And the wheel turns.

My how time flies... It's almost the holidays already (which, yay!), the weather is getting cooler, and it might even snow tonight!

Yesterday, however, was warm and wonderful.

A big chunk of our woods was recently bought by Greenspace and they put on a neighborhood hike to show the city what a beautiful place it is.

I already knew that it is beautiful of course, because I have been hiking all over these woods since I was small. I have still had this event in my calendar for weeks. And after all my planning for it, it turned out that we were late because they changed the time. Luckily, we were able to catch up to the main pack and lo and behold there was a big turn-out!

( The "Old Girl Scout Camp" }

I think Tyler got a kick out of the fact that the neighborhood was going on a hike together. At one point he smiled and shook his head and said, "Who does that?"

We do. and it. is. awesome.

After the group hike we were working on cutting some vines that were growing up our trees and we found ourselves wandering back into the woods. As I was walking up the creek I kept finding cool things I wanted to point out to Tyler but he was slowly lollygagging behind and building damns in the creek. Ignoring my pleas to "Come look!"

But then! I came upon something really exciting... You see, back in the day there used to be coal mining in the area and there was a railway going through our woods. There are still concrete pillars marking its way and many other pieces of its history hidden about the woods.

Mostly buried in the creek bed, I saw a wheel.

It was in an area that used to be a blockage of tree trunks, rocks, trash, bicycle, etc. for most of my days. For 24 years it probably sat under there without anyone knowing. But as nature does, it changed. The logs rotted, the rain swells swept them away, and it their absence my wheel was uncovered.

I called out to Ty long enough that he finally came and caught up to me.

The wheel is neat, and it's history! I found treasure and I wasn't about to leave it there. We wanted it. We got to work scraping rocks an mud off of the wheel.

Turns out it was double spiked, with very thick rims, and just... BIG. We worked and worked until it started getting dark deciding to come back to it later.

Today we went back down with extra supplies, a large iron rod was the most useful tool and Tyler pried the wheel up out of the ground. Then we started rolling it along the creek bed...  I say WE but it was a dangerous and daunting task. Did I mention the wheel is made out of iron and probably weighs a lot more than I do? Yeah, Tyler didn't let me near it in case it crushed me. So HE rolled it and I moved big rocks out of its path, supervised, gave advice, etc...

Unfortunately, getting back to our house is all up hill. Steep hills. We had other plans today and weren't able to complete the task. We left it on the side of the creek bed and I covered it with leaves in case the Hulk comes across it and decides he wants to keep it too.

We will be back for it soon! Even if we have to organize a second neighborhood hike the get enough people to lift it up that hill, we will do it!



I'll keep you posted.