The calm days

I am spending time with my parents in their new home. I like the place they have found. The house is cozy, the neighborhood is quiet and comfortable and you would never know they lived close to a city.

I have been keeping busy preparing for the trail crew that I will lead during the month of July and apartment hunting for the fall. I am getting more and more excited about my Golden Gate crew, though having never led, I have much to worry about too. We will be building raised timber structures to keep the trail out of the water (or the water out of the trail, as they say). That is the most exciting part for me. So far. Training in Washington State was fantastic as I had never experienced trail building and now I feel much more prepared. I learned how to build a turnpike (a timber frame filled with stone, crushed stone and then sedimentary soil, crowned at the top for proper water drainage) and a puncheon (a timber bridge made of two sills, two stringers and planking) made out of cedar and pine, felled near to our worksite. We, a team of seventeen people or so, managed to build nearly the entire two strucutres in six and a half hours. Our instructor told us at the end that he had never worked with a team that managed to produce so much in so little time. !!!

So, I have forest construction art to look forward to.

Last night I took a walk around the neighborhood. It was nice getting out of the house. I also slept on my back porch two nights ago. I tried to sleep outside, but after the third mosquito I moved in. I miss living outside. God, I miss it. But it's more than that. I miss being surrounded by people who also enjoy living outside. This, and a myriad of other reasons, is why this past year was such a fantastic experience. You can not understand it until you have lived it.

I'd like to share it with you.