By Brian Campbell, Facilities Director
It’s a long road that takes you from Upstate New York to Opal Creek. I understand this clearly now after my exhausting marathon drive, through the snow, to take up the challenging yet incredibly satisfying work of Facilities Director for the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center. After two seasons of working in the Lodge kitchen I was offered the opportunity to fill this position around the first week of December and was more than happy to accept. But, I had to suppress my excitement until the end of the month when I would finish my degree requirements at SUNY Geneseo and be free of the obligations that originally called me away from Opal Creek.
The moment I finished my last final exam, my thoughts immediately turned to making the necessary preparations for a winter of self reliance in the remoteness of Jawbone Flats. Most of the friends of Opal Creek may already be aware of the difficulties faced by the winter crews during the last couple of years: above average snowfall, loss of power, loss of water, bitter cold and the persistent isolation from the world beyond the gate. These were the conditions I had in mind as I set out to gather the food and supplies necessary to support myself until the snow would, hopefully, begin to melt in April.
When I finally arrived in Opal creek on December 27th, weighed down with three months worth of provisions, my excitement could not be dampened even by the heavy wet snow which hung on the trees and mixed with the mud on my doorstep. However, there was work to be done. The icy cold temperatures that hung over the Northwest during the early part of December had burst many of the pipes in camp and disabled the Pelton Wheel (our primary source of electricity). Adam Mims, Ben Yates and myself spent many of those first days lying on our backs in the cold mud replacing water lines. And, by the time we finished our repairs the weather had, gratefully, turned for the better, becoming milder with the precipitation coming exclusively as rain which quickly filled the creeks and brought them up to levels that I had never seen before.
The mellow babbling of the creek in the summer had been replaced by a thrashing and crashing tumult that filled every corner of the flats with its presence. Since those days things have been rather quiet. The creeks have settled themselves, the rain has come infrequently and the temperatures remain mild. But, those hardy souls that have come before me and preserved Jawbone Flats through multiple winters assure me that the winter will come and, often, it will come quickly and unexpectedly. So for now, I’ll happily continue the work of maintaining this amazing place, all the while, with an awareness that I am, ultimately, a subject of nature’s whimsy.