I once helped build a cabin on the side of a 10,500 foot mountain. The only power tool we used was a 10” circular saw powered by a small generator. We cut the trench for the foundation footing out of the granite mountain side with picks, sledges, and a big cold chisel named Steely Dan IV, in homage to William Burroughs. It was a fine experience, from which I learned much about the expandability of human endurance. I also learned that I would never willingly do it that way again, and when we went to build a second cabin, the generator had grown considerably, and the power tools were screaming above the growl of the backhoe.
Had we been entirely and purely devoted to self-sufficiency, we could have built that cabin entirely by hand. We’d still be working on it, of course, and would by now have diminished our ranks through falls, coronaries, homicides and other accidents incidental to a mad enterprise. Or we could have simply put up tee-pees and spared a lot of work and expense.
But the job was to build a cabin on a steep mountainside, upon the deck of which we could sit in the evening and watch the shadows ascend the mountainside across the valley, drinking gin and smoking dope and playing guitars until dinner had been cooked on the cast-iron wood stove and we could go to bed quiet and comfortable and unworried about the occasional bear. So we used a truck and a generator and an electric hand saw, the tools we needed to achieve the result we wanted within our youthful lifetimes.
The job comes before the tool.
