Improving the property at Ridges
Shaping the land - enhancing its natural beauty - remembering its history
I started cutting firewood for Otto and Anna our German expat neighbors when I was four years old. Otto needed small logs to fit in their wood fire cooking stove to prepare their meals and heat their small woodland home in the center of their dead end road, 160 acre property. It would take my sister and me stacking four and half rows of 16 inch logs to fill a load before Dad would let me be done for the day.
When I was four that took.... FOREVER!!! (Probably because I barely worked).
Always done before lunch I could wile away the afternoons as I pleased all summer. Dad would return to the woods to cut our firewood in the afternoon without us. Often I would follow the growl of the chainsaw and sneak out to his worksite. I stayed out of sight lest he put me back to work. When I grew bored of his labor I headed to the creek.
There I would redirect the flow of water, build dams, dig pools, remove busted limbs that clogged the flow of the stream and splashed away the days. In my little mind I was the giant shaping the world even if it washed away before I rolled down my pant legs for the jog home.
Now - 44 years later I make a little bit more lasting impact than those summer afternoons. The fall of 2025 my vision of a ridge top trail the length of our central ridge took many weeks of long labor days. The trail I cut measures just under a quarter mile in length with multiple descents cleared for the current ski season.
The land and I worked together. The trail is not a straight Roman road subduing the countryside. Instead I cut the standing dead and weaved through the line of pines and hardwoods so I could remove the fewest live trees possible. Das Pine Line is now my favorite trail at Ridges, not just because it is the newest, but because it opens up new views over the old homestead of Otto and Anna, and meanders past their grave stone.
I feel the trail pays homage to their memory, continues what they started, allows me to share in their Letztes Stelldichein in Ewigkeit, Amen.
