|
|
|
five acre clearing
Saturday, August 19 2023
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
[REDACTED]
After another typical weekend morning at the cabin, I resumed work on the foundation insulation project. As always, I stripped off all my clothes so as not to get sand in them. But then most of the work consisted (as Gretchen later put it) of "playing Tetris" with small rectangles of styrofoam, which I cut so that they would fit around the electrical boxes and conduit at the top of this last spot to be insulated on the cabin's west foundation wall. Using a fair amount of spray foam, I got it all nicely blanketed with a consistent two inches of foam, which I left to cure while I went off to do other things.
I walked down to the lake with a beer thinking I'd pop it open on the dock and take a little break. But after attaching that Honda brake drum to the bottom of the overwintering support pole and sanding away the excess Gorilla Glue, I felt like walking to the northwest corner of the lake to see how the beaver dams were looking. While I was over there, I noticed that the new second dam (the one below the old dam that sets the water level of Woodworth Lake itself) was rendering a swath of land just below it soggy and waterlogged. I then walked over to the nearby Boy Scout campsite, the place with the picnic table and fire pit that Gretchen is so excited about. It was unseasonably cool day, with strong breezes and temperatures down in the low 60s, so there were no biting flies of any kind, which made the campsite seem much more pleasant than usual. Not being in a hurry to leave, I put more attention into exploring the immediate locale, venturing down to where the outflow creek flows nearest to the campsite. There I found an old makeshift wooden bridge across the creek to a knoll just beyond. The bridge was rickety but strong enough to support my weight. While there, I also came across a splash of crimson that turned out to be (according to Google Image Search) cardinal flower, a native North American member of the genus Lobelia.
I was barefoot at the time but nevertheless decided to explore further afield, mostly to get a look at a five acre clearing I'd seen on Google Maps' satellite view on state land just north of our parcel (and which Gretchen and I had hiked to from Lake Edward back in 2013). On the way there, I passed an impressive 30 foot granite cliff that I'd visited in the past and then I found that the creek into which the Woodworth Lake outflow feeds is significantly bigger than I'd remembered it (being nearly the size of Esopus Creek), though this might only be a result of how unusually rainy the summer has been. Near there, I collected some mushrooms I was pretty sure were chanterelles. I made it to the clearing (43.1256N, 74.3412W), which is so rectangular it must be man-made, though now I suspect beavers are maintaining it.
Back at the cabin, I proceeded to dig out the slot for the first sheet of styrofoam to go on the south (and only remaining uninsulated) foundation wall of the cabin. I could've worked from the east or the west, but since I'd recently been working on the west wall, I started from the west. There as another dispiriting trench wall collapse as I neared the footer that then had to deal with. By then, I was feeling some sort of mild malaise that kind of made me fucking hate what I was doing. And this might've contributed to the face that I hadn't quite dug the slot wide enough when I went to stick the sheet of styrofoam in. I got it to fit, but not without a small amount of sand getting trapped at the bottom of the trench between the styrofoam and the foundation wall. (It doesn't really matter; the pressure of the soil will force it all together anyway, but it irritated me nonetheless.)
This evening when I finished and went into the cabin, Gretchen had made some sort of Asian noodle dish, but I had no appetite. For lunch I'd eaten a couple huge burritos containing leftover two-week-old chili, so perhaps that was my problem. So instead of eating, I mixed some gin with kombucha and walked around in the twilight looking at the results of all my foundation insulation (something I often do after I reach some break point in a project). Then I fixed myself a glass of scotch on the rocks and took a nice hot bath, which my sore muscles desperately needed.
The rickety Boy Scout bridge across the outflow creek.
Click to enlarge.
Cardinal flower on the bank of the outflow creek.
Click to enlarge.
Woodpecker holes.
Click to enlarge.
30 foot granite cliffs.
Click to enlarge.
The clearing just north of our parcel's property line.
Click to enlarge.
The clearing viewed through a fish-eye lens.
Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?230819 feedback
previous | next |
