They're not anything packed with information or profound. They consist mostly of vivid snapshots from the depths of memory. Bubbling up at seemingly random times, clamoring for attention. Once in a while one just has to be noded.
We had been in the unfinished wilderness cabin for a little over a year. The grand plan was to move in and finish it while living in it. Best laid plans. Living in a small cabin in the woods with two year old twin girls and no electricity or plumbing while completing the construction of said cabin may not have been the best plan, in retrospect. You do what you have to do.
Keeping in mind that internet was not available, even if it had existed back in the late 1970's, I had subscribed to MEN. We were, after all, trying to be back to the land homesteader types. I had run across some articles in said journal of self-sufficiency that gave me hopes of having a hot water shower. A simple design, poorly implemented, the shower would consist of a 55 gallon (200 liter) drum with rudimentary plumbing mounted atop the sorriest water tower ever cobbled together by a DIY wannabe. It's a wonder it didn't collapse and crush someone. It lurked in an unused corner of the garden like a kid's jumbo Lincoln Logs project gone awry. My choice of construction material was the doghair pine growing near our house in an old clearing.
The twins were to have the honor of the first hot shower from my Rube Goldberg monstrosity. I checked the temperature every little while once the sun was on the drum by placing my hand on the metal drum. When the temperature was just right, we stripped the girls naked and had them stand under the shower head I had spliced to some garden hose. The water began to flow and the girls turned the bright orange of a Halloween pumpkin. Our iron water had done what iron water does when aerated. The iron had immediately turned to rusty sludge and settled to the bottom of the barrel. That happened to be where the hose was attached to the bung on the barrel. Our daughters were unharmed and the image of naked pumpkin babies was indelibly etched on the retina of our mind's eye.