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treated lumber harvesting
Tuesday, July 18 2006
Gretchen had spent the night down in the city, visiting with Dina who is in town from Tel Aviv. There is some concern that Dina's new husband Gilad will be called up for battle against Hezbollah in Lebanon, since he was once part of a military unit stationed on (and familiar with) the Lebanon border. I should point out, by the way, that conscripts like Gilad do not have the contrived male-pattern assertiveness I've seen so often among members of America's all-volunteer military. I get the feeling that a country that is forced to draft its army doesn't feel such an urgent obliglation to "break" and "rebuild" its soldiers. Since everyone must serve, a sense of individuality is allowed to persist throughout the entire process. (My father was a draftee during World War II, but throughout my life he's always seemed to me as exactly the opposite of the sort of person ideal for a military role.)
Meanwhile I took the dogs on a double-Esopus outing, first to Fording Place where I deliberately forded at a place deep enough that Eleanor was forced to swim (something she will only do for utilitarian purposes, unlike Sally, who enjoys the occasional recreational swim).
After a trip to Marbletown Hardware ("the world's only rock and roll hardware store") for a few supplies, I took the dogs to the Secret Spot, which is upstream from Fording Place about two and a half miles. While there, I harvested some nice pieces of treated lumber that had been piled against the trees by the flooding that happened a month ago; these pieces had once served as a support beam for someone's deck.
Before I could leave I had to go back across the creek a second time just to retrieve Eleanor from the little makeshift campground among the fields atop the bluff of the northern shore. I don't know who stays there (Mexican farm workers perhaps?), but it includes a sizable a collection of rusty old trucks, campers, and even a small garden plot, and Eleanor always spends an absurd amount of time snuffling around them.
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