Site Work Begins

The permit was granted and now the site work has begun. This is big, loud work. First the strong trucks pull long trailers up the road to drop off equipment. Yesterday a worker went up in a bucket with a chainsaw to safely take down a dead tree that was leaning toward the street. Now a large, orange excavator rolls around the site using it's claws to pull out the overgrown, gnarled cedar hedge. A chipper will chop the softwoods and limbs into mulch. Saws and splitters will chunk the hardwoods into firewood for next winter.

Like I said, this work is BIG. This work is LOUD. It seems so destructive. Neighbors look on, some curious, some concerned about the changes. It is such a contrast to the quiet design phase that I think of as "creating a house". My pen scratching on paper... My computer mouse clicking around the drawing screen... My mind looking for solutions, trying ideas...
 
But it only seems destructive and different. This loud work implements the quietly created site plan. The buildings were purposefully placed on the site to keep as many of the healthy trees as possible. The excavator operator controls the machine efficiently and thoughtfully such that his work is not actually too unlike my work of pen on paper. It occurs to me that it's really just a matter of scale and what tool one is skilled at using.