Erin- Cumberland- Day Four

Thursday 17 Jan 2013

Today was our first real day of work. We worked in an area that will be a trail but
that is now basically nothing—simply a forest-y hillside. When we first started out,
it was hard for me to imagine a trail running through, the only indication we had of
where the trail would be was a flag on a tree every now and then. The first step in
the process is removing the smaller trees that are in the trail—the trail is designed
around the larger ones, but the smaller ones must simply be removed. This involves
hacking endlessly at the ground around the trunk to break free the roots. Then,
pulling at the tree with all of your might until it begins to break free. Then more
hacking at the ground. When I watched the demonstration, I was quite excited. This
was the reason I had come on the trip in the first place! I was excited to get some
pent up energy out and put it to a good cause. The other group members felt the
same way. We all started off very strong, moving fast, working as productive as a
group of inexperienced tree removers could. In fact, the entire morning went by
quickly, all of us entranced in our work, finally relieved go get a bit done.

After lunch, however, we hit a wall. Suddenly I realized why it was so hard and
time consuming to build a trail in the first place. After swinging a seven-pound ax
for a couple hours, our hands were cramping up, our backs were aching and all we
wanted to do was take a nice hot bath. This was not an option whatsoever—we still
had a couple more hours to work. I came on this trip knowing the work would be
hard, knowing I would have to push myself, but in that moment when I still had a
couple hours of working and I felt like I couldn’t move my arms, I began to question
why I had been so crazy to come. Why hadn’t I been training all of winter break?
I scolded myself for my laziness, and then sucked it up and grudgingly got back to
work. The afternoon passed slowly but when we were done and as we walked back
through our work, we got to see what we had accomplished. Even though there was
not yet an actual trail built, we saw all of the removed trees and we could actually
see the path that the trail would take. This was the most rewarding part of the
day. I can’t wait for tomorrow to actually build the trail and get to see the finished
product.