Rite of Passage

Somebody raised his hand and Mr. Pizarro called on him. “Well, if we cut them down, the logs are going to be green. They won’t thy evenly and the walls will let air in.

“Right,” Mr. Pizarro said. “We’ll chink the walls as best we can now.”

After we had discussed the cabin for a few more minutes, Mr. Pizarro led the way down the hill to a level place near the river. Here the cabin outlines had already been marked, and two saw pits had been dug in the ground. Mr. Marechal’s group was already down here.

Mr. Pizarro said, “Mr. Marechal and I came down here last Saturday to mark our spots, blaze our trees, and make the saw pits. This is just to make the work faster. When you cut a tree, try to decide why we picked it rather than some of the others around.”

Then he assigned us to jobs: tree-felling, horse-handling and log-hauling, log-peeling, and so on. Jack Fernandez-Fragoso and I were put on sill-laying and lunch. Mr. Pizarro gave us a quick sketch of what we were to do and then took the rest of the people off to get them started on their jobs. Mr. Marechal left two people like us behind on the other cabin, and we took a look at them already at work, and started on our own job.

The side base logs, the long base of the cabin, are the most important because the cabin rests on them. They have to be solidly fitted. The best way to do this is to half-sink them into the ground.

Jack and I got shovels and started digging shallow trenches down the long sides of the cabin outlines. We had pegs and string to keep our trenches straight, level and the same depth. The physical part wasn’t too bad, since we had been using hand tools for several months in practice and our hands were not as blister-prone as they once had been. It was somewhat painstaking, involving a good bit of measuring to keep things even. When we were done, we leveled the interior floor of the cabin. As we worked, we could hear axes ringing in the woods, voices, and sometimes the fall of a tree.

Before we had finished the floor, Mr. Pizarro, the two horses and the two base logs were all present. The logs were dragged in along the river bank. We came out almost in a tie with the peeling of the logs. Then Jack and I watched as the top quarters of the ends of the logs were cut off. Across these ends would be laid the similarly-cut tenons of the base logs of the cabin’s short walls, these logs lying on the ground. After that, logs would be laid in alternate rows — long sides of the cabin then short sides, the tenons allowing the logs to rest on those just below them.

Jack and I went off to gather wood, then, and start lunch. By the time lunch was ready, all four base logs were in place, the long ones sitting half in the ground, the short ones standing higher, and a number of other logs had been brought up by the saw pit. Mr. Marechal’s people had done about the same amount here, but I had no idea how much had been done out in the woods.

Jack and I ate before everybody else and then served. I went over and sat with Jimmy and Riggy while they ate. Jimmy had been felling trees, Riggy cutting poles, and they and I were both pleased to have the free hour after lunch that Mr. Pizarro allowed us. There is nothing like doing physical labor to give you reason to think, if only to pass the time, so I had more thoughts for my ethics paper on the subject of stoicism. I got out my notebook and wrote them down. Jimmy and Riggy just rested.

The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that that is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to the king than the slave.

It is much the same as the question of determination and free will. Whether or not your actions are determined, you have to act on the assumption that you have free will. If you are determined, your attempt at free will loses you nothing. However, if you are not determined and you act on the assumption that you are, you will never attempt anything. You will simply be a passive blob that things happen to.

I am not a passive blob. I have changed and I think at least some of it is my own doing. As long as I have any hope, I could not possibly be a stoic.

In the afternoon, I walked with Jimmy behind Mr. Pizarro to chop down my tree. We followed the skid marks of previous logs along the edge of the river bank. The sun was bright and the air a little warmer now. I couldn’t help thinking that this was very pleasant although it was nothing like home. After a few hundred yards we cut away from the river and up a ridge line. The underbrush was very thin and there was a rust brown carpet of shed tree leaves over the ground.