trail work

Pictures! Video!

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First, check out all the pictures in the “Pacific Summer” album.  I even put captions.  Next, take a look at this awesome tree I took a bunch of pictures of throughout the season.  I may clean them up and crop them and make one of those three-picture scenes to show the changes in the seasons.  Or may not.  You could, if you want though.

Finally, two videos:
Bear in Wenaha Tucannon Wilderness
Rattlesnake in Tree

Like a Firecracker Waiting to Blow

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An excerpt of an assignment I had to write for the end of the season:

Like lighting a firecracker, felling an 80 foot tree has an atmosphere of apprehension and astonishment.  And while more effort is required than simply lighting a fuse, the result is that much more spectacular.  Making a face cut, you gain respect for how much weight the tree trunk can actually support – even with a crosscut saw one-third of the way through.  Making the felling cut, you expect it to fall at any moment, with your ears perked for any any strain or groan of soon-to-be timber.  After hammering wedges, with each blow reverberating up and down the back country skyscraper, and a bit more sawdust, the fuse hits the gunpowder.  From here, the procedure is the same.  That is, you grab your lighter, or crosscut, and find safe ground while watching whatever force of nature you’ve unleashed.  For me, it gave new meaning to “cut and run”.

Seriously, pictures to come soon.

Bear!

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I swear, I’m trying to upload pictures.  I’ll make it work sometime, I promise.  Especially because new pictures include an awesome bear.  And video of bear.  From less than 50 yards away.  BEAR!

The trail we’re working on is getting more beautiful the more north we go.  My hands are also getting more swollen the more we work.  Ibuprofen, or “trail worker candy”, is becoming a good friend.

I’m off to depend on the kindness of good strangers, soon to be friends, near Pullman, WA.  Which, if you don’t know, is near Moscow, ID.  Which, if you don’t know, is Josh Ritter’s hometown.  As Radiohead says, “everything, in its right place”.