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July 11, 2001
My current construction project is a bridge over the beaver creek.
These were troubled waters in the spring, when there was flooding, making visits to the treehouse nearly impossible. I tried once, overly confident that I could traipse down a muddy bank and over the overflowing beaver dam. I immediately slipped on the mud of the sloping bank and would have proceeded to slide feet first down the bank and into the muddy creek water, but just in time I grabbed onto a tree and suffered only a slight loss in dignity and muddy shoes.
I convinced Jerry that a bridge would solve this problem, and we proceeded to select two suitable standing trees for the log base of the bridge. The first was a standing but dead cedar. Jerry felled it with
a chain saw, and dragged it out of the swamp with a chain and the four wheeler.
It was a good-sized log--30 feet long, and about 8 to 10 inches in diameter. In the same way, using the four
wheeler,
it was dragged down the trail, and taking the fork in the trail to the right, which reaches the creek upstream from the beaver dam, Jerry was able to drag it down the last stretch, a precipitous slope to the creek, and across to the other bank.
This sounds easier than it really was, because not only was it hard work, but it was hot and humid, and we were in mosquito headnets and long sleeves and surrounded by hordes of vicious blood sucking flying insects.
Even if one isn't sucking your blood, having her and a couple dozen close relatives hum angrily very close to your ear is unpleasant. Some found it possible to bite right through the clothing, and others discovered that it is possible to find bare skin by flying low at the ankles, then up the interior pants legs.
The second tree was a live pine, but it had been toppled in a wind storm and rested at a 40 degree angle with its top nestled among other upright trees. Jerry felled this one with the chain saw, but that's where
events stopped proceeding according to plan.
This tree, being living, and a pine, was much heavier than the cedar, and attempts to haul it out with the four wheeler resulted primarily in spinning wheels in the muddy trail.
Jerry finally traded the
four wheeler for the four wheel drive Ford pickup truck, and dragged the pine log into the yard and close to the trail to the creek. There it sat for a week or so while we contemplated. It was clear that the trail
is too narrow to use the truck.
I devised a wheeled rig for one end of the log. The rig consists of two wheels mounted on a short piece of 2 x 4 treated lumber. Two long one inch thick tree limbs were nailed and lashed to the 2 x 4, making a triangle. At the apex, the limbs could be lashed above the log to hold the contraption in place.
Jerry decided that if he could lash the front end of the log to the four wheeler hitch closely enough, the forward movement of the vehicle would raise the log at the same time that it was dragged forward. To our
amazement, it worked! A few minor adjustments were necessary, but five minutes later, the log had been hauled uneventfully to the end of the trail.
We still had to get it down the creek bank
and pulled across so that one end rested on the other side. This was accomplished tediously with the use of a chain and a comealong, sweat equity, and Jerry's knowledge of Newtonian physics. That is to say, the use
of leverage. By tightening the comealong, then pulling on the chain, he got mechanical advantage enough to be able to pull the log forward a few feet at a time.
We weren't alone, during this effort.
We had the companionship of several dogs, who felt there was nothing more fun than a romp in the creek, followed by a vigorous shake as close to one of us as possible.
The mosquitoes showed continued interest in our presence as well.
Eventually, the second log was in place, parallel and three feet apart from the first.
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