January Workday

On the eve of the Quadranid meteors, a small group of us braved the elements on a sunny, seasonable-but-blustery morning. Dan Carnevale's four wheel drive made it up the driveway to the stone wall, but my little Matrix stuck in the ice just past the barn. Dan, Barry Hervieux and I spent a little time clearing the small parking area across from the barn, and we sanded the area.

The lower drive is now "passable", but I still don't recommend anyone go up to the hill to observe alone. If you do come up, I'd recommend bringing your own sand, just in case. NOTE: free sand is available at the Cummington DPW yard just off Rt. 9, just bring your own shovel and container.

Ray Burk joined us, and we made our way up the hill, clearing the driveway of blow down as we went along. Barry and Dan's chains saws got a good workout, there were lots of large tree limbs to move out of the way. Dan had to stand on his tailgate to carefully cut up one of the limbs that was on some telephone wires.

I walked out to the lean-to's to check things out... both Scout Heaven and Piliated Path Lean-to's are in good shape, but there's a lot of blow down around Scout Heaven. All of the paths are impossible to follow, I needed to bushwhack my way through a tangle of brush... good thing I had my trusty pair of loppers. Maybe we can get the scouts to do some cleanup on the trails in the spring. It will take a lot of work. The big lean-to at Scout Heaven took a near miss... the top of a huge Hemlock must have missed the roof by a matter of inches!

The wind has blown most of the snow from the clearing, though where the drifts pile up the snow can be knee deep. All of the buildings are in great shape.

By noon we had cleared up the road enough for Dan and Barry to get their trucks to the clearing. Thanks to Dan, Barry, and Ray.

After all that hard work, I hope someone gets to see some meteors tonight!

-Ed