Mountain Man

We lived in Texas for 7 years. We miss Texas, we miss our friends, we miss the community we had there, but...we are so happy to be where the woods are in our backyard (not literally since we live in town, but close..very close).

As I was reflecting with a friend yesterday on the phone, Brett must have been in agony while living in the Lone Star State. There was limited opportunity to be out in nature. When we were in nature we were either way too hot or constantly looking out for poisonous snakes which we just knew were lurking around the next corner...lol!

Here, however, are endless opportunities...endless...really, I mean endless. Fortunately for Brett and usually for us, my dear husband has spent most waking moments either seizing these opportunities or dreaming up his next excursion.

The most recent adventure was making his own deer hide drum...out of the hide of the deer he shot. He soaked the hide for a little over a week and then scraped the hair and whatever off of it. This job stunk soooo bad that we couldn't even be outside in the yard while he was scraping. The next step was stretching and nailing the hide up in our garage to dry.

Last weekend Brett and Aidan went out to the forest to find a piece of wood...and find they did. Brett planed the bark off the wood and on Tuesday night stood over our stove with a big pot of steaming water steaming this piece of wood and slowly, slowly, slowly (read 4+ hours) bending it into a circle to be the frame of the drum. Then came stretching the hide over the frame, making a mallet, etc... You get the idea. Here are some pictures of the end result. Warning: these pictures were taken at 6:30am this morning.