"Always," he says, wiping an arm across his damp brow. By now the canoe is mostly stripped of bark, a basic outer shape revealed. It's been slow and steady work, learning the tools and the wood, being careful of his hands. There's really nowhere he'd like losing a finger, but home ranks a lot higher than out in the woods.

Soon he'll start hollowing out the center: he should really leave the outside alone until then, and maybe he will on the next one--but there's some hesitance to start. Should he hack his way in with the ax? Should he be looking for a tool he can bend into a kind of scoop? Maybe he'll take his time on an outline and go from there, trying a few things until something seems to stick.

"Once I've got this done," he says, indicating the log, now roughly shaped like a child's crude toy, "we'll have an easy time getting you a hull. We'll want to get you off before it gets much colder."