Saturday, April 21, 2007

Cache Maintenance and the Felling of Trees

This morning I got up early and went out to do a little cache maintenance. A friend from grad school has recently started caching; he told me that the log for Arc d' Memphis was full, so I replaced it. I then drove over to do a little work on In the Middle of East Memphis.

Recently I had visited IMEM to check on the container, which had been reported missing. Sure enough, the container, which was suspended 20 feet up in a tree and attached by wire cable, was gone. Fortunately, there were plenty of clues as to who took it, as the surrounding area was filled with pot-smoking kids, some sitting in the tree next to where I was standing. They had driven a vehicle back into the park and had the doors wide open, playing the stereo. Did I mention that there was a park picnic table mounted up in one of the trees?

This morning I returned to the park to find a new situation. Shortly after walking back to the original container site, a park service vehicle drove by, followed shortly thereafter by two dump trucks and a front-end loader. The real change, though, was that the park commission has cut all of the lower limbs off of the magnolias and is cleaning up the debris.

On one of the trees youths had already nailed 2x4's to re-create the steps provided by the branches. They had even painted a message on them, something like "Patrick and Drew will find a way" and "why did you do this to our trees" and some insults for the park commission. Maybe they will get to enjoy the trees. I hope that this is the beginning of a better Audubon park.

No comments: