We found the well!

Today Bryan and I went back to the property to take a few more photos and to deliver a letter to our new neighbors; we want to let them know that we're finally actually going to build and give them an idea of what to expect and when. So far, we know there will be a backhoe on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then not a lot of obvious change until February.

While we were there we started wandering, following a similar path to the one I took on Friday when I took most of the pre-clearing photos. This time, though, we started looking for the well. Yes, one of our wells was hiding somewhere in the dense shrubbery, and we do actually need to find it and to clear a path to it so it can be tested for potability and flow and, eventually, used. I had a decent idea of where it might be, since the boys and I visited the site when the well-digging equipment was there in 2006. I remembered going down the "road" along the western edge of the property and it curving around a bit. Now that road is thoroughly overgrown and mostly impassable in parts, though. Bryan and I approached it from a different angle, from the east, under the stand of firs. We could make out where the road was, and where it curved to the left. We could even see where it made a U turn to where the digging trucks had been parked. But that whole flat area where the trucks were was completely covered in a dense, prickly tangle of scotch broom (in itself easy to manage) interspersed with overgrown blackberry vines (ouch!). We picked and pushed and trampled and crawled and ducked our way through, sometimes only inches at a time, trying not to be stabbed, slashed and snagged by the blackberries. We were thoroughly unprepared for this adventure! We had come to the land intending only to take photos, so we had no clippers or tools of any kind. However, with a great deal of patience and perseverance, we actually found the wellhead! Well, Bryan found it; by that time, I was ready to turn back -- but he'd gotten the bug and was bound and determined. I think it helped that I was confident that we were looking in the right area, especially after we found the winding road. (Cue the Beatles song.)

Lo and behold, the wellhead is literally in the farthest southwestern corner of our property; it must be only steps from the property line, as our down-the-hill neighbor's yard was a few yards away, and the lot just to the west of us was even closer.

Somehow we managed to escape with no major injuries and only a couple of hearty "ouch!"es. Even those were only at the end, when we were growing weary of the whole adventure (and my thighs were fatiguing from crouching through so much underbrush). We'll know tomorrow whether we managed to escape without any poison oak; when we got home we thoroughly showered immediately and washed our clothes (only slightly damaged from blackberry snags).

And we found the well!

The wellhead.

The tangle of bushes we fought through to get to the wellhead (just behind me).
Too bad we didn't know there was an easier way!

Bryan hacked the rest of our way out with a large stick.