Out on the wooded slopes of Moose Mountain, far beyond the confines of civilization, seven Dartmouth student have elected to spend their summer rebuilding a piece of Dartmouth history, Harris Cabin.
The cabin, once one of the most popular shelters owned by the Dartmouth Outing Club, fell into disrepair and eventually collapsed in the early 1990s. The rebuilt version is expected to be open for use by 2007.
Since June 20, students have been living at the site of the old cabin, toiling each day with chainsaws, axes, wheelbarrows and their own bare hands to install log after log onto the ever-growing structure. The team plans to have the basic structure of the cabin completed by the end of the summer, according to Outdoor Programs Assistant Director Brian Kunz. A portion of the team will stay behind during the fall to install windows, flooring, propane lines, roofing and other finishing touches.
The completed cabin will sleep 30 visitors, making it the second-largest DOC shelter after the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.
The project started two years ago when Chris Polashenski '07 proposed rebuilding the cabin to the Outdoor Programs Office. Kunz said that Polashenski "wrote a whole book on how to rebuild this cabin," including a site evaluation and a history of the old cabin.
"Chris convinced us that he had the energy and the stamina to continue with this project year after year," Kunz said.
Once the proposal was approved, the Outdoor Programs Office convinced the town of Hanover to grant a building permit, then imported hundreds of logs from the College Grant to the site. A team of students led by Polashenski began to lay down the principle foundations last fall, but most of the serious log work began when the summer team moved in. Since then, the cabin has risen from a one-log height to a 13-log height.
Polashenski, the group's foreman, described a typical day at the worksite as lasting from 7:30 a.m. until sunset, with periodic breaks for meals. Upon his arrival at the site, John Paul Lewicke '07, one of the members of the group, built a clock which only displays "Eat," "Work" and "Sleep."
Two of the camp's three tents house the supplies and six of the seven students; the third is a "honeymoon suite" for the recently-married seventh member, Anthony Bramante '06. Also at the site are a cooking area and a swimming hole.
"[We have] pretty much everything you need for summer, if you don't mind a bit of a smell," Polashenski said.
Though a highlight of Lewicke's experience has been getting outside the "Hanover bubble," he and the other workers leave the site weekly to stock up on necessities.
"You make a trip to town every Monday to get supplies," Lewicke said. "It's just a bunch of bearded guys in the shopping mall grabbing stuff and going back to the mountains."
Lewicke described his experience at Harris as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"I went and talked to Career Services, and what they said and what I found very true is that doing an internship could be useful in the short term for career stuff, but this is a chance to learn cool skills and do the sort of stuff that I won't get the chance to do again," he said.
Polashenski said the team's progress has been slow but steady.
"We're certainly behind where I thought we'd be at this point in the summer, but we've been doing good work and lots of it," Polashenski said. "At this point we're just putting on the lofts. We're still hoping to get a roof on the cabin before snowfall, but we're counting on more volunteer support for the rest of the summer and during [freshman trips]."
Despite being behind schedule, Polashenski said he looks forward to leaving his mark on the Dartmouth community.
"There's something special about leaving a physical legacy which will certainly outlast my Dartmouth career and hopefully outlast my time on Earth," he said. "In addition, no one had built a cabin for the DOC in many years, and none of those cabins were as large as this project."
