On our hitch there was one fateful day. Right in the middle of our 10 day hitch of building rock steps on Mt Watatic there was a catastrophe. A dreadful, terrible, tragedy had bestowed the crew. Our camping stove had started to spit fire and act up in all sorts of ways. This itself wasn’t the worst thing to befall our crew. Without the stove we were still able cook the night’s meal over a fire. The real dilemma was that our stove was unusable Saturday morning meaning no hot water, which meant no coffee. And that meant one sleepy crew.
I tried to deliver the bad news to the other four members of my crew as gently as possible. Regardless of my efforts it didn’t go over well. Right from the start I could tell it was going to be a slow day. Four groggy faces blankly looked at my while I told everyone the day’s plan in the morning. After a cold breakfast we crammed ourselves into the truck like every other morning and headed to the work site. Not a word was said on the 25 minute ride to Mt Watatic.
We arrived at the trail parking lot and filed out of the truck like the last drops of syrup from a container, it took a while and nobody wanted to move but eventually everyone was out of the car. Still almost no words had been spoken in the last 30 minutes. I tried gathering everyone together and getting people ready to go for the day with our normal stretch circle. I managed to get the crew to half-heartedly form a circle but that’s as far as a got. There was no question of the day, or sharing questions, or talking. I suggested doing some jumping jacks to get the blood flowing but that idea was shot down by heads turning sharply towards with the word “NO” written all over it.
We stretched individually and then hiked out to the site to continue working on our steps. In the end it turned out to be an okay day. Granted production might have been a little slower and less than an average day, but we all made it through safely and still got solid work done. People might have been getting slightly loopy towards the end, but no one quite lost and for that I must say thanks to them and for the lunch nap they took.
