Michfest, Day 5

I Wanna Be ~ Your Sledgehammer

Thursday, Pre-Fest. This day kicked my ass, seriously. Yesterday I was feeling pretty on top of my game. Feeling good energetically, feeling like my body was doing a fairly admirable job at handling the ply situation. Onward to the next challenge.

Charles had been saying the word, ‘sledging’ for the last few days and staring off into space with a dreamy look in her eyes. Me, I had no idea yet exactly what sledging entailed, nor did I know that my crew of fourteen was responsible for raising a good three quarters of the tents on the land.

Putting up tents is a lot more involved than I could have managed. Lots of angles, corners, cranking, attention to lines, tension, hills and bee hives. The first step was figuring out where all the stakes went- the second was getting them into the ground.

Sledging is one of those things that takes a while to get. I spent most of the afternoon missing the wooden stake entirely and knocking little dusty holes in the ground, trying not to hit my damn foot. My back ached. My wrists felt awkward along the taped wooden handle. After about ten minutes of whacking and swinging I had angry red blisters on both of my palms.

One of my better swings knocked the metal ring off the top of a stake. I was about to keep swing, but Dix stopped me and told me I should keep the ring- it would be one of the things I would want to have after festival. I tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans and liked the feeling of its weight there.

Michelle came over to help us out and I couldn’t help but stare at her sledging technique. Poetry. Her hammer moved in a fluid windmill that looked effortless, almost easy. I listened to the rhythmic metallic peal of the hammerhead against the stake ring. Now that’s how you do it.

********

Sledgehammers are a lot more sensitive than they look; it’s a fine balance to keep them happy. Hold them too loosely and they drop out of your hands, or miss the mark entirely. Grip them too tightly and they chafe against you, again and again, until eventually you have to let them go. Somewhere in the middle lies the perfect tension, which I had yet to find.

And sledging need not be back breaking, either. Michelle explained to me that the upswing was important, but once the hammer reached the apex of its swing… the rest was just inertia. Letting gravity do the work for you, bending your knees for extra force, gliding smoothly into the next swing. If it felt like too much work, then you’re probably doing something wrong.

So much at stake. So much to learn from a sledgehammer.