(written on the 2nd from notes taken previously)
Busy day today.
Lower on sleep than I should have been. Lower on nutrition and hydration then I should have been.
Being a Saturday, that meant that it was weekly Haven Hill Work Crew morning.
When 8:30 rolled around, it was just Jim and I out there working. We decided to focus our efforts on the strip between his house and the gazebo, cutting down the rotten trees and the partially burned down trees/trunks.
After we’ve been going for maybe an hour, Stevie showed up to help, and then Landon, and then Rafe and Rhett.
What started off as a discouraging morning, looking like it was going to be just myself and Jim the whole time, turned into a very productive morning, cleaning up that strip, and cutting a whole bunch of wood up. There were multiple fallen trees, blown over by the wind, and Stevie got them mostly cut up, with me helping with my battery-operated chainsaw.
We made quite the dent. 🥳
We also loaded up two trailers worth of brush to add to the pond brush pile.
It definitely looks a lot better than it has for a good long time now. 🥳
After all of that morning work, Jim had a to-do list item of creating building a new grow box for Stephanie, so I offered to help him with that, but he needed to go out and buy the materials first.
So while he and Landon were out running errands, I headed down to the creek to dig down one end of the dam that I had just barely finished recreating a handful of days ago.
Why was I digging it down?
Well, the only way to get it deeper was going to be to dig it down, and the only realistic way of digging it down was going to be to drain it so I could get my skid steer back in there to scrape the bottom lower and lower and lower.
At first, I was hoping that I could do it with just my pick ax. So I grabbed it and my shovel and started hacking away at the North end of the dam.
Little me decided not to wear a shirt, because he’s a genius, and I was hoping to make quick work of the corner of the dam in order to drain the water out.
Well, it took a lot more than quick work. 😅
I dug away the side of the dam, trying to save as much of it as I could because it was also full of compacted soil that was starting to be held together by plants growing on the surface.
But as I dug, more and more I realized that everything I was trying to save was going to need to come out in order to drain the area that I was damming up. Eventually, I gave up trying to do it with a pic and shovel, realizing that I was destroying everything anyway, so I might as well just go get the skid steer and make sure it work of it.
Fortunately, I finally got my little butt to put a shirt on, and then I spent the next however long, probably at least a couple hours, driving this skid steer back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to remove the dam, and then to scrape the creek bottom over and over and over again, trying not to get stuck again, and dumping the rock in big piles along the south side of the creek.
I dug down and down as far as I could go before realizing that it wasn’t going to be possible, or at least not realistic to try and drain that area far enough to be able to drive my skid steer across to the other side of the deepest spot.
In order to get it deep enough to drain the rest of it, I would have to lower the entire Creek bed level probably another 2 ft, which meant maybe a hundred yards worth of Creek bed in order to get that kind of a fall. So I gave up and figured that I would try coming in from the deck area, but not today.
After a massive amount of work in the creek, and gratefully without getting stuck, I parked the skid steer in the middle of the creek and headed up to charge my phone as well as to check in with jim.
I had been answering questions online all while doing the creek stuff, so my phone had been getting drained down because I have to have the screen on the entire time, or the system won’t recognize that I actually am waiting for a question.
Anyway, so I headed up to charge my phone, and I checked in with Jim to see if he still wanted help with the grow box stuff, but it was late, and priorities got shifted, so he hadn’t started working on it yet.
I don’t remember what I did between then and heading to the neighborhood market. I just remember what happened on the way home from the neighborhood market.
😅
As I was driving back from buying some ice cream 😅, as I left the four-way stop to head back home, I looked down to grab a little spoonful of ice cream, no cars coming toward me the opposite direction. But when I looked up, I realized I was over the yellow line, so I steered myself back into my lane, only to realize that the vehicle behind me was a cop.
Did he wait to see if I would lose my lane again? No, once was enough, so he pulled me over, with me ending up parked in a little Christian church parking lot.
At first the guy was really nice, but then he kept coming back to the van again and again asking more questions, and finally asking me to get out of the van and do sobriety testing.
Really?!?!
When he had first pulled me over, I explained what happened, even showing him the open carton of ice cream, but apparently neither that nor my clearly sober demeanor would deter him from doing a field sobriety test.
😶
I ended up in the parking lot for over 20 minutes, a fair chunk of that time performing multiple different field sobriety tests.
At first I was annoyed.
At one point there were three officers there.
Then as time went on, and they kept going and going, it started feeling like they were trying to find any excuse they could come up with to arrest me for a DWI.
I haven’t had alcohol since I was 16. Haven’t smoked pot since I was 16. There was a day on my mission when I got high because I didn’t read the instructions on the bottle and assumed that when taking cough suppressant, you just filled the little cup up to the line marked on it.
But despite the fact that I haven’t been an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-Day Saints for a good little while, and it might be easy to go out and experiment again, I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t want to do them.
I got pretty scared when, after lots of time doing sobriety tests, one of the officers said “are you going to call it in?” And the other one I think said some sort of affirmation.
Call it in?!?!
What the crap is going on?!?!
In my mind’s eye, I was picturing being led away in handcuffs and driven to the county jail for processing. Me. Stone cold sober me.
I felt helpless, knowing that I was completely in their power and feeling like they were going to find some reason to charge me.
The more I did the tests, the more my muscles tightened up, being in the same positions doing awkward things over and over and over again.
I was terrified that if I lost my balance doing all these crazy things that I would get arrested.
There I was, fighting with everything that I had to not lose my balance doing their crazy little tests, and I was completely sober.
I guess that’s why they give those tests, because it was really challenging to pass them even completely sober. I can only imagine what it would be like trying to pass them when you’re drunk or otherwise intoxicated.
Gratefully, after who knows how many minutes of following the flashlight with my eyes without moving my head, standing on one leg with my arms to my sides, walking a straight line with my arms at my side and my leg out in front of me… they deemed me sober and let me off with a warning–adrenaline pumping.
I left that experience frustrated with those officers. I despise the approach that so many departments take, assuming guilt in their speaking with you. “How much have you had to drink tonight?” As opposed to “I pulled you over because you crossed the center line. Have you had anything to drink tonight?”
Too many times I’ve had to deal with that disgusting approach. It’s no wonder people dislike cops. I’ve had my fair share of good experiences with officers as well, but I despise the training that so many departments do where they verbally assume your guilt to see your reaction. It’s just a despicable way of treating your fellow citizens, in my opinion.
I also left that experience with a newfound appreciation for what it feels like to be unjustly accused and to be a hair’s width away from getting in trouble legally for something that I didn’t do.
Certainly, I’ve had to deal with my life being altered by claims others have made for things that they said I did that I didn’t do, but this one just felt a little different. The sheer power that police are able to wield, some real and some simply the pressure, is enormous.
They could make the decision whether to take away my freedom or not right then and there. I had no say in the matter once they decided to put me on trial. If they could find a way of making me guilty, there would be absolutely nothing that I could do about it.
That was… scary.
On the other side of it, I didn’t want to do much to express my frustration and irritation because I wanted to be able to leave with a warning and not a ticket for having crossed over the center line, so I couldn’t say how I actually felt or pushed back a little bit at what I felt like was excessive.
Certainly I had the freedom to do that, but with me being completely at their mercy, I just held my tongue, and hoped against hope that my tired, tightening muscles wouldn’t betray me in the middle of a test.
I want to go back and issue a complaint for how I was treated, but part of me recognizes that they need to do their job. And part of me is afraid to make enemies with the local police department for fear of reprisals.
That’s a lot of power they wield.
In the end, I was let off with a warning, they having determined that I wasn’t under the influence of anything. And interestingly enough, once they made that determination they almost seemed apologetic to the point that they were worried that they had done something wrong and would get in trouble for having done what they did.
Super weird experience. Frightening. Embarrassing (I drive an extremely recognizable vehicle, so it’s not just some random vehicle. It’s a vehicle that people will likely recognize when they see it again because it stands out quite a bit, so it’s easy to see who the person was who was doing the DWI tests in the church parking lot).
After getting back to Haven hill, and eating some of the rest of my melted ice cream, I wasted some life watching YouTube and whatnot online before remembering to check the weather. My skid steer was sitting in the middle of the creek, and if there were a chance that it was going to rain, I didn’t want it in the creek to be flooded or washed down the creek.
I had a friend who had a car completely swept away that was parked up on the bank of a creek, several feet above the normal water line. But after an absolutely massive rainstorm, the water level Rose so high that it flooded the banks, and not only did it flood the banks, it flooded so high above even the highest water level that there was enough current to grab the car pull it from the flat top above the highest water line down into the creek and send it a very long ways down the creek, partially buried in rock when it was found.
It was unrecoverable.
Anyway, it was about 11:00 when I realized that not only was it going to rain, but it was likely going to be a pretty hefty storm, one of the ones with the red exclamation point warning. 😅
So I crawled out of my bed, headed down to the creek, jumped in the skid steer, and gratefully, managed to get it up the steep bank and on to the freshly recut ramp and out of harm’s way.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful that we had a decent turnout for Saturday work day.
- I’m grateful that I was able to make significant progress in the creek. (As a point of transparency, I had the impression not to dig down the dam. I don’t know why, whether it was to just not do it with the pickax or whether it was to not do it at all, but I had that vein of thinking, which I decided to use to test, so I did it anyway. We’ll see if anything comes of it. I did already end up with a sunburn that has aloe vera gel on it in the hopes of staving off a longer-lasting burn experience)
- I’m grateful I was able to do everything that I did in the creek without getting the skid steer stuck. 😅
- I’m grateful to have this skid steer. It is supremely useful, and it’s also fun. 🙃
- I’m grateful that I was able to bucket walk the skid steer up the creek ramp sides and on to the ramp itself without getting stuck. It very easily could have gone differently, and I would have most likely needed to wake up Jim or somebody to try and get me pulled out before the storm came.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 