Etna is a wonderful to place to view the "Superman memorial Span." The following article will explain.
Subj: Re: Greetings!Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 6:50:59 PM Eastern Daylight TimeFrom:
[email protected] (Will Lange)To:
[email protected] --
You think it's cold now? Wait'll tomorrow night, when the first cell of
high-pressure polar air swoops through New England! Sleep in your socks!
Really sorry to hear about Winter. Hope she's resting up in a warmer
climate. Dogs do give it everything they've got.
Don't know if it will overwhelm your server, but I'll append the newspaper
column I wrotw a few days after I met you and Winter.
Will -
A YANKEE NOTEBOOK NUMBER 997
Willem Lange 603-643-4156
Box 288 603-643-0112 -- Fax
Etna, New Hampshire 03750
[email protected]
September 4, 2000 For week of 9/3/00
SUPERMAN TAKES A BATH, AND I GET STUCK BUILDING A BRIDGE
ETNA -- I drove home the last galvanized spike with a flourish and a couple
of extra whacks for emphasis. "There!" I exclaimed. The dog, resting in the
ferns a few yards away, looked up to see if the exclamation involved her.
"That'll hold 'er! Now to move those blankety-blank rocks!"
It was Superman made me do it: made me work on Labor Day. He put the
finishing touches on an already deteriorating situation created a few years
ago by a bunch of kids.
Superman is the "trail name" of a Viet Nam veteran who's currently hiking
the Appalachian Trail. The other day, on his slow progress from Georgia to
Maine, he arrived at the short section of trail I have adopted as mine to
monitor and maintain. He came at evening to a brook crossing in an alder
swamp and decided to take a much-needed bath.
Now, if you know alders, you know that these otherwise virtually useless
little trees grow in practically impenetrable thickets in silty,
unconsolidated sediments beside streams. They stabilize the muddy banks,
help keep the water cool, and provide shelter for stream life. When you chop
them away, two or three passages by the feet of cow, moose, or human being
will suffice to churn the banks into mushroom soup.
Here where Superman decided to take his bath, I have been agitating for
years for a bridge. But the folks at the Appalachian Trail office are
probably too busy to see to it; and the primary local source of volunteer
personpower had sent a crew of young students to tackle the problems of the
crossing. "What you need here are stepping stones," they announced, and with
the incredible energy of youth sweated three large boulders from their nearby
resting places and wrestled them into place on the brook bed. The brook at
the time was about three inches deep, so the foot-thick boulders stuck up
well above it. But during the January thaw and the spring freshet the brook
is about knee-deep, which it occurred to me might reduce the stones' utility.
Also, stepping stones interfere with a stream's flow, spreading it out; and
it didn't take the imagination of a rocket scientist to see what that would
do to the brook banks.
So we had stepping stones. The dog and I dutifully hopped across them in
low water and high (even when they were submerged), and teetered dangerously
on each when they were clad in ice. I took one cold bath; she took two. And
I kept watching the banks. And sure enough, each year the stream was about a
foot wider and the banks soupier. It was time to do it: to grab the bull by
the horns and bridge the brook.
But life is busy and hectic, and building a bridge, like replacing broken
shingles on a roof, gets put off in good weather because it isn't needed, and
in bad because it can't be done then. The stream slowly got wider and the
need more obvious. It became clear that neither an earthquake nor a
continental ice sheet nor a band of fresh young volunteers (with ears this
time) was going to take care of my little brook's problem.
Years ago, a group of Outward Bound directors, including me, was
kvetching to the founder of the Outward Bound movement -- a very elderly
German named Kurt Hahn -- about the administrative and organizational
problems that we felt were overwhelming our creativity. He listened for a
long while and finally asked, "Does anyone else here in the United States
perceive these problems as critically and clearly as you do?"
No, we allowed; probably no one else did. "Well, then," he said, "you
are clearly the ones who ought to be solving them."
So on a recent trip to the lumber yard I picked up a nice, solid,
knot-free, 12-foot-long two-by-twelve pressure-treated plank. I already had
two chunks of pressure-treated six-by-sixes out by the woodpile. I set the
plank aside, ready to be installed the next time I felt like it, if ever.
And then Superman trudged into my life.
Setting up his tent beside the brook and feeding his German Shepherd
companion, he then decided to bathe and do a wash. But the water was too
shallow for either. So he dragged stones this way and that till he had
enough water impounded to do a reasonable job of wetting and rinsing
everything that needed washing. I came along as he was just getting dressed
again.
"Hope you don't mind," he said when he discovered that I was the adoptive
father of that chunk of trail, "but I've made a little bathtub here." I
didn't mention it, but he'd also raised the water level up into the mud of
the bank, and it was bleeding gray plumes into the clear current.
No more. Today I sank the last galvanized spiral nail, put away the
tools, and dragged the crowbar out of the truck. Then, with the dog looking
askance at the flying water, heaving rocks, dripping sweat, humming
mosquitoes, and Anglo-Saxon-blistered atmosphere, I worried those grim
granite monoliths into the banks on either side. The little brook, like the
Mississippi after the fall of Vicksburg, once again flowed unvexed to the
sea.
"How would you like," I asked my furry pal, "to be the very first dog in
the whole world to cross this brand-new bridge? I'm going to call it the
Superman Memorial Span."