Building Bridges Day Two, The Rocks.

The first problem today, was waking up to temperatures of around 40 degrees. Which is a whole lot colder then I want outside to be. So we kind of got a late start because cold is not a big motivator for me. Well, unless the heating system has broken and we are fighting to fix it, then it's a huge motivator. Unfortunately for the graveling-the-ends-of-the-bridge-because-hey-we-didn't-make-it-level-with-the earth-plan it had rained all night. Meaning that the road, the road that we had already tore the shit up with the backhoe and the pickup was a big muddy mess.

A big muddy mess that we didn't want to take a backhoe full of gravel down.

Still undeterred by the coldness and clouds we gathered a few tools and went off to the back to build the stone extensions that will keep the gravel from spreading out all over the meadow when we drive the truck over it. Well optimistically we assumed we could use the rocks we had unearthed when we dug out the culvert pipes.

Which was of course totally not how that ended up working.

What we came to realize, is that most of the stones King the backhoe had dredged up were huge. Like we can't move them even with two people huge. Like, I hope we like where these rocks are because they sure as hell aren't going anywhere anytime soon huge. Abandoning that plan, we did the next logical thing, which was to go into the forest to find rocks.

Now I have to explain something about the forest. So gather round readers and listen.

The forest floor has a lot of rocks on it. But you can't move those. They are the mere tips of the iceberg. They are held in place by tree roots as thick around as your thigh. They are wedged and crushed by the trees until it seems like you are trying to pull up the very roots of the mountains themselves. So you must go to the creek, or find slopes where the rocks are exposed by water erosion. Which of course means that you are collecting heavy ass stones on a angle.

Which meant that most of my morning was spent hauling arm fulls of rocks up an embankment.

To answer your question, no it was not fun.

Although it made that goddamned bridge motherfucking beautiful. It's an art people. So we stacked the stones and used dirt fill between them, and then we back filled each side of the bridge to make it look less weird that we hadn't thought to inset that bitch into the earth.

Although at one point during all this I was bringing rocks back in my pockets. Dedication people. Dedication. I also saved three snails. Mostly to make up for Froggate or Frogmageddon or whatever you want to call it. Not totally because I think that snails can grant wishes and are probably magical or someshit. Nope. Not me. Ha ha ha that would be crazy.

So anyway by that point I was super ridiculous hungry so we gathered up the tools and then we headed back up to the house to eat the grilled cheese sandwiches of accomplishment.

Which of course, is a lot better then the sandwich of loneliness or the ice cream of remorse.

Actually the ice cream of remorse sounds pretty good right now.

As long as it's chocolate chunk remorse.