Book Club

Eating Dirt

It’s become a book club tradition to spend a day working with Washington Trails Association to give back and lend a hand to our beloved trails. This year we helped build a new trail at Little Mountain. We gathered at the trailhead, greeted by the knocks of woodpeckers and the smiles of our crew. Barbara, our crew leader for the day, gave us a safety briefing and explained what we would be working on.

The trail was aptly named the Upquick Trail. Barbara took us down the lovely new switchbacks to try out the old trail on the way back up. We got up quick alright. The trail went straight up the steep hillside. They started working on the new trail in October and now it just needed some final touches like some rock walls to help retain soil and prevent erosion. I’ve wondered how they make those nice neat rock walls on the trails, now we were about to find out.

The key to the rock wall is the zip line. A pulley system allowed us to move massive rocks down the steep trail most efficiently. I was super stoked to hear we were working a zip line, and this wasn’t just a simple zip line like I’ve done before, but a legit zip line that went straight down the mountain side. This was a task that required great care and coordination.

We paired our work party with Eating Dirt, a memoir of a tree planter. Like most jobs in the outdoors, tree planting is not a glamorous one. They spend entire days hunched over digging holes and planting little seedlings as fast as possible. They were getting paid by the tree and it was grueling work. The way that Gill describes her experience, though, is right on and exactly how I feel after a work party. It’s hard work, but it can be addictive in a strange way that makes you keep coming back for more.

During our lunch break, we discussed some of the hardest jobs we’ve had. Jamie has spent a lot of time working in the outdoors studying fish and really related to the last part of the book when the tree planters live on a boat off Vancouver Island. Rebecca told us how she spent a summer in Alaska working in a cannery for college money. She said it was incredibly humbling. We all decided that it’s good to have those types of work experiences when you are young: humbling hard work.

By the end of the day we had transported a large pile of boulders down the mountain. It was more fun and exciting than hard and humbling, but it certainly gave us perspective on how much work, effort, and love goes into maintaining our Washington trails. While we celebrated our accomplishments for the day, we found out that one of the “orange hats” that was with us, Pete, had recently logged over 2000 work hours with WTA in his lifetime! He even self-published a guide to building trails that many of us happily bought and got signed by him. Then we headed to Skagit River Brewery for a celebratory meal to finish off our day of working in the woods.

There was something alluring, addictive even, about the job. I liked the feel of loam between my fingers, loved the look of a freshly planted tree bristling up from tamped soil. Planting trees was a whole, complete task. You could finish what you started in just a few seconds. You could sow a field in a day. It meant being outside, unprotected from the elements, but at least weather affected everyone equally. Best of all, in a cut block you could erase your old self. You could disappear almost completely.

Charlotte Gill, Eating Dirt
Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill

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Book Club Archive

Book Club

Dirt Work

There is nothing like getting your boots and gloves dirty on the trail. This month we did just that by volunteering with the Washington Trails Association and reading Dirt Work. The book is a memoir by a self-described “traildog” who has worked trails in several National Parks. From the beginning Christine encounters sexism. In order to prove herself, she has to quickly learn how to use a saw and to endure long days of difficult physical labor. It’s a long road, but she finds that she thrives as a traildog, despite the wear and tear on her body.

Our dirt work day was quite different than Christine’s typical day on the trail. Our group was enthusiastically greeted by the WTA crew and they wanted to know all about the book we read. We stood in a circle and introduced ourselves and the crew leader asked us, in the spirit of the book club, to share our favorite genre of book. This made me very happy and it was something that I assume would never happen in one of Christine’s trail briefing.

Our major goal for the day was to brush out the Snoqualmie Lake trail. The salmonberry bushes were encroaching the trail making for low visibility and wet clothes for hikers in the rain. We were sure to snack on the ripe berries before we “lopped” them to oblivion, sometimes digging them out completely. We unceremoniously slung the poor victims into the depths of the forest to turn to dirt. It seems callous and wrong, but man, it is satisfying. We did a heck of a job.

Some members of our team worked on tougher tasks like digging drainage and moving large builders to support them. We were also tasked with “popping rocks” which is the glamorous job of digging up rocks in the middle of the trail that may be a tripping hazard. Have you seen a trail in the Cascades? Someone could literally spend a lifetime popping rocks on the trails here. Not nearly as satisfying as brushing, but it’s fun to say.

The thing about the book that stood out to me the most was how Christine really appreciated the female companions and teachers she had on the trail. It is nice to feel supported on the trail and like you belong there. WTA does a fantastic job of making you feel at home (no matter the gender) and they really take the time to make sure you are taken care of. This day was made even more special with the support of our fabulous book club crew and from my sister who was in town visiting and was brave enough to join us for the day.

Trailwork is not fetish, hiatus, or a meander off a truer path. Through two decades of changes, years of both drudgery and stimulation, trailwork has been an unexpected constant, the magnetic pull that swings my inner needle true, the thing that has taught me, in a way, how to live.

 

Dirt Work by Christine Byl

 

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