Recently our neighborhood came together to do something really hard.
Our local park is bordered on one side by a steep hillside filled with wild growth and piles of tangled dead wood.
All that dry brush could easily catch fire and spread to the adjoining neighborhood. Most of the hillside is privately owned by homes just above the hill, who are ultimately responsible for clearing out the dead brush, but the hillside is so very steep and the wild growth so dense that it is a daunting task. The Deputy Fire Marshall came to the City Neighborhood District Board requesting help getting the dry fire fuel cleared out of the hillside.
When we looked closely at what this service project would entail—we were overwhelmed. The hillside is precipitously steep, just a few degrees from being a cliff, and it is densely covered with weed trees and vines. You can hardly work your shoulders through the impenetrable growth. Besides, how could we even access the hillside? From the top, the angle was so steep that footing would be dangerous. One homeowner told us when he ventured down the hill, he first tied a rope around his waist and secured it to a solid anchor.
We had to access the hillside from the park below. But a sturdy 6-foot-high chain link fence, installed by the Parks Department, ran all along the border. How could we climb the fence and then pass the dead wood over the fence? Finally, one person suggested using adjustable ladders that could be positioned with one part on the park side and one part on the hillside so we effectively would have a stile. We had a plan.
Cooperating with both the property owners and the city fire department, we began advertising for volunteers on Facebook community groups, in local churches, and with signs throughout the neighborhood. Soon we had more than 150 willing to help. A local restaurant even volunteered to provide breakfast for everyone.
Maybe this would work out after all, we thought, but I was still having sleepless nights thinking of all that could go wrong.
Then the day came.
The volunteers who would oversee teams of workers came early and placed the donated adjustable ladders. People at the picnic pavilion were ready to check in the volunteers, having them sign waivers provided by the city. The fire department came: Deputy Fire Marshal Jeannie and her crew of young workers. The park-provided dumpsters were at the ready, as well as an industrial-sized chipper.
The volunteers streamed in. All ages, men and women alike, pitched in to help. There were people from nearby and people from farther away; people who knew each other and people who did not.
The hardiest climbed over the fence and pulled down the dead wood, pushing and cutting their way through the underbrush, reaching up the steep slope for dead branches and piles of dead brush, then pulling it down and hauling it to the fence. Big branches and dead logs were lifted as a team. When someone slipped on the steep slope, many hands reached out to steady them.
Others stayed on the park side of the fence and received the branches and brush as they were passed over the fence, dragging them to the four dumpsters which soon proved inadequate. The Fire Department’s chipper could not keep up. Piles of dead brush grew. And grew.
For hours the volunteers worked and sweated. One guy got hit by a branch and downed. Others gathered around, helped him up, and he was fine. Another guy pinched his hand between the fence and a heavy branch—holding his bleeding hand with the other, he kept insisting, “it’s nothing” as his wife led him to the first aid station.
Workers proudly displayed curious discoveries appearing amid the brush, including a metal hubcap and a 6-foot section of chain link fence.
My friend Tessa, 70 years old but fit, was helping with registration and then on the park side gathering branches. Before long she thought, “They need more help on the other side of the fence,” and over she went. When I saw her, she was stretched out flat against the steep slope reaching for some dead wood that was just above her head. I yelled, “Tessa, get over here! You can’t do that.”
She ignored me, and rightly so, for obviously she could!
After three hours of work, the hill behind the fence was transformed, with clear space among the green. The fence was bordered by piles of dead brush, 6 feet high and more. The Deputy Fire Marshall said she had never seen a community project accomplish so much.
As we gathered in the pavilion to enjoy donated eggs, potatoes, and muffins, everyone was laughing and talking, sharing their adventures. Men and women covered from head to toe in dirt and sweat compared to see who was filthiest. People who had been strangers became friends.
The hillside was safer from fire danger, but something more important had happened too.
As Tessa said, “It felt good to do something important together.”
In this modern age, we are seldom called upon to work together physically on something truly hard. The prehistoric cave people had to work together to hunt the mammoth; ancient peoples came together to protect their communities from enemies both human and natural; pioneers would help each other with barn raising and threshing. But now, everyone does their own thing; industrialization and specialization means that we seldom need to rely on our neighbors.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m thankful for modern conveniences. Still though, when from time to time we get to really work together, to really depend on each other, something wonderful happens. The philosopher David Hume once observed: “It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.”
Our neighborhood had the chance to spill our sweat together, doing something both hard and important. We are better for it.
