The Mound

 

by Dominic Vautier
5/2002


As the days and weeks of early spring 2002 gave rise to June rains, I noticed this gradual shifting around of earth in our front yard.  Could it be aliens? Or perhaps some subterranean life form, like a giant Tremors type worm at work enjoying the soft, rich rock infested Bellevue earth, or perhaps an early sign that the planet is tilting more?

Not a bit of it.  My wife Cynthia had simply decided that she wanted to lower the southern part of our yard by about 2 feet and needed a place for all the soil.  Sometimes ladies with wheelbarrows can be a real challenge to life and limb (tree limb, that is).

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I awaited my unenviable fate of removing approximately 12 yards of really, really heavy, but clean fill dirt.  Cynthia was more than happy to soften the dirt up a little bit with her trusty roto-tiller and a smile.  But it seamed that the dirt was just as heavy as before.

So I go and rent this big, big old truck that can handle over two yards of dirt at a time.  That's a lot of dirt.

It isn't too long before everybody joins in the fun and games.

Valentin becomes our backloader but soon looses himself in the sheer enjoyment of the moment.  Why is it that kids and dirt go so well together?

We find this private camp just outside of Redmond that want all the dirt we can haul.  My first reaction was that the place was a nudist camp, but Cyn thinks that it was more like a religious camp.

Here we see Cyn, Val, Gabriel's friend and Fiona hard at work.  I had to stop my feverish work to take the picture, naturally.

No.  She's not pushing the truck.

Boy. This is so neat, and I'm even getting paid.