Afternoon on the Water

After work today I loaded the kayak on the car and headed out to the reservoir to get some time on the water. I had not had a chance to paddle the boat since I installed a new seat and some knee braces. I was eager to see how these additions affected the boat's handling, but also just to get out on the water on only the second nice day in a few weeks. After a quick sprint to the north end, I doubled back at a more leisurely pace, keeping an eye out for wildlife along the shoreline. The first thing I spied was a Canada goose sitting on her nest in the grass along the shore. She was not happy to see me, and kept her head low to the ground, but her eyes firmly on me, and I floated by and snapped a few pictures.

At the north end dozens of turtles were soaking in the sun from log perches. Typically the turtles scatter quickly as my boat approaches, but this brave soul decided that the sun felt too good and his perch was just too nice to be abandoned by the approach of me. Even after the bow of my boat bumped his log, he held his ground. After soaking in the scenery for awhile, I headed back to the car. As I pulled my boat ashore, a few members of the track team headed out on the trail, and gave a thumbs up review of the new bridges when they completed their lap.

Stags, Phi Taus, Ulster, MACE, and Football players

It has been a hectic few weeks, with lots of crummy weather getting in the way of completing the bridge building around the reservoir. Last Thursday the Phi Taus came through with ten volunteers, but the bridges weren't ready, so instead we did some trail benching in the rain. Last Friday the Village crew told me that they had completed two of the small bridges and wanted me to go with them to drop them as close to their final resting places as possible. I had a two hour window between a meeting with the Ohio Humanities Council and our annual scholarship day ceremony, dashed home, threw on some muddy jeans, a t-shirt and my muddy boots, and met the crew out at Carol Emerson's house. We dropped the smaller of the two bridges in her backyard, then drove across McCall's farm fields and left the larger one on the edge of his field about 100 yards up hill from its final resting place. Then it was back to the house, back into respectable clothes, an on with the doctoral robe to line up for the scholarship ceremony. Scholarship day is one of my favorite Muskingum College traditions, because every year after we process in, we sing the "God of" song. The song's real title is "God of Wisdom, Truth and Beauty," sung to Beethoven's Ode to Joy, but we like to call it the "God of" song because those words are repeated so many times throughout the song:

God of wisdom, truth, and beauty, God of spirit, fire, and soul,
God of order, love, and duty, God of purpose, plan, and goal:
Grant us visions ever growing, breath of life, eternal strength,
Mystic spirit, moving, fl owing, fi lling height and depth and length.

God of drama, music, dancing, God of story, sculpture, art,
God of wit, all life enhancing, God of every yearning heart:
Challenge us with quests of spirit, truth revealed in myriad ways,
Word or song for hearts that hear it, sketch and model – forms of praise.

God of atom’s smallest feature, God of galaxies in space,
God of every living creature, God of all the human race:
May our knowledge be extended, for the whole creation’s good,
Hunger banished, warfare ended, all the earth a neighborhood.

God of science, history, teaching, God of futures yet unknown,
God of holding, God of reaching, God of power beyond each throne:
Take the fragments of our living, fi t us to your finest scheme,
Now forgiven and forgiving, make us free to dare and dream.

It is little traditions like this one that make me feel connected to this place.

We had miserable weather all weekend, but on Monday eight members of the Stag club came through and carried the bridges and put them in place. It was indeed a chore, but the Stags embraced the challenge. Tuesdy morning six football players arrived at the reservoir promptly at 8 AM, and hauled lumber, tools, and a generator out to the last bridge build site. Corey and Matt worked all day on the bridge, and at the end of the day the heavy generator needed to be hauled out of the woods. I managed to recruit two strapping members of the MACE club, who took turns pretending they were in a strong man contest, hauling it about a 100 yards a turn until we got it to their jeep. On the way back to town, we passed the track team out for their afternoon run, and told them the bridges were done. They added a lap around the trail to their run. This project has consumed most of my free time for the last month, required the help of village workers, football players and four different fraternities, but it is done at last. Katie and I celebrated later that evening by taking a walk around the reservoir with the dogs, coming home and popping open a beer.

Getting ready for the Second Bridge Build

It is Easter weekend, and we seem to have taken a momentary diversion from Spring. After temperatures reached into the low 80s on last Tuesday's bridge building day, a cold front plunged through the area, bringing nightime temps into the teens or twenties. We should begin a slow stead warmup this week. Our next bridge building day is scheduled for Tuesday. This west side bridge will span a deep swampy gully. Our make-do solution has been to throw a number of dead trees across it. Hikers need to carefully tread across these at the risk of twisting an ankle or slipping into the mud. Once we get this one built, trail access will be dramatically improved. The last two small bridges span creeks that are fairly easily crossed on makeshift board and log bridges. The biggest challenge once again will be getting the lumber to the site. I think we can get it most of the way there on a Gator or 4-wheeler, but it will have to be carried the last 250 yards. I borrowed a chainsaw this weekend in order to clear a few deadfalls that came down across the path this winter. Liam and I headed out this morning to get this task done before next Tuesday's bridge build. We encountered our friends and new neighbors, Phil and Amy, who came out for a morning walk to check out the bridge. They were excited to see it in place. Phil has been working with me on the trail since the beginning, and he was the one who came up with the design for the bridges, and put together the estimates of the lumber needed. But he's a little busy these days--he and amy just bought a house in our neighborhood and moved in last weekend. They are expecting their first child in a few weeks, and Phil is graduating from College in less than a month. All of this meant that Phil was unable to come out for the first bridge build day. We nonethless couldn't have done it without him. The village crew followed his plans and they worked perfectly.

It was a cold and gray morning, but after getting the chainsaw started it began to snow. The snow fell steadily for about a half an hour, and then as quickly as it came on, the sky cleared, the sun came out, and the snow event was over. Snow covered the green leaves emerging on spring's early bloomers, and weighted down the many spider's webs that had gone up in the last week. It was a beautiful spring day.

Here's a picture of the next bridge building site:

Here I am clearing deadfalls from the path:

A view of the lake decorated in April snow:

A view of the east side trail from the west side. The white line of snow marks the trail: A spider's web covered in snow:

The east side grove of pines in the snow:

New Concord's New North Bridge

Last week I was hit hard by the flu. I'm still suffering the aftermath, sleeping in my easy chair because lying flat on my back brings on coughing fits. And I get winded easily. All week long as I fretted about all the things I needed to get done but couldn't get done. Even on Sunday night, while I was clearly on the mend, I could't get more than two or three hours of uninterrupted hours of sleep before another coughing fit came on. Monday morning I awoke early and headed into the office to begin to play catch up. The short walk to campus left me sweating and out of breath. The phone rang as soon as I sat down. It was Village manager, John Huey. "Good Morning, Bil, are you ready to build a bridge tomorrow? The Village crews are at the lumber yard getting supplies and will be ready to go. How about 8 AM?" What spun through my head was this "No. It would be insane to do it tomorrow. You are in no shape to be lugging lumber through the woods. The army of student volunteers you've worked to recruit seems to have gone AWOL. They haven't returned your calls or emails. This is a disaster in the making. If you build this tomorrow, they might as well call it the Bil Kerrigan Memorial Bridge, because it will kill you." This was immediately followed by another thought: "You've been working toward this bridge build for two years. You've spent endless hours navigating the various interest groups and bureacracies, planning, lining up volunteers and materials. It is going to be sunny and in the seventies on Tuesday. On Wednesday the forecast was for thunderstorms, plunging temperatures, and the return of snow. If not tomorrow, then never." The words that came out of my mouth were "You betcha, John! We'll be there, ready to go!"

I was now committed, and had less that 24 hours to pull things together. But things looked bleak. And before I could do anything, there was that little problem of my paying job. I actually had to run off and teach some actual classes before I could start tackling this one. All the signs the rest of the day told me that my leap of faith would be rewarded. When I returned from class I had a message from the football team. They would have a half doen volunteers there. An hour later, a message from the Ulster fraternity--they'd have guys there, too.

Last night I slept for six straight hours, and awoke not fully refreshed, but a little bit stronger. The volunteers and village crew workers Corey and Steve arrived on time. They were pulling a trailer with what appeared to be enough lumber on it to build a modest-sized home. Thankfully, this was the material needed for all three bridges, and today we were just building the first of those. We met at the home of a friend and fellow kayaker. The bridge site was at the far north end of the reservoir loop trail, and we decided bush whacking through the woods and down the hollow behind her house would shorten our haul. Still, it would take many trips up and down a fairly steep hill, through woods without a trail, rapidly filling with this spring's edition of thorny multiflora rose. From the labored breathing of he football players, I'd say it rivalled or exceeded their typical practice workout. As we hauled lumber and materials, Korey and Steve and a few skilled students set to the work of planting posts and framing out the bridge. It went up remarkably quickly. I managed to put a tear in my jeans that ran from my fly to my knee. That crazy professor kept on working with his underwear exposed to the crowd! By noon it was finished, and our only problem was that we had in fact carried TOO MUCH lumber to the site, and would have to haul some back, plus the generator, tools, and other village materials.

I had to run off to shower for an important meeting with the College President. And all but two of my student volunteers had gone home. I turned to Eby, a student who is a member of the Ulsters, and had come through with volunteers this morning. Could he get some more guys out here, and finish this off without me? He whipped out his cell phone and started making calls. The Ulsters have fallen on some hard times recently. In fact they have been expelled from their fraternity house, banned from participating in group activities, and from wearing their orange and black Ulster colors. I don't exactly know what misdeeds they have been charged with to bring on these sanctions, and didn't really want to know. I just needed volunteers, and if helping me get bridges built could help the Ulsters redeem themselves with College authorities, it seemed like a win-win opportunity to me. I managed to get special dispensation from the Student Life authorities to allow the Ulsters to participate in the bridge build, "unofficially and not as Ulsters." If that's what we need to call it, fine. I plan to write a letter to the Dean and President praising the Ulsters for coming through on this project, and urging them to consider their volunteer spirit when determining their ultimate fate. And in the end, Eby and the Ulsters DID come though for me. After an afternoon of non-stop meetings, I headed back to the site to make sure everything had been cleaned up. The Ulsters were gone, but had done a remarkable job!

The first of four bridges is now complete! Next Tuesday we'll do the next long bridge, the village crew will construct two smaller bridges in the shop, and I'll get volunteers to carry the small bridges to their locations and set them in place. If weather and everything else cooperates, folks will be able to complete the loop walk around the reservoir without having to leap across or step into any of the creeks that feed it!

It seemed appropriate to dub it New Concord's North Bridge. Not so elegant as it's Concord namesake, but functional nonetheless.