Goodbye Calwood

Sigh. This is our last night at Calwood (which, just so you know, is actually Cal-Wood, but I hate typing that for some reason). I'm really pretty sad about it. But instead of being sad, I guess I could tell you what I did for my last few days.

Monday: The high on Monday was like 33 degrees, which is far warmer than it had been. That means we could work outside again! In the morning, we had to load up Angie's truck with branches from brush piles. Someone (probably Angie) had cut down a bunch of trees and left the branches in piles along the road up to Solitude Point. We had to load them in her truck so she could dump them in the burn pit by the barn. This is surprisingly hard work. The branches all get tangled up in each other, and many had been buried by snow. Heaving them out is hard sometimes, but really satisfying when you get a really hard one free. It got pretty cold and windy after we had been out for a while, which made waiting for Angie to come back when she went to dump a load pretty miserable.

In the afternoon, Tomm, Marquis, and I built bird boxes. Remember the bluebird boxes that we cleaned a week or two ago? Angie and Rick wanted a bunch more built. Some people had already worked on that before (some with pretty funny looking results), but Tomm and I hadn't. It wasn't too difficult though. Rick had cut template pieces for each of the sides, and we just had to try to repeat it. It was pretty fun. The only saw available was a jig saw, which is NOT my favorite, but I always enjoy building stuff. I'm proud to say that I think mine looked like one of the most well put-together. We also decorated them a little be burning designs and our initials into them with a soldering iron that was in the shop. I don't know how, but I somehow managed to completely forget to take pictures.

Tuesday: In the morning, there were more brush piles. These were even harder. Jess, Michala, Heather, Marquis, and I had a tough time with some of the branches. There were a few we just had to leave, they were so stuck. We were in a different area than we were on Monday, and the trees here were apparently taller. We had to saw several in half so they would fit in the truck. Let me tell you, hand sawing for long periods of time gets tiring. The first tree you cut, you get all excited because it's so easy. Then you do a few more. And a few more after that. Then you're pretty tired and never want to see another hand saw. Also, it was even windier than it was on Monday, and we were farther from the burn pit, so we had to wait a long time between loads in some crazy strong wind.

For the past several days, TK has been Rick's special helper. They've been working on getting the old barn doors (which got pretty messed up in the strong wind) off and taken apart, and new ones on.Tuesday afternoon, TK was scheduled to split wood. So I was Rick's helper. My task was to take apart the other barn door that TK hadn't gotten to yet. Taking apart is often more fun than putting together, so I had a good time. There were nails everywhere, a few random screws, and gigantic hinges. What more could you ask for? I got to know my pry bar and hammer pretty well yesterday.

After work yesterday, most of us went down to Boulder. Why, you ask? Because Tomm had an appointment to get a tattoo. He's been wanting a hand-sized tattoo of a velociraptor on the back of his shoulder for a while now, and one of the Calwood staff people has a tattoo artist brother in Boulder. So Tomm made an appointment. And we all wanted to come watch. Jess, Lindsey, TK and I were there when Mike, the artist, put the stencil on, then when he started doing the outline, then we went to go get food because no one really wanted the four of us crowding around the whole time. He got the outline and some shading done, and he'll come back sometime for the color. It actually looks pretty cool.

Wednesday: Today, in the morning, Christina and Heather were scheduled to split wood. TK and I were scheduled this afternoon. Christina fell on Monday, put her hand out to catch herself, and landed on her thumb wrong. She went to the doctor yesterday and found out her thumb was broken, and now has a cast (which we have all signed). So she couldn't split today. Angie said they were almost out of gas for the splitter, so the afternoon people might not be able to do it. I volunteered to take Christina's place, because I really kind of wanted one more turn splitting. Working the splitter is pretty fun and I didn't want to miss my last turn. Also, I had heard that everyone who wasn't splitting would be seeding an area between the barn and lodge, and splitting sounded more fun than that.

It turns out that seeding didn't happen in the morning. I don't know why. So it got moved to the afternoon. Since TK and I were actually scheduled to split in the afternoon, I decided to go ahead and take another shift. About five minutes into it, Angie came and got us and said they need everyone to seed because it was such a big job. One person sprinkles seeds, and everyone else covers the ENTIRE HUGE AREA with dirt from piles Rick had dumped with the bulldozer. Shovel, dump. Shovel, dump. Shovel, dump. Let me just say that I am very tired right now. The good news is that Angie said that if we didn't finish, we'd have to do an hour or so tomorrow. All we're supposed to do tomorrow is pack, clean up, eat lunch, and go back to campus. No one wanted to come back out and shovel tomorrow. We actually did more than Angie's goal for the day. So no shoveling tomorrow!

So there we have it. That's all the Calwood work. I still haven't quite realized that we're really leaving tomorrow. This has been such a great first project. My team is SO lucky.