We had been told that for our last week, we would be split up. Half would be camping near Stone Cellar Monday and Tuesday working on trails and using the horses to bring tools to another Southwest Conservation Corps group working up there. The other half would work with Dwight on that fence we had started on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, the campers would return and join the other half to pull weeds with Clayton Wednesday and Thursday. Christina, TK, Jess, Becky, and Alex did the horses and camping while Tomm, Heather, Michala, Rob, and I stayed back. Let me tell you, I think we chose right. Michala was still working in the office because of her tailbone. Rob had not used any of his days off so he worked Monday then took the rest of the week off. Monday was pretty nice. Tomm, Heather, Rob, and I went back up that ridiculously bumpy road to Dwight’s fence. Remember how the last time we were there we had to reroute the road a little bit to get around some mud? The rerouted road went up a slight incline into the grass. Even with the gas pedal on the floor, the van wouldn’t make it up the hill. Dwight, Heather, Rob, and Tomm all had to get out and push the van while I floored it to get it up there. I of course found it hilarious and felt quite triumphant when I finally made it. The entire day was spent digging holes for H-brace posts and saw the digging of The Most Perfect Post Hole Ever by Heather and myself. We had a perfect area to dig in with hardly any rocks. Heather used the rock bar to loosen dirt and I removed it with the post hole digger. We were done in like 10 or 15 minutes and the hole was perfectly round and not much wider than the post. Perfection is a pretty nice way to start a day, don’t you think? I remember that on Monday we didn’t get much done because with the exception of that perfect post hole, everywhere else we needed to dig was full of rocks. That was also the day we found out that Dwight is a Beast. We knew him as this super nice and friendly slightly elderly man with white hair and a pleasant smile. What we didn’t know was that he can wield a rock bar like no one else. (There are slight variations on what a rock bar looks like exactly, but mostly it’s just a 6-foot metal staff that tapers at the end and weighs probably 15 pounds or so. It’s used to either pry rocks out of the ground or break rocks.) We kept running into soul-crushing rocks like Becky, Tomm and I did the last time we were up there with Dwight. We would take turns with the rock bar with varying techniques of trying to break the giant rock or trying to archaeology it out (I don’t know why we started saying that, but it’s when we would try to get the rock out by digging around it, not breaking it). Dwight would come over and juts wail on the rock with these beastly slams of the rock bar. He would be panting and sweating and we each independently planned what we would do if he hurt himself, but he broke some ridiculously huge rocks. It was insane.
That night, we had a lovely evening of sitting around in the quiet house. I grew up in a family of four. After my brother transferred to a college in Louisiana almost four years ago, usually when I am at home it’s just my parents and myself. And yet, after almost a year of AmeriCorps, having only five people home seems really quiet and empty.
On Tuesday it was only Heather, Tomm and I at work with Dwight. I made it up that grassy hill on my first try this time. Turns out you need to floor it from the beginning. Even with fewer people that day, we got so much more done. We dug more post holes than the day before and put in the cross beams for six H-braces. (Part of the reason that went so fast is because we had always had to do it with a hand saw, but Dwight is a chainsaw-wielding Beast. Goes much faster that way.) Also, at about 2:30, it started to rain really hard. Dwight told us to just take a break until it stopped. He sat in his truck and we sat in our van. It ended up raining for about an hour. After it stopped we worked for another 20 minutes or so, then Dwight called it a day. So even with fewer people and an hour-long break, we got SO MUCH done.
That night Heather, Tomm, and I watched Memento. We marveled at the fact that we all got a good seat in the living room and there was hardly anyone talking. (We don’t mind when people talk during non-dialogue parts, but we all hate it when people talk during dialogue. And that seems to happen a lot when there are eight of us or so watching a movie.) I love my team, but it was really nice to have some peace for a couple days.
The others were supposed to come back Wednesday morning and come join us wherever we were working on weeds with Clayton, but is anyone surprised that didn’t happen? Nope, not a bit. I would have been surprised if that actually happened. It wasn’t their fault though. I think there was some kind of problem with the horses or something. Since it was only Heather, Tomm and me again, we rode in Clayton’s truck. We pretty much just drove around until we would see a henbane plant or two along the road, then hop out and grab it. We ended up near some property Clayton’s family owns around lunch time. We stopped to fill up our water bottles at a stream on his property (delicious!) then had lunch at picnic tables outside of their adorable mountain house. No one lives their permanently anymore but it was really cute. At the end of the day we had the pleasure of accompanying Clayton to take the weeds we had pulled to the dump. This trip was actually highly amusing, but I think I’ll wait to say why until Tomm sends me the picture we took.
The others got back around 5:00 that evening with tales of rain and cold night in tents. We definitely chose the right job for the week.
And that brings us to our last day of work in Saguache. Clayton had a meeting or something in the morning so he just sent us to an area where he knew there were TONS of weeds in a gulch. We found it and split up to cover more ground. Becky and I were walking along the gulch from the far end when we found we needed a shovel. Becky went to find one. I stayed down there alone pulling whatever weeds I could get just with my hands. I ended up being down there for a pretty long time. I yelled to see if anyone was nearby a couple times but no one answered. I started getting paranoid. If there would ever be a time in my life when I would get bitten by a rattlesnake, I was sure it would be right then. I filled my bag with weeds, so there wasn’t really anything else I could do. I started trudging back up the gulch to where we had parked the van. I actually passed Becky and Tomm on the way. They were heading back to where Becky and I had ended up with a shovel and another bag or two. When I got back to the van, everyone else had finished their areas and were ready to move on. I told them about Becky and Tomm and we decided to wait for them so they wouldn’t be left wondering where we were. We ended up waiting about an hour and a half. They had found a huge bunch of weeds. A couple people even walked about a mile down the gulch but didn’t find them. We actually started to get worried. It was a little silly. They came back near lunch time so we just decided to go ahead and eat. Clayton had rejoined us by that time and he brought us Pulling For Colorado T-shirts. He had already given us water bottles with the same logo. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We went to another area of the gulch and split into two groups. My group accidentally went into private property pulling weeds. Oops.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Week 8. Nearing the End!
That Thursday night, we all made a trip to Alamosa. The girls all saw Eclipse, the third Twilight movie, while the boys saw The Last Airbender. Funny how the second and third Twilight movies both came out during AmeriCorps, and the girls on my team got to see them together.
On Friday, we had planned to have another barbecue in the park to celebrate the Fourth of July. We love our barbecues here. We had invited pretty much everyone we know and were really excited about it. Unfortunately, it was rainy all day and pretty chilly. Only a few people showed up, including Will (one of the fire guys), Sarah (who works in the office), and some fire guys we hadn’t met yet who are here temporarily from Wyoming. We didn’t get rained on because the park has an area with a roof and picnic tables. It was cold but we still had fun.
On Saturday, I believe we watched more World Cup. At least some of us did. I don’t remember who played right now. TK and Heather have watched pretty much every World Cup game from the same table at the Oasis (the only restaurant/bar in town, conveniently located less than a block from our house). I’ve watched most games with them, and a few other people come occasionally. That night, Heather, Jess, TK, and I all went back to the Oasis (or as the cool kids call it, The O) that night when it was being a bar instead of restaurant. We had heard that nights when there are Ultimate Fighting Championship fights are the busiest there, and Saturday was fight night. Will, Miles (a fire guy who lives at the bunkhouse), and Matt (an AmeriCorps VISTA with the BLM who also lives at the bunkhouse) were all there as well. It was pretty fun. When the O is being a bar, it doesn’t really have a set closing time. If there are no people, it closes early. If people are there, it’ll stay open. The seven of us were there playing pool and playing crappy songs on the jukebox way later than anyone else, but Travis the bartender didn’t seem to mind.
On Sunday, the Fourth of July, we went to Salida. We had seen posters for the activities on the Fourth, including a parade and a band. The parade was ok but nothing like parades in Alton. We had planned to stay for the band but it was kind of lame. We also found out that we were invited to a gathering at Josh’s house (he’s yet another fire guy) so we left Salida early. Heather, Jess, Michala and I went to Josh’s, where we got to see Miles, John (a fire guy who used to live at the bunkhouse but then moved to Alamosa to do fires at Sand Dunes) and Kent (yep, another fire guy). It was pretty fun. We hadn’t seen any of the fire guys in like a month because there was a huge fire near the Sand Dunes. It was especially nice to see John, since he moved away.
We had Monday off since everyone at the BLM did. Most of us went to the Sand Dunes to sunbathe. We checked the weather and saw that it wasn’t supposed to be windy like it was last time we were there. Unfortunately, it seems we are not able to have a pain-free trip to the Sand Dunes. Instead of sand blowing into our legs like a thousand tiny knives like last time, the ridiculously hot sand burned our feet. Oh my goodness, it was painful. You couldn’t walk barefoot because it was just too freaking hot. Keeping flip flops on made it really awkward to walk through the sand and was still super hot. It was also really rocky where we were walking and rocks kept getting between my feet and flip flop. We walked until we came to the first dune so we could lie on a slope. We were all super sweaty just laying there. It was kind of pleasant though. When we were on our way out we saw John in the parking lot. He and another fire guy were standing outside their fire truck in the Dunes parking lot to just talk to people about the fire near there. It had been something like 500 acres but they’ve gotten it a little more under control.
Tuesday began our weed removal adventure. We would be working with Clayton, who turned out to be really cool. The weed that needed removing was Black Henbane. It is an annual plant that has probably about 20 seed pods on each stalk, with roughly 1,000 seeds in each pod. While the plant is green and alive, it poses no threat. When it dies and dries out, those millions of seeds just blow away in the wind. They are then able to germinate for the next 35 years. This plant also grows really quickly. It is also poisonous to humans and to cows. Apparently eating the seeds produces a mild hallucinogenic effect. And it’s not native to the area. You can see why this is a problem. So Clayton just took us along the road (he in his truck and us following in the van) until he spotted an area with a lot of these plants. We would stop and hop out to rip them out by the roots. We quickly realized that this was not usually a job for all seven or so of us who were in the van, so we split into two groups and alternated who got out at each spot. Clayton said he wanted it to be a chill day since it was getting back to work after such a long weekend. Not bad at all.
That Wednesday I took one of my allotted days off that I had not yet used. I chose to use one that day because it was Spain playing Germany in the World Cup semifinals. (Hey, I can use my days for whatever I want!) TK was also taking that day off. During halftime when I went to the restroom, Christina appeared in the restroom. Then when I came back out to the table, there was Heather. Apparently the team was pulling weeds not too far away and requested to come back into town for lunch. Also, it looked stormy out, so they were waiting to see what the weather would do before going back out. They ended up going back to work for only like another hour or so before the storm came.
Thursday was another day of pulling weeds, but it was a really short day. The BLM wanted to have a barbecue for us to thank us for all we’ve done and scheduled it for that Thursday at like 3:00. So we pulled more weeds with Clayton all morning but finished the areas he wanted to get done at about lunch time. He then decided to give us a little treat and take us to Penitente Canyon which was way out near La Garita. I think. He said there are really cool places to hike around there and you can climb up the canyon walls. Unfortunately, by the time we got there we only had about 20 minutes to look around. Clayton didn’t want to make us late for our own party. It was really cool there though. The barbecue was delicious. It was fajitas again, at a newish campsite we hadn’t been to yet called Big Springs. Again, one big wok full of meat (this time is was pork, which I didn’t eat, but the rest was delicious), another full of potatoes and onions, and another for warming tortillas. Mmm, yummy. It was really nice. Almost everyone who works at the BLM came to thank us.
That weekend we did…something. The only day I can remember clearly is Saturday. We had our Day of Service, which we are required to organize and do both second and fourth rounds. We went back to Alamosa (where we had worked in the homeless shelter and community garden before). There was this thing called Restaurant Walk going on that day and the food bank was part of it. (There’s a whole network of places that all benefit La Puente, the homeless shelter, like a coffee shop, a thrift store, the food bank, and some kind of place for kids. It’s actually pretty cool. All those places are staffed by volunteers and AmeriCorps people, like the AmeriCorps Directs with Habitat in New Orleans.) For the Restaurant Walk, you pay like $10 or something then get to walk around to a bunch of different restaurants and get samples of food. Sally, the AmeriCorps person in charge of us for the day, split us into two groups. Michala, Jess, Becky, Tomm, and I all worked at the food bank in the morning. Sally had made chili for the food bank to give out for restaurant walk but we were only supposed to sit at a table with a bunch of AmeriCorps information for when people come in. Pretty much no one was interested. Which means that we just had to sit there for a few hours. Super easy. Since no one was there, we got to split up and take turns walking over to the coffee shop for a beverage and to listen to the live music going on for a bit. And we got hours for it. The other group was pulling weeds in the community garden all morning. The two groups swapped after lunch. Pulling weeds wasn’t too bad. There were so many that we all just sat in a group and talked while we pulled the weeds we could reach, then just scooted over a bit. The day was cut short by the appearance of a huge thunderstorm later in the afternoon. Not a bad day of work at all.
That evening after dinner, several of us decided to go enjoy some beverages in the park (don’t worry, it’s legal). Eventually, the rest of the team joined us. It was extremely enjoyable. It was also some pretty good bonding, just the 10 of us hanging out. When everyone started deciding to go home, Heather, Jess and I went over to the bunkhouse. Heather had mentioned to Miles that we might come over sometime that night since it was our last full weekend in Saguache. We went to the house and no one was home, so we decided to go to the O. Oh look, there are Matt, Miles, Travis the bartender, and no one else. Matt and Miles started on this whole thing about how they were at the O to drown their sorrows that we hadn’t come over. Matt said Miles had made hors d’oeuvres for us (300 mozzarella sticks, he said) and then ate them all because we didn’t come. A 40 square foot cake was supposedly also made, but they had to eat that too. It was hilarious. They’re both really funny.
I’ve asked Becky, Michala, and Jess what else we did that weekend and none of us can remember. I don’t think we really did anything else interesting. Memorable last weekend, huh?
Pictures are coming soon! I promise! (Maybe not until after I get home, but soon!)
On Friday, we had planned to have another barbecue in the park to celebrate the Fourth of July. We love our barbecues here. We had invited pretty much everyone we know and were really excited about it. Unfortunately, it was rainy all day and pretty chilly. Only a few people showed up, including Will (one of the fire guys), Sarah (who works in the office), and some fire guys we hadn’t met yet who are here temporarily from Wyoming. We didn’t get rained on because the park has an area with a roof and picnic tables. It was cold but we still had fun.
On Saturday, I believe we watched more World Cup. At least some of us did. I don’t remember who played right now. TK and Heather have watched pretty much every World Cup game from the same table at the Oasis (the only restaurant/bar in town, conveniently located less than a block from our house). I’ve watched most games with them, and a few other people come occasionally. That night, Heather, Jess, TK, and I all went back to the Oasis (or as the cool kids call it, The O) that night when it was being a bar instead of restaurant. We had heard that nights when there are Ultimate Fighting Championship fights are the busiest there, and Saturday was fight night. Will, Miles (a fire guy who lives at the bunkhouse), and Matt (an AmeriCorps VISTA with the BLM who also lives at the bunkhouse) were all there as well. It was pretty fun. When the O is being a bar, it doesn’t really have a set closing time. If there are no people, it closes early. If people are there, it’ll stay open. The seven of us were there playing pool and playing crappy songs on the jukebox way later than anyone else, but Travis the bartender didn’t seem to mind.
On Sunday, the Fourth of July, we went to Salida. We had seen posters for the activities on the Fourth, including a parade and a band. The parade was ok but nothing like parades in Alton. We had planned to stay for the band but it was kind of lame. We also found out that we were invited to a gathering at Josh’s house (he’s yet another fire guy) so we left Salida early. Heather, Jess, Michala and I went to Josh’s, where we got to see Miles, John (a fire guy who used to live at the bunkhouse but then moved to Alamosa to do fires at Sand Dunes) and Kent (yep, another fire guy). It was pretty fun. We hadn’t seen any of the fire guys in like a month because there was a huge fire near the Sand Dunes. It was especially nice to see John, since he moved away.
We had Monday off since everyone at the BLM did. Most of us went to the Sand Dunes to sunbathe. We checked the weather and saw that it wasn’t supposed to be windy like it was last time we were there. Unfortunately, it seems we are not able to have a pain-free trip to the Sand Dunes. Instead of sand blowing into our legs like a thousand tiny knives like last time, the ridiculously hot sand burned our feet. Oh my goodness, it was painful. You couldn’t walk barefoot because it was just too freaking hot. Keeping flip flops on made it really awkward to walk through the sand and was still super hot. It was also really rocky where we were walking and rocks kept getting between my feet and flip flop. We walked until we came to the first dune so we could lie on a slope. We were all super sweaty just laying there. It was kind of pleasant though. When we were on our way out we saw John in the parking lot. He and another fire guy were standing outside their fire truck in the Dunes parking lot to just talk to people about the fire near there. It had been something like 500 acres but they’ve gotten it a little more under control.
Tuesday began our weed removal adventure. We would be working with Clayton, who turned out to be really cool. The weed that needed removing was Black Henbane. It is an annual plant that has probably about 20 seed pods on each stalk, with roughly 1,000 seeds in each pod. While the plant is green and alive, it poses no threat. When it dies and dries out, those millions of seeds just blow away in the wind. They are then able to germinate for the next 35 years. This plant also grows really quickly. It is also poisonous to humans and to cows. Apparently eating the seeds produces a mild hallucinogenic effect. And it’s not native to the area. You can see why this is a problem. So Clayton just took us along the road (he in his truck and us following in the van) until he spotted an area with a lot of these plants. We would stop and hop out to rip them out by the roots. We quickly realized that this was not usually a job for all seven or so of us who were in the van, so we split into two groups and alternated who got out at each spot. Clayton said he wanted it to be a chill day since it was getting back to work after such a long weekend. Not bad at all.
That Wednesday I took one of my allotted days off that I had not yet used. I chose to use one that day because it was Spain playing Germany in the World Cup semifinals. (Hey, I can use my days for whatever I want!) TK was also taking that day off. During halftime when I went to the restroom, Christina appeared in the restroom. Then when I came back out to the table, there was Heather. Apparently the team was pulling weeds not too far away and requested to come back into town for lunch. Also, it looked stormy out, so they were waiting to see what the weather would do before going back out. They ended up going back to work for only like another hour or so before the storm came.
Thursday was another day of pulling weeds, but it was a really short day. The BLM wanted to have a barbecue for us to thank us for all we’ve done and scheduled it for that Thursday at like 3:00. So we pulled more weeds with Clayton all morning but finished the areas he wanted to get done at about lunch time. He then decided to give us a little treat and take us to Penitente Canyon which was way out near La Garita. I think. He said there are really cool places to hike around there and you can climb up the canyon walls. Unfortunately, by the time we got there we only had about 20 minutes to look around. Clayton didn’t want to make us late for our own party. It was really cool there though. The barbecue was delicious. It was fajitas again, at a newish campsite we hadn’t been to yet called Big Springs. Again, one big wok full of meat (this time is was pork, which I didn’t eat, but the rest was delicious), another full of potatoes and onions, and another for warming tortillas. Mmm, yummy. It was really nice. Almost everyone who works at the BLM came to thank us.
That weekend we did…something. The only day I can remember clearly is Saturday. We had our Day of Service, which we are required to organize and do both second and fourth rounds. We went back to Alamosa (where we had worked in the homeless shelter and community garden before). There was this thing called Restaurant Walk going on that day and the food bank was part of it. (There’s a whole network of places that all benefit La Puente, the homeless shelter, like a coffee shop, a thrift store, the food bank, and some kind of place for kids. It’s actually pretty cool. All those places are staffed by volunteers and AmeriCorps people, like the AmeriCorps Directs with Habitat in New Orleans.) For the Restaurant Walk, you pay like $10 or something then get to walk around to a bunch of different restaurants and get samples of food. Sally, the AmeriCorps person in charge of us for the day, split us into two groups. Michala, Jess, Becky, Tomm, and I all worked at the food bank in the morning. Sally had made chili for the food bank to give out for restaurant walk but we were only supposed to sit at a table with a bunch of AmeriCorps information for when people come in. Pretty much no one was interested. Which means that we just had to sit there for a few hours. Super easy. Since no one was there, we got to split up and take turns walking over to the coffee shop for a beverage and to listen to the live music going on for a bit. And we got hours for it. The other group was pulling weeds in the community garden all morning. The two groups swapped after lunch. Pulling weeds wasn’t too bad. There were so many that we all just sat in a group and talked while we pulled the weeds we could reach, then just scooted over a bit. The day was cut short by the appearance of a huge thunderstorm later in the afternoon. Not a bad day of work at all.
That evening after dinner, several of us decided to go enjoy some beverages in the park (don’t worry, it’s legal). Eventually, the rest of the team joined us. It was extremely enjoyable. It was also some pretty good bonding, just the 10 of us hanging out. When everyone started deciding to go home, Heather, Jess and I went over to the bunkhouse. Heather had mentioned to Miles that we might come over sometime that night since it was our last full weekend in Saguache. We went to the house and no one was home, so we decided to go to the O. Oh look, there are Matt, Miles, Travis the bartender, and no one else. Matt and Miles started on this whole thing about how they were at the O to drown their sorrows that we hadn’t come over. Matt said Miles had made hors d’oeuvres for us (300 mozzarella sticks, he said) and then ate them all because we didn’t come. A 40 square foot cake was supposedly also made, but they had to eat that too. It was hilarious. They’re both really funny.
I’ve asked Becky, Michala, and Jess what else we did that weekend and none of us can remember. I don’t think we really did anything else interesting. Memorable last weekend, huh?
Pictures are coming soon! I promise! (Maybe not until after I get home, but soon!)
Friday, July 9, 2010
Weeks 6 and 7
Week 6:
That week was kind of strange. We were working with Lisa on a barbed wire fence up near Stone Cellar again. The first plan was to come back to town at like noon on Wednesday because we had a short project here we could work on. We would then drive back up Thursday morning to ride horses (a “service learning day,” but really it was just for fun because the BLM people are nice to us). It was nice to be back at the cabin. It’s so pretty up there. So we made the 1.5-hour drive up there on Monday with both our van and cargo truck. As soon as we unloaded the truck, Becky and Michala drove it back down because they both had doctor appointments. Becky has had a cough for a while and unbeknownst to me, Michala’s tailbone had been hurting pretty bad for like two weeks even though she hadn’t fallen down or anything. They didn’t get back to the cabin until that evening. Becky had gotten an inhaler and Michala had found out some news. She had a cyst on her tailbone that has been there since birth, but all the bouncy car rides we’ve been doing made it inflamed or something. Apparently this happens to soldiers a lot when they ride around in Jeeps all the time. So she had an appointment on Wednesday to get it drained and they said she’d probably have surgery to have it removed on Friday. Eek. Christina drove her back down to our house that night since she couldn’t do the work at the cabin and wanted her to work in the BLM office on Tuesday. We found out Christina’s plan on Tuesday. She found out when she was in town that our Wednesday afternoon project was cancelled so there was no reason for everyone to go back to town before Thursday and riding horses. TK and Heather were both taking a day off on Wednesday to watch the USA/Ghana World Cup game. Tuesday after work, TK, Heather, and I would drive down to Saguache. On Wednesday, they would watch the game and I would take Michala to the doctor in Salida in Christina’s car. After the game, TK and Heather would drive back up to the cabin bringing with them all the food needed for those extra days at the cabin and things needed to ride horses since everyone expected to be back in town before that. I would stay at the church with Michala Wednesday and Thursday. Whew. So confusing. Michala’s doctor appointment was fairly traumatic because the local anesthesia shot they had given her didn’t work. She also found out that she can wait another month until she’s back home after AmeriCorps is over to have the removal surgery. She also found out that she needed to get one of those donut-shaped pillows to sit on until she has the surgery. So we went to the medical supply stores and started looking around. We couldn’t find the pillows so we found a person. Michala said “Do you have any of those donut-shaped pillows?” and the lady said “Sure! Do you want chocolate or glazed?” Gotta love a medical supply lady with a sense of humor. She showed us the options, which were not what we expected. We expected like a clear plastic inflatable thing. What they had were fabric-covered foam things in either red plaid or navy blue. We both agreed that she should get the plaid because it was so silly looking and it’s silly enough to need a butt pillow anyway. We laughed about it for the rest of the day. It looks like a Scottish dog bed. It looks especially silly on our couches, which are kind pastel and floral. When the others came home and saw it, Becky immediately decided it needed a Scottish name and called it MacDougall. So that’s how MacDougall the Butt Pillow came into our lives. Luckily Michala had already decided to laugh about it instead of being embarrassed by it.
I’m going out of order here. Monday of that week while Becky and Michala were gone, the rest of us built a new barbed wire fence about a 20 minute drive up a terrifying rocky mountain from the cabin. Building a new wire fence is WAY easier than repairing an old one. Only the middle two wires needed to be barbed. The top and bottom wires could be smooth. My favorite part was pounding in the metal posts. Post pounders are fun. They’re kind of like a metal tube that is closed on one end with handles on the sides. You put the open end of the tube over the post and pound away so the top of the post hits the closed end of the tube until the post is in the ground enough. We finished that fence on Tuesday. I’m not entirely sure what everyone else did Wednesday while I was with Michala. They rode horses on Thursday. (I didn’t mind missing out to stay with Michala because while I’m much more comfortable being near horses after that training we had, being on a horse still makes me nervous. And they were going to be riding like five miles.)
That Friday night most of us went to see Robin Hood at the two-block-away movie theater. They’re only open Friday through Sunday and show one movie per weekend. We were not impressed with it as a Robin Hood story, but it was pretty good as a Medieval action movie.
On Saturday, the five girls on the team all went to Salida. We had a delicious dinner at the Boathouse Cantina, went to one other bar, then came home pretty early. AmeriCorps has turned us all into old people.
Week 7:
Week 7 started with my two least favorite days of my entire AmeriCorps experience thus far. We were scheduled to be surveying baby trees all week. We had been told something about how we’d have to use maps and a GPS to find these trees and document them or something. It sounded like it might be kind of cool. Oh how wrong we were. On Monday we were missing Michala (who would be working in the office all week to avoid bumpy car rides), Becky (who had been randomly selected for a drug test), and Christina (who had to take Becky for the test). The rest of us were sent to work with Sarah and Kevin. We drove out to the woods and were put into two groups. I was with Tomm and Alex, led by Kevin. Oh my goodness, the work was boring. You have to use the GPS to find a set of coordinates that were already programmed in. Then one person holds the end of a tape measure on that spot while another person pulls the tape out to 11.8 feet. That person then circles the spot while still holding the tape and counts all the baby trees in the circle. Someone else documents the findings. We developed a system. I would find the spot with the GPS (which I got pretty good at by the end of the day). Tomm and Alex would come do the circling and counting while I took off to find the next spot. Kevin documented. I feel bad saying this because he seems like a nice enough guy, but Kevin is possibly the dullest person I’ve ever met. I tried to make conversation and be cheerful but it just didn’t work. A bad omen for the day: When the groups first separated and we were walking down the road to our first spot, I realized I didn’t know Kevin’s name. I asked and he said Kevin. I said “Oh, I’m Courtney. Nice to meet you.” He said nothing. He didn’t say it was nice to meet me. He didn’t ask Tomm or Alex’s names. Nothing. Every time I tried to ask conversation-starting questions, he would just answer the question and that was the end of it. Very frustrating. With boring work like that, you need to make it interesting somehow. It just didn’t happen for us that day. And it wasn’t just a horrible job because it was boring. I’ve had boring jobs before. It was also physically pretty hard. The reason the baby trees needed to be counted was that they were in areas of prescribed burns. So everywhere we had to walk was literally covered in dead tree trunks and branches. Sometimes when you step on them they would be sunk into the ground and stay still and sometimes they would roll out from under you. You never know which it will be. The area was also really hilly. There was little shade and it was pretty warm that day. If something is hard, it’s usually also interesting. If something is boring, it’s usually also easy. Nope, neither of these were true for that day. Adding to the misery of the day was the fact that we HAD to wear pants, long sleeves, and hard hats. To count baby trees. I would have wanted to wear pants anyway because we had to walk through a lot of brush but I don’t think anything touched my arms all day. And hard hats? Seriously? What do our heads need to be protected from? Partially due to my compulsion to ask WHY for everything we do here and partially in an attempt to make conversation and get Kevin to talk, I asked a few different times why we had to wear these things. I did not get an acceptable answer. The long sleeves were apparently to protect our arms from getting scratched by branches. Heat stroke and overheating sound less safe to me than a few scratches on my arms (which, PS, I’ve had many of already). One time, after asking about the hard hats yet again, Kevin said he’s been hit in the head with branches a few times. (He’s been doing this for several years.) I said but I’m not that tall. (He’s tall.) He said no, from stuff falling out of trees onto his head. I would rather face the highly unlikely possibility of something falling out of a tree onto my head than be awkwardly top-heavy all day and have my scalp covered in sweat. By the end of the day I was just carrying my stupid hard hat around most of the time.
Heather, Rob, Jess, and TK, who were with Sarah for the day, didn’t mind it much at all. They loved chatty outgoing Sarah and even invited her to the barbecue we’re having on Friday to celebrate the Fourth of July. Blah blah blah.
On Tuesday morning before work, the only thing keeping me going was the thought that surely we would switch up the groups and I would not be with Kevin again. Also because the plan was that since we all knew how to do it now, we could go out in pairs with each other, not groups with Sarah or Kevin. Unfortunately this was not the case. The only people from the team who would be out there that day were Heather, Rob, Tomm, Jess, and I. When we met at the BLM office in the morning like always, Sarah came out and said that Heather and Rob would be with her and Tomm, Jess, and I would be with Kevin. I immediately feared for my sanity. I think Tuesday was even worse. It began with the crushing blow of not switching groups. We were also in a different area that day which was much hillier, making the hiking much harder. I was doing the GPS part again for most of the day. It was much harder to navigate there because there were a lot more adult trees that I would have to go around which made it way harder to keep a straight course to the next point. Ug. At least it’s over now. Kevin told us that day that he heard we would be working on a fence somewhere Wednesday and Thursday (that was the previous Wednesday afternoon’s cancelled project). Thank goodness.
Tuesday night we watched another gem from one of Tomm’s horror movie four-packs. The cover said it was called The Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep. When TK put the DVD in his laptop, he clicked on the thing that said The Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep. When the movie started and it showed the title screen, the title was Deadly Waters. We were confused. A little ways into the movie we realized that the description on the back of the DVD case for The Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep matched the movie we were watching. The star was Charlie O’Connell, Jerry O’Connell’s brother. He had three different faces that I could tell: there was angry face, happy face, and flirting-with-the-blonde-main-character face. The plot wasn’t quite as awful as Raging Sharks but the acting was worse. It was pretty ridiculous. I’m starting to forget what a good movie looks like. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one.
(I wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday so I didn’t go to work. The rest of the team did indeed build a fence with Dwight. It was a log fence, which we haven’t done before. I don’t know much about that day though.)
On Thursday, we were with Dwight again. Our task was to put in the wood corner posts for a soon-to-be-built barbed wire fence. He didn’t even bring any wire because the only goal was to put in the H-braces that would go on each corner of the square fenced-in area. We set off to the far away location of this future fence. First Dwight and Dave (who I later learned is an actual shaman, but I did not get to talk to him at all that day) in the BLM truck, then Alex and TK in our truck, then the rest of us in the van, driven by me. We drove down the highway as usual then turned off onto a dirt road, also as usual. The dirt road turned into gravel, which then turned into rocks. The rocks got bigger and bigger. Soon we were bouncing along so violently that we wondered if the van would actually fall apart on us this time. As has been happening more and more frequently during ridiculous situations on this project, I got a laughing fit. The road was just SO BUMPY and there was nothing I could do about it. It didn’t help that I could see the rest of the team bouncing up and down in the rearview mirror. Also, as the road got bumpier, it also got narrower. This meant that I couldn’t avoid scraping past tree branches every few seconds. I had tears running down my face I was laughing so hard. Then it got worse. We got to a part of the road that went fairly steeply upward and was covered in mud. The BLM truck made it up ok, but our truck couldn’t. If our truck couldn’t, there’s no way Gertrude could make it. Alex and TK made several tries up in the truck, even trying going off the road into the grass a bit after Dwight and Dave had cut down trees to make room. It just wouldn’t happen. We were told that the worksite was only about a half-mile from where we were and we could just walk, but for some reason we decided not to do that. The whole team got out of the van and helped clear brush next to the road. Dwight got out his chainsaw and cut up the huge fallen trees in the way. That’s right, we were rerouting the road. I think we would have just walked the rest of the way but Dwight and Dave were worried about other people getting stuck there. Then we backed up our vehicles to go on our new road. The truck almost got stuck again trying to get up onto the grass, but I learned from their mistake. Apparently you just have to go fast. I was randomly chuckling for the rest of the day just thinking about how silly the drive to work was.
Once we finally got there, we began The Day That Stole Our Souls. We were in groups of two or three on each corner on the future fence. Becky, Tomm, and I were a group. There were two unclaimed corners. We started at one but discovered it was really rocky. Since we didn’t have a rock bar at the time we decided to go to the other one which was down a little hill and nearer a creek. Big mistake. We started digging our hole and ran into a huge rock about eight inches down. We knew we couldn’t get past it so we just moved over and started a new hole. Same thing happened. So we moved over again. Turns out the third time is indeed a charm. We managed to dig our 30-inch deep post hole in our third location and finished right before lunch. After lunch, since three wood posts would need to go there eventually, we each carried an eight-foot, six-inch diameter wood post the long-enough distance from the truck. We got that first post in without much problem. We then moved in to our next post hole. About ten inches in, we hit another rock. It was jutting out from the edge of the hole and went about halfway across it. We couldn’t just start a new hole like we did before because this one had to be a certain distance from the first, otherwise the cross piece for the H-brace wouldn’t fit. We thought since we could expose one side of the rock, surely we could get it out. We then spent the next two and a half hours or so having our souls sucked out by this rock. Imagine the frustration. We tried just slamming it with a rock bar (which we had gotten by this point) to break it up. We tried widening the hole to find the other side of the rock. We tried prying it up. Nothing worked. Luckily everyone else finished early-ish and we got to leave at about 4:00. Also luckily, my soul was mostly restored as I laughed my way down the bouncy road back to the highway.
That week was kind of strange. We were working with Lisa on a barbed wire fence up near Stone Cellar again. The first plan was to come back to town at like noon on Wednesday because we had a short project here we could work on. We would then drive back up Thursday morning to ride horses (a “service learning day,” but really it was just for fun because the BLM people are nice to us). It was nice to be back at the cabin. It’s so pretty up there. So we made the 1.5-hour drive up there on Monday with both our van and cargo truck. As soon as we unloaded the truck, Becky and Michala drove it back down because they both had doctor appointments. Becky has had a cough for a while and unbeknownst to me, Michala’s tailbone had been hurting pretty bad for like two weeks even though she hadn’t fallen down or anything. They didn’t get back to the cabin until that evening. Becky had gotten an inhaler and Michala had found out some news. She had a cyst on her tailbone that has been there since birth, but all the bouncy car rides we’ve been doing made it inflamed or something. Apparently this happens to soldiers a lot when they ride around in Jeeps all the time. So she had an appointment on Wednesday to get it drained and they said she’d probably have surgery to have it removed on Friday. Eek. Christina drove her back down to our house that night since she couldn’t do the work at the cabin and wanted her to work in the BLM office on Tuesday. We found out Christina’s plan on Tuesday. She found out when she was in town that our Wednesday afternoon project was cancelled so there was no reason for everyone to go back to town before Thursday and riding horses. TK and Heather were both taking a day off on Wednesday to watch the USA/Ghana World Cup game. Tuesday after work, TK, Heather, and I would drive down to Saguache. On Wednesday, they would watch the game and I would take Michala to the doctor in Salida in Christina’s car. After the game, TK and Heather would drive back up to the cabin bringing with them all the food needed for those extra days at the cabin and things needed to ride horses since everyone expected to be back in town before that. I would stay at the church with Michala Wednesday and Thursday. Whew. So confusing. Michala’s doctor appointment was fairly traumatic because the local anesthesia shot they had given her didn’t work. She also found out that she can wait another month until she’s back home after AmeriCorps is over to have the removal surgery. She also found out that she needed to get one of those donut-shaped pillows to sit on until she has the surgery. So we went to the medical supply stores and started looking around. We couldn’t find the pillows so we found a person. Michala said “Do you have any of those donut-shaped pillows?” and the lady said “Sure! Do you want chocolate or glazed?” Gotta love a medical supply lady with a sense of humor. She showed us the options, which were not what we expected. We expected like a clear plastic inflatable thing. What they had were fabric-covered foam things in either red plaid or navy blue. We both agreed that she should get the plaid because it was so silly looking and it’s silly enough to need a butt pillow anyway. We laughed about it for the rest of the day. It looks like a Scottish dog bed. It looks especially silly on our couches, which are kind pastel and floral. When the others came home and saw it, Becky immediately decided it needed a Scottish name and called it MacDougall. So that’s how MacDougall the Butt Pillow came into our lives. Luckily Michala had already decided to laugh about it instead of being embarrassed by it.
I’m going out of order here. Monday of that week while Becky and Michala were gone, the rest of us built a new barbed wire fence about a 20 minute drive up a terrifying rocky mountain from the cabin. Building a new wire fence is WAY easier than repairing an old one. Only the middle two wires needed to be barbed. The top and bottom wires could be smooth. My favorite part was pounding in the metal posts. Post pounders are fun. They’re kind of like a metal tube that is closed on one end with handles on the sides. You put the open end of the tube over the post and pound away so the top of the post hits the closed end of the tube until the post is in the ground enough. We finished that fence on Tuesday. I’m not entirely sure what everyone else did Wednesday while I was with Michala. They rode horses on Thursday. (I didn’t mind missing out to stay with Michala because while I’m much more comfortable being near horses after that training we had, being on a horse still makes me nervous. And they were going to be riding like five miles.)
That Friday night most of us went to see Robin Hood at the two-block-away movie theater. They’re only open Friday through Sunday and show one movie per weekend. We were not impressed with it as a Robin Hood story, but it was pretty good as a Medieval action movie.
On Saturday, the five girls on the team all went to Salida. We had a delicious dinner at the Boathouse Cantina, went to one other bar, then came home pretty early. AmeriCorps has turned us all into old people.
Week 7:
Week 7 started with my two least favorite days of my entire AmeriCorps experience thus far. We were scheduled to be surveying baby trees all week. We had been told something about how we’d have to use maps and a GPS to find these trees and document them or something. It sounded like it might be kind of cool. Oh how wrong we were. On Monday we were missing Michala (who would be working in the office all week to avoid bumpy car rides), Becky (who had been randomly selected for a drug test), and Christina (who had to take Becky for the test). The rest of us were sent to work with Sarah and Kevin. We drove out to the woods and were put into two groups. I was with Tomm and Alex, led by Kevin. Oh my goodness, the work was boring. You have to use the GPS to find a set of coordinates that were already programmed in. Then one person holds the end of a tape measure on that spot while another person pulls the tape out to 11.8 feet. That person then circles the spot while still holding the tape and counts all the baby trees in the circle. Someone else documents the findings. We developed a system. I would find the spot with the GPS (which I got pretty good at by the end of the day). Tomm and Alex would come do the circling and counting while I took off to find the next spot. Kevin documented. I feel bad saying this because he seems like a nice enough guy, but Kevin is possibly the dullest person I’ve ever met. I tried to make conversation and be cheerful but it just didn’t work. A bad omen for the day: When the groups first separated and we were walking down the road to our first spot, I realized I didn’t know Kevin’s name. I asked and he said Kevin. I said “Oh, I’m Courtney. Nice to meet you.” He said nothing. He didn’t say it was nice to meet me. He didn’t ask Tomm or Alex’s names. Nothing. Every time I tried to ask conversation-starting questions, he would just answer the question and that was the end of it. Very frustrating. With boring work like that, you need to make it interesting somehow. It just didn’t happen for us that day. And it wasn’t just a horrible job because it was boring. I’ve had boring jobs before. It was also physically pretty hard. The reason the baby trees needed to be counted was that they were in areas of prescribed burns. So everywhere we had to walk was literally covered in dead tree trunks and branches. Sometimes when you step on them they would be sunk into the ground and stay still and sometimes they would roll out from under you. You never know which it will be. The area was also really hilly. There was little shade and it was pretty warm that day. If something is hard, it’s usually also interesting. If something is boring, it’s usually also easy. Nope, neither of these were true for that day. Adding to the misery of the day was the fact that we HAD to wear pants, long sleeves, and hard hats. To count baby trees. I would have wanted to wear pants anyway because we had to walk through a lot of brush but I don’t think anything touched my arms all day. And hard hats? Seriously? What do our heads need to be protected from? Partially due to my compulsion to ask WHY for everything we do here and partially in an attempt to make conversation and get Kevin to talk, I asked a few different times why we had to wear these things. I did not get an acceptable answer. The long sleeves were apparently to protect our arms from getting scratched by branches. Heat stroke and overheating sound less safe to me than a few scratches on my arms (which, PS, I’ve had many of already). One time, after asking about the hard hats yet again, Kevin said he’s been hit in the head with branches a few times. (He’s been doing this for several years.) I said but I’m not that tall. (He’s tall.) He said no, from stuff falling out of trees onto his head. I would rather face the highly unlikely possibility of something falling out of a tree onto my head than be awkwardly top-heavy all day and have my scalp covered in sweat. By the end of the day I was just carrying my stupid hard hat around most of the time.
Heather, Rob, Jess, and TK, who were with Sarah for the day, didn’t mind it much at all. They loved chatty outgoing Sarah and even invited her to the barbecue we’re having on Friday to celebrate the Fourth of July. Blah blah blah.
On Tuesday morning before work, the only thing keeping me going was the thought that surely we would switch up the groups and I would not be with Kevin again. Also because the plan was that since we all knew how to do it now, we could go out in pairs with each other, not groups with Sarah or Kevin. Unfortunately this was not the case. The only people from the team who would be out there that day were Heather, Rob, Tomm, Jess, and I. When we met at the BLM office in the morning like always, Sarah came out and said that Heather and Rob would be with her and Tomm, Jess, and I would be with Kevin. I immediately feared for my sanity. I think Tuesday was even worse. It began with the crushing blow of not switching groups. We were also in a different area that day which was much hillier, making the hiking much harder. I was doing the GPS part again for most of the day. It was much harder to navigate there because there were a lot more adult trees that I would have to go around which made it way harder to keep a straight course to the next point. Ug. At least it’s over now. Kevin told us that day that he heard we would be working on a fence somewhere Wednesday and Thursday (that was the previous Wednesday afternoon’s cancelled project). Thank goodness.
Tuesday night we watched another gem from one of Tomm’s horror movie four-packs. The cover said it was called The Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep. When TK put the DVD in his laptop, he clicked on the thing that said The Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep. When the movie started and it showed the title screen, the title was Deadly Waters. We were confused. A little ways into the movie we realized that the description on the back of the DVD case for The Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep matched the movie we were watching. The star was Charlie O’Connell, Jerry O’Connell’s brother. He had three different faces that I could tell: there was angry face, happy face, and flirting-with-the-blonde-main-character face. The plot wasn’t quite as awful as Raging Sharks but the acting was worse. It was pretty ridiculous. I’m starting to forget what a good movie looks like. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one.
(I wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday so I didn’t go to work. The rest of the team did indeed build a fence with Dwight. It was a log fence, which we haven’t done before. I don’t know much about that day though.)
On Thursday, we were with Dwight again. Our task was to put in the wood corner posts for a soon-to-be-built barbed wire fence. He didn’t even bring any wire because the only goal was to put in the H-braces that would go on each corner of the square fenced-in area. We set off to the far away location of this future fence. First Dwight and Dave (who I later learned is an actual shaman, but I did not get to talk to him at all that day) in the BLM truck, then Alex and TK in our truck, then the rest of us in the van, driven by me. We drove down the highway as usual then turned off onto a dirt road, also as usual. The dirt road turned into gravel, which then turned into rocks. The rocks got bigger and bigger. Soon we were bouncing along so violently that we wondered if the van would actually fall apart on us this time. As has been happening more and more frequently during ridiculous situations on this project, I got a laughing fit. The road was just SO BUMPY and there was nothing I could do about it. It didn’t help that I could see the rest of the team bouncing up and down in the rearview mirror. Also, as the road got bumpier, it also got narrower. This meant that I couldn’t avoid scraping past tree branches every few seconds. I had tears running down my face I was laughing so hard. Then it got worse. We got to a part of the road that went fairly steeply upward and was covered in mud. The BLM truck made it up ok, but our truck couldn’t. If our truck couldn’t, there’s no way Gertrude could make it. Alex and TK made several tries up in the truck, even trying going off the road into the grass a bit after Dwight and Dave had cut down trees to make room. It just wouldn’t happen. We were told that the worksite was only about a half-mile from where we were and we could just walk, but for some reason we decided not to do that. The whole team got out of the van and helped clear brush next to the road. Dwight got out his chainsaw and cut up the huge fallen trees in the way. That’s right, we were rerouting the road. I think we would have just walked the rest of the way but Dwight and Dave were worried about other people getting stuck there. Then we backed up our vehicles to go on our new road. The truck almost got stuck again trying to get up onto the grass, but I learned from their mistake. Apparently you just have to go fast. I was randomly chuckling for the rest of the day just thinking about how silly the drive to work was.
Once we finally got there, we began The Day That Stole Our Souls. We were in groups of two or three on each corner on the future fence. Becky, Tomm, and I were a group. There were two unclaimed corners. We started at one but discovered it was really rocky. Since we didn’t have a rock bar at the time we decided to go to the other one which was down a little hill and nearer a creek. Big mistake. We started digging our hole and ran into a huge rock about eight inches down. We knew we couldn’t get past it so we just moved over and started a new hole. Same thing happened. So we moved over again. Turns out the third time is indeed a charm. We managed to dig our 30-inch deep post hole in our third location and finished right before lunch. After lunch, since three wood posts would need to go there eventually, we each carried an eight-foot, six-inch diameter wood post the long-enough distance from the truck. We got that first post in without much problem. We then moved in to our next post hole. About ten inches in, we hit another rock. It was jutting out from the edge of the hole and went about halfway across it. We couldn’t just start a new hole like we did before because this one had to be a certain distance from the first, otherwise the cross piece for the H-brace wouldn’t fit. We thought since we could expose one side of the rock, surely we could get it out. We then spent the next two and a half hours or so having our souls sucked out by this rock. Imagine the frustration. We tried just slamming it with a rock bar (which we had gotten by this point) to break it up. We tried widening the hole to find the other side of the rock. We tried prying it up. Nothing worked. Luckily everyone else finished early-ish and we got to leave at about 4:00. Also luckily, my soul was mostly restored as I laughed my way down the bouncy road back to the highway.
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