are the 15 weeks!
Thanks for letting me share my journey with you!
Murphy