The Perfect Rock by Ashton York, Western Wildlands

Only two hitches down, and already I am often visited by a single reoccurring dream: Appropriately clad in full MCC attire, surrounded by Ponderosa Pine and bright sunlight beaming through branches, squinting through slightly fogged eye-pro...I look down to see a mound covered in the most vibrant green moss one’s eyes could ever gaze upon. I know in my dream-state that the perfect rock lies just beneath this pristine layer of sunlit emerald tuft. A pick mattock appears in my hands, and I effortlessly pry the perfect rock from the earth. Indeed, the rock is perfect--flat on top and bottom and two sides, edges that will give three perfect points of contact against even the ugliest of rocks...and provide hundreds of years of stability to any wall, culvert, or turnpike. And that is it. The perfect and elusive rock that in my experience so far...does not exist.
It seems that perfection only exists in dreams; so in life, I suppose we must strive for something like perfection through good, old-fashioned, hard work. We sweat, strain, grunt, chisel, dig, pound, and swing for hours on end, and what we end up with is hardly perfect--but all of our labor certainly ends up as something solid and full of purpose. We complete a project knowing that it will last for years to come, through hikers and packers and torrential downpours. We do not doubt our work because we know that we have done good work-- and good, solid, hard work is certainly better than something we may imagine as perfect. So, even though I dream of the perfect rock, I do not value the perfect rock. My time with the MCC so far has helped me to realize that what is valuable is the intensive hands-on experience of resourcing available materials (no matter how imperfect) and moulding them into something practical, useful, and ultimately beautiful.
Also, more immediately than ever before, I am learning the value of proactive teamwork--and the good that can come from utilizing and combining personal strengths in order to complete specific tasks. I see myself and my teammates learning our weakness, and slowly but surely, figuring out how to turn these weak points into strong points. As I sit here in an imperfect world, scratching at bug bites and rubbing sore muscles...I realize that our time in the woods is as close to perfect as one may ever get while in the waking world.