A couple of days later I was sat in a truck for 6 hours on my way to Utah, for my next project. This was to be my first 8-day project and we were off to Zion National Park. The journey did provide me with an encounter with some local Hillbillies! We were at a gas station stop when they rickety old truck (that you could tell was once painted blue) pulled up, on the front seat meant for a max of 3 people, were at least 5 and they just about had a complete set of teeth between them. I wanted to keep looking at them like they were a museum exhibition as they were so sterotypical but that was rude so I instead tried to look anywhere but at them which was really hard.
We had set up camp but had to move when we got back from the hike and so had to put up our tents in the dark which was not much fun when your name is Carla, and you're using a big rock to hammer in the pegs held in your hand. But it was totally worth the throbing thumb as the new campsite was a real campsite with benches and a fire pit and.....bathrooms! I had never been so happy to see a fluching toliet in my life, so much so that for 4 days after I still hadn't noticed the spiders lurking around them. The first night was mild, but then we had rain and my tent leaked a bit, and then the mountain we were working on had snow so the rest of the week got cooler and cooler.
The work itself was bloody hard. We were taking down some fencing around the edges of the park for when the heavy snow starts to arrive. This meant a lot of carrying, clipping, cutting, and more carrying, before lack of energy drove me to just drag the damn things along the snow. The problem with taking fencing down is that the further you go along the fence the further you have to carry the wrapped fencing back. We devised a chain that got longer and longer as the week went on, so you spent a lot of time alone in the snow to play with the snow and think about the possible eyes watching you as we were in Mountain Lion country but I never saw one. The fencing was so heavy, I tried so many ways to carry it, sometimes under my arm, or on my hip, and if I could lift it - then on my back but when you're carrying it for about a half a mile, whatever way its carried is going to kill you, what with the barbs, and the slippy snow that then turns in to slushy mud - there was never much hope for me. I remember carrying a load of fencing at one point and yanked it up on to my back, the barbs managed to grip something and I thought 'this is great - its not slipping' - only later I would discover I'd dug the barbs through my two layers and into my skin. When we weren't cutting down and carrying fencing we were working in a yard with great view of the mountains to prepare the old fencing for recycling - Though a little frustrating, I liked this part best as there was little carrying.
I can honestly say I will never look at fencing the same way again, and if I see barbed wire ever again - it will be too soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment