- Joined
- Oct 25, 2004
- Messages
- 3,178
I try not to get too far off topic here. Sometimes I try harder than other times. Sometimes the lines merge. That's kind of the problem I'm having here.
Preliminary warning: my pics are still big, typically a bit over a meg in size each. I've included links instead of inserting them directly into the thread to spare the dialup users some unintentional pain. I have a copy of PSP and lack a good excuse for not sizing them down - call it artistic license. Someday I will. The good news is, you can zoom in to your heart's content. High resolution pics have do have their advantages.
Tuesday, as I've mentioned in other threads, was a maintenance day at the Camp. We were travelling from location to location in an attempt to get the long-neglected drainage system functioning again. This can't be considered anything more than dirty, smelly manual labor, and that's what I tend to think of it, but on Tuesday, it became a bit more. I'll try to explain.
I work on 400 acres, give or take, of spectacularly beautiful woodlands, wetlands, and semideveloped land. I often forget my environment. It's easy enough to understand, I think - the hustle and bustle of daily life, my job, stress, whatever. A big part of my job is watching people. I can see why I so often stop paying attention to everything else around me. I've developed tunnel vision. Sometimes, a day spent doing honest labor for an honest dollar is what's required to shake the detritus loose.
The culvert on the "admin" side of the street is a real PITA to work around. Trash tossed from passing cars finds its way down there. A beaver occasionally dams it. The brush had (until recently) choked it. The sides of the ravine it lays in are steep, unstable, and very muddy most times of the year. Here is a shot from the road. My two partners in crime (on dredging duty) are Wil, foreground, and Ben in the distance. They're not happy to be down there while I'm up where I'm at - Wil is actually threatening me (half-seriously) with a Ka-Bar. Rank has its priveleges as such and I reserve the right to take picture breaks. The image is not a trick of the light or photography - the stream behind them is indeed that overgrown. One needs to stoop simply to walk down the middle of it. In areas, one would need to crawl.
The 20" Siru's first field task was clearing this out; as I've said earlier, it handled this extremely well. It was a lot of work. You can see where I've come from, and where I'm headed. Pay no attention to the big bald bastid hamming it up for the photographer - the Siru was the star for this job. Numerous trees had to be cleared; you can see one of them. I would not have wanted to do this with a machete and chainsaws don't handle brush well.
It took me some time to realize that the lush foliage that I was cursing at the entire time was not evil, not hostile, and not out for my blood. It simply was, and I was simply removing it. It's definitely more beautiful than me and I feel a sense of loss at having a hand in its demise but it will grow back. The next time, I won't be around to cut it. We both know who the winner is.
In the operational area - pretty much smack dab between all the different ranges - there's an area of forest, mostly pine, mostly dead. Many of the drainage ditches run through here. Over the years they've become clogged to uselessness, meaning that the area floods badly during the winter; this has gone on for who knows how long. When it's not underwater it's hauntingly beautiful; the animals are very quiet here, the road is far enough away that the sounds of cars aren't readily apparent, and all one can hear is the burbling of the water (when it's moving) and the gentle sussuration of the wind.
We had canals to clear here too. From the start we had problems: fallen trees, a beaver dam, lots of brush and literally feet of accumulated pine needles at the bottom. Here's an image of it. Note the tree with the 20" Siru laying on it: that's the one with the iron heartwood that I managed to jar the buttcap (and nearly my hand) loose on. The Siru limbed it and cut through it twice. The beaver dam is difficult to see but lies just beyond it; Ben is in the distance, clearing a path to the site of the next major obstruction.
The 16.5" Chiruwa AK was my companion through most of this. The Ghost Forest can make one apprehensive but one feels very safe with the right tool in hand. (That, or my ultra-cool sunglasses cowed my prospective opponents into submission.) The pictures are somewhat washed out and appear far lighter than they actually were; this stand of wood is very gloomy. As you can see, the dead trees have many stubby, broken limbs that can make passing through a chore. A heavier khuk is tiring; a lighter khuk won't remove them cleanly. The Ghost Forest has its own rules.
Why the Ghost Forest? As best as we can tell, it was not always a forest. The trees are far smaller than they are anywhere else at the Camp; rumor has it that it was once completely cleared out and used for a variety of purposes. (I hear about it being a parade ground most often but the terrain is quite uneven and most of the canals have been there for a very long time.) One constantly finds relics of the servicemen from the past here: knotted ropes half-covered by the trees that grew over them, discarded artifacts of an earlier, seemingly forgotten time. The remains of a fence enclose a portion of it all, made from roughcut lumber and partially strung with rusted barbed wire, supporting one claim that horses were once kept in this area long ago. I've included a picture of it. I have better ones from close up but this is the one that wanted to be shown. It's a bit difficult to see: look across the canal from where I'm standing, slightly to the left. The top rail is sagging and uneven but the posts are nice and straight - look for two of them next to one another. Nothing is straight in the Ghost Forest that isn't manmade.
The ghosts of the past whisper quietly here, but if you listen carefully enough, you can hear them.
Trudging through this place can make one feel almost like an archaeologist poking amongst the ruins. Occasionally we find things that're completely unexpected but, had we done our homework, we would've known about. One of these is the Bridge. The Bridge originally served to span one of the drainage canals that lay in the path of a shortcut, from the admin area, through the Ghost Forest (which probably looked a lot different then), directly to the 300 yard line of the outdoor rifle range. It does not appear on a 1952 map I have, yet does appear on a 1958. This probably (but not certainly) means that it was built between these dates. Considering that it's made of wood and that we had to essentially clear the path to it from scratch again - it's been neglected for decades most likely - and that for an unknown number of years it spent its winters underwater, it's held up rather well. It still holds my 225 pounds, with some complaints. The debris on the far end consists of sections of branches stripped by an enterprising beaver, whose home sits directly to the left of the bridge; the top of the dome is level with the left handrail and is just about visible through the brush. It's enormous. The dam probably blocked the waterway at one time but, as water tends to do, the current found two paths around it. The dam will not be moved. We're not sure that we could, even if we wanted to.
I complain about my job often - I'm a sailor, I belong on a ship, chopping wood and clearing brush ain't my job, this is crap, et cetera. I'm still young at 28 and I lose perspective sometimes. My brother is a sailor. He drives a desk in a cube farm at a Coast Guard depot. He doesn't hate his job but he doesn't seem to like it either. I don't believe that he will ever gain anything from it other than a paycheck, nor does he expect to - it's not that kind of job. Maybe the next duty station. He'd kill to have what I have.
Nearly every day, I work in the middle of this. I complain about the heat when it's hot, I complain about the cold when it's not. I complain about the rain when it's wet and I complain about the lack of rain when it's dry. I complain about my bad knee, my popping joints, my aching back, my callused hands and my flat feet. I complain about the unfairness of my receding hairline and my poor hearing. (Poor hearing is par for the course in this line of work and mine was not always poor.) I complain about the traffic getting to work and the bills I pay when I get back.
I'm young and I'm healthy. I can tolerate that weather, those physical deficiencies don't slow me down and I can negotiate the traffic in my new car. I can pay those bills. To top it all off, I work in the middle of this. I have nothing to complain about. My good fortune is arguably undeserved.
Some portions of the Camp are accessable only during short periods in the summer. The rest of the year, these are covered with a deep layer of stagnant water, dyed black with tannin and probably polluted. It belongs to the salamanders and the frogs. Hopefully my hard work, and the hard work of others, will have repaired this; the new owners are due to move in in a month or two and will probably not appreciate this, but I did not do it for them. Work can sometimes be its own reward.
One of these places that's difficult to access is the Pond. The students don't know about it and never see it. I believe that some of our own personnel haven't seen it either. Although it lies next to the rifle range, that range has been abandoned for years and the Pond is largely forgotten. If you've taken the time to read this far, you've earned the Pond for yourself. Consider it my gift.
Out of the way, but not out of the mind.
Preliminary warning: my pics are still big, typically a bit over a meg in size each. I've included links instead of inserting them directly into the thread to spare the dialup users some unintentional pain. I have a copy of PSP and lack a good excuse for not sizing them down - call it artistic license. Someday I will. The good news is, you can zoom in to your heart's content. High resolution pics have do have their advantages.
Tuesday, as I've mentioned in other threads, was a maintenance day at the Camp. We were travelling from location to location in an attempt to get the long-neglected drainage system functioning again. This can't be considered anything more than dirty, smelly manual labor, and that's what I tend to think of it, but on Tuesday, it became a bit more. I'll try to explain.
I work on 400 acres, give or take, of spectacularly beautiful woodlands, wetlands, and semideveloped land. I often forget my environment. It's easy enough to understand, I think - the hustle and bustle of daily life, my job, stress, whatever. A big part of my job is watching people. I can see why I so often stop paying attention to everything else around me. I've developed tunnel vision. Sometimes, a day spent doing honest labor for an honest dollar is what's required to shake the detritus loose.
The culvert on the "admin" side of the street is a real PITA to work around. Trash tossed from passing cars finds its way down there. A beaver occasionally dams it. The brush had (until recently) choked it. The sides of the ravine it lays in are steep, unstable, and very muddy most times of the year. Here is a shot from the road. My two partners in crime (on dredging duty) are Wil, foreground, and Ben in the distance. They're not happy to be down there while I'm up where I'm at - Wil is actually threatening me (half-seriously) with a Ka-Bar. Rank has its priveleges as such and I reserve the right to take picture breaks. The image is not a trick of the light or photography - the stream behind them is indeed that overgrown. One needs to stoop simply to walk down the middle of it. In areas, one would need to crawl.
The 20" Siru's first field task was clearing this out; as I've said earlier, it handled this extremely well. It was a lot of work. You can see where I've come from, and where I'm headed. Pay no attention to the big bald bastid hamming it up for the photographer - the Siru was the star for this job. Numerous trees had to be cleared; you can see one of them. I would not have wanted to do this with a machete and chainsaws don't handle brush well.
It took me some time to realize that the lush foliage that I was cursing at the entire time was not evil, not hostile, and not out for my blood. It simply was, and I was simply removing it. It's definitely more beautiful than me and I feel a sense of loss at having a hand in its demise but it will grow back. The next time, I won't be around to cut it. We both know who the winner is.
In the operational area - pretty much smack dab between all the different ranges - there's an area of forest, mostly pine, mostly dead. Many of the drainage ditches run through here. Over the years they've become clogged to uselessness, meaning that the area floods badly during the winter; this has gone on for who knows how long. When it's not underwater it's hauntingly beautiful; the animals are very quiet here, the road is far enough away that the sounds of cars aren't readily apparent, and all one can hear is the burbling of the water (when it's moving) and the gentle sussuration of the wind.
We had canals to clear here too. From the start we had problems: fallen trees, a beaver dam, lots of brush and literally feet of accumulated pine needles at the bottom. Here's an image of it. Note the tree with the 20" Siru laying on it: that's the one with the iron heartwood that I managed to jar the buttcap (and nearly my hand) loose on. The Siru limbed it and cut through it twice. The beaver dam is difficult to see but lies just beyond it; Ben is in the distance, clearing a path to the site of the next major obstruction.
The 16.5" Chiruwa AK was my companion through most of this. The Ghost Forest can make one apprehensive but one feels very safe with the right tool in hand. (That, or my ultra-cool sunglasses cowed my prospective opponents into submission.) The pictures are somewhat washed out and appear far lighter than they actually were; this stand of wood is very gloomy. As you can see, the dead trees have many stubby, broken limbs that can make passing through a chore. A heavier khuk is tiring; a lighter khuk won't remove them cleanly. The Ghost Forest has its own rules.
Why the Ghost Forest? As best as we can tell, it was not always a forest. The trees are far smaller than they are anywhere else at the Camp; rumor has it that it was once completely cleared out and used for a variety of purposes. (I hear about it being a parade ground most often but the terrain is quite uneven and most of the canals have been there for a very long time.) One constantly finds relics of the servicemen from the past here: knotted ropes half-covered by the trees that grew over them, discarded artifacts of an earlier, seemingly forgotten time. The remains of a fence enclose a portion of it all, made from roughcut lumber and partially strung with rusted barbed wire, supporting one claim that horses were once kept in this area long ago. I've included a picture of it. I have better ones from close up but this is the one that wanted to be shown. It's a bit difficult to see: look across the canal from where I'm standing, slightly to the left. The top rail is sagging and uneven but the posts are nice and straight - look for two of them next to one another. Nothing is straight in the Ghost Forest that isn't manmade.
The ghosts of the past whisper quietly here, but if you listen carefully enough, you can hear them.
Trudging through this place can make one feel almost like an archaeologist poking amongst the ruins. Occasionally we find things that're completely unexpected but, had we done our homework, we would've known about. One of these is the Bridge. The Bridge originally served to span one of the drainage canals that lay in the path of a shortcut, from the admin area, through the Ghost Forest (which probably looked a lot different then), directly to the 300 yard line of the outdoor rifle range. It does not appear on a 1952 map I have, yet does appear on a 1958. This probably (but not certainly) means that it was built between these dates. Considering that it's made of wood and that we had to essentially clear the path to it from scratch again - it's been neglected for decades most likely - and that for an unknown number of years it spent its winters underwater, it's held up rather well. It still holds my 225 pounds, with some complaints. The debris on the far end consists of sections of branches stripped by an enterprising beaver, whose home sits directly to the left of the bridge; the top of the dome is level with the left handrail and is just about visible through the brush. It's enormous. The dam probably blocked the waterway at one time but, as water tends to do, the current found two paths around it. The dam will not be moved. We're not sure that we could, even if we wanted to.
I complain about my job often - I'm a sailor, I belong on a ship, chopping wood and clearing brush ain't my job, this is crap, et cetera. I'm still young at 28 and I lose perspective sometimes. My brother is a sailor. He drives a desk in a cube farm at a Coast Guard depot. He doesn't hate his job but he doesn't seem to like it either. I don't believe that he will ever gain anything from it other than a paycheck, nor does he expect to - it's not that kind of job. Maybe the next duty station. He'd kill to have what I have.
Nearly every day, I work in the middle of this. I complain about the heat when it's hot, I complain about the cold when it's not. I complain about the rain when it's wet and I complain about the lack of rain when it's dry. I complain about my bad knee, my popping joints, my aching back, my callused hands and my flat feet. I complain about the unfairness of my receding hairline and my poor hearing. (Poor hearing is par for the course in this line of work and mine was not always poor.) I complain about the traffic getting to work and the bills I pay when I get back.
I'm young and I'm healthy. I can tolerate that weather, those physical deficiencies don't slow me down and I can negotiate the traffic in my new car. I can pay those bills. To top it all off, I work in the middle of this. I have nothing to complain about. My good fortune is arguably undeserved.
Some portions of the Camp are accessable only during short periods in the summer. The rest of the year, these are covered with a deep layer of stagnant water, dyed black with tannin and probably polluted. It belongs to the salamanders and the frogs. Hopefully my hard work, and the hard work of others, will have repaired this; the new owners are due to move in in a month or two and will probably not appreciate this, but I did not do it for them. Work can sometimes be its own reward.
One of these places that's difficult to access is the Pond. The students don't know about it and never see it. I believe that some of our own personnel haven't seen it either. Although it lies next to the rifle range, that range has been abandoned for years and the Pond is largely forgotten. If you've taken the time to read this far, you've earned the Pond for yourself. Consider it my gift.
Out of the way, but not out of the mind.
