My alarm went off once again- it was about time for me to make the most difficult climb of the day: the one out of my sleeping bag and into the crisp are of the early Thursday morning. It would be our last day working under the blazing sun of New Castle, where we had adopted as our home for the past three weeks. We had spent our time here building a new mountain bike trail, with our project partners Dante and Simon.
The trail we built goes downhill fro over a mile, traversing steep twists and rock jumps, complete with killer views. Out long days of carrying and prying out heavy rocks, moving logs, and tons of dirt always paid off at the end of the day when we saw how much progress we had made.
We'd pile into the van at the end of the day, smelling worse than we ever had before, which I believe somehow made us all grow closer as a crew. We can't be anything but our raw selves when living outside and working together every day disconnected from social media and the pressures of society. Only us and the nature that surrounds. It's sort of a beautiful thing that can't be felt through any other means. If we were lucky we'd make a quick jump into the reservoir before heading back to camp, exhausted but not enough to stop us from hanging out, possibly squeezing in a game of poker, and finally heading to bed to repeat it all the next day.
Nothing's more satisfying than walking through the trail freshly dug, imagining how many bikers will be enjoying it next summer. I have never mountain biked in my life, but I'd like to imagine myself there is a few years. How incredible the feeling would be to ride the very trail that my crew and I used our hands to build, bringing all of those sweet memories back.
Written by: Gabby Galestro