I don’t often get the opportunity to see behind the green screen that marks the boundary of the Barn construction site. The construction vehicles are tall enough to be seen over the screens, and I hear them, certainly, so I know that the work is being done. But it is something else to see the progress being made in person.
Part of working at a pre-k to grade eight school is borne of a desire to keep ourselves young. A great litmus test for that perpetual youth was my visit yesterday to the site itself with CP, our director of operations. I felt six years-old again. Huge vehicles, lifted from the pages of the illustrated construction books I read as a child, surrounded me. Excavators, steamrollers, bulldozers and dump trucks were everywhere, and all of them were hard at work creating, before my eyes, the transformation that has only been the stuff of our imaginations to date. Enormous piles of dirt and excavated boulders and rocks are patiently waiting for their opportunity to be restored once the subterranean work has been completed. It is a real life playpen for a child’s imagination.
CP began the tour at what is now the clear outline of the Barn marked by a concrete foundation. “Here,” he explained as we waited for the steamroller to pass by, “is where the woodworking studio will be.” This was not an exercise in imagination or theory. CP was gesturing to the foundation walls that outlined the actual room. “And there are the garage doors that will open onto the tennis courts.” Then we walked the drivewaycurrently in use only for construction vehicles and soon to be used by all of usand looked out over Far Field. The soon-to-be new entry to our school. Without hyperbole, I could feel my heart beating a bit more quickly, my step quickening.
I’m not one for crystal balls, but I have never seen the future so concretelyand yes, pun very much intended. We are making very real progress and the next stepssteel delivery!will be upon us before we know it. As we have said before, the future is bright here at Belmont Day. Now we have a foundation to prove it.
If you are not yet following along with construction on Instagram, I would encourage you to check it out. I hope the photos are as inspiring to you as my visit to the site was. Enjoy.
Happy vacation, everyone. May it be a restful and restorative one.
