It's done!
(For those of you that don't like to read, a whole bunch of photos follow this blog)
That final push was a doozy, but worth it. As of Sunday, Nov. 10th everything was installed. I had moved many parts of the remaining habitat in during the week, leaving only the pieces that did not fit in my car or were too delicate to move that way. We took a look at the calendar and realized our best day to finish was Sunday. The bank for the turkey, two large, airy birch saplings and the long foam piece that had the fox and the sumacs needed to be transported in our large enclosed trailer. I also brought my car that day, with the songbirds, fawn and the hummingbirds carried carefully. I breathed a sigh of relief once everything had arrived and made it through the school’s front door that morning! After that Joey and I spent the rest of the day touching things up on one area before the next piece of foam went in and we couldn’t reach it. Neither of us thought it would take us the entire day to reach the finish line, but we finally made it.
So now that I’m done, I thought I would add up some things about the project that might be interesting to note:
First, time spent on painting the mural was 308 hours, time on the building of the structure and all that entailed was 1,245 hours. Making the total project time 1,553 hours; if translated into a standard 8 hour work day, this “job” took me almost 10 months to complete. Of course this was a project squeezed in between a full-time job and the usual home chores. Hands on actually began January 23, 2016 and finished November 10, 2019 about 3 years and 10 months later. This does not include the preparatory work of a scale model or 5 large paintings to work from. Nor does it include all the 3:00 am thoughts that kept me up so many nights, worrying and wondering “what if..” I did a quick “get info” click on the Nature Case folder on my computer and came up over 3 gigs of data and 900 items in it. Hmmm.
So now what? We will be creating a plaque thanking all those who helped me on this project. Once we have that we hope to have some sort of reception to celebrate...the details need to be worked out yet. I will keep you posted.
But right now I would like to thank a few people that made my dream actually become a reality. Bob, Peter and Joey - My family. This project was always on my mind... what was the next step, the next problem to overcome. I’m going to brag a little here and say my guys were the perfect partners to bounce these issues off of. They came up with some brilliant solutions to those problems and I need to tell you I couldn’t have done half as good a job as this turned out to be without that help. They were not only my heavy lifters, but my quality control and my engineers.
Living with this project for almost 4 years wasn’t easy either. It was not only on my mind all the time, but in our house, garage and pole barn too! So thank you guys for living with badgers in the bathroom, moles sitting on the computer, fox, fawn and weasels hanging out in the living room. Hawks and owls hanging off the kitchen light and a canvas river that spent months on the floor and dining room table. Thanks for putting up with my schools of various fish on sticks on every available flat surface, not to mention the horrible vinegar smell of the silicone molding of those fish. There were fake rocks, stuffed animals, leaves, branches, weeds and grass here and there and everywhere. Two huge foam trees as well as two halves of a real tree occupied our garage one whole summer and fall. One third of the whole project took up most of the working space of our pole barn for months, making everyone squeeze between the beaver dam and birch saplings if they needed any tools...all with me warning them don’t bump that and to be careful!! and the foam. Foam everywhere, in all forms. Foam sheets, foam scraps and foam pebbles in the house, the garage, the pole barn, my shop, everyone’s vehicle, our clothes and yes, even in our dinner...once. We have stacked it, glued it, carved it, sawed it, melted it, vacuumed it, swept it, coated it and painted it...I’m sure we’ll be finding bits of it for months to come. So again, thanks guys for following this crazy dream right along with me- love you always.
One final word to leave you with. I took a walk today, much as I do almost every day with our Ellie and for the first time in a long time I didn’t look at the woods wondering if I should include that weed or bush in the case or make my branch or tree look like this....I just enjoyed the view. It’s a strange feeling to have when a large chunk of your life is finished. I volunteered for it and yes, I loved it, but it also weighed on my shoulders like a heavy backpack a large part of the time. So while it kind of feels like I’ve abandoned my baby and walked away, it also feels as though I’ve laid a heavy burden down after carrying it a long way. For those that have taken this journey with me...we are not quite done. Almost, but not quite. We still have a baby animal to add to the case and our celebration of course so I will have those posts to make, but it feels right to take the time RIGHT NOW to thank you for coming along on this ride.
You all made it so much more fun.
