Mucking Out

Katie is spending her summer interning for a company in New York City, this is fun for her because A) the company is awesome and she will probably end up working for them after she graduates next year, B) her boyfriend Sheldon lives in NYC, C) Dad and Julie live in upstate NY so she is a two hour train ride from being spoiled and D) it is New York City. To make things even more fun, the company also has a branch in London which they have sent her to this week. This past weekend she and Sheldon went up to visit Dad and Julie before she left. Dad immediately saw an opportunity to put two extra pairs of hands to work helping him clean out the swimming hole. The cleaning (or mucking) out of the swimming hole should ideally happen once a year. Gramp created the swimming hole by damming up a stream that runs off of the lake and through the middle of the property. The swimming hole is nice and deep and sits right next to the main cabin, the only problem is that the dam collects not only water, but every other bit of leaves, sticks and dirt that comes down the stream. These various types of debris sit at the bottom of the swimming hole slowly decomposing and turning into mud (or muck) that is roughly the consistency and color of diarrhea. Now it is one thing to build up your courage to jump into a cold swimming hole in the middle of the woods when you can see straight down to the gravely bottom, it is another thing entirely when you peer into the water and see nothing but darkness that could be harboring anything from a 300 pound snapping turtle to the Loch Ness Monster. While Dad may be fearless when it comes to all the creepy things that could be in that water, he knows that the rest of us are not so, as close to yearly as possible, he opens up a pipe in the bottom of the dam to drain the swimming hole and then shovels/rakes the muck downstream and cleans off all the fuzz that is growing on the rocks around the edges so that the swimming hole will be nice and clean for anyone brave enough to take a dip.