Living The Dream—2026-07-24 (Patreon)

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NO RAIN DELAYS by Claire Turner

Successfully turning a forest clearing into a research base requires following a fairly rigid sequence. Some things can happen in different orders, but others—not so much.

You can’t hook up the plumbing to the well until the well has been drilled. You can’t park the two mobile homes and the portable office trailer until the ground is at least somewhat cleared and leveled.

Add the urgency of a team of scientists who think they’ve found the holy grail, and everything becomes extremely dependent on sequence and timing.

I’m making it happen.

I’m in the South Selkirk Mountains of Boundary County, Idaho, west of Bonners Ferry and roughly ten miles south of the British Columbia border. Everyone is worked up about caribou that were considered gone from the South Selkirks after the last known animals were moved in 2019.

It seems that a forestry surveyor placed a trail camera along an old access road and captured a female caribou accompanied by a calf. The camera recorded them on three different nights over six weeks. Wildlife officials later obtained clear telephoto photographs of the cow, calf, and a second adult several miles away.

Now I have to set up housing and a small research office for six scientists who want to do science stuff. They got a 24-month grant for the study.

I got 12 days to set up the camp.

The one-acre clearing is mowed and leveled. The well is drilled, and the mobile homes are being backed into place.

It’s rainy, the drivers are grumpy, and there’s a newly installed wellhead that can’t be run over by a mobile home.

I gave the drivers radios and strict orders not to run over the well.

Plumbers come tomorrow. If the trailers don’t get set up today, the whole schedule starts sliding backward, and I get calls like, “Sorry, I was ready for Friday. I can’t come on Saturday. See you Monday.”

False.

I’ll just guard the wellhead and get the job done.

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