Before the blog and website went dark and I took a subsequent break, there was a major work weekend among the cabin folks in Mineral King. This was the 2nd weekend of reducing fuels, which is another way of saying that a bunch of people gathered together and worked our tails off to clear off branches, downed trees, thin trees, and prune trees.
It was a historic undertaking; our cabins are on National Park land, and as part of our leases, clearing and cutting are forbidden. However, the Park hasn’t done the necessary work of forest management, so things have been in a precarious state for many years. After much negotiating, countless meetings, and a whole lot of talk, we received permission and finally got to take action.
We got hot, tired, dirty, sore and stung by wasps. All those things were much easier to recover from than a devastating wildfire would be, had we not done this work.
And when you are reading this, I am probably back up the hill, continuing the work. Feels endless, but with a lot of help from our friends, we are all making progress in mechanical thinning, forest management, fuels reduction.
2 Comments
That looks like a lot of work, and some of those trees are impressively huge! It’s amazing (or rather, irritating) that you had to beg for permission to do it. Good job to you and the whole crew!
Michelle, the amount of persistence and negotiating was positively heroic, working with multiple bureaucracies and bureaucrats and petty fiefdoms and fearful people who didn’t want to commit to decisions. The president of our cabin owners association and the man who had the vision were are fantastic!