Week 3-5

Week 3:
Week 3 was our week at Kerber Creek. There is a whole big explanation that I don’t remember about why and how Kerber Creek got messed up. I think the main problem is the town of Bonanza (which I am unable to say without ridiculous emphasis on the NAN part of the word). BoNANza is much smaller than Saguache but used to be quite the bustling mining town. I don’t remember what that really has to do with the creek, but I’m pretty sure it was involved. Anyway, the creek doesn’t flow very well in lots of parts. This is bad because it runs into the Rio Grande which apparently hasn’t actually reached the Gulf of Mexico for like eight of the past ten years or something. The BLM is trying to get Kerber Creek to run better so it will help the Rio Grande. The mine did something like deposit a bunch of chemicals or something which both killed a lot of the vegetation around the creek and also widened the creek in parts. Steve said that the creek flows best when it is a narrow deep channel. Widening it makes it flow slower. I don’t quite remember how this helped narrow the creek channel, but our main job was to install wattles. What are wattles, you ask? They are 20 foot long mesh tubes filled with hay. They come on pallets rolled up so they look like cinnamon rolls. To install them, you unroll them and put them in kind of a U shape along the creek, with the ends pointing away from the creek. It is fairly hilly in most places along the creek, so the wattles catch whatever dirt and stuff might be falling down the hill and into the creek and promotes new growth. When you have in where you want it, you hammer in a few wood stakes to hold it to the ground. Yes, there were several vampire slayer jokes with the stakes. The work isn’t hard, but carrying the wattles to where they needed to go was pretty unpleasant. They’re heavier than they seem like they should be. It was also really windy that day and straw was flying everywhere. Everyone had straw in every pocket of their clothes as well as sometimes in their hair and mouth. Gross. We had to do this in several places along the creek, and as usual, we finished before they expected us to. The last day of the week, since we had finished everything else, we had a pretty silly assignment. We were sent to some private property to fix the wattles the forest service had installed there about a year ago. A lot of people who own land along the creek are cooperating with the BLM’s mission to fix the creek, but only if they don’t have to do any work for it. We went along the creek, which sent us into a huge cow pasture. Let me tell you, it’s pretty unnerving to have a couple hundred cows staring at you, many of whom are also mooing angrily while standing in front of their babies. It was also silly because it was pretty much a job for one person, but there were 11 of us (including Kim, a BLM employee who is writing her thesis on…something relating to the creek). We were split into two groups, one on each side of the creek, but it was still usually just one person doing the little work we had to do and the rest just walking along behind them.

Week 4 and 5:
Week 4 began our two weeks of trail work and brought us yet more confusion. The BLM had said from the beginning, even since they first applied to get an AmeriCorps team, that the weeks we were working on trails we would be camping because the worksite was so far from the church where we live. We planned our meals for the week thinking we would be camping. We packed up on Monday morning to camp. We got to the BLM office in the morning like always and set about finding a camping stove to borrow, and a table, and an extra water jug, and all sorts of things. We were also told that Christina would have to drive back into town every day to get more water for us because there wasn’t a water supply where we would be camping. Then, as Jess and I were going with Steve to find more equipment, he said something about how we could drive back into town to take a shower every day if we wanted to. We said we probably wouldn’t because it was so far, and he informed us that it was only about 20 minutes away. We told everyone else and we all decided that it was way too much trouble to camp when we were so close to town. Ridiculous.

Anyway, these two weeks we were either working on trails with Jake and Jimmy or working on fixing up a campsite with Dario and the Southwest Conservation Corps. We alternated and were split into different groups most of the past two weeks. The first day we did trail work was not much fun for me. Jake and Jimmy were really fun to work with. Jake is 19 and Jimmy is 21, so it was nice to be with other people our age. They’re both pretty funny. The bad part was that the plan for the day was pretty much just to hike this eight-mile trail, each carrying a different tool, and fix anything that needs fixing along the way. We stayed together as a group the whole time. Most of the things that needed fixing were just things like a tree fallen across the trail, or some big loose rocks in the trail, or some plants that are growing into the trail too much. None of these things take 12 people to fix. What ended up happening is that the 3-5 people in the front of the group who would see the problem first would fix it, and the people in the back of the group would stand there. As usual, just like in Big Bend, I was toward the back of the group. I got a lot better (and by better, I mean faster) at hiking by the end of Big Bend, but I’m still a pretty slow hiker compared to a lot of people. Especially going uphill at an altitude of probably like 9,000 feet. I spent most of the day being like fourth from the back. Literally, the only actual work I did that day was this: There was a little section where Becky and Tomm used McClouds to chop out some grass in the trail and I used my flat shovel to smooth the dirt out again. Also, later, there was a random hole in the trail that needed to be filled because horses go on that trail a lot. Other people filled it with dirt, and I used a tamping bar to pack the dirt in. That’s it. That’s all the work I did all day besides just hiking up hills. That is not really my idea of a good day of work.

The day after that, Jake and Jimmy had to be in some kind of training all day, so we were sent to the Buffalo Creek campsite to work with the Southwest Conservation Corps. Most of us were kind of excited to be meeting more people our age. We’ve been really wanting to hang out with other people lately. We hadn’t seen people much since Memorial Day. The BLM people we had hung out with before were mostly the fire management guys, and they have been away a lot on fires and working a lot of weekends. We had been determined to make them our friends, but that’s difficult when they not around and we can’t see them. Anyway, we looked forward to the chance to meet more people. The SCC group was pretty cool once we got to know them a bit better. They had four guys and four girls. I think I ended up working with them more than anyone else did (most of the rest of the team really liked the trail work, but I’m kind of burnt out on it, so I think each time there was a campsite group I was on it) and started really liking most of them. Their program is only like a month long and they came about halfway through our stay here, so I think we’ll be leaving at about the same time.

On Monday of Week 5, Rob and I were the only ones from our team to be working at the campsite. After meeting at the BLM office at 7 like always, we were told we could go ahead and leave because Dario and Aaron, the BLM people in charge of the project, were already there. We arrived at the campsite at about 8 only to find the gate locked. We called Christina and asked her to radio someone and she told us that Heather (not our Heather, a Heather who works for the BLM) had just left the office and would be there in about half an hour. So we waited. While we were waiting, someone drove up. We found out that his name was Calvin and that he was there to take away old picnic tables, but he didn’t have a key for the gate. So we all waited. Luckily I had brought my book along and read for a bit while Rob took a nap, then I decided to take a nap also. Finally, at about 9:30, Dario and Aaron showed up. So we got to start the day with a nice long nap in the truck. When we got in and joined the SCC group, they asked us if we were having fajitas with them. We asked what they were talking about, and they said that Dario had said he would make fajitas for them for lunch that day. We said we would love to have some if there was enough, but if not we had brought our lunches like usual. (Brief tangent: Sometime in the past couple weeks, Steve invited us to his house for breakfast. It turned out to be a cookout breakfast for a bunch of people in the BLM, including us. Steve had a campfire set up outside of his house with a thing the BLM loves to use that is like a wok with legs attached to stand it over a fire. So we got to Steve’s house and Dario was at the fire with a wok full of potatoes and onions. Then Steve and other BLM employees brought out scrambled eggs, tortillas, cheese, and everything else needed to make breakfast burritos. Oh my goodness, it was delicious. End tangent.) So when lunchtime rolled around that day, it turned out that the county commissioners or someone important like that was in the area to look at noxious weeds or something, so the BLM had a huge cookout lunch for them, lots of BLM people, and the SCC. They graciously let us have some. There was one camping wok full of potatoes and onions, another full of chicken with red, green, orange, and yellow peppers, and a third wok for warming up tortillas, some of which were homemade. I had one regular sized one and one small one. It was SO GOOD. The only bad part of the day was the hail we got after lunch, but it didn’t last long.

Also, on Thursday of Week 5, we had some horsemanship training with Gerard. This coming week (the week of 6/21 through 6/24), they’re going to let us ride horses a little, but we needed to have training before they would let us. Horses have always kind of freaked me out. They’re so big, and so powerful, and fairly unpredictable. Even just going near them without a fence between us makes me kind of nervous. During the training, everyone had to take a turn doing several different things. We had to go into the corral and “catch” a horse (put a halter with a lead rope on them), lead it out of the corral, then back in. We had to brush a horse and pick up one of its feet to clean out the hooves. We had to attempt to put a saddle on a horse. Goodness, that was hard. I was the only one who couldn’t do it. Saddles are freaking heavy and really awkward, and horses are tall. Gerard showed us his way where you can use the saddle’s weight as momentum and kind of spin as you fling it upward, kind of like a shot put. When he did it (and he’s a few inches shorter than I am), it just floated right up there. I tried three times. The third time I came close, but I pretty much just flung the saddle at the side of the horse each time. After that, we had to take a horse into a round pen and make the horse run in a circle in both directions. Then we had to do the “pivot exercise.” You hold the halter rope right under the horse’s chin with one hand and put the other hand on their neck. You push the rope and pull the neck to make the horse turn in a circle, being careful not to let it step on your feet. I didn’t do so well at either of the round pen things, but oh well. We can’t all be good at everything. At least by the end of the day I felt much more comfortable being near horses.

Earlier that day, we were sent to go pick up some old fence posts from near Great Sand Dunes National Park. We were told that we could go pick them up, then just hang out in the park for like an hour before bringing the posts back to the BLM office. What actually happened is that we drove around the dirt roads by the park for about two and a half hours, trying to find the posts. We had a map, but apparently some roads on the map didn’t actually exist. Half the team was in our cargo truck and the other half (including me) was in a BLM truck. We couldn’t take our van because we would be driving through sand and they didn’t think Gertrude could make it. In the process of one of the many U-turns we had to make, Alex, who was driving the cargo truck, got it stuck in the sand. (Tangent: Have I mentioned Alex yet? Due to some bureaucratic silliness, Marquis from my regular team and Alex, who was on Sun 5, switched teams. So with the addition of Alex, and without Marquis and Lindsey who’s foot is still broken, our team is rather different. I miss Lindsey and Marquis, but the addition of Alex hasn’t been bad.) We had to tie the cargo to the BLM truck to kind of tow it out after several unsuccessful attempts at pushing it out. So silly. We finally found the posts after so long of driving around then it only took about 20 minutes to load the posts. So silly.

I would now like to write about possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. When we make the great hour-long pilgrimage to Wal-Mart, Tomm likes to get movies. A few times, he’s gotten those things that are like a four-pack for $5. You can guess at the quality of these movies. So a few nights ago, we watched one of his new purchases, a gem of a film entitled Raging Sharks. (I suppose it’s only fair to mention, spoiler alert.) We put the movie in, and the first thing that happens is that there are aliens who send a capsule thing down into the ocean. Are we really watching a movie called Raging Sharks? We then meet the crew working on a deep sea lab, led by a doctor and his wife. They found some weird red crystals that the resident scientist says are like nothing else on the planet. Oh yeah, and there are a bunch of killer sharks. Raging sharks, if you will. When they attack the lab, we see the exact same shot of a shark biting some kind of pipe THREE TIMES. Literally, the same shot. After each time, it cuts to the interior of the lab and some lights flicker. (The movie was also full of stock footage. We saw the same generic shots of sharks swimming around, a boat bobbing along the waves, and a submarine too many times to count.) There are also a couple more scenes of shark attacks, and then sharks are never seen again. The majority of the movie is not about sharks at all. There was a guy there who we were told was with some kind of agency, checking up on the lab and making sure everything was up to code or whatever. After that shark attack on the lab, they call a nearby submarine to come help them. The sub captain says they’ll be there in 35 minutes, but the doctor in the lab says they only have 20 minutes of oxygen left. They decide to go outside the lab to try to fix it, despite the raging sharks, but it somehow breaks more. Now they only have 10 minutes of oxygen, they say. Now we find out that the guy checking up on them is actually with the “black ops” and has been sent to kill them all because they are finding out about the red crystals, which the government wants to keep secret. He kills everyone in the lab but the doctor and his wife. How convenient. Half an hour after they said they only had 10 minutes of oxygen left, they manage to kill the black ops guy. After 40 minutes, they’re starting to get a little woozy. The wife falls unconscious. With fires burning all over the lab, sucking up the oxygen that was supposed to run out 30 minutes ago. The sub gets there and believes that everyone in the lab is dead so they sail away. Suddenly, the aliens appear again. The doctor sees them, but his wife is unconscious and the sub is already leaving. I honestly don’t know what the aliens did, but it was probably something with the crystals. Then we suddenly see the doctor and the wife on the submarine. I think we are supposed to assume that, supposedly oxygen deprived and with his unconscious wife in tow, the doctor swam fast enough to catch up with the sub. I feel like this description does not accurately show how horrible this movie was. We were all laughing hysterically most of the time.

This past weekend (I’m writing this on 6/20) was really fun. There’s apparently a really famous whitewater festival in Salida every summer called FIBArk, pronounced exactly how it looks. Through careful research (I read it on a T-shirt I saw), I found out that it stands for First in Boating the Arkansas. Apparently the Arkansas River is really good for whitewater activities, especially the part that goes through Salida. They have this festival every year with all kinds of rafting competitions, a fair, and live music. Both Friday and Saturday, we got there at about 4 or 5. We watched whatever competition that was happening then had dinner. Heather, Jess, Michala, and I all went to this one pub for dinner on Friday. It was SO delicious. Heather and I both had veggie sandwiches that came with cucumbers, lettuce, red onions, sprouts, cream cheese, and guacamole, all on some delicious toasted wheat bread. We also got to sit outside on the patio. We decided that we wanted to come back for dinner on Saturday, variety be darned. Saturday we were joined by Becky and also Jimmy from the BLM, with whom we managed to meet up. It was just as delicious as the first time. So both nights, we finished the awesome dinner right around the time the music started. Friday it was an electronic band called BoomBox, and Saturday it was a bluegrass band called Hot Buttered Rum. They were both pretty good. Why have I never discovered electronic concerts? They were so much fun to dance to. Most of us danced till the music was over. Friday night we just went home after the music, but Saturday some of us wanted to stay out. Heather, Jess, and I went to a bar with Jimmy and Will, one of the fire guys we ran into after the concert, while the others went home (Will gave us a ride home since he lives about three blocks from us). We got a little more dancing in there. It was a really fun weekend.

And now the blog is only a week away from the present! I'm so close!

Current Project!

Transition week in Denver was, well, transition week. Full of silly meetings and obligations. The whole week is either free time or wasted time. But oh well. The best part was that I left on Friday to go to my brother Carl’s graduation in Lafayette, LA. My flight was supposed to leave at about noon to go to Dallas then on to Lafayette. When I got to the airport to check in, the lady asked me what time my flight left. I told her noon, and she said “Well your flight is still showing on time, but every other flight to Dallas before yours has been cancelled. There are bad storms in Dallas.” Awesome. I got to my gate which was super crowded with all those people who were supposed to go to Dallas earlier on cancelled flights. My flight time got pushed back an hour, then another hour, then another hour, then the gate attendants just said that they didn’t even know if it would be able to leave at all that day. Awesome. I waited in the line to talk to a gate person for about an hour. I talked to the people in line around me. It sounded like a lot of people were trying to get to graduations that weekend. By the time I got to the front of the line, my flight from Dallas to Lafayette had been cancelled. Brief tangent: Why are people rude to people who can give them something they want? The poor woman at the desk looked completely frazzled. I even heard people being rude to her when I was nearing the front. That’s usually not a good way to get what you want, people. It’s not her fault that there are storms and the planes can’t fly. Anyway, I was as polite to her as I could be and smiled as much as possible. She booked me on the last seat on the only other flight to Lafayette that day, which left at like 7:30 and printed out a boarding pass for me. She also booked me on a flight from Denver to New Orleans the next morning in case I couldn’t get out of Denver that night. (The plan for graduation was to go to the ceremony in Lafayette on Saturday early afternoon then everyone drive the two hours to New Orleans to celebrate. So I would miss the ceremony but get to meet them in New Orleans for the celebration, which is really the most important part anyway.) Luckily, my flight finally left Denver at about 5:45. I didn’t really know what I would do though, because I wouldn’t land in Dallas until like 8:30, which is obviously too late for that connecting flight to Lafayette. Oh well, I got on the plane anyway. When I landed in Dallas I got myself to the gate listed on my boarding pass as fast as my gimpy foot could take me. (About a week before I left Big Bend, my right foot started hurting. I think it was a stress fracture, even though an X-Ray didn’t show one. They don’t always show up on X-Rays, and I’ve had stress fractures in that foot before. Stupid foot.) When I got to the gate, it was empty. I stood for a second wondering what to do. At the next gate over were a female gate attendant in uniform and a guy wearing jeans and a flannel shirt behind the counter looking intently at the computer. I went and stood patiently at the desk while they determinedly ignored me. The woman left without ever talking to me. The guy told me he didn’t work there, but he could help if I just needed something looked up on the computer. Um. Ok. I showed him my boarding pass and asked if that flight was horribly late like I was hoping for it to be. He looked it up and said it was just about to start boarding like four gates away from where I was right then. Amazing! I called my family, who I had been updating on my transportation issues, on my almost-dead phone and told them I was about to get on a plane and to pick me up at 10:30. It was pretty much a miracle that I got to Lafayette that night. There was someone on that flight who I overheard saying he was glad the flight left because he was going to the UL-Lafayette graduation tomorrow. I turned and said that’s where I was going, and he asked what time mine was. I said noon and he said his was at 3:00. I forgot about big schools and their multiple graduations.

That was a really fun weekend. I was really looking forward to meeting Nikki, Carl’s girlfriend. We didn’t do much after I got there because it was so late, but I’m so glad I got there in time. The ceremony wasn’t as long and boring as graduations usually are. My aunt and cousin from Memphis came to the ceremony as well as Greg, one of Carl’s friends from high school (my parents were there too, obviously). Then I got to see Carl’s apartment and go to my first sushi restaurant. Then I got to drive through the worst rain of my life to New Orleans. We went to the hotel in New Orleans we were all staying at and ordered pizza before heading to the French Quarter. It was pretty nice to be back in New Orleans after spending two months there. Several more of Carl’s friends met up with us there, including Andy, another high school friend. I had a great time with all of them. The next day, most people wanted to go to Café Du Monde. Due to leaving the hotel later than intended, getting a bit lost on the way there, and having to park far away, we didn’t have time to get there in time to enjoy it before someone would have to take me to the airport to go back to Denver. Everyone was hungry so we needed to find somewhere to eat nearby. I am quite proud of the fact that I remembered a quick Mexican place we went to a few times when I was there for my project called Filipe’s that I was pretty sure was only like two blocks from where we were standing. I was right! Everyone loved it. Perfect ending to the weekend.

And that brings us (finally!) to my current project. It is with the San Luis Valley Public Lands Center in Saguache (pronounced sa-WATCH), CO, which is the valley between the Rockies and the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We’re also working with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service. I’m not sure how all these organizations are connected, but they all seem to be coming from the same office. Saguache has a population of about 500 people. We live in a church. Actually, I think the building where we live used to be the church, but the church is now next door. This building has become more like a house. There’s a big room that used to be the sanctuary (which is where we all sleep on the floor with sleeping pads – yes, the pews have been removed), a pretty decent kitchen, and a little living room with a couch, two loveseats, and a TV complete with a VCR. There’s also a bedroom with two twin beds. At the beginning of the project, we said we would rotate who gets the beds. Tomm and TK took them first, and I think no one really cares enough to get the beds for themselves. It’s really not bad at all. Even the part where we all sleep in the same room isn’t that bad. And the town is so small we can walk everywhere we want to go. The grocery store and the only bar/restaurant are both less than a block away. The movie theater and used bookstore are about three blocks away. The park and the public library (which has the only wireless internet in town that we know of) are six blocks away. The BLM office is only about a mile away, and it has a little workout room we can use. I can’t even tell you how nice it is to be able to walk everywhere. Corps Members aren’t allowed to drive the vans alone, so it’s pretty much impossible to go anywhere by yourself. You have to find at least one other person to ride with you, but usually it’s several people, so you all have to agree on a time to leave, and usually someone isn’t ready when you agreed to be (I’ve been that person myself, but it’s still annoying), and then you have to be at the place until everyone is ready to go, etc. etc. etc. Don’t get me wrong, I got used to all that a long time ago, and it’s really not as big a deal as I just made it sound. But now, for our last project, it’s really nice to have more independence. I can walk to the library when I want. I can walk to the gym when I want. I can walk across the street to the store and just grab a snack if I want. It’s wonderful!

Also, Steve, our sponsor, is the most enthusiastic sponsor ever. He is SO excited to have us here. He keeps offering us things like fishing lessons, extra sleeping pads, air mattresses, coats (we didn’t bring our because you know, it’s summer, but it was colder here than we were expecting), etc. He even offered to let us come to his house to play with his dogs if we wanted. It’s kind of amusing, but he’s really nice.

So now on to the project itself. The BLM (or whatever organization we actually work with) has divided our time so that we’ll be working on a different project with a different supervisor in and around Saguache almost every week. I’ll do my best to catch up with what we’ve already done. (In case you were wondering, the way I was able to write in so much detail about each day of Big Bend is that I was writing in a paper journal while I was there since I couldn’t use a computer much. I haven’t been doing that here so far. Oops.)

Week 1:
Our first project was for the Town of Saguache. The town has recently purchased a large plot of land from a private owner. Their plan is to eventually build like a recreation center kind of place for the local youth. However, the previous owner seems to have used the land as their own personal junk yard. But not just any junk yard. It’s the biggest Crap Pile this side of the Mississippi. The town has already removed tens of thousands of tires, yet there were still at least a few hundred more in the Crap Pile. There were old appliances, toys, tools, books, and unrecognizable broken things. You name it, the Crap Pile has it. I think the Crap Pile was about a square mile or so. At least, that’s about the size of the land we worked on. Our job was to put all the metal in piles to be recycled, put all the wood in piles to be burned, put the trash in the dumpster, and put aside things that could potentially be sold. We did all of this as well as filling a dump truck two or three times after we had filled the dumpster. We did it all with the help of Charles, the 19-year-old BLM summer worker who has an obnoxiously smug expression on his face all the time, is mildly incompetent, and has told us multiple times about his involvement with the Air Force ROTC. This project wasn’t all that terrible, but it was pretty darn boring. And with a Crap Pile that big, it took a while before we really saw any results.

In the middle of that week, we were invited to a sloppy joe dinner at the Baptist church in town. We all went because we wanted to meet people. They were all really nice, as could be expected.

Matt, a guy working with the BLM through AmeriCorps VISTA, worked with us one day. That weekend, Matt invited us to his house (conveniently right down the street from our house) for a party. There were several other BLM people there. It was a little awkward, but it was nice to meet a few other people in town so soon after getting there.

That first weekend we also went to the Great Sand Dunes National Park which is about an hour and a half away. I didn’t even know about it until I found out I was coming here for my next project and someone told me, but there are huge sand dunes in the middle of Colorado. It has something to do with all the mountains everywhere and the stream that runs through it, but I don’t remember the details. The day we went, the weather forecast was calling for (unbeknownst to us) winds of 50 mph with gusts up to 70 mph. Oh my goodness, it was windy. The dunes were really cool, and the ranger leading the tour we went on was really good, but it’s really hard to pay attention to much when sand is hitting your entire body like thousands of tiny knives. It was pretty painful for most of the time we were there. It was also pretty chilly, especially with that strong wind. Luckily I had a sweatshirt on which protected my arms, kept my hair from getting blown around with the hood up, and kept sand from getting in my ears like it did to everyone else. Unluckily, I was wearing shorts. Thousands of tiny knives. After the tour, we started to climb the dunes, but it was so cold and so painful that most of us didn’t make it to the top. Despite the thousands of tiny knives, I’m glad I got to see the dunes.

Week 2:
The second week we were working with Mark. Not only does he work with the BLM, he is also the pastor of the Baptist church where we went to that dinner last week. We were working in Saguache Park, which is like an hour and a half from Saguache. (Gold star to whoever can figure that one out.) Since it’s so far, they arranged for us to stay at Stone Cellar, a cabin in Saguache Park. I think the cabin is owned by the BLM (or one of those other organizations) for its employees to stay at when they have to work up there. The cabin had only a pump leading to a well in the backyard for water. There was a modern outhouse for a bathroom. There was no electricity in the cabin. There was a propane stove and a few weak propane lights. The elevation of Saguache is about 7,700 feet (yep, this is a valley and it’s that high up) but Saguache Park is closer to 10,000 feet. Our job was to repair a whole bunch of barbed wire fencing. Mark, who has been dealing with barbed wire for a few decades, said it’s way easier to just build a new fence than to repair an old one. Woo hoo. I’ll never look at a barbed (or barbless) wire fence the same way again. The next time you see one, you’ll notice that there will be wood or metal posts fairly close together along the fence, but then every once in a while you’ll see bigger wood posts in a sort of H configuration with wire going in an X across it. This is appropriately called an H-brace. It is used to pull the wire from to make it tight. Our fences used metal posts, not wood ones. The metal posts have little protuberances (yes, I’m pleased with myself for the use of that word) that the wire can sit on. You then take a piece of regular wire and wrap it around your barbed wire on either side of the metal post to hold it onto the protuberance. To do this, you use fencing pliers. Fencing pliers are supposed to be able to do everything you need to do on a wire fence. There’s the part with the pliers, of course. There’s also a nook on the side where you can cut wire. There’s also a blunt side you can use as a hammer (when you use wood posts, you use metal staples to hold the wire onto it that need to be hammered in). There’s a pointy side opposite the hammer part that you can use to remove those staples from the wood posts. It’s supposed to be the miracle all-in-one fencing tool. Since I'm in a coffee shop in Hippietown (AKA Salida) right now, not the Saguache Public Library which seems to hate pictures, I've taken the liberty of Google Imaging a picture of this so-called miracle tool:
In reality, it’s the most useless tool I’ve ever used in my life. Most regular pliers are kind of curved so it’s easier to grasp curved objects, right? Fencing pliers have a curved part, but it forms a circle that is bigger than the wire. Thus, when you try to grab some wire, you have to grab it at an angle or else the wire will just slip right through that hold. The “hammer” part is pretty wimpy. You can’t actually hammer in one of these giant staples with that silly thing. You still need a regular hammer. The wire cutter part is ok I guess, but the times I cut wire with it, it was really difficult. Pretty much the only good part of that awful tool is the pointy end. If you need to take out one of those giant staples, the best way is to put the pointy end under the staple and hammer the point farther under with a regular hammer. I consider myself fairly good at using tools and doing things with my hands, but I would get so frustrated trying to wrap the regular wire around the barbed wire to clip it to the post. There was even a time when I was working alongside Rob putting those clips on. We were just going along the fence together, passing each other when we finished one. At one point, he finished FOUR posts in the time it took me to do ONE. And this was at the end of the week after I had gotten a bit better at it. Most of you know how frustrated I get when there’s something I can’t do. Urg.

Was the weekend after that Memorial Day weekend? It might have been. I’m too lazy right now to get up and look at a calendar. Let’s just pretend that it was, shall we? Memorial Day weekend was really fun. On Friday (we don’t work Fridays because we work ten hour days Monday through Thursday) there were auditions for a children’s play that the San Luis Theatre Company is putting on. Heather, Becky, Jess, and I all went. We all actually really wanted to audition (the add in the newspaper for the audition said it was open to children ages 9-90) but the performance isn’t until August, so AmeriCorps will be over by then and we’ll all be at home. But we decided to go to the audition anyway just to meet the director and whoever else and see if we could help with the set or anything. There were only a few kids there, so the director (a really friendly woman named Virginia) said we could stay and play if we want. Um, of course we want. The audition only consisted of all of us sitting in a circle with scripts. Virginia randomly assigned parts to everyone and we just read through parts of the script. It was fun. The play seems pretty cute. It’s called Doc Doc Goose. It’s about Dr. Goose (as opposed to Mother Goose) who runs a clinic in Nurseryland. A bunch of different nursery rhyme characters come in to get treated for various physical ailments, like Jack B. Nimble coming in to get treated for burns he got jumping over a candle while practicing to be a stunt man. That sort of thing. The play seems pretty cute and we’re all sad we can’t be there for the performance. Oh well.

On Saturday, there was a Blow Out Book Sale to benefit the public library. It started at 9am. Books were $0.25 each or a grocery bag full for $3.00. One time earlier in the week when I had been in the library, I overheard a rather incriminating conversation. One of the librarians asked the other who was working the book sale for the first shift. When Librarian #2 told her who, Librarian #1 said "Oh, good, so she'll be there early. I'll get there a little before 9 to try to find something good." You think you can play that game and get away with it, do you Librarian #1? I immediately resolved to get there a little before 9 as well. As it turned out, I only found 6 books that I had even the slightest bit of interest reading, but I still felt triumphant in not letting the librarian beat me.

After that, Heather, Becky, Tomm, Michala, and I went to the Saguache Memorial Day parade. It was, well, pretty sad. Especially since Alton’s parades are always such a production, and that’s the only M. Day parade I’ve ever been to. There weren’t many floats and there wasn’t any music whatsoever. It was the quietest parade ever. We still had fun though. We had long ago realized that we are far more enthusiastic about Saguache events than people who actually live here are.

After the parade we went to the fair at the park. There was some pretty decent live music and vendors set up. It was fun. We mostly just sat around in the park and listened to music. Later that afternoon was a Vaudeville variety show featuring all local talent. Some of the talent was more talented than others, but that’s to be expected. We all had a great time. I think the best one was The Amazing Greg, who was listed as doing a magic routine. It turned out to be him doing ridiculously fake magic tricks but it was hilarious.

Sunday was the annual grand opening of the Saguache Museum. No, I don’t know why it closes every year. It probably just closes in the winter when there aren’t that many people around. Pretty much all they had at the outdoor part of the grand opening (which was the only part you could get to without paying admission) was a barbeque, some homemade ice cream, and a woman demonstrating making soap the old fashioned way. The soap part was fairly interesting but that’s about all it had going for it. No one minded that the afternoon was kind of lame because that night was the main event. It was a performance by the Salida Starlettes. (Salida is one of the nearest “big” towns, about an hour away from Saguache.) Who would have thought that Salida would have a Burlesque troupe? Not me. Most of us went to the show and it was really good. Some of those women were really talented. What a weekend. I don’t think any of us expected Saguache to have so much to offer.

The End of Big Bend

The next day was really pretty nice. The whole trail crew, including Colin, had hiked down the night before because they had a search and rescue training to go to, so we were on our own. Colin’s instructions were to just clean drains in partners on the Boot Canyon trail, then up to the South Rim (where we went on the day we “learned how to mellow”), down Laguna, then ending with the Colima Trail, the trail our campsite was on. That whole thing makes a big loop. Elena was my partner for the first time. We had a bit too much fun for most of the day. We had a few drains to clean that had a kind of little lake near them. When you clean drains, it’s usually just clearing out rocks and leaves that are clogging it. Elena and I both got really distracted for a while by throwing the rocks from our drain into the lake just to enjoy the sound. Isn’t throwing rocks in water one of the best sounds ever? The first time we did it, we ended up falling WAY behind everyone else. We started walking down the trail and came to a fork. One way was labeled Northeast Rim and the other was labeled South Rim. Elena remembered that when we went this way before, we took the trail to the Northeast Rim, which lead to the South Rim. But I remembered hearing Colin’s instructions, and he just said to go up the South Rim. We decided to take the South Rim fork for a while, and just turn around if we didn’t see anyone soon. We walked for a while, and just as we were thinking we were wrong and were about to turn back, we ran into Ryan. Whew. We were really behind. We fell behind again when we found another lake to throw rocks into, but not as bad that time. Everyone had a pretty good time that day. Cleaning drains isn’t hard work physically so we mostly just got to enjoy the nice day and pretty scenery. Scott kept trying to hurry us along, but he clearly didn’t get that Colin was purposefully giving us a nice easy day while he wasn’t there. Oh well. We never really paid much attention to what Scott said anyway. By the end of the day when we were nearing the end of the trail, everyone got pretty silly. Everyone kept singing Disney songs as they would pass by other pairs to get to the next drain. It was fun.

That night, Amy had to go to the bathroom at like 4am like I did the night before. And just like when I needed to go, she couldn’t get the Crappy Tent zipper open more than just that little slit and she had to crawl out through the bottom like I did. Since I was awake, while she was gone I managed to get it open the rest of the way for her. The Crappy Tent strikes again.

The next day, we saw Colin in a bad mood for the first time. He is normally one of the most good humored and mellow people I’ve ever met, but not that day. Most of us were just a couple minutes late to meet up with him at the cabin for some reason. I think that was the main reason for his bad mood, but I think it was also an accumulation of things Scott did. I haven’t written about it much before, and I won’t go into detail on the internet, but Scott was a pretty bad team leader and it frustrated Colin a lot of the time. Anyway, we hiked the two miles or so up to our regular worksite and changed into our steel toes like usual. Then, Marc, Tabitha, Amy, Marie, and Davis found out that we were being sent back down all the way to the Pinnacles Trial. That’s one of the trails we use to get up to Emory, which means it’s pretty far from where we were right then. It also means that we hiked like a mile and a half up to our regular worksite for nothing, and would now have to go back the way we came. We were also told to just keep our steel toes on, not change back into hiking boots. Our task was just to go partway down Pinnacles and clean any drains that might need cleaning (even though we had cleaned those drains about three weeks ago) and get rid of any big rocks that are in the trail (and we knew from hiking that trail several times that there were a lot). We were all as sure as we could be that this was punishment. It was kind of sad. The work wasn’t hard once we got there but I for one wasn’t very happy about hiking an extra three miles or so for nothing.

It was about 11:30 by the time we finished that and got back to our regular worksite. For the half hour before lunch we just had to go along the new trail and collect brush that had been piled along it and carry it down to where it intersects with the old trial. Apparently this was so that next round, when another NCCC team would be in Big Bend, they could use that brush to stuff that part of the old trail. So essentially we were kind of doing that team’s work for them.

After lunch, Tabitha and I were sent back to our logs. We really didn’t want to because of how frustrating it was the last time we worked on them, when we thought we had gotten a log in tightly and it just popped out. We took that log out and put another in its place, and got like two more logs I think. They worked this time. Also, it had been really pretty cold all day. In the afternoon when we were working on our logs, it actually started snowing. It was May 1. In the desert. Colin and Ryan passed us to go work on something and they stopped to talk for a minute. Colin made us all hold hands and reflect upon the fact that it was snowing on May 1 on the Mexico border and said this would be a day we would tell our grandkids about. Apparently his bad mood was over and he was back to his usual goofy self.

We were coming down from Emory the next day, but we had to work for a while first. Since Tabitha and I were finally done with our logs we had another job. A few other pairs had been working on doing that several logs right next to each other thing. After those logs are in really tightly, you’re supposed to cover them with dirt since the purpose of those logs is to raise the level of the trail back up to where it was before it was eroded and to get vegetation to grow on it again. Tabitha and I were sent to plant Prickly Pears on all the spots with the dirt-covered logs. Planting Prickly Pears is probably the easiest thing ever. All you have to do is cut a pad off of one and lay the pad down on the dirt. It will just drop roots right there and grow a whole new plant. We made that last until lunch time because there wasn’t a whole lot we needed to do that day. We had our usual hour-long lunch with most of the team. After an hour, Colin came over to tell us all to get back to work, but then everyone (including Colin) ended up sitting back down and talking for like another half hour. We were pretty sure Colin was getting pretty sad about us leaving soon.

Something I haven’t written about before: Almost the whole trail crew at Big Bend loves to hula hoop. Not kidding. Apparently it was Laura who started it. She’s the one that was on Colin’s team when he was a Sun Unit Team Leader two years ago. She makes her own hula hoops out of gardening irrigation pipe and tape. She got most of the rest of the trail crew into hooping, who then got a bunch of rangers and other park employees into it. Pretty soon after we got there, Colin had brought out a few extra hoops they had for us to play with. We all decided we wanted to make our own hoops, so we bought a bunch of irrigation pipe, decided what colors we wanted, and ordered our tape from some website that had a bazillion different kinds of tape in a bazillion different colors. Our tape had finally arrived while we were on Emory that second time, so we made our hoops the night we came back down. Colin let us come upstairs in the Remuda and we watched a Tenacious D DVD and ate some delicious cake Colin had made while we put our hoops together and taped them up.

The next day we worked at Santa Elena Canyon. There’s a longish sandy walk to get from the parking area to the river and canyon which apparently some people have trouble walking on. There were rolls of this kind of boardwalk stuff that we needed to lay out. It wasn’t hard. The hardest part was carrying the rolls out to where they needed to go because they were pretty heavy. You literally just line the roll up with the boardwalk section before it and unroll it. We also kicked sand on top of it a little and into the cracks between boards so it would stay put a little better, but that was it. Since that was not a task for 11 people, Colin sent Marie, Ryan, Churchill, and I down to the beginning of the trail that leads a mile or so into the canyon. The trailhead wasn’t very obvious because there were a lot of plants growing around there so he just wanted us to clear the plants to make the trailhead look nicer. It was during this task that Scott came over with his phone for me to find out that I had been hired as next year’s UDA. Yay!

That job at the canyon only took us till lunch. After lunch, we went and checked out all the gear we would need for our river trip the next day. The crew had very nicely planned a river trip for us to go on with the crew. The best part is that the crew got to come down from Emory early and the trip was counted as a work day for us and for them. Colin, Julie, Matt, Alex, Laura, and Rachel were the members of the crew who hadn’t left for the summer yet. Shaggy, the Trail Supervisor, and Joseph, the crew’s packer (he does all the stuff with the mules), also came. It was pretty fun. I was in a boat with Marie. We went back to Santa Elena Canyon and paddled our canoes about three miles upstream. We pulled off on the Mexico side of the river and ate lunch. Then, we explored the canyon on the Mexico side. The crew had been to this place before, called Fern Canyon. Right there on the Mexico side you can climb pretty far back into the canyon walls. There weren’t as man ferns as there usually are (I think it was still too early in the year for them or something) but it was SO COOL. The funniest part was the Birth Canal. This was where there were two rock walls close-ish together with a boulder balanced on top of them. There was a pool above the boulder that sent a waterfall down between the boulder and rock walls. The only way to get past this part was to wade across the pool at the bottom and climb up that waterfall between the rock walls and boulder. Ridicuous. There were a few places that a few of us wouldn’t have been able to climb up if it weren’t for Colin climbing up first (he is super tall and super strong) and giving us a hand up. We climbed way back until we couldn’t go any farther without climbing equipment (it was a pretty sheer rock wall without a way to go around it). I think that was one of my favorite memories of Big Bend.

The day after that we had a day off, and Colin and Rachel were leaving for a trip to Mexico (a real trip, not just crossing the river like we did). They were leaving at like 6am, meaning we wouldn’t see them again because we were going out in Terlingua and spending the night there after the river trip. (That night was ridiculously fun. We ended up sleeping just in our sleeping bags under the stars again, but this time in the “parking lot” which is on the main road. We literally slept 10 feet off the main road. That’s how safe Terlingua is.) Anyway, when we got back to the Remuda the next morning, Colin and Rachel were gone. Colin had left us some candy and some cookies he baked the day before. He also left us the best note ever. It was all about how much he enjoyed having us there and how much fun he had with us. It was just the right combination of sentimental and hilarious. We were all really sad to be leaving the park and our awesome supervisor.

We left the next day. For some reason, even though we didn’t have that far to drive before arriving at our hotel in Roswell, NM, everyone decided they wanted to get on the road at 6am. To accomplish this, we agreed to the idea Colin had given us. He said we should pack up EVERYTHING, including our tents, the night before. Basically just have our bags and everything ready so that we could just sleep outside in our sleeping bags and then in the morning all we would have to do would be to roll up our bags and pillows and throw them in the truck. Everyone liked this idea except for the part where there were gigantic ant hills all over where our usual camping area is at the Remuda. The ants weren’t really a problem when we were in a tent, but no one really wanted to sleep without a tent there. We discovered that there weren’t any ants in the corral behind the Remuda. (The mules don’t live in this corral all the time, only when Joseph is getting the mules ready to go bring the trail crew their supplies, so the mules weren’t there that night.) That’s right, we decided to sleep in the corral. And no, it didn’t smell too bad. It was actually really nice. The corral has a perfect view of the Window. I laid there with my glasses on for a while after going to bed just looking at the night sky and scenery. It was probably a perfect last night.

And that’s the story of Big Bend! I can’t believe I’m finally done with it! Pictures will be coming eventually (and oh my goodness, there are a lot of them). In the meantime, like I said, there are a lot of pictures already on facebook, as well as the slideshow video we made for our debrief.

Almost Done!

The next day was our last real day of work for the nine-day week. We did another rotation thing with small groups. In the morning, Davis, Churchill, Scott and I had to find rocks for Matthew and Alex from the trail crew, who were building a rock wall. I think this was the job that everyone disliked the most. The rocks they needed for their wall had to be as big as possible (if you could carry it by yourself, it was too small) with a flat rectangular face that was within a specific set of measurements. And since they’ve been working on this wall for a while, all the rocks anywhere nearby had already been found. The other guys found a few, but I didn’t find a single rock that would work after looking ALL MORNING. I was just climbing around through the trees feeling useless.

After lunch, Erin, Marie, Davis and I got a turn on the Pionjar. Unfortunately, we only got one short turn each. It took Colin a really long time to get it started (sometimes the Pionjar gets cranky) and hikers kept going past. The section of the new trail we were working on had already been opened and every time a hiker would approach we would have to turn the Pionjar completely off so they could go past and not go deaf (you have to wear earplugs). So we only got one turn that day. After that, it was back to finding rocks. I was about as helpful this time as I was earlier in the morning.

The next day was coming down from Emory. We just had to wake up and pack up our campsite then hike down. Since the rest of the trial crew was coming down that day also, Colin wanted them to have a chance to take a warm shower before we used all the hot water. (We hadn’t showered for nine days, remember?) He said we couldn’t use hot water until after 5:00. Some people said they were going to wait until after 5 or even the next day to shower, but one by one everyone decided they couldn’t wait. We all took cold showers. Let me tell you, it was the most glorious shower of my life.

And then we had our last 5-day weekend. Ryan, Marc, and Churchill went on a 30-mile hike called the Outer Mountain Loop. They had to camp overnight and finished in like a day and a half. It was pretty impressive. One day while they were doing that, everyone else except Marie, Tabitha and I went on a shorter hike. Tabitha had been tanning like it was her job and she made it look pretty relaxing. She laid her sleeping pad out on top of the bear boxes because there were way too many ants in our campsite to lie on the ground. I ended up laying my sleeping pad out on top of the picnic table and just laying in the sun with her for a while. It was really nice. That weekend was also Davis’s 21st birthday so we went out in Terlingua. We were planning on spending the night there again but the weather didn’t seem very conducive to sleeping outside. We ended up sleeping in the van. Word of advice – never sleep in a van. Even if you have a whole bench to yourself. You will not get a good night’s sleep.

The morning after that was I think one of my funniest experiences of AmeriCorps. We went to the Ghost Town Café for breakfast. (I keep saying Terlingua, but the town is actually the Terlingua Ghost Town. Or something. There’s a chance the Ghost Town is only a part of the town of Terlingua. We always went to the Ghost Town part.) When we walked in, we saw that we would need to sit outside on the patio because there wasn’t enough room for us inside. When we started toward the door to the patio, the waitress started yelling that it was a $20 fine if anyone jumps on or off the patio. She was also saying that they were out of pancakes, cinnamon rolls, and toast. How can you be out of toast? The waitress was also scarily mean when she came out to take our drink orders. “So how many waters, and how many coffees?” When we were thinking about what we wanted to order, some people were wondering if they could make French toast or not, since they were out of toast. Are they out of toast because the toaster is broken, or because they’re out of bread? Erin asked the scary waitress (we found out her name is Deena) if they had French toast, and she said emphatically “We’re out of pancakes, cinnamon rolls, and toast.” Also, Davis was sitting between Amy and I. Davis and I both got bacon omelets, and Amy (a vegetarian) got a veggie omelet. When Deena was bringing out food, she called “Veggie omelet.” Amy said “That’s me.” And Deena seemed to look right at her and called “Bacon!” Also, the water was served in glasses that only held about three sips of water. I was really thirsty and wanted more, but I knew she would yell at me if I asked before she was done serving food. I waited until everyone had a plate in front of them, then said as politely as I could “Could I please have some more water when you get a chance?” She said “Well you’ll have to wait until I’ve served all the food, won’t you?” I thought I had waited. We also noticed that she would be really mean when we asked for anything, but then when she brought us things and we said thank you, she would always say “You’re welcome” really sweetly. It was so weird. We all found the whole thing completely hilarious. We were laughing about it and telling Ryan, Marc, and Churchill (who were still on their 30-mile hike) about it for days.

We also did another ISP at the Terlingua Community Garden that weekend. This time, everyone but Ryan, Marie, and Scott came. Erin, Lindsey, and I had talked up the garden so much from the last time we did ISP there that everyone was excited to go. Zoey, the woman who runs it, is so awesome. Our task this time was to work in the trench. There’s like a tunnel about a half mile from the garden that was built during Terlingua’s mining days (there used to be a mine there – I think it was mercury). Nowadays, the tunnel catches pretty much all the rain in the whole town and sends it gushing down the tunnel and through the trench that it made all the way to the garden, where it continues to cut away the edges of the trench and invade the garden’s space. The garden ladies wanted to try a solution they had read about. Apparently if you put long rectangular things coming out at an angle from the wall of the trench, the water will hit the thing instead of the wall and not eat away at the wall more. Since the garden operates almost solely on donations, they could only complete this project little by little as materials get donated. Someone had just donated a huge wire box thing that kind of looked like a crab cage. Our job was to put it where it needs to go and then fill it with rocks so it wouldn’t go anywhere with the force of the water. It was really hard for me to wrap my mind around huge amounts of water gushing down this trench in the desert, but Zoey had shown us how much damage had been done in a short amount of time, so I guess it happens. It took us all morning to fill the cage thing because it was so big and we had to walk pretty far down the trench to find rocks that were big enough. After we were done, just like last time we were there, Zoey and a few other ladies gave us a delicious lunch.

That day was really nice. We had all brought clothes to change into because we planned to hang out in Terlingua for a little while after we were done at the garden and didn’t want to stay in uniform. We did a lot of good quality porch-sitting. I’ve talked about the Terlingua porch, right? It’s the long porch that goes across the front of Starlight and the trading company next door. There are benches across the whole porch, and useful things like fly swatters, binoculars, and bottle openers hanging on the posts. If you say “the porch” to anyone in Terlingua, they know exactly what you mean. The porch also faces the park so you can have some really nice views of the mountains in Big Bend, especially at sunset. We spent a lot of time on that porch. While we were there that day, Erin had a great idea. Tabitha and Marc were cooking that night, and they planned to cook burgers on the grill. Erin suggested calling Ryan, Marie, and Scott, who were still back home at the Remuda (the house next to our campsite where the trail crew lives) and seeing if they would bring the food to Terlingua so we could have a cookout with the grill in the park on the other side of the Starlight parking lot. They agreed to it and everyone had a really nice time. I even discovered a hidden talent. People drink a lot of Lonestar beer in Texas (it’s a local beer that’s not bad, and it’s pretty cheap). On the bottom of the bottle caps they have those little puzzles where a series of pictures represents a phrase. Most of the time, no one can figure them out. I had never been any better at figuring them out than anyone else, but for some reason that day I could get almost all of them. I really kind of miss Terlingua sometimes, but the tiny town I’m in now for my current project is pretty nice also.

I also got to see some live theatre that weekend! Last Minute Low Budget Productions, the theatre company in Terlingua (yeah, I was surprised it existed also) was doing a play that weekend called Hunter Gatherers. Amy, Tabitha, Elena, Erin, and I were the only ones that wanted to go. It really wasn’t bad for such a small community. And the set was really good, considering it was in some kind of building that looked like it used to be a warehouse. The posters for the play said the location was “Behind the store in Terlingua.” I think that is its official address. We all had a really good time. The others totally missed out.

After that lovely weekend, we had to make the long trek back up to Emory. This time, we had to go to work after dropping our stuff off at the campsite. Marc, Tabitha, Elena, Marie, and I went along and got rid of piles of brush that had been left right next to the new trail from where trees had to be cut down to make way for the trail. It wasn’t hard work, but doing pretty much anything that involves moving your body after hiking up to Emory is hard.

The next day started pretty easily. There were a bunch of logs that needed to be taken a pretty long way down the trail, so we spread out and just passed them down the line. It was way easier to just carry logs down to the next person than it would have been to carry them ALL THE WAY DOWN. And because Colin is silly, we played conga line telephone. You would pass the log and whatever the sentence was that the person before you told you down the line. After that, Tabitha, Elena, and I went with Colin to put several logs in the old trail. If you put like 6 or 8 logs in really tight right next to each other, the hope is that dirt will just fill in on top of them to raise the level of the trail. The old trail was really eroded, remember? None of us, including Colin, really felt like working that day though. Ryan, Davis, and Erin had all come to help or bring us tools, and all ten of us just ended up sitting around trying to write limericks for a while.

After lunch, Tabitha and I were sent back to our logs. We were both SO TIRED for some reason. It was also really hot that day. We talked a lot about how much we wished we had some ice cream. Needless to say, we didn’t get very many logs done that day. What little wind was left in our sails completely died when we had just put in another log and spent forever smashing little rocks in the cracks to hold it in place. We thought we finally managed to make it tight, then the whole log just completely came loose. We kind of gave us after that.

The next day, Tabitha and I were back on those stupid logs all day. Remember how Tabitha and I are always together when we’re working on something all day that drives us crazy? Yep. It happened again. We hated those logs. We could never find a good pinner rock (the big rocks you put at the ends of the logs to hold them in place) and all of the logs we had were different lengths and widths and most of them were all curvy. That makes it really hard to jam them in tightly right next to each other. It was really frustrating. The only good part of the day was that every once in a while Colin would come down to see how we were doing, and then the three of us would just sit and talk for a while. Colin hadn’t been feeling like working lately either. We thought he was also getting sad that we were leaving soon.

That night was really windy for the first time at that campsite. It would get REALLY windy at night down in the basin, but up on Emory, our campsite was pretty protected by hills and trees. We would sometimes hear the wind, but it wouldn’t blow our tents around like it would in the basin. But that night, the tents were shaking. I ended up just lying there awake from like 2:00 till 4:30am. It was awful. Also, the Crappy Tent struck again. At about 4am, I realized I needed to go to the bathroom. Our tent door had two zippers, so obviously when the two zippers are together the door is closed. The bottom zipper never worked, so we had to close the door at the bottom. When I had to get out for the bathroom (and when I say bathroom, I mean large rock a little ways from the campsite) and started to unzip the top zipper, it got stuck after just going across the bottom of the door before it even started to go upward. I tried for several minutes to get it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I ended up having to kind of slide out feet first through the little slit that was open. Ridiculous. Luckily, when I was coming back and had my headlamp on, I could see the problem and get it open the rest of the way to come back in. I kept my headlamp off while I was still in the tent because I didn’t want to wake Amy up.

More...

The next day was the infamous Pionjar Day (pronounced POON-jar). Colin split us into three groups and we would rotate so everyone could have a turn. Tabitha, Churchill, and I were first. As I think I’ve said already on here, the Pionjar is kind of like a giant gas-powered drill that is used to break up rocks although instead of the bit spinning like a drill, I think it just vibrates really hard. Standing up on its bit, it comes up to like a few inches above my waist. It is heavy and awkward and smelly, but so much fun. Colin had to help everyone quite a bit at first. Sometimes he would have to help people hold it, sometimes he would grab the bit and put it where it needed to be, and sometimes he would just point to where you should aim. Everyone got much better pretty quickly and didn’t need as much help. Let me tell you, that thing is a good workout. It works your upper body because it’s so heavy and it works your legs because you usually have to squat and lunge in all different ways to get it at the right angle, all while the Pionjar is shaking your whole body. I wish we had gotten a little more time with it.

Unfortunately, my group’s turn with the Pionjar only lasted between 10:00 break and lunch. Then we rotated out, and got stuck on the same project all afternoon. While we were Pioning, another group was working on rehabbing a pretty long section of the old trail. Rehabbing is what we did to that old campsite, where we try to make it disappear and grow new vegetation. The group that was working on it while we were Pioning had already tilled and duffed it, so all that was left was filling it with dead branches. Sounds easy, right? Not when most of the dead branches already seem to have been found. It felt like we were making almost no progress because the section of trail was so long and it took so long to find branches. Tabitha and I getting stuck working on the same tedious job for long periods of time seemed to be a recurring theme. We worked in small groups or pairs a lot on Emory, but I was always with Tabitha when it was a task that would slowly drive you crazy.

It rained after work again that day. We had already scheduled who would be cooking every night, and the system was that you always clean up the day before you cook. Tabitha and I were cooking the next day, so we had to clean and wash dishes in the rain. And Amy and my rain fly still leaked, even after we covered all the seams with duct tape after the first time it rained. Grr. Never use a Crappy Tent.

Yeah, this one is short. It was a busy weekend. I’m doing my best!

Oh, but I realized that I haven’t mentioned this bit of news: I applied to be a Team Leader for next year, and I got the job! Well, sort of. Each unit has two TLs who don’t go out in the field with a team, they work in the office. One is a Support Team Leader (STL) who does…something I’m not really sure of. They all have different jobs, even though they have the same title. It’s confusing. But the other is the Unit Development Assistant (UDA – pronounced YOU-da), who is like the right-hand man of the Unit Leader. This person is responsible for making sure all the field TLs get in all the necessary paperwork (and there’s a lot) and apparently also provides emotional support for those poor stressed out TLs. Also, if there’s a national disaster, UDAs and STLs are usually the first people to be sent out. Also, if something happens to a field TL where they can’t stay out with their team anymore, the UDA from their unit will usually be sent to take over their team. So long story short (whoops, too late for that), I’m going to be the Sun UDA next year! I start September 7.

And now the library is about to close, so I need to post this thing and make like a tree and get out of here. (Back to the Future reference, anyone?)