"Who's going to sing 'Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Work We Go'?" asked Tom, one of the other five volunteers as we set off on the Trailwork Tuesday outing organized by the Los Padres Forest Association. Once we got down to work, a different song ran through my head: Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang." There were no ankle chains, of course, but I associate swinging a heavy tool with hard labor done as penance.
I could swear the leaders called it a trailsmith, but Google won't corroborate that. All I know is that the thing was efficient at tearing up earth, stones, plants, and whatever it came into contact with.
We met at 9 a.m. at the trailhead, then hiked for 15-20 minutes, till we got to an area where the trail was rutted by recent rains. The first thing we did was dig a few drains, so water could continue down the hillside rather than the trail. Then Ari from the LPFA decided we should remove the five feet of natural berm, hacking away at the plants and earth until the trail was flattened out from one side to the other. I felt funny about it: When I hike, I go out of my way not to destroy anything, and I don't go off trail for fear of doing damage. Before and after shots below.
We next tackled a major strip of rutted trail. The plan was to create three stone dams (if I remember the phrase correctly), so that the center of the trail would stop eroding. First, we went to get large rocks from the streambed further up the trail. "They should be too large for one person," said Ari. "We call them 'double hernias.'" Stones get heavy fast; while carrying something larger would be manageable, this was like two people trying haul a bowling ball—another volunteer, Liam, and I pressed up against each other as we maneuvered downhill, along a narrow, rutted trail. "I'm like Ginger Rogers," I said when it was my turn to walk backward, but I don't think anyone got the reference. Once we had enough stones, we dug out rectangular pits the width of the trail. "It's like you're digging a grave for a small casket," said Ari, which sent us all into our heads for a while. We hoisted the stones into the little graves, repositioning them until they lay flush with the trail and wouldn't wiggle underfoot, and we filled in the gaps with smaller stones, followed by dirt.
We had been told to bring lunch, and I was anticipating a nice 20-minute break where we ate our sandwiches and chatted. My feelings about lunch are near religious on a normal day; at 12:30 p.m., after swimming two miles and working like a prisoner, for free, with no mention of lunch, I put my foot down. And my trailsmith. The cheese sandwich I had packed was pretty meager, but I don't know if I've tasted anything better. What's the point of working that hard if you're not going to reward yourself? I'm still baffled other people don't feel the same. A couple of people pulled out snacks, and one of the organizers eventually brought out a sandwich.
Tom had left at 10:30 a.m., Liam around noon. The rest of us soldiered on. We moved more large rocks and decimated a patch of wild fennel—it smelled terrific—to make the trail easier to see, and we sawed off a dead tree limb extending over the trail because it posed a threat to horseback riders. There were times during the day when I was sure that we made a positive impact. Occasionally, however, I thought we ran the risk of smoothing the trail out too much. The rationale was often to improve life for mountain-bike riders, but when I hike, I like varied terrain, I like having to clamber a bit, I like the feel of a stone under my foot when I step on it. Trailworkers, it appeared, have a compulsion: If they see a rock that could stand to be moved, they can't let it go. And that extends beyond rocks to anything trail-related. They know that it may all be for naught once the next rain comes, but they can't help themselves. More than once I thought of Sisyphus.
P.S. I will be extremely sore tomorrow, with commensurate moaning.
P.P.S. Afterward, at the parking area, I was talking to Ari about the next Trailwork Tuesday, and how it'd be great if there were ways to find out about it other than going on Facebook (which I'm trying to avoid these days). "You know what's amazing about Facebook, though?" she said. "How long it's been around. It's been around since I was in, like, middle school!"
What was in the cheese sandwich?
Posted by: MikeG | 20 February 2019 at 07:41 AM