Camping or logging? Pt II

Sunday morning we awoke slowly, at least in our tent. I am sure those kids were up at first light, but I was grateful for a good sleep once I made it back to the tent. The day was gray and damp, but a mug of hot tea and Tom's breakfast burritos fortified me for some more work. It wasn't long before we heard Ma & Pop coming up the hill, calling for help. Pop had a heck of a time through the soupy mud, and that last hill got him just inches from the top. They roped the truck and pulled in the little bit he had left to go, and then we were set to work. I layered my sweatshirt on over my t-shirt and followed the guys back to finish the tree from Saturday afternoon. Thomas worked his way up the trunk, David and Daniel worked their way down from the top. This tree had so many thick branches - Pop just kept saying, "That's a lot of wood!" I had made myself busy splitting the blocked wood with Pop's wedge and hammer. The base of the tree was so wide, the pieces were too heavy to handle. Then once we hit the rotty stuff, splitting the blocked wood made it easy to leave a pile of the rotten stuff behind. The wood was piling up, and then Tom hit the vein of ants. They were of the little biting/stinging variety. I discovered this once my wrists were under attack. Then I realized they had made it up my boots. I was wearing knee-high wool socks in the cold, so they had to make it to my knees to bite. Then, surveying the work we had accomplished, I felt the sting of a bite on my butt. I yelped and grabbed and squished, hoping to have done that darn ant in. Then I felt another. I high-tailed it up the hill so fast, too proud to drop by overalls in front of the guys. Oh! I was done with ants! We broke for lunch and finished up that pile afterward and started in on some more trees. Once all the trucks were loaded, we started packing up what we could. Marie and the girls and Julie would not return with us Sunday night. They thought I was crazy to stay, but I really enjoy the hard physical work. It is a good kind of tired to be! The road back down wasn't so bad. We unloaded and showered once again. I remembered to grab my headlamp, found my yogurt covered pretzels in the fridge, and decided there wasn't much use for the overnight bag that hadn't left the truck. What with coming down everyday, it was hardly the camping of living out of a backpack for a few days as the smell of nature overtook any efforts for cleanliness. Daniel pulled a good one on me, suggesting that he had changed his mind and wasn't going back up. Alas, just a joke - Dave and Andres, Daniel, and Tom & I made a run for the gate to Urraca once more. The road was even drier than a couple hours earlier, so we didn't have to back down and reattempt any of the hills. Once there, we set to work right away loading up the trucks. We got all three filled with relative ease - we were cleaning up piles of blocked wood, so we didn't have to bring the chain saws back out. I actually sat on the porch swing and read a bit. It was a good feeling to have the wood already loaded! We polished off the leftovers from the night before and sat around telling stories into the night. It was a lot colder without cloud cover, but it was good to see stars. After a cup of water and a trip to the bathroom, I hoped I could avert another sleepless night. This morning we awoke to clear sunny skies and slowly set to work breaking camp. Andres asked me who was going to wake up Thomas, but we all agreed it was better to let Thomas wake up Thomas. After a breakfast of quesadillas, we set to work a little more urgently to pack up. We were down the mountain pretty quickly, and sadly, I have no pictures of Sunday or Monday. The first load of laundry came out with lots of bark and wood shavings in the lint trap. The cooler is unloaded and stowed away. The tent dried out in the sun and has been folded and put away. Probably not tent camping for a little while, but it sure was fun! And we brought home a lot of wood!