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semi-euphoric flow state
Sunday, August 30 2026
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Gretchen had left the cabin yesterday in the Subaru Forester with the hope that I'd collect more solar energy today for the drive home in the Bolt. But the weather today was cloudy and threatened rain, so I never ended up adding any more to its nearly 160 miles of accumulated range (a number that would've been higher had I not driven to Johnstown yesterday). After I'd had my toast and coffee, I was back working on the upper deck near where the spiral staircase lands. I had to build some conventional deck railing to close off a 43-inch-wide gap, and this involved making custom cuts to the vertically-oriented two-by-six running between the tops of two posts in order to accommodate the steel railing coming from the spiral staircase. Initially I thought I'd make these cuts with a jig saw, but cutting conventional two-by lumber with one of those is apparently impossible; the blade just snags in the thick wood and bounces the body of the saw uselessly (and unpleasantly) up and down. So then I tried using a little blade in a little handle, and that sort of worked. But what really worked was using a hole saw to just cut out what needed to go. Then I used the spinning edge of a circle saw to rapidly rasp away any additional wood that needed to go. That last technique is a great skill to develop, as I'd discovered earlier on this project. But you have to be careful not to let the blade cut too deeply in the wrong place or snag itself suddenly in a way that pulls the saw in some dangerous direction. Also, since the blade is curved and you usually want to produce a flat surface, you have to know how to feather the process and quickly identify high spots that need additional attention. In this case, though, I was cutting away wood that would otherwise intrude into a complex shape (a steel pipe with a bend near its end), so I had to keep trying the piece for fit and looking for what bits of wood needed to go. It helped that black paint from the handle would come off on the wood, marking exactly the places that needed to be trimmed back (much like the articulating paper that a dentist has you bite into to show the places on a new crown that need to be filed down).
Later I cut off the unused end of one of the big six-by-six posts coming up through the upper deck. This post was, unlike all the others, one that served no role in the upper deck. At first I tried used a flush-cut manual saw, but that was going too slowly. So then I tried a Japanese pull saw. It was faster because of its sharper teeth, but it was a little too short to reach far enough into the post. What I ended up doing as using the small battery-powered chainsaw to cut the post off about a half inch above the deck. Then I used the circle saw in "rasp mode" to cut away the post nearly down to the level of the decking, a process that worked nicely because of the experience I have developed using this technique. I then put a sanding pad in a power drill and sanded away the high spots, leaving just a smooth square where the post had been. It looked great this way, as the cut had happened at a level in the post with several knots, which left an interesting visual pattern in the wood.
Back when I'd bought a bunch of balusters for the south deck restoration back in Hurley, I'd bought more than I needed. I'd ended up having 31 of them leftover, which was good because the upper deck had railings that needed balusters. So I spent awhile early this afternoon cutting and installing the 31 I had. To get them to fit, I had to cut each down to 31 inches. I used self-tapping screws, which I thought would prevent the balusters from splitting. But after one of them split, I started pre-drilling the holes as part of the process of cutting them, something I could do with four at a time. This had the additional benefit of making all the screws in all the balusters form neat lines instead of jumping around a little.
At some point my work switched to cleanup, and by that I mean more than just the constant sweeping of sawdust I'd been doing. I carried some big scraps of dimensional lumber down to the basement and started putting away some of the tools I probably won't be needing now. I even returned a set of ratchet sockets I'd "borrowed" from the trunk-based toolkit of the Chevy Bolt; they'd been on loan for months. (Fortunately, I almost never have a reason to use the car-based toolkits, though when I do I generally find they are missing the specific tool I actually need.)
As I did these things, I was slowly drinking from a big sixteen ounce IPA and also sipping kratom tea, and these chemicals conspired to make me feel a sense of mild euphoria, a feeling that merged with obsssiveness to keep me working with such pleasure that it felt a little like flow state. I kept not looking at the time because I didn't want to know, though I was aware that whatever time it was, I'd have to be driving back to Hurley tonight so Gretchen wouldn't have to spend a third night in a row sleeping with Neville and responding to all his needs.
Before leaving for Hurley, I needed to go down to the dock to collapse the dock chairs so they wouldn't blow into the lake (which happened recently to the copper lid of the dock water bottle). But on the way down, I was suddenly compelled to pave more of the Mossy Rock Trail, particularly a low spot just east of a continuous grade leading down from a couple hundred feet east of the cabin. To find these rocks, I went over to a stee rocky grade just to the south which I hadn't really explored very well and from which I'd only ever been able to recover bits of stone that had crumbled into unusual shapes. But this time I quickly found several flat rocks. I'd find one, place in the the trail (perhaps after a little digging) and then I quickly find another one. It seemed as if that rocky slope might be full of such rocks, and that the very nature of how the ice age glaciers had passed through had concentrated flat rocks there. Only tiny bits of them were visible above the leaf litter, and some of them I discovered just by feeling their hardness as I walked through. Perhaps I could mine a great many such rocks from this slope if I was willing to do a little digging.
After finally making it down to the dock and collapsing the chairs, I again became obsessed with paving the Mossy Rock Trail on the way back. This second place was on a fairly steep slope maybe 300 above the dock, and this time I managed to find good flat rocks that I arranged into a nascent three or four step stairway, one that will have to be expanded to many more steps for it to be truly helpful walking on this stretch of trail.
Back at the cabin, my euphoric obsession compelled me to attack another thicket of mugwort I'd just discovered only a dozen or so feet north the beginning of the Mossy Rock Trail, near the southeast corner of the clearing the cabin was built in. The plants were especially tough here, and I had trouble ripping some individuals out of the ground. Some of the mugworts broke off as I yanked on the, and one even managed to lodge mugwort splinter into my left thumb. But after about fifteen minutes, I'd gotten rid of nearly all the plants in that location, leaving a suspiciously empty patch of yard. I intend to sew seeds here from less ecologically selfish species of plant such as tickseed and echinacea.
A past after 7:00pm after I'd performed the usual pre-departure cabin cleaning ritual (most of which had been done hours before), I began my drive back to Hurley with a Hazy Little Thing as my road beer. But I was feeling a little off at the time, more like I'd drunk too much kratom tea and less like I was drunk. But that beer I'd taken hours to drink had been a strong one, so it was possible I should not have been driving. Since my insulated travel mug had gone home with Gretchen, I had no way maintain the hot temperature of my kratom tea (which I intended start sipping after my road beer ran out). My solution to that problem was to fashion a crude thermos for the road by wrapping LDPE foam around the paper Dunkin cup I had after my roadtrip to Rochester and back. To keep heat from escaping out of the top, I broke off a square of flat styrofoam and used the sliding cover for the covered part of the center control to hold that makeshift lid tightly enough against the cup that any sloshing tea would have difficulty escaping.
Back home in Hurley, it was indeed my turn to sleep with Neville. Gretchen told me he had been much more lethargic after going back on the medications she'd failed to bring with him to the cabin.
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The landing platform at the top of the spiral staircase. The 4X4 post a quarter of the way from the left is the one to which the spiral handrail (visible to its left) connects. Click to enlarge.
The spiral staircase viewed from above (and from the northeast). Click to enlarge.
Lots of smoke was rising from Pyotr's parcel early this evening. Maybe they were having a barbecue. Click to enlarge.
A good view of the Mossy Rock Trail looking west from near its geographic center. This is the "elfin causeway" and does not include any of the rocks I'd set today. Click to enlarge.
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