Sisyphus Lives in Pittsfield

I don’t know what started it, exactly, this fascination with dragging random cumbersome objects to the mountaintop cabin. When I first arrived here over two years ago, it was an eighty pound wagon wheel, which, as an unorthodox workout regimen, the owner, and ultra endurance race fanatic, lugged several miles from his lovely farm up steep forest roads one thousand vertical feet to the top. Now, his financial intern, who spent a significant proportion of the first term of his education yanking weeds from said farm, had to take it back down.

The two young farmers, who had been running the Appalachian Trail before inheriting the responsibility of running the farm, padlocked his Specialized Rockhopper to the barn rafters. The key was attached to the wheel in such a way that the intern had to retrieve the wheel from the summit to unlock his steed. He got it down, freed his bike, good natured laughs were shared all around. About a week later, as I was buffing Noodle’s Revenge, a different intern was a few switchbacks above me, struggling and bumbling with the same wheel. He asked for help and we got it back to its original spot. 

A month later, a bikram yoga instructor and the female farmer got into the spirit of things, rolling a six foot wooden wire spool through town, and up a dirt road, managing to make it half way up the mountain. A couple of months after that, the US olympic wrestling team, in town for a Death Race camp style training session, were compelled to roll it the rest of the way to the top, by far the steepest section. 

And there it remained for the last two years (It did make a decent table for race aid stations) until the latest DR campers wheeled it back down, and replaced it with a five foot truck tire and two fifty pound sand bags. Exasperated I walked to the cabin to survey the damage, pulled a dagger stuck in the cabin door, and could not find the tire, though it should’ve been obvious. 

I found it finally, laying off the side of Luvin It next to a set of confused tire prints and even more perplexing footprints. I gave it a good yank and in a huff, decided to let it roll to the bottom until a vision of my folly thankfully got the best of me. Maybe if I wish for it loud enough, next time someone will decide to carry up something equally burdensome, but infinitely more useful, like some nice adirondack chairs.