Rockin’ Weekends

I thought he was joking. I had shown up for a ‘stone splitting’ workshop, and Matt was going through the motions. First you choose a rock – a nice half ton piece of granite with a flat side that would make a great step. Then you use a rifting hammer and sledgehammer to mark a line where you would like the stone to crack, then drill some evenly-spaced holes along this line, drop in some feathers and wedges, and whack the heck out of it with a 10 lb sledge. “Now, form groups of three and split your own steps.”

The idea that anyone would let me – the New Yorker – wield a sledgehammer, rock bar, and rock drill (and later still, the very cool pick-mattock), would ordinarily lead me to question one’s judgment. My unlikely trio included Ron, a retired fireman, and Hector, who worked in plumbing out in Long Island. We split rock that Saturday – in fact, we split several, producing about six steps that currently weave through a tricky boulder field, which is part of an ambitious 3-mile reroute (with some 600+ rock steps) of the Appalachian Trail in Bear Mountain State Park.

“Next week, we’ll teach you how to move giant boulders with rock bar – it’s a game of inches (centimeters would be more accurate) – and how to position and set stone steps along a hiking trail.” They call it Trail University; my sis prefers weekend prison labor camp.

It’s seriously hands-on, hard, slow work. And unlike anything I’ve ever done in my life. But I’ve spent far too many weekends in front of the tv, surfing the web, or vegging out in some form or other. I cannot tell you what I did in Spring ‘07, ‘06, or ‘05… but this Spring, I found a new love in trail building.

The trail is a few years away yet – many more steps to lay, crib walls to build, and hours-upon-hours of crush fill therapy (breaking down larger rocks into smaller pieces with rock hammers and sledges). And when you make it up to New York next, I’ll walk you along the trail that I played a tiny part in building. It’ll outlive you and me both … not bad for a weekend’s work.