Fixing Sinks and Trapping Beavers: Why We Bother

I cursed so vehemently that Duke, who is a hunting dog and has heard his share of foul language, looked up from under the truck where he lay in the shade.

Four spring-loaded couplings hold my camper onto the back of my truck by attaching to four eye bolts that hang from the underside of the camper.  The back-left eye bolt attaches to a wooden beam that runs underneath the sink.  The sink had been leaking, which, if left unchecked, could have caused the beam to rot and allowed the eye bolt to pull through the beam.  So I spent an hour and a half this morning with a wrench, a screwdriver, thread sealing tape, and silicone caulk banging around under the sink, checking seals.  Then I ran some water through the sink while watching the pipes, saw no leaks, and walked outside to stretch and congratulate myself.  I glanced at the back-left eye bolt.  It was dripping.  That’s when I cursed, and Duke looked up.

I have been reading about the fur trappers and the privations they endured.  Packing metal traps and dried beaver pelts up and down some of North America’s toughest terrain.  Out at dusk each night in the fall and spring, wading in just-above-freezing water setting beaver traps.  Out at dawn each morning, wading through the same icy streams to check the traps.  Rheumatism was not an unfortunate disease for a fur trapper, it was an inevitability.  Yet the trappers kept trapping.  It gave them an excuse to live the free life they loved.

I spat to emphasize my displeasure at the eye bolt and walked back inside the camper.  I opened the cabinet under the sink and looked for leaks.  Water dribbling down a hose.  It wasn’t there before.  Must have run down from somewhere higher.  I ran my fingers up the hose.  Water all the way up, past the seals that I had re-sealed.  Coming from the top of the counter.  I clamored to my feet and inspected the faucet.  Some water on the counter alongside the faucet.  I unscrewed the spigot and checked the o-ring.  Looked okay.  I tried to remove the faucet so I could inspect it.  I couldn’t remove the faucet without removing two plastic bolts under the counter.  I couldn’t get access to those bolts without removing the sink.  I couldn’t remove the sink without uncoupling the drain hose.  None of that was going to be easy.  I could just forget the project, I thought.  I could have some lunch and a beer in the sun.

As years passed, things got harder for fur trappers.  The supply of beaver dwindled, then plummeted.  Once beavers were removed from a river, they could only repopulate the river from one of two directions – upstream or downstream – so it took time for beaver populations to rebound after hard trapping.  And demand dropped.  As silk hats replaced beaver hats on London’s most fashionable heads, the price of a beaver pelt in the Rocky Mountains sank from six dollars to less than two dollars.  Trappers needed more beaver to break even, but there were fewer beaver to be had.  Times were hard, but the fur trappers kept trapping.  Those drawn to the freedom and adventure of the fur trade seldom reacquired their taste for settled society.  They weren’t making money, but didn’t seem to care – it wasn’t money that had drawn them to the Rockies.

I removed the drain hose, pulled out the sink, and twisted at the plastic bolts that held the faucet in place.  They wouldn’t budge.  They were designed to be loosened and tightened by hand, but I couldn’t turn them.  I widened the bite on my pipe wrench and clamped down on them.  I twisted.  The wrench stripped plastic from the nuts.  Wouldn’t budge.  I tried again.  Nothing.  Whoever built my camper fastened this faucet onto a particleboard counter, which is cheaper than plywood but comes apart more easily and swells when wet.  The particleboard under the leaky faucet had expanded and put so much pressure on the plastic nuts that they became immobile.  Stumped, I sat on the floor.  I didn’t know how to repair this.  I looked outside on the sun shining on the prairie grass.  There was one beer left from the six-pack I bought in Alabama.

Why did the trappers trap, instead of just wander?  It’s a seldom-asked question.  The trappers were in the mountains for the adventure, the scenery, and the near-absolute freedom that came with the Rocky Mountain fur trade.  With a few exceptions, none made any money.  When they did make money, they normally blew it gambling, drinking, and chasing squaws at the annual rendezvous.  Why didn’t they quit trapping?  The mountain men were famously self-sufficient, and needed little they couldn’t produce themselves besides a gun, bullets, powder, a knife and maybe an awl.  A mountain man could have worked for a short time in a town until he could purchase these few items, then set off into the Rockies to wander, enjoying adventure, scenery, and absolute freedom without enduring the drudgery of setting, checking, and carrying beaver traps.  But most didn’t do that, and when the Rocky Mountain fur trade died out in the late 1830s and early ‘40s, most mountain men sought other employment as scouts or guides.  Why didn’t they stay in the mountains and wander?

Abandoning the project felt wrong.  If I didn’t fix this myself, I’d have to wait while some RV mechanic got around to doing the job, I’d have to pay him, and the next time something under the sink went wrong, I wouldn’t have learned how to fix it.  I stared at the swelled particleboard awhile.  I decided to excavate.  With a hammer, chisel, and flathead screwdriver, I chipped away at the damp particleboard clamped between the plastic nuts and faucet.  I scraped away the lower half of the expanded countertop, leaving enough material to support the faucet but freeing the plastic nuts of the pressure that the swelling exerted.  I twisted at the nuts.  They turned.  I removed the faucet.  Inside the faucet I found a tiny crack in a clear piece of plastic.  With some silicone caulk it was watertight again.  Problem solved.

No, I thought as I sat outside in the sun, the fur trappers were not just wanderers or hermits living in the mountains.  They were men with a purpose – trapping beaver for money – even if the purpose was one they didn’t care much about.  I took a sip from my beer and scratched Duke’s head.  People, by and large, need to believe they have a purpose, whether it is to make money, rear children, disseminate a theological system, or write a book.  That’s why the question folks ask is “what is the meaning of life?” instead of “is there a meaning of life?”  We can’t bear to think that the answer to the second question might be “no.”  I took another pull from my beer.  It tasted much better than it would have if the sink still leaked.  It is true, as the wise men say – happiness can seldom be pursued directly.