The Destiny Diaries

Young Dom has nearly mastered the paper making knowledge. He has even been experimenting with the mix on his own. We have many special orders this year. Our bundling paper has become very popular and there are even several orders for the marking paper. This is a good time to prepare the spring batches because we have prepared most of the spring fields and the days are warm and dry enough for the paper to set before it gets too hot. We are almost out of last years batch. We traded several blocks of our best marking paper to some traveling merchants that were in the area from California. They are starting to keep records of their dealings so that they can challenge the taxes that the States are beginning to charge on trade. Apparently we are one of the few paper makers left on the coast. They still make paper in Portland. I heard that they have even started printing on special pages of their paper for the government there. With such a market they can charge much more for their paper than we do. I would like to see their printing device. I don’t imagine we could justify printing here. There aren’t many who use the words around here. Even the government in Bellevue keeps all of the records it needs with the counting marks.

Bron Wilits – 4/23/2149

While Rhina is away to help her mother get through Rhina’s father’s death we are having to share the cooking and housekeeping chores. The twins are mostly able to keep up with the cooking but Robin is not very happy about it. Bal and I are trying to get the fields ready for planting but there is only so much we can do until the rainy season is over. There are not as many days of rain, it seems, but when it rains it seems to be even more destructive. I am worried that Bal will be called to help with the problems that we are having on the northern border. The farmers of Columbia are claiming exclusive access to the Fraser River even though we have been using water from that river for years. There has been much less water in all of the rivers for the last couple of years. Our canal had water early but is already drying up much earlier than normal. We will need to get water from the Walkers this year for sure. The lake is low again so I know we will pay dearly.

Dom - 3/12/2179

Today we have been digging out from a covering of white powdery ash from what we think was an eruption of Mount Rainier to the south of us. This is the first time that the mountain has erupted in anybody’s memory. Ray remembers talk of an eruption of another mountain in the Cascades about a hundred years ago, but not Ranier. We had heard that there were smoke plumes and rumbling from the mountain several times in the past couple of months but we haven’t seen anything. It will take awhile for the news from the settlements closer to the mountain to get here. We heard the sound of the eruption and felt a small earthquake just after dark yesterday. We weren’t sure what we had heard until the ash started falling this morning. It is very odd. It looks a little like snow but it is too warm and the texture is much finer. It isn’t good to breathe. Everyone is coughing even though we have all been wearing cloth over our faces. It is not falling as hard now as it was earlier but I am a bit worried because most of our early crops are already in. I don’t know what this will do to them. You can only remove the ash from the plants. It is much harder to remove it from the soil.

Ivan Stans - 5/20/2094

I have not been able to write in the Journal for a few days. We have all been fighting a terrible sickness these past few weeks and I finally came down with it a few days ago. Dawn and Ivan have been very ill (seem to be getting a little better today) but the day before yesterday little May passed from us. She was only 9 years old and she was very sick for nearly a week. They call it a stomach flu, but it seems worse than any I have ever seen. With the aching and diarrhea you gradually lose all of your energy. Poor May just couldn’t find the strength to defend herself against it. Mary is devastated with grief. I think that May was her favorite. Luckily, the other children didn’t have such bad symptoms as May. With everybody so sick for so long we have lost some of our late crops. Since everybody is in such a weakened state I doubt if we are going to be able to get back on top of the fields before the rains.

John Stans - 9/20/2122

Now that I have taken over the Jounals I think that Dom is happy to just be making the paper. He is actually trying to improve it. As far as we know, the way we make the paper has always been the same but he is convinced he can find a way to make it more consistent so we don’t have to throw so much away. We are having a hard time keeping up lately. It seems like people are wanting more of the paper lately. He has also been digging around in the Robert’s Library box. He said some of the books were damaged pretty badly (I don’t know how long it has been since somebody has actually looked at the books) and he wants to dry them all out and wrap them up so they won’t get any worse. I think he is actually trying to read their words as well. He remembers his grandfather John telling him how important these books used to be and how almost everyone once used the words in books. I remember looking at them when I was little and I didn’t really understand most of the words. I probably wouldn’t understand them now. When Droen gets older, and I am teaching him our words, we will get them out and see if we can find understanding.

Bal - 5/12/2189

Editor’s comment: The box of books that Bal refers to as Robert’s Library was a wonderful bonus for the Archival Project. This sturdy, sealed box contained 24 books that Robert and Jarrod Davis originally thought would be worth preserving and they were kept with the cache of Journals that built up over the years. Most of the books were non-fiction, reference volumes but there was some fiction as well. Several of these books were actually new to the Archival Project. Even though their existence was known from Industrial Age sources, there were no actual copies known to exist. Several of the books had water damage and all of the books had some damage from mold and generally from aging but there were only a handful that were damaged enough that information was lost. Eventually I will post an inventory of the books in a note.