Indian Jack Slough’s Renaissance
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- Created: Tuesday, December 27 2011 18:49
- Last Updated: Saturday, February 15 2014 14:53
- Written by Dan Friesz - Columbia Landtrust
- Hits: 4922
Battered, tired, cold, and drenched to the bone from enduring a late-February day’s worth of non-stop rain, I and two other colleagues were ready to seek our urban sanctuaries. Our knuckles, fingers, and thumbs were bloody and throbbing from swinging hammers that too often missed 2-inch-long galvanized staples—unmerciful reminders of our final day’s efforts to complete 7,300 feet of fencing. We built this important fence surrounding a 50 acre portion of the 180-acre Indian Jack Slough property in order to discourage elk from consuming the nearly 45,000 native trees and shrubs that were to be planted a few months after the fence’s completion, in March and April of 2011.
Exhausted, we slogged and waddled our way back to our truck, thinking only of hot coffee, steamy showers, and dry clothes, and then something caught my eye that immediately extinguished all my thoughts of discomfort.