Steve Fagin: Rocks, lumber and sweat: Building a new bridge in Pachaug

“Pull! Pull! Pull!”

Urged by shouting coworkers near Voluntown’s Lowdon Brook one morning last week, a crew of sweating laborers hauled a rope tied to an enormous sack bearing some 4,000 pounds of rocks.

The swaying load dangled from a cable stretched across the brook, where a crew waited with outstretched arms.

After carefully lowering the sack, workers then began loading rocks into heavy-gauge wire baskets called gabions, which will support a new bridge to replace a wooden span that had been ripped up by a flood last year.

While this operation took place, other workers were digging more rocks, smashing oversized boulders with a sledge hammer, carting them in a gas-powered wheelbarrow, and lugging lumber by hand.

There are a lot of moving parts to bridge construction, noted Sunny Ramos, an assistant crew leader with the Connecticut Woodlands Conservation Corps (CWCC), which is overseeing the project in Pachaug State Forest.

The corps is run by the Connecticut Forest & Park Association (CFPA), founded in 1895 as the state’s first private, nonprofit, conservation organization, which helps maintain Connecticut’s 825-mile, blue-blazed trail network.

Now in its second year, CWCC hires seasonal employees – many are college students on summer break – who travel to public parks and forests across the state, clearing brush, digging new paths, setting stone steps, and repairing and replacing bridges. Before hitting the trail, crews receive training in the use of chainsaws, drills and other power tools. They also camp rather than commute, often hiking several miles to reach work sites.

The campground in Pachaug was only about a mile from Lowden Brook, but that did not make the job any easier. Before construction began, workers had to carry four telephone poles that will be used as supports, rig a high-line pulley system across the brook, and dig tons and tons and tons of rocks.

Not that Sunny was complaining.

“I love being outside,” he said.

Rock-gathering was particularly time-consuming, because crew members couldn’t simply dismantle nearby stone walls.

“We’re trained to leave no trace, not touch anything manmade,” Sunny said.

Volunteers, including members of the Friends of Pachaug Forest, helped with this chore. Marco Barres of Jewett City, a member of the nonprofit organization who frequently joins my hiking and kayaking adventures, invited me to last week’s work party.

I arrived at the Pachaug Trail site, north of an unpaved section of Gardner Road, to find Marco and his wife, Dorla Landry, loading cantaloupe-sized rocks into a gas-powered wheelbarrow.

“You need to get one of these machines,” Marco said, starting the engine. The machine bucked and rumbled over the rocky trail, while he clutched the handlebars and hung on.

“Here – you try it,” Marco said.

I promptly got the machine wedged against a tree, before Marco showed me how to squeeze the clutch, put it in reverse, back it out, and shift back to first and second gears. After making a couple trips with hundreds of pounds of rocks, I began getting the hang of it – but felt more at ease carrying rocks than running the machine.

Joining our makeshift rock-hauling crew was Jeff Brozdowski of Coventry, who recently retired after 38 years with Travelers Insurance in Hartford and now is a Friends of Pachaug Forest volunteer.

“I love hiking. This is my way of giving back to the community,” he said.

Jeff, Dorla, Marco and I spent a couple hours carting rocks to a spot near the brook, where fellow Friends volunteer Tim Schulz of Preston and others loaded them into gabions.

“I’m following in my father’s footsteps,” he said. During the 1930s, Tim’s dad, Theodore Schulz, worked in Pachaug for the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration that offered young men jobs and lodging during the Great Depression.

“He was stationed here in Pachaug at Camp Lonergan,” Tim said.

In addition to helping maintain trails in Pachaug, the Friends group raised money to commission a bronze statue of a CCC worker in 2019. It stands at the site of the former camp, near the state forest headquarters off Route 49.

In many ways, the Connecticut Woodlands Conservation Corps is modeled after the CCC, whose recruits established parks, cleared trails, planted trees and became known as “Roosevelt’s Tree Army.”

CFPA also has established a separate group of volunteers, called the Rock Stars, who travel around the state with picks, hammers, hoists and other equipment to build and repair bridges, stone staircases and work on other trail projects. I spent a day with Wayne Fogg and his Rock Star crew last year rebuilding stone steps on Meriden’s Chauncey Peak, and also have helped volunteers with the Tri-Town Trail Association build a bog bridge in Ledyard. It’s hard work, but rewarding.

Elsewhere, scouting groups, land trusts and such organizations as the Appalachian Mountain Club also stay busy building and maintaining trails.

Such efforts remind us of all the hard labor, by paid workers and volunteers alike, to create and maintain the public outdoor recreation areas we enjoy today. Too often, their work is taken for granted.

More information about the Connecticut Forest & Park Association is available at ctwoodlands.org.

More information about the Friends of Pachaug Forest is available at friendsofpachaugforest.org.