Each day of work this week was accompanied by gorgeous weather. We work 10-hour long days Wednesdays through Saturdays. We all get up around 6:15, pull on our uniforms- which are blue t-shirts and tan-colored Carharts. Then we make our lunches, eat breakfast, fill our Nalgenes with water, scramble out the door to get our tools from the shed and bale into the fire-engine-red truck to head towards the trails by 7 am. We hike to the trail heads with our packs( full of extra clothing, water, lunch foods, snacks, sunscreen and first aid supplies), our orange hard hats, goatskin gloves and tools. We have 12 tools, so each day we choose two tools.
On Wednesday, our first day of work, we hiked a few miles to Colombine trail where we spent the day constructing a waterbar, filling in a ditch with dirt that we dug up and transported with pulaskies, shovels and dirt bags. We also spent a lot of time brushing, which means taking dead timber and laying it in divits or other places where we do not want hikers to walk. That day we also drained an enormous puddle over the train by creating a route for a stream to run off.
The next day, we went to Frog Pond Trail, where we assessed what needed to be done to improve the trail. Because the first part of the trail is through a marsh land, we ended up rerouting the trail in two places and built a bridge. On other parts of this trail we did brushing, cleaned out a drain that had been completely blocked by fallen timber so that water could drain away from the trail, and cleaned out water bars. We also say a moose at the end of the trail. It was neat to see, but a bit unnerving for all of us because it was young and we knew its mother must have been nearby, but we didn’t see her.
We spent our last two days working on a trail between the two that we had already improved. This posed numerous challenges for us because it lies in a marshland. We attempted to create a bridge but encountered one problem after another, because we misjudged the slope of the land, didn’t notice the slight current of the water beneath the marshy grasses and had to walk quite a distance to gather rocks and timber. While crushing rocks, we broke the sledge hammer which slowed us way down. The second day we realized that we needed to dig a ditch and also reinforce it, which was difficult because rocks are not easy to set firmly into soggy ground. When we tried to split a log (evenly) for the planks of the bridge with just a small hand saw, 2 pulaskies (which is like a double bladed ax of which one blad has beed twisted to serve as a hoe) and a tiny mallet and all six of us, it took 3 hours and was exhausting!
One other thing that happened this week, is that the sewage system in our cabin broke down and backed up in our basement. This was a bit inconvenient, but the good thing that came out of it is that we were then notified that the water from our faucets (which we’d been drinking…although it tasted bad) that looked yellow and murky, is not safe to drink, because it contains a lot of diesel. We were repulsed to know that we’d been drinking diesel, but it has given us many laughs and we now know where a pump is (about 3 miles away) where we go to fill up jugs of water after work for drinking and cooking. So, despite the inconvenience of no toilets for a few days, the sewage problem was a blessing in disguise.
After enjoying a few relaxing days outside, we’re preparing for another week of fun, but physically demanding work. Now a glimpse of this week in photos:
