trail daze

On Saturday I went to a workday at Christian Encounter Ministries with a few people from DCCC. According to their website, CEM is a ministry for youth who are dealing with anger, depression, abandonment and youth. It’s located on a large ranch in the Sierra foothills. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of work to maintain such a large ranch. I ended up working on the trail team for the day, rebuilding a trail that had become overgrown with weeds.

As you can see, the trail was pretty overgrown with weeds. We pretty much used hand tools (some of which I’ve never held or heard of before, like Pulaskis and McCleods) and a lot of muscle to clear out the trails and create little ditches for water to run off of.

By the end of the day we were all exhausted and looked a little worse for the wear.

But it was all worth it, by the end of the day the trails looked really nice. I definitely have a new found appreciation for all the trails that I hike and bike on. It’s amazing how much hard work goes into building and maintaining these trails and I am thankful for all the unnamed workers (who are often volunteers) who toil endlessly to keep these trails usable for the public. I will definitely try to leave less of an impact on the trails, especially when I’m tearing through them on my mountain bike.

On a side note, it was good to see both Chris and Zoya at the CEM workday. They both seem really happy out there in Grass Valley. They’re both pretty outdoorsy in general, so they are definitely in a great place, and on top of that, they get to work with a really cool ministry. I wonder if I should do something different with my life. On the one hand, I’m really thankful for my job, it pays the bills and provides me with a lot of freedom; on the other hand, sometimes I wonder if I should be doing something more worthwhile. Hmm, I guess at the very least I should use my freedom to do more worthwhile things…

Things I am thankful for:

• hiking and biking trails, and all the work that goes into building and maintaining them
• gardening tools
• cool ministries like CEM
• sunshine and shade