Will It Burn?

Tuesday was the warmest day of the week, and therefore, the day when we were told to make fire. Sonny's son and a few other Hurley-ites spent the day on the roof, replacing rotting plywood and laying roofing felt. However, on Monday, we had dumped all the tar paper over the edge of the roof. It now layered the ground beneath the roof. So Phil charged us with gathering all the tar paper and burning it in the backyard. We stirred yesterday's fire until we found a tiny flame, and then fed it small pieces of tar paper. By the time Cecil had been summoned as a gopher for the men -- the vestiges of gender roles clung to our job -- we had a raging fire, sending foul-smelling black smoke into the clear mountain air.

We spent most of the day gather tar paper to feed the fire and playing with the cat that hung around the house because Sonny and Donna fed it. At the end of the day, we clambered back up to the roof and gave a small hand with the shingling. However, we took off a little early, because we wanted time to get into the mountains behind the community center before it started raining the next day.

A "road" quickly becomes a "path" and alternates between "path" and "creek" behind the community center as it leads up to the side of the mountain. I knew where we could find old mines sunk into the mountain sides and I led the charge up the paths. Half an hour up the mountain, we found Cair Paravel : an abandoned building, overgrown by ivy. The roof was completely gone; only one wall and some bits of grey brick and wood remained. We could tell by the broken pulley systems and rusted propellers that it had once served some sort of a function for the mine, but its purpose is lost. Past the building, we found old rail tracks. And then, we found round tunnels sunk into the side of the mountain. It looked like someone had found coal and just kept digging. We could peer into them but not very far, before darkness took over.

Later on in the week, we found out that the mine came from the 1960s. I was shocked. I had expected that it was at least 40 years older than that.