Now for that random stuff.
I told in an earlier post about my uncle in West Virginia encouraging me to keep after this project. He was at one time ( long ago ) the Acting Dean of Students at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh , and for a variety of reasons left that and moved to 40 acres in the mountains of West Virginia near Buckhannon. His acreage was essentially 20 acres like / and 20 acres like \ and when he first moved there , he was 7 miles from the nearest paved road. Maybe a little exaggeration there - but actually , not much. Initially , he and his wife and some friends lived in tents and cooked over an open campfire as they used hand tools to build a one room cabin. Their place has evolved and grown considerably over the years and I will try to get some pictures because now the place is really something. They very graciously allowed me to spend several spring breaks with them while I was going to college and I have very pleasing memories of earning my keep by helping them with a number of chores. I helped collect truck loads of old sawdust from the site of an abandoned sawmill by the Buchannon River. Lay planks in order to back up to the 50 foot pile of leavings , shovel it into the bed of the truck until the tires started to flatten out , and then shovel in into wheelbarrows and transfer it to the garden for mulch . Getting there was somewhat of an adventure as we had to travel on what I would have to call wilderness tracks , not really roads , which would switchback up and down over a number of ridges before getting to the river.The track actually continued on the other side of the river but it was fast flowing and deep enough that the only way across was by amphib or boat as far as I could see. We made several trips and saw deer , wild turkeys ( you should see those things RUN up the side of a hill that you could barely stand upright on ) and the hillside beside the river was where we went to gather wild ramps which I highly recommend to anyone who has never tried them. BUT - they will make you stink.
One year , my "chore" was to help clear trees and brush from the right of way for their power line ( yes -they finally got electricity ). If they didn't clear the power line , the electric company would spray along the right-of-way with defoliant which would then get into the garden and water table ( ALL water was hand carried to the house from several springs ) so this was pretty important . The stretch I was tasked to clear was about 100 yards up one side of a hill above the house and then another 100 to 150 yards down the other side. Using a scythe ,a brush hook and an axe( and a file for sharpening ) I spent the best part of the first day working my way up this steep , overgrown hill. The next morning when I got back to it - and I was getting pretty good at hacking through the 2" and 3" thick saplings with that brush hook - I finally crested that hill and looked down at a FOREST. This side of the hill got most of the sun and was sincerely and severely overgrown. Endeavor to persevere. It took me most of the rest of the week but I did finally get to the road at the base of that hill.
This is getting kind of long and not what I wanted to talk about , but - what the hell - one more memory. On another spring break we went out to the site of where they were drilling several gas wells and had cut down all the trees to clear the drilling site. All of the cabin heating and cooking was done using wood stoves - several of them , and one of the first structures erected other than the cabin , was the woodshed. We spent a couple of days collecting truck load after truck load of logs from these clearings. The logs had to be cut into 18" sections using a bow saw and then split with a maul and then stacked. I spent several full days in the woodshed sawing , splitting , and stacking while it SNOWED . Not your typical spring break.
NOW -what I wanted to tell you . We were recently together for a niece's wedding in Seattle and I got to talking with my uncle and aunt and reminiscing and I asked if they still were doing those things I had done while on break. They told me that the garden had been essentially abandoned because the trees on their place had grown to such an extent that they were kinda sorta living in the woods now. When I talked to them recently my uncle said he now had proof that they were actually living in the woods. He had been sitting in what is now his "den " and looked out the window to see a bear nosing around on the hillside below the cabin. He called to his wife , " come look , there's a bear out there. " She opened the door and went out on their deck and made motions and noises , encouraging the bear to depart , which the bear did in somewhat of a hurry. But not before leaving a large deposit as a reminder of it's presence. My uncle said " this proves two things : one - your aunt can and will scare the crap out of a bear. And two - we are definitely living in the woods now , because THAT IS WHERE BEARS POOP."
This has certainly gone on for longer than I intended ,so I'll suspend here and when next we meet I hope to tell you about further yard art progress AND another uncle - this time my mom's younger brother who at one time was a big deal at NASA.
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