Nature Center Day Two:

October 3rd 2018:

Today is our second time volunteering at the Fort Worth nature center. We meet in a place near where we worked last time but quickly learn that we have a new task today. Our goal today is to clear the Bison observation deck. This consisted of a wooden platform about three or four feet away from a fence that surrounds one of the bison pastures. The platform and fence were overrun by plants, especially a weed called privet, and you could barley see into the bison pasture. This was a fairly daunting task and to add to that there were a few small dangers that we had to avoid. One was the observation deck had a few holes in it, another was that poison Ivy grew in the area and a third was there were a lot of vines with long pokey thorns. Despite all this though, I like to believe we succeeded at our task by the end.

I mainly worked on clearing the fence with Davis, Teresa and Victoria. The fence had tress of privet growing in and out of it along with a bunch of vines enter tangled throughout the fence and privet. We used giant sheers that we liked to make up different names for, some including ‘the cutty things’ and ‘the choppy things’ as well as ‘the machete things’ to cut down the privet and to cut a few of the vines apart and then we would yank the pieces through the fence. This took a lot of team work because although yanking the foliage off the fence was generally the best way you would sometimes week someone to cut another vine or help direct the branch through one of the gaps in the fence. While we worked there were these fly things that look kind of like bees but didn’t sting buzzing around us a keeping us company. We worked slowly across the fence from left to right clearing away the brush while getting to know each other better. As we cleared away the privet the sun started to shine down on us through the fence, which was how we all knew we were making progress.

Even though it was hot and muggy out and the air we were breathing felt heavy I enjoyed being outside and physically active. I cherished the ache in my arms from holding the giant sheers and didn’t mind the scrapes on my arm from the thorns on the vines. One thing we all discussed was how unused we were to doing physical labor and how in the past this was normal for everyone. You don’t realize how much time you spend inside sitting around until you are outside physically working and trying to complete a task. I find that I rarely work hard enough that I need to stop and have a water break even though I dance and I’m fairly active this is a different type of work.

Behind is the fence we cleared off

In the truck behind us is all the brush we cleared