Nature Trail Progress Report ~ Be A Volunteer

WOW!  There are SO many great things going on in Pocomoke City I can't keep up with all of it!

Sadly, I have missed a few of  Ritch Shoemaker's informative stories and progress on what has been done on the Pocomoke Nature Trail.  I'm sure you will find his writings quite humorous and if I do say so myself, the volunteers are working so hard but still having fun. 

 Tentative supply moving and construction date  Friday May 17- from what I can determine.  Phone numbers are listed at the bottom the post- just give one of those numbers a call. jmmb

Nature Trail Progress Report

Photo/BW

April 28, 2013

 by Ritch Shoemaker MD, project chairman

So far, we have obtained a line of credit to purchase the materials we need for the 600 foot long “Missing Link” that will let us walk around Stevenson’s Pond and loop back to the main Trail in the high ground. We have our first buyers of a “Foot of the Loop,” as Pamela and Professor Matthew Hudson donated double the cost of two feet. Don’t be bashful about buying the Famous bird T-shirt! We will have an excellent selection next week to complement our dwindling supplies.

Why donate to the Trail? Simple. It is a magnificent project. With all the talk about government doing dumb things with tax dollars, here is a model for community self-help. Keep the gubmint out of here! We can do this work privately just fine.

Just think, walkers will now be able to see flame azaleas of the banks of Stevenson’s Pond (blooming right now) up close and touch massive cypress knees growing from the root systems of cypress trees that might have not been touched by people for a long time. The origin of our Trail is blazed through a logged-over cypress swamp but the missing link doesn’t have any cypress stumps that I can find. The swamp is just too deep to cut and drag out huge cypress trees. I wonder who has visited this unfound ground in the last 50 years.

And yet we would like to open access into this hidden forest to anyone who can walk on a boardwalk. The job really is a bit ambitious for old men like Don Malloy, Jim Norton and me. Larry Fykes has already volunteered for the job of construction foreman and now his fellow volunteer fireman, Andy Clarke, has agreed to be in charge of transporting materials from our stockpile at the City Works lot to the loop site. I can almost feel a passing of the hammer here and this is a good thing. Andy was 10 years old when the original Trail was build yet even back then he was helping out. Larry was right at the “Head of the Trail” for the section of 300 feet of boardwalk we added several years ago to join the Trail to the City Dock in Cypress Park.

The guys at the Head get wet, dirty and lots of satisfaction by setting in the “sleepers,” long structural beams, which are then held together by 16 foot racks of cross-braced 2x8 boards. As the developing structures weaves its 16 foot lengths through the swamps, avoiding disturbing the vegetation as much as possible, the “mules” bring in the materials for the joist layer of more 2x8x16 foot boards.

 

We initially walk on the joist layer placed flat until such time as we can attach the boards on end to the racks and then attach the treads to make the top layer of the boardwalk. By staggering the angle of attachment of one rack to another the entire structure can wind sinuously on top of the floor of the wooded wetland, as the Trail interlaces by trees and hummocks, it can resist forces of winds and tide that could tear apart a straight line structure.

Here is where the next generation of builders comes in. We’ve got to access the loop staging area by crossing a 40 foot-wide stream (or gut, as they are called around here). The bridge we built 20 years ago that crosses the gut lasted until Hurricane Sandy surged the bridge abutments up onto the bank, twisting the 4 foot wide structure into a good imitation of a salt treated Mobius strip. I have no decent plan for what to do to fix the bridge. If we can’t cross the gut, the idea of finishing the loop is just an old man’s fantasy.

Andy looks at the bridge and talks with Larry for a moment. “We can use a come-along like the house movers do. We can move the four-ton bridge back into position, level it up and we are then set to start moving materials in. Shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

And it wasn’t. The next day when Larry and Andy started finagling with the come-along, using different trees to be the solid end, we could get the free end of the bridge levered out of the swamp only to have it slip back when the tension increased on the come-along. Andy didn’t get frustrated, just looking for a place to attach the come-along with a different chain angle and a different height of the solid end on the tree. “Let me try just one more time. If I can’t get it then, I will be surprised.”

With Larry guiding the free end of the bridge (but not pinning his leg between the nearby tree and the bridge abutment), Andy cranked her up one more time. Slowly the bridge eased past the roots, and up the bank. Larry yelled out, “Just a little more, Andy, we are almost there.”

And then the job was done. The bridge dropped right where it had to be in its new perfect position. The structure is solid and it will carry the weight of hundreds of 2x8s and 100 200-pound sleepers, not to mention a herd of mules.

Well done, Larry, good job! And the gold star goes to the Come-Along King, Andy Clarke. Next weekend we will start on building the racks.

Come out and help us. There is hard work ahead but we sure have a good time. Call the Chamber at 410-957-1919 or Dr. Shoemaker’s office at 410-957-1550 for more information.

And don’t forget to donate to the Trail project!

Pocomoke Area Chamber of Commerce