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 CafĂ© 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.
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Bear Boxes? BEAR BOXES!!! I think I'm glad I didn't know you needed bear boxes while you were there. And how is it that you know about crab cages? I assume it's used for catching crabs?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, GREAT post--one of my favorites. Thank you, Courtney.