Swirling
[email protected]
We were up at five AM.
Dylan's father is a heavy equipment operator. Today he had a job running
a delimber.
For those who don't know, a delimber sits on tracks or a flat bed and has
a long boom with front and back grapple hooks, a swinging butt plate and
a front and rear saw. It is designed to pick up trees, remove all the
limbs and cut the log to the proper length.
It was an interesting job because it was a local private land owner who
has a select cut every year and it was located in Gold Creek, MT. site
of an 1862 gold dredging operation that left huge, vast mounds of river
rock for miles and miles. At the time of the gold discovery the
landscape was decimated by gold mining operations.
Douglas fir and lodge pole have been growing there for about 102 years
now.
It was a low impact select cut which means, basically, not a clear cut.
The land owner is not a lumber corporation, but a fourth generation MT
native who uses the lumber sale to pay his property taxes.
All this said, you can't believe the mess.
Dylan sat in and ran the delimber for about thirty minutes and he seems
to have his dad's skill at operating. He said it was just like
Playstation. ( for those of you wondering what video games will do for
kids ) Then we watched his dad tear through this deck of trees ( the
trees were all hand felled and skidded into a pile )
while we talked about why someone would cut trees. His dad can de limb,
cut and deck a log about every twelve seconds, for perspective. While we
talked the truck driver showed up, in a self loader, to take the logs to
the mill. He let Dylan climb into the loader seat, located above and
behind the cab, and swing the boom around. He wouldn't let him load,
mumbling something about not wanting a log shoved through his cab. We
watched him load logs onto his truck, which he did in thirty minutes,
start to finish. Dylan sang the Lumberjack song from Monty Python to his
dad over the radio.
We counted rings on logs. The oldest tree we found was seventy two, a
Douglas fir, about twenty four inches in diameter.
We climbed the mounds of boulders from years of dredging. We talked
about gold and greed and impact and reclamation. We had a fir cone
fight. We saw a rattle snake, we saw white tail deer who are so nosey
they came right to the deck to check us out. We saw bear scat, but no
bear. We hiked, we rode in a log truck, we had a memorial ceremony
for the dead trees. We found a mouse head with no mouse. We found a
shady bank of snow and made angels. We pulled wood ticks off our socks.
We climbed on the remains of an old sluice and part of the original
dredge, now half submerged in a dredge pond. We found a cow skull.
When we came home we ate peanut butter and jelly and went to Karate where
Dylan sparred everyone in the class, and learned a new kata. He talked
with his instructor about Ki and they tested each other's inner strength
in a game where all the students line up one behind the other and try to
push over one student who is focusing his Ki.
He came home and found a package from friends in Arkansas filled with
dried mushrooms, okra, mud dauber nests, persimmon seeds, acorns, sweet
gum seeds, organic popcorn and pictures of salamanders.
He wrote an e-mail to the green party, which he joined two months ago,
and volunteered to collect signatures for a ballot initiative to buy back
Montana's hydro electric plants.
He's eating popcorn and watching Spartacus. He says he wants a chariot
for his tenth birthday, or a sling shot.
It's almost 8:30 PM on a day that started with only a vague plan to be at
the dojo on time. We have no plans for tomorrow but it will be worlds
better than a desk and math book, what ever it is.
Deb L
Dylan's father is a heavy equipment operator. Today he had a job running
a delimber.
For those who don't know, a delimber sits on tracks or a flat bed and has
a long boom with front and back grapple hooks, a swinging butt plate and
a front and rear saw. It is designed to pick up trees, remove all the
limbs and cut the log to the proper length.
It was an interesting job because it was a local private land owner who
has a select cut every year and it was located in Gold Creek, MT. site
of an 1862 gold dredging operation that left huge, vast mounds of river
rock for miles and miles. At the time of the gold discovery the
landscape was decimated by gold mining operations.
Douglas fir and lodge pole have been growing there for about 102 years
now.
It was a low impact select cut which means, basically, not a clear cut.
The land owner is not a lumber corporation, but a fourth generation MT
native who uses the lumber sale to pay his property taxes.
All this said, you can't believe the mess.
Dylan sat in and ran the delimber for about thirty minutes and he seems
to have his dad's skill at operating. He said it was just like
Playstation. ( for those of you wondering what video games will do for
kids ) Then we watched his dad tear through this deck of trees ( the
trees were all hand felled and skidded into a pile )
while we talked about why someone would cut trees. His dad can de limb,
cut and deck a log about every twelve seconds, for perspective. While we
talked the truck driver showed up, in a self loader, to take the logs to
the mill. He let Dylan climb into the loader seat, located above and
behind the cab, and swing the boom around. He wouldn't let him load,
mumbling something about not wanting a log shoved through his cab. We
watched him load logs onto his truck, which he did in thirty minutes,
start to finish. Dylan sang the Lumberjack song from Monty Python to his
dad over the radio.
We counted rings on logs. The oldest tree we found was seventy two, a
Douglas fir, about twenty four inches in diameter.
We climbed the mounds of boulders from years of dredging. We talked
about gold and greed and impact and reclamation. We had a fir cone
fight. We saw a rattle snake, we saw white tail deer who are so nosey
they came right to the deck to check us out. We saw bear scat, but no
bear. We hiked, we rode in a log truck, we had a memorial ceremony
for the dead trees. We found a mouse head with no mouse. We found a
shady bank of snow and made angels. We pulled wood ticks off our socks.
We climbed on the remains of an old sluice and part of the original
dredge, now half submerged in a dredge pond. We found a cow skull.
When we came home we ate peanut butter and jelly and went to Karate where
Dylan sparred everyone in the class, and learned a new kata. He talked
with his instructor about Ki and they tested each other's inner strength
in a game where all the students line up one behind the other and try to
push over one student who is focusing his Ki.
He came home and found a package from friends in Arkansas filled with
dried mushrooms, okra, mud dauber nests, persimmon seeds, acorns, sweet
gum seeds, organic popcorn and pictures of salamanders.
He wrote an e-mail to the green party, which he joined two months ago,
and volunteered to collect signatures for a ballot initiative to buy back
Montana's hydro electric plants.
He's eating popcorn and watching Spartacus. He says he wants a chariot
for his tenth birthday, or a sling shot.
It's almost 8:30 PM on a day that started with only a vague plan to be at
the dojo on time. We have no plans for tomorrow but it will be worlds
better than a desk and math book, what ever it is.
Deb L
[email protected]
That was one big damned AWESOME day!!
I really enjoyed reading that. I bet your kids slept like stones after that
much mental stimulation. (Slept like LOGS!!!)
I love those days, when you wake up and stretch and life takes you off on
some swirly ride. But this big logging day with the karate dessert was an
especially sweet one!
Sandra
I really enjoyed reading that. I bet your kids slept like stones after that
much mental stimulation. (Slept like LOGS!!!)
I love those days, when you wake up and stretch and life takes you off on
some swirly ride. But this big logging day with the karate dessert was an
especially sweet one!
Sandra
[email protected]
Can I come live with you?
Kelly
Kelly
KT
Deb L., that was an entertaining post. Thanks for telling us about your
day.
Do you live anywhere near Bozeman by chance?
I have a friend who recently moved there to be part of an intentional
community. She moved from Arkansas, so those two things kind of melded
together from your post. She has a young son and a baby, and I'm sure
she's looking for some other unschooling folks to hook up with.
Tuck
day.
Do you live anywhere near Bozeman by chance?
I have a friend who recently moved there to be part of an intentional
community. She moved from Arkansas, so those two things kind of melded
together from your post. She has a young son and a baby, and I'm sure
she's looking for some other unschooling folks to hook up with.
Tuck
[email protected]
> Do you live anywhere near Bozeman by chance?I'm about 95 miles from Bozeman and we there a few times every year to
the Museum of the Rockies, and Lewis and Clark Caverns.
We have a Montanaunschoolers e-mail group ( yahoo ) she'd be welcome to
join. There are only about 15 or so on the list, but it's an active
list and we talk about everything. There are a lot of interesting folks
on this list and several "rabid" unschoolers as one likes to call
herself.
I don't personally know anyone else unschooling in Bozeman but maybe
someone on our list does. I'll ask. I know there's a big group of
Christian homeschoolers there.
Please give her my e-mail address if you think she'd like it.
We have some land in Arkansas, in Newton county, and my husband was just
down there looking things over. He went to a big mushroom planting part
(no not THAT kind of mushroom ) and is now inspired to grow some here.
Might be interesting.
Deb L
[email protected]
> Can I come live with you?Sure! The more the merrier! You might have to sleep with a pigeon
though.
Deb L
Sharon Rudd
Thanks again, Deb L. :-)
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> We were up at five AM..............Sharon of the Swamp
> It's almost 8:30 PM ..........
> Deb L
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