OCTOBER 19, 2020 – Those who’ve followed my stenciling project for signage in our Northwoods tree garden will be happy to know that over the weekend I hung the first sign.
As it turned out, the hanging required ample engineering, way too many tools (and return trips to the cabin workroom), and boundless patience. Early in the process, however, I pretended I was installing a new telescope outside the International Space Station. This helped improve my patience—I imagined engineers in Houston watching my every move and giving me excruciatingly detailed instructions during two marathon spacewalks—one on Saturday, another on Sunday.
Because actual temperatures were in the mid-30s F, gloves were a necessity, given the duration of my EVA (“extravehicular activity”). Normally, this would’ve created an annoying inconvenience as I tried to manipulate tools, lag screws, drill bits, socket wrench, hammer and nails. But if you’re an astronaut, taking your gloves off during an EVA is not an option. Accordingly, I learned to adjust my fine motor skills to do just . . . fine . . . with the gloves.
“Spacewalk” sounds so pedestrian, but I know from NASA’s Gemini Project that spacewalks gave everyone quite a case of heart-burn—and remember what happened to Commander Kowalski in the movie Gravity? My spacewalk definitely had its dangers—not while I was . . . er . . . on the ground, but while I was high up on a step ladder.
The ladder was for reaching a sufficient height to affix a cross member (from which the sign would hang) to two large trees 11 feet apart. Ladders are dangerous, especially when . . . they’re on the exterior of the ISS. If my project had been in the middle of civilization back on planet earth, I would’ve been less nervous—in case of a mishap, I’d either be able to call 9-1-1 myself or someone would soon discover me out cold (or impaled on my five-inch drill bit) and call for help. At the southwest entrance to our secluded 20-acre tree garden, I was totally on my own and beyond decent cell phone coverage.
Merely climbing up and down the ladder wasn’t a big deal, but what made Houston extremely nervous was my measuring, drilling, using a level, nailing temporary supports (and removing same), lifting the cross-member into place, and tightening lag screws from the fourth step up on a ladder shimmed on uneven ground.
My biggest problem was dropping stuff in a weightless environment. Knock a four-inch lag screw off the top of the ladder and you get to watch it disappear into infinity—a thick layer of freshly fallen leaves. Fortunately, my tools were visually “tethered,” that is, colored brightly, so that when I accidentally dropped them, retrieval was easy.
After a lot of hard work and improvisation, my sign was up and exactly as I’d imagined. When I packed up the ladder, Houston let out a collective sigh of relief, clearly audible inside my spacesuit as I headed for the decompression chamber and . . . a beer.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
