THE HOT, summer sun beat down on 15-year-old Tristan Hatcher as he lined up another plank on a boardwalk being built at Belle Isle State Park.

Tilting his head to catch the breeze off nearby Mulberry Creek, where a heron was artfully snagging minnows in a shallow cove, Hatcher used a battery-powered drill to secure the board with galvanized screws.

The young man from Cumberland said with pride that getting the deck even wasn't all that tough.

Not after he and the rest of the Youth Conservation Corps crew had dug, leveled and concreted the posts beneath it.

Last fall, Hurricane Isabel ripped the original boardwalk from the peaceful, 733-acre park on the Rappahannock River, near the boundary between Richmond and Lancaster counties in the Northern Neck.

That damage gave Hatcher and the 13 other boys in the YCC crew stationed at Belle Isle plenty to do during a three-week stay that will end Saturday.

"Building the boardwalk has been work, but it's fun too, like a lot of the stuff we do here," Hatcher said. "That's what got me here. Getting paid for having fun sounded OK to me."

The Virginia state parks YCC summer program, for youngsters 14 to 17, has YCC teams in a dozen different parks this summer.

With hand tools and elbow grease, the YCC workers will work to restore wetlands, remove invasive plants and do landscaping, painting, mapping, trail management and more.

All for just $500 for three weeks of work.

Ask Hatcher and the others at Belle Isle about their stay and work isn't the first thing they mention.

Sure, they're proud of the new boardwalk where visitors can again stroll to get a view of the creek teeming with wildlife.

Ditto for a paint job the YCC team applied to the house on the property, and the work the crew did at the Upper Lancaster Ruritan Club recreational complex in return for swimming privileges in a swimming pool there.