We began building on the “Giesy place” about a mile south of Woodard’s Landing. I picked berries, dried the meat that Hans brought in, shooed away seagulls who pecked at the deer entrails, milked the goat, and while Andy slept, I chopped at slender willow branches—withes Christian called them—that could be braided into rope or used for binding while the men felled with their saws.
The timber, both tall and stately, took days to chop through the trunks. I stood in awe of the size of the red cedar they selected first. Smaller than the towering firs and spruce, its long flat needles sagged toward the earth. The tree did not easily succumb. Both its wide girth and the sweat off Christian’s brow surprised me. I listened to the chink, chink sound of the axes making their wedge around the base of the trunk. And when the sun set, only small indentations of the axe marked their day’s work. Standing inside that forest felt as peaceful as being in the church at Bethel when our leader was absent. Light filtered through the branches. Echoes of bird calls trembled in the silence when the men rested their tools. The air smelled moist, and the forest floor acted spongy against my moccasins, the cedar liking damp, it seemed. I set Andy down and brushed away the needles and picked up a handful of soil to inhale it. Later when a squall moved through, dropping rain on us, we stood with Andy beneath weepy boughs, barely getting wet. I leaned against that dark grain of a thousand years of growing undisturbed until we came and wondered how it was we had found this Eden of our own.
It took the men three days to chop that first tree down.
When at last it cracked and sounds of falling splintered through the forest, Adam shouted to get back. The tree’s heaviness lingered in the woods as it sighed against another taller tree and hung there, unwilling to lie down. Sam Woodard called such trees “widow-makers” when Christian rode to get him, seeking advice. Sam offered suggestions to get it down without a death. It required skill and God’s blessing, but they accomplished the task.
“Maybe it would be good if you looked for downfalls,” Sam suggested. “Find some not rotted. It might be easier.”
I thought that good advice, but the men still looked for trees they felled themselves.
By the end of the first week since the scouts had left, they’d felled two huge cedar trees and prepared to cut them into ten-foot lengths for walls. The bark stripped off easily, and Sarah Woodard said she’d seen the Indians pound the bark until it was almost like a cloth. The bark looked fuzzy with fibers floating from it. I pulled some free and found they might work as thread to repair Christian’s socks.
The men harnessed two mules brought from Steilacoom and drove them into the forest, and while it may have seemed a good idea, and would be in time, the mules resisted pulling the logs behind them. They startled and reared and snapped ropes, and I could tell that even getting the logs to a building site could take days of wrestling them over brambles and vines into the small clearing at the edge of these trees.
My stomach ached with the possibilities of injury, the snail’s pace of the work.
Sometimes, if the men chopped a tree near the top of a ridge, they would try to roll it down, but the tree often hung on another tree felled by a previous storm. The men did then consider chopping and using downed trees, but many rotted in place. They wanted strong, sturdy logs to house us. Cedar, they said, would last forever.
It took a month for the small squat hut we called the Giesy house to rise up at the forest’s edge. It needed caulking, something I could do, but the men decided this could be done later. For now, they would set a ridge pole and some cross rafters for later roofing. In time, they’d draw a canvas across it for a winter’s roof.
“As the Israelites lived in tents to remember their harvests and all God provided, so will we live,” Christian said. The cost of bringing milled lumber from Olympia, or even from a mill Christian learned was built closer to the ocean, meant an expense so great none of the scouts felt it justified. Secretly, I thought they didn’t want to have to explain to John Genger where the money went when he returned.
“It’ll be easier now that we know how to do it,” Hans said when they prepared to move on to build another hut.
Adam Schuele said, “We must show that we can build in this place and live from it as we are asking our brothers and sisters from Bethel to do.”
“The weather’s mild,” Christian noted. “By the time they arrive here next fall, we will have two dozen log homes for them to winter in. Maybe three dozen.” It sounded more like a wish than a promise.
I couldn’t see how. It was September and we’d only finished one. At one a month we’d only have a dozen by the time the Bethel group arrived.
“Might we stay with the Woodards when the weather keeps us from building this winter?” I asked Christian one night when we lay in a lean- to with our canvas acting as our roof. I could see the stars like white knots of thread in an indigo cloth appearing in a tiny patch of sky not covered by treetops.
“Nein,” Christian said. “What would it look like for the leader of the scouts to stay in a soft place with feather ticks while the others make their way beneath a canvas tent? We will all stay at the Giesy place if we are unable to build where we need to, but I don’t expect that. Last year was mild, Sam said. We can work in the rain.”
“At least we’ll be in our own place,” I said. He didn’t correct me.
As the weeks wore on, I wondered how these men convinced themselves that they could build enough houses in time for the arrival of the Bethel group. Weren’t they counting the days and weeks and months that one small hut required, and it still needing a roof and caulking? They had to hunt for food, which took time too, and we needed to graze the mules closer to the river and give them more rest time. They looked thin from all their efforts. We’d need to gather firewood, dry more deer meat, and perhaps even fish before winter so we’d have food enough to last us.
Once when the work slowed and I couldn’t watch any longer as they swung their axes against so noble a tree, I took Andy and walked to the Woodards’. Andy sat playing with clamshells and a knobby shell Sarah called “an oyster house.” Andy was nearly a year old, and Sarah had made a cake for him, which we ate on the porch of her house. I loved her view with a small grassy area surrounded by split cedar rails that eventually disappeared into trees. The house sat in a clearing that felt open and wide even with the darkness of the trees beyond. I could hear the Willapa River swishing its way to the sea, pulled there by the tide.
“How long did it take you to build this house?” I asked Sarah. She brought the churn to turn as we finished up Andy’s cake.
“It stood here when Mr. Woodard brought me to it,” she said. “We added on a room that took a little time, but I don’t know how many days the house took to raise.”
“What does your husband say about our efforts?” I asked. I knew men gossiped as much as women, though they claimed to be above such matters.
She smiled. “How do you know we talk of this?”
My English had gotten better every day as I made myself use it with Christian and with the Woodards. “My husband talks with me about the world around; yours, too?”
She lowered those dark blue eyes. “He says you Germans are stubborn, that you should live with us while you build. It is the Christian thing to do to make that offer and Christian to accept. But your husband does not do this.”
“He gives,” I said. “If ever you have need of something, my Christian will provide it if he can. But receiving is harder for him.”
“He is generous to his family,” she said.
I nodded agreement, wondering what she’d seen that made her say that.
“He names the Giesy place and says it will be for his parents and brothers and sisters.”
I felt an envy pang, or was it disappointment? “He takes care of his own, ja,” I said. I took Sarah’s place at the churn, pounding with vigor though I didn’t know why.
“Mr. Woodard says your plan to build right on through the winter is also a … crock full of wish. A dream, my words for it,” she said. “Instead, the mud will keep you in one place. Venturing out or chopping trees will be too difficult. My husband says you should be preparing food for winter storage now. Chopping wood and keeping it dry for firewood.” She stopped my hand and lifted the plunger. “I think it is churned enough.” She finished the butter, and we pasted it into wooden molds. “Do you have candles for the winter?”
“Some.” I thought of our lantern and how easily that light blew out.
“Plan to stay with us. We’ll read and tell stories and sing and maybe even dance while the rains come down.”
It had been a long time since we’d danced.
“My husband is determined to have three dozen structures by next fall for when our friends join us.”
Sarah nodded her head. “This is the stubborn part my husband says defines yours. You won’t be able to work so hard through the rains, and the trees … the trees demand respect and are not easily changed.”
“You make it sound as though trees have a soul,” I said.
“The Indians say they do. The trees give them so much—canoes and clothes and houses and tools.” She showed me a deep scoop spoon made of wood the color of my sister’s chestnut-colored hair. “Smell it,” she said, and when I did I knew it was a cedar burl. “Something that gives so much needs to be noticed, witnessed to,” Sarah said. “It gives up in its own time, giving itself as a gift rather than a taking.”
“People are counting on us to have homes when they arrive,” I defended.
“This forest and river land will be their home,” she said. “People here just take temporary cover inside their houses.”
Christian’s constant enthusiasm and my commitment to be his helpmate silenced me. Even when we poled upriver in the Woodards’ boat so Christian could show me another piece of property he’d claimed for the colony, I kept my tongue about whom he built for and whether we could accomplish all he’d set to do so we could make a life here.
It wasn’t that the land near the river wasn’t lush and laid out for easy tilling, but that these meanders of river were separated by ghastly tangles of vines and trees and sometimes close-in hills that seemed to suck the air from my throat. We could cut trails along the river through those sections, but most likely living here, we would use the boats often, ride in small crafts that were not nearly as grand nor as sleek or as stable as those used by the Cowlitz people. We’d be dependent on this river, to go from here to there. I’d be on water nearly every day of my life if I wanted to visit someone, or become a hermit connected only to my husband and my children.
“I’ve purchased these three hundred twenty acres,” Christian told me when we’d beached the boat and climbed up a high bank. “It was a donation land claim of a man who is prepared to leave.”
“But it’s so far from Woodard’s Landing and our place,” I said. “Won’t we all want to be close, the way we were in Bethel?”
“This is maybe seven miles, nothing more.” He bristled.
“I only meant that in Bethel we all lived close together. In a town, with streets that—”
“Some stayed in Nineveh, you forget. We can have settlements separated by a few miles and still remain true to our cause. We all agreed to settle along the Willapa, Emma. We will need to do things differently in the West. Around us is free land if a family lives on it for five years and improves it. It’s theirs. There is no such thing as this in Bethel. We cannot afford to drain the entire treasury there to buy land for us, Liebchen.” He patted my shoulder.
“I’ve seen no buggies, or even people except for the Woodards.”
“I told you. Here we walk or go by water. It is the way. There’s a post office in Bruceport and warehouses, so there are people closer to the bay. We’ll go there one day. You’ll see. This will be the route nearest to the Cowlitz, and those from Bethel will come across our trail, and maybe by then we’ll have time to clear it further so the stock can be driven across too. The returning scouts will advise that we bring only mules or oxen to drive the wagons. Our farm will be along the way for people heading to the coast.”
“Whose name is this property in?” I asked, changing the subject.
“In the Territory’s eyes, it is ours,” he said. “But it belongs to the colony, all held in common as in Bethel.”
“Then who owns the Giesy place with the one nearly finished house?”
He cleared his throat. “I claim that for my parents. This section, distant but not so far away, this one will be ours to farm.”
Andy shouted, then pointed at a squirrel and took my attention.
“You let us men attend to these things,” he said, following me as I changed Andy’s diaper. I grabbed at some cedar duff as an absorbent. “Your job is to make what we will build into a home to raise our sons in. Wait here.”
He walked down the riverbank and leaned into the wobbly craft we’d pulled up onto the shoreline. From it he took a pack with a shovel pitched over his back. “I begin,” he said.
He lifted the sod from a square, pushing and scraping the tall meadow grasses. Sweat dripped from his forehead, but he whistled as he worked. I gingerly walked through the grasses, felt the sun warm my face and knew it must be warm on Andy’s too, though I’d set him in the shade. I took his hand and he waddled upright. He still hadn’t taken his first steps alone, but with help he grinned at his success. “We may as well see if there are late-blooming berries, since your father is so occupied in digging.”
I’d filled my apron with flowers instead, sticking one behind Andy’s ear, tickling him as he sat. I slapped at mosquitoes. They’d be swarming by sunset. Andy pulled against my skirt to raise himself and stay balanced. Finally, Christian whistled his single loud tone and motioned me to return to the square he’d scraped out. Across it, he’d spread the canvas. Come,” he said. “Let’s christen this land we’ve been given to turn into service to our Lord.”
The look in his eye told me he had more than the Lord’s service in mind at that moment. I felt a stirring in my own heart. My face grew warm. I marveled that his hours of intense labor poling upriver, then clearing the sod, hadn’t weakened him in the least. If anything, it seemed to fire his desire.
“When do we begin work on our house?” I said as he reached to untie my bonnet.
“Don’t worry about that now.” He pulled me to him.
I said, “Right here? Won’t it tire you for the return trip? And what about Andy?”
Christian smiled as he lifted his son still clinging to my skirt, laced him into the board leaned against the tree. His wide fingers wove the rawhide strings through the buckskin covering, then tied them neatly in a bow. Something about the movement softened me.
“Andrew has perfect timing,” he said. “See? He sleeps.”
Swaddling did usually put Andy to sleep. His father laid the board propped up against the shovel base, but in a shaded area beneath some arching vines. On his cheeks I wiped the mud paste to counter mosquito attacks. Christian replaced the flower behind Andy’s ear, and our son took two quick breaths but didn’t awaken.
“As for me being too tired to love my wife and then take her safely back to the landing, you forget.” He grinned now and began untying my wrapper at the bodice. “Do you still wear the petticoat with the ruffles?” I nodded. “Then here is another occasion to mark your uniqueness on our Giesy place.” With Christian, life felt right, even in this place so far upriver from the others. Geese called above us on their way south for the winter.
“Trust me, Liebchen,” he whispered as he led me onto the canvas he’d unfurled on the ground. “It’s an easy ride downriver to wherever you wish to go from here.”
He kissed my neck, and I felt like a tall cedar going slowly down.