Repairing the Axsom Branch Trail

Work on trail in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness has amazing results.

An ice cold lemonade while sitting on the porch is the height of many people's summer ambitions. However, this "perfect" summer day was not to be for Eric Sandeno and the fifteen people who supported the repair of the Axom Branch trail in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness.

Some people would think that thirteen days work on a trail in the middle of summer would be hard work. They are wrong. It is unbelievably physically demanding, grueling and downright miserable to be working in that kind of heat and humidity. Especially since the Wilderness where they were working, is entirely machine free. That's right, nothing with moving parts was allowed on this unique Indiana Wilderness. Mules were used to haul dirt and rocks to repair stream banks that were suffering from erosion. During this time Sandeno said they logged over thirteen hundred man hours.

Sandeno said, "Most of the time the average person doesn't even notice that work has been done on the trail, and that is how it should be." The hardworking people of the Hoosier weren't out there to make a pretty, easy going trail. They were there to make sure it was passable, and non-destructive to Mother Nature, nothing more, nothing less. Nevertheless, this particular trail had taken too much damage, in several places, to be repaired by nature alone. In one stream, which was eroding the nearby trail, there were at least fifty enormous rocks easily two feet in diameter that were rolled, by hand, to the site, and set in place. These rocks acted as a barrier preventing the stream from further damaging itself. In other places water bars or drainage had to be built to make sure the stream continued in the right direction and caused as little damage to itself as possible.

While moving large rocks may be easy for some people, there is no way to effectively move large amounts of gravel with your bare hands, so the mules Ruth, Jack, Rose, Spade, Belle, Paul, Jim, Dodge, Fox and the horse Vaquero lent a hoof. These nine mules and their horse companion had the hapless job of moving large amounts of smaller rocks up and down the trail to wherever crushed stone was needed.

The phenomenal work by both man and beast led to valuable benefits for the Axom Branch. This work improved general water quality of the downstream municipal watershed by preventing the flow of sediment into the streams. Two miles of trail was given years back on its life, as preventative measures such as water bars and drainages, which keep the streams from literally tearing themselves apart, were put in place.

NOTE: Luke Taft is a volunteer High School student interested in Journalism.