A Tale Of Hens & Gnomes

The world is full of interesting people. A lot of them are selfish, inconsiderate and simply unpleasant. But this is just my opinion, of course. While living here, I have met many people that are completely opposite of my standard opinion of people.

Our friend Brett made a pit stop here before heading back to his home in Kansas City. He was a guest here for almost two weeks. He helped us plan, mark and create trails. Each day he would get up around 7 a.m. and each night Tylor and I would have to set an alarm so we could get up each morning and start working a little earlier than normal.

Tylor and Brett hiked through the woods while brainstorming, and by the end of the first week a loop had been connected and mostly cleared. I also had my share of cutting down saplings that were in the way, digging up roots, and ripping out massive amounts of never ending thorns. I also like decorating our forest with random trinkets we find out here. Numerous baby dolls currently hang out in the trees along with other lovely forest friends like a baby elephant, a 3-legged unicorn and a beheaded gnome.

After a long day of working outside, Brett was oh so kind and made us veggie tacos for dinner. The table was set, the plates were full and we all started to devour our food. I was curious what was in the veggie tacos so I simply asked,

Hey Brett, what did you put in these veggie tacos?

He listed off some of the ingredients and mentioned adding some of our left over rice and beans.

I was slightly confused since we didn’t have any left over rice and beans.

You know, the red pot in the fridge. It’s full of rice and beans.

Tylor chuckles and we both slowly put down our soft tacos.

THAT’S OUR DOG FOOD.

Tylor can’t stop laughing.

The look on Brett’s face is complete shock. He also drops his dog food taco.

We eventually tell him, not to worry because it is literally just rice and beans. And I’m so relieved that we hadn’t added other ingredients yet such as food scraps, veggie clippings and sometimes vitamin powder and meat gravy.

I turn to Tylor. It is just rice and beans, right? I have to make sure.

Tylor reassures us and says he just made it this morning and all it contained was simply rice and beans.

Brett apologizes repeatedly and then adds that it’s probably the best tasting dog food he’s ever had.

We finish our dog food tacos.

Thanks Brett for the lovely dinner. I think from here on out we’ll start labeling our containers.

While staying here, Brett also got a taste of our lives out here at the Slick80. Our truck, Big Bear has caught the plague and hasn’t been working therefore we haven’t been able to recycle. Tylor’s mom comes to the rescue with a truck and trailer so we can in fact load it full of scrap metal and take it in, and well, get paid. We’ve been collecting for a while and the piles have been growing. She’s only here for a couple of days, so all of us help with the heavy lifting. We fill the bed of the truck with aluminum. The trailer is full of ten clothes dryers, which are filled with rusted tin cans. We fill the gaps with barrels of more rusted tin and sheet metal.

Brett joins us as we drive to the next town to drop it off at the scrap yard. We all try to guess how much we’ll make off of this giant delivery. Unfortunately, we don’t make what we had hoped but it did take 1.2 tons of junk off our land. It always feels good to get rid of tons of junk.

We also hosted our January Work Weekend. Last year, we hosted some work weekends and we had a few volunteers show up on a couple of random summer months. Tylor and I sort of got used to just doing it ourselves.

Do you know the story about The Little Red Hen? The red hen finds a grain of wheat and goes around to all the other farm animals asking for help to plant it, but none of the other animals volunteer. The hen goes through the entire process of harvesting, threshing, milling the wheat into flour and still none of the farm animals step up to help. The hen goes around again, asking if any farm animals want to help make bread with the wheat flour, and still none of them are interested. It isn’t until the bread is made and smells delicious that the other farm animals are interested in helping to eat it. They ask if they can eat the bread, but the hen tells them all no because they did not participate.

The life lesson being that if you do not work, you do not eat, and perhaps those who do contribute can therefore enjoy.

Of course, this place will eventually be open to whoever wants to enjoy it no matter who helped and who didn’t. But without the help of others, this place might not happen or will take an extremely long time to happen.

I guess you can say, we have gotten used to feeling like little red hens.

 

However, this January Work Weekend was quite different than all the others.

People showed up! We needed a second hand to count them.

The MORC Trail Gnomes showed up with trucks and a trailer full of equipment around 8:30 in the morning.

And I would like to point out that yes we were in fact up. Maybe for about 20 minutes, but still, we were up and dressed. I walk out to the front and greet all of them. I am introduces to everyone and I try to remember their names. They are eager to work and ask a lot of questions about the property.

We work the entire day. We showed them the sections we wanted to clear and they just started doing it.

Tylor and I weren’t really sure what to do and for about five minutes we just stood there in shock and watched them clear out brush. Is this happening right now?

We take each other’s pulse.

Not only were they extremely helpful but also great, genuine people that were fun to work with. Later in the day, a burly man with a chainsaw named Adam actually asked me if we needed them to clean up some of the scattered trash.

Say what now? You want to clean up trash?

Again, out of shock that, one; he called me ma’am, and two; that he’s actually asking to clean up random trash, I just stand there and stumble over my words. I never intended the MORC crew to clean up trash. Adam asks again.

Brett has been listening to the conversation and says, Do it Diddy!

Some how I say YES, clean up the trash. Pretty soon, some of the crew and even their children are picking up trash. I set up barrels and tell the kids how to separate it and they actually do it. I almost get teary-eyed.

After about five and a half hours of work, we had almost a quarter mile of single track that was ready to ride. It would have taken Tylor and me about four days if we had done it by ourselves.

The workday comes to an end and everyone relaxes around the fire. There are plenty of jokes, story telling and comical haiku making and the sun starts to set. We are used to our visitors staying longer than anticipated. It happens often. Eventually though, everyone packs up their gear and they literally drive off into the sunset.

Tylor and I are so appreciative and have not quite thought of a way to thank everyone who helped out over the weekend. Saying thanks and passing out temporary tattoos just doesn’t seem like enough. Right now, all we can offer is unlimited riding on our future trails.

I naturally wake up at 9 a.m. the next morning. I look at the clock again, because that can’t be right. But it is.

We have two guests that remain and after breakfast we test out the new section of trail. We make a loop out of everything and ride about three miles. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but months ago none of this existed. This is only the beginning.

People have started to ask:

What type of place is Slick80? and What kind of trails will you have?

First of all, it’s weird that people even know this place exists. We went to a MORC event last night and we naturally introduced ourselves as Tylor and Diddy.

Hi, I’m Tylor this is Diddy.

A friend who has repeatedly gone out of his way to inform people about us will randomly pop his head in and blurt out that we’re Slick 80.

Oh! Why didn’t you say so?

Again, weird.

What type of trails are you guys creating out there?

I have no idea how to sum up our place into one little sentence and honestly I think we’re still trying to figure it out ourselves. I want to just say:

We’re creating awesome.

 

I suppose the trails here at Slick80 could be classified as backcountry riding. I’m not sure I even want to use a specific label. We’re creating whatever we want and just hope people will like it. We will use the natural flow of the landscape and will incorporate natural elements that already exist. All of the trails here will be built by hand and I believe will contain bits of our personality. They will also carry characteristics of the volunteers who help form them. When something is built from nothing into something by hand, how could it not?

These trails probably won’t be super manicured and they will probably be less groomed and a little gritty but oddly captivating.

 

Kind of like Tylor and me.

 

(That’s suppose to be funny.)