Entries to Win Afghan

Sign up to receive the Books Leaving Footprints Newsletter. Comes out occasionally. No spam. No list swapping. Just email me! jhyshark@gmail.com Previous gifts include a short story, a poem, and coupons. Add your name, and don't miss out!

Monday, August 12, 2024

Blazing Again

 There was another work day with a good group of volunteers to do blazing on the Spirit of the Woods section of North Country Trail.

Over an hour was spent in instruction and hands-on demonstration. Pete is our Trail Work guy, and he and I make a pretty good instructional pair. He's an engineer and tells everyone the very detailed way to do things just exactly right, and I am the person who tries to lighten it up a little when it begins to sound daunting and say that it doesn't always happen perfectly. But the truth is that we both like blazing done well.

There was a good turnout with some more EcoSeeds young people, and both familiar and new volunteers from our own chapter.
group of volunteers


Pete has assembled very nifty buckets of blazing tools, including some handy-dandy gadgets he made. Blazing is best done in teams of 2 or maybe 3 people. Counting me, there were 12 of us there. (but I wasn't staying all day), so this was just about the perfect number)
buckets of tools


Here is Peg trying her hand at painting a perfect blaze. She's a long-time volunteer with SPW, but was happy to have some actual instruction in blazing.
person painting trail blazes


I really couldn't stay all day. I did have white paint with me, and did the short spur trail from the trailhead to the main trail. I promised to do these spurs this summer, but have only managed about 1.25 out of 4 of them so far. And the summer's almost gone. Spurs are blazed with white.

I've managed to stay mostly on track this afternoon. Shopping, editing, still messing with the lawnmower, other repair issues in the house, blah, blah.

I guess you could say I hiked a little, but it probably wasn't even 0.2 mile.

See Young Volunteers

3 comments:

Ann said...

If you're going to do something you may as well do it right and that applies to blazing as well. :)

The Oceanside Animals said...

Lulu: "This is definitely a kind of blaze we can get behind! Not like those crazy wildfires!"

Sharkbytes said...

Ann- agreed!

Lulu- right with you on that one!