I Miss You, Big Bend

So here I am back in Denver. I guess I'll kind of try to pick back up where I left off, but it'll be hard. We'll see how it goes.

Spring break in Austin was pretty cool. The only bad part was that on the first morning we were there, Lindsey hurt her foot pretty badly when we were walking to breakfast. She was stepping off a curb and her sandal got caught, but her foot kept going. She still walked all around the city with us, just a little slower. We came back to the park on Monday after spring break, and Lindsey wasn't able to go to work on Tuesday because she couldn't do the hike to our work site. Scott took her to the doctor in Alpine on Wednesday and we found out some horrible news. Her foot was broken and she was being sent back to Denver to work with a team from another unit who was living on campus and working at a school. We were all really sad that she had to leave and so was she.

That day while they were at the doctor was pretty interesting for the rest of us. It was a service learning day for us as well as for the whole trail crew. (They don't do service learning like we do, but they all came with us.) We took a tour with Tom, the park archaeologist, of an area called Indian Head. He showed us all kinds of evidence of people living there many many years ago. There were several pictographs and petroglyphs on the huge boulders around.

Do you see the little hand prints under the circle thing? Tom said they were probably made by like a 10-year-old. Crazy!

The next day, Scott assigned me to have another service learning day with Lindsey. I think it was mostly just to get her some hours since she had to miss work after spring break. Davis ended up coming with us because he had hurt his knee the day before. The three of us went to Boquillas Canyon. It was really pretty. (Surprising, huh?) To get from the parking area into the actual canyon was like a mile hike which unfortunately Lindsey and Davis couldn't do with their injuries. There were a couple of overlook things that we could drive to so we were still able to see some of it and get some good pictures. At one of the overlooks was a bunch of crafts set up on rocks. There were signs saying that they were made in Boquillas, Mexico with a list of prices for all the crafts. The sign said that buying them (putting money in the plastic containers next to the rocks) would benefit Boquillas schools. Unfortunately, none of us had money with us, but the things were really pretty.

That is obviously the Rio Grande behind us, with Mexico on the other side. We even got to see someone crossing the river back over to Mexico on a horse, most likely after dropping off more crafts or collecting money or something. It was a really nice day. We just drove around the Boquillas Canyon area and looked at pretty scenery then had lunch in Rio Grande Village. (The village isn't as cool as it sounds. It's just another visitor center and a store. But it was still nice.)

The day after that was our Alpine day. Alpine days, as I've mentioned, are just pretty horrible. Too much going on. And that day was even worse because I had my team leader phone interview scheduled for that day. (Yes, I applied to be a team leader for next year.) I thought it went pretty well. The Unit Leaders from all four units were on the phone but I didn't really feel nervous or anything.

Saturday April 10 was an all-day event in Terlingua called Green Scene. Terlingua has been trying to do a lot more recycling and move toward sustainability and the Green Scene was kind of a celebration of that. There were demonstrations on things like solar ovens and composting, and a lot of locals were selling their art and food. Terlingua only has like five or six hundred people, but a lot of them seem to be artists. All of the local art I've seen is really good. The Green Scene was really fun. I think probably the whole town was there as well as people from surrounding communities. One of the highlights was a demonstration by the local acro-balance yoga class. Colin, our supervisor, and Laura, another member of the trail crew, are part of this class. They were doing some crazy stuff!


Alex, a member of the trail crew, had given us a brilliant idea. There's a "camping hostel" in Terlingua, so we should just bring our sleeping bags and stuff and sleep there so no one would have to drive back (beer is a pretty important part of life in Terlingua) and so we could stay out as long as we want (the curfew for the van is midnight which means we would have to leave at 11:15 to get back in time). Such a good idea! At the end of the night, we slept beneath the stars in the campground. Stars in Terlingua/Big Bend are probably the prettiest I've seen. In the middle of the night, I woke up to a strange pattering sound that I didn't recognize at first. Then I realized it was rain. Only a little sprinkling. How ironic, that the first time we decide to sleep without tents in the desert is the first time it rains. It only lasted a few minutes so it was kind of refreshing. In the morning we had breakfast at a really good little cafe next to Starlight, then went back to the park.

Well I guess I might as well go ahead and post what I have so far. This is going to take a while.

Gah! No Time!

So I'm in Alpine right now, but there's never any time when we're here. Too much to do! I'll do a more detailed post when I can (which might not be until after the project is over), but we just got back yesterday from our first real work week. We hiked up to Emory Peak, the highest peak in the park and camped near Boot Cabin, where the trail crew stays when they go up there. Then we had seven straight days of work on the trail leading to Emory Peak. Some of it was working on the new trail they're building, some of it was making the old trail that's closing disappear. It was pretty awesome. Highlights include the Pionjar (there's an umlaut over the A, and it's pronounced POON-jar), which kind of like a jackhammer. Or maybe it IS a jackhammer. I just realized that I don't actually know what a jackhammer is. The Pionjar is used to break up rocks. It's pretty heavy and awkward but really fun.

I think that's all I have time for right now. It's so hard to get internet around here!

The Desert = Hot, Prickly, and Beautiful

And as always, picking back up where I left off. The Saturday before last, we all went to Terlingua to the farmers market we had seen a flyer for. It wasn’t really anything special. There were only like six or seven tables and like half of them were art or crafts, not fruit or vegetables. It was kind of interesting though. Also, Colin had told us that there was an ISP opportunity at a community garden and Erin and Lindsey managed to talk to Zoey, the person in charge of it, to set up some ISP hours for the three of us (no one else wanted to go) the next day. Unfortunately, by the time the farmers market was over everything else in town was closed. I think Terlingua takes a bit of Mexican influence and has a siesta after lunchtime. There was an interesting time when Lindsey, Ryan and I went over to sit next to a school bus because it was the only shady spot and it was HOT that day, and it turned out that there was a campsite near there and the bus was the office for a “camping hostel,” and the area next to it where we wanted to sit was the outdoor kitchen for the hostel. While we were sitting there, a woman came over from the campsite and we talked to her for a while. She’s been living there for a little over a month because she just wanted to live in this area but hasn’t found a permanent place to live yet. It was a pretty nice afternoon.

We went back to the park to eat dinner, but then most of us went back to Terlingua that night. We first went to the Boathouse, the only bar we hadn’t been to yet. It was pretty empty there and we ended up sitting out on the patio playing cards for a bit. Then we went over to the Starlight because we had heard there would be live music there. They wouldn’t give us a table until after the kitchen closed if we weren’t eating dinner but we could still to in to the bar and hang out on the large porch. When we were able to get in, the band ended up being pretty decent. I think we all had a pretty good time that night.

Last Sunday, Erin, Lindsey and I went to Terlingua yet again for our ISP at the community garden. Who would have thought you could do much gardening in the desert? Our main task was just to till a plot of land because a new grower was coming into the garden soon. It was a little difficult because the ground was so packed and dry but not too bad. It was lunchtime by the time we were done and Zoey had made bean burritos for us. When we were done with her lovely lunch, she just kind of showed us around town a little. It was really enjoyable. We all really want to go back. The work was kind of fun, and Zoey was just a fun person to hang out with.

On Monday, all of us but Ryan, Marc, Marie, and Scott went to the hot springs by the Rio Grande. The others had all been there the day before when we were working at the garden. I didn’t actually go in the hot spring because it is usually like around 100 degrees and it was HOT again that day, but it was really nice to just sit by the river. The sand around there is really soft so we all mostly just laid around in the sand. It was another pleasant afternoon. That night, there was a ranger talk we wanted to go to. Every night, there is some sort of informational presentation by a ranger about something related to the park. That night there was one about the full moon. We thought it was going to be like taking a walk while the rangers told us about the moon, but it started before the moon came up. The rangers talked to us about the moon for a while then we just waited for the moon to rise. When it rose, it rose FAST. Have you ever just watched the moon rise? It was really cool. The moon had been so bright lately as it was moving toward being full. You almost don’t even need a headlamp at our campsite at night, the moon is so bright.

Finally on Tuesday, we had to go back to work. We learned how to clean out drains on trails, which usually isn’t too hard. It’s usually just shoveling out rocks. We worked on the Pinnacles Trail which we hadn’t been on yet. It is actually the trail up to Emory Peak, the highest peak in the park. You take Pinnacles up for a while, then veer off to go to Emory. We started at the bottom and worked our way up, which is the opposite of how we worked on our last trail. It makes it a little easier I think, because you only have to go uphill for short amounts at a time.

We were still cleaning drains on Wednesday. This time, we hiked up to the top of Pinnacles to work our way back to where we ended on Tuesday. Let me tell you, that is a tough hike. I think we went up about three and a half miles and it was pretty steep pretty much the whole time. There are also a lot of really high stairs you have to climb up. The work was the same, just cleaning out drains. Amy was my partner that day (we’ve been working in pairs everyday) and we had a pretty good time.

Thursday was different and it was really awesome. Colin taught us how to put logs in trails for steps or to prevent erosion. When he showed us, he just put one in for a step, but he wanted us to do the kind that hold the dirt in place. You have to use a pick axe to dig a fairly deep trench across the trail then put the log in. Then you find a huge rock (a pinner stone) to put at one end of the log to shove against it and pin it in place. Then you find a bunch of other rocks that are maybe a little bigger than your fist and shove them in around the edges of the log. Then you take a stone hammer (kind of like a miniature hand-held sledge hammer) and just beat on those rocks to shove them in place even more. The rocks will probably break, and that’s ok. The object is just to make it so the log can’t move at all. Then you cover the whole thing with dirt so the log and rocks are buried and you can’t tell that anything had ever been done. Colin kept apologizing for making us do such inglorious work but we all enjoyed it. Marc, my partner for the day, and I were pretty proud of our work. Our log didn’t move at all and it looked like nothing had ever happened there when we were done. It took each pair about two or three hours just to finish one log. It was tough swinging the pick axe all day, but I think this was everyone’s favorite work day so far. It finally felt like we were doing something productive even if no one will ever know about it.

On Thursday night, several of us went out in Terlingua. There was the 20th annual “Alter Ego Party” at La Kiva. What is it? You guessed it – you just dress up as your favorite “other personality.” We didn’t dress up because we didn’t know in time and even if we did, no one had any crazy clothes to dress up in, but it was ok. It was really fun to see like most of the town there all dressed up. There was a band there and most people were hanging out in the outside area of the bar, which was closed the only other time we had been to La Kiva. It was very enjoyable.

Friday was the beginning of spring break! Amy was going to Austin to meet her boyfriend, and Lindsey, Davis, and I wanted to go to Austin as well. Also, Scott was meeting people in San Antonio, so the five of us rented a car and drove over. It was a tiny tiny car which made the ride not so comfortable, but it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. TK and Tomm from my old team were coming to Austin for the break as well. Their current projects are both in New Orleans again. They drove up with Dylan and Matt, two other guys from the Sun Unit. It’s been a pretty nice weekend. Austin is really cool. There’s just like a good vibe here. Plus it was really nice to sleep in a bed and use a shower with decent water pressure. It was really weird when we got here. Three weeks in the desert made us forget what it's like to be somewhere with lots of people, cars, and buildings everywhere. There are even plants and grass that aren't prickly (yes, even the grass in Big Bend is really prickly, not to mention the numerous plants with spikes or thorns). It's also way more humid than we're used to, but it was fun to explore a new city. It is currently Sunday night, and we’re driving back to the park tomorrow. Then we have three more days of work starting Tuesday, then four days off, then our first nine-day work week up on Emory Peak. And now I’m all caught up again! Whew!

First Week at Big Bend!

So it turns out that it’s pretty hard to write a blog entry here. Here’s my best shot.

We got here not last Wednesday, but the Wednesday before. We stopped in Alpine to get groceries on the way in. We have a much bigger food budget than AmeriCorps usually has because we're getting money from the National Park Service as well. We didn't do much else that day. We set up our campsite, which isn't really all that bad. We're in the basin of the Chisos Mountains, which means that there are mountains litterally 360 degrees all around us. The trail crew lives in a bunkhouse right next to our camp site. My tentmate Amy and I accidentally got a really small tent the first night, while Marie and Scott, who both had tents to themselves, and the tent we were keeping extra stuff in were all much bigger tents. Lindsey and Erin also got one of the smaller tents. The second day, Marie switched with Amy and me and Lindsey and Erin took over the stuff tent. That first day we also had money left over from our travel budget so we got to eat dinner at the lodge, half a mile from our camp site.

On Thursday, our supervisor Colin (who was a Team Leader in Denver two years ago) took us on the Window Trail. I'll post a picture later, but the Window is a really cool part of the mountains where two mountains form a V that you can see through. The Window Trail is 5 miles round trip. We hiked to the end, then on the way back did a little trail brushing. This is just where you use loppers (like pruning shears, but bigger) or a hand saw to cut away any overgrown plants that are coming into the trail. There wasn't a lot that needed to be done on this trail, but Colin just wanted us to practice using the tools.

We didn’t do any work on Friday. Colin and Alex, another member of the trail crew, just took us around to different places to show us around. First we went to a nature trail. It was just a really short trail that had signs about what plants were what. We weren’t there for long because we had to get to the visitor center for a talk with Don, the park geologist. It was really interesting. He told us about like the entire history of the park’s geology, back to when dinosaurs roamed Big Bend. He also told us about Santa Elena Canyon. You know plate tectonics? This canyon was formed by a plate being tilted, then part of it breaking off and dropping. We then got to go to the actual Santa Elena Canyon. It was GORGEOUS. It was also fun to get to go to the Rio Grande. The river was really narrow through the canyon. I could have thrown a rock at Mexico if I wanted to. There’s like a mile-long trail that kind of goes into the canyon, which provided some really nice views. That canyon is definitely one of my favorite places in the park so far. After the canyon, we went to the ruins of two houses. One, the Dorgan house, had a fireplace made of petrified wood. That fireplace and one wall were the only parts left of the house. After those houses, we went to Tuff Canyon. It wasn’t near the river, but it was still pretty cool. We hiked up to an overlook above it, then hiked down into the canyon itself, then hiked back up to another overlook. It was a pretty nice day, just driving around and hiking different parts of the park.

Saturday was our first day of WORK. The Blue Creek Trail is a 5.5-mile (one way) trail, most of which is in a wash. I’m not actually sure what “wash” means, but that’s what Colin and Alex called the hellish part of this trail. I think the wash is just where the creek used to be. Now, it’s just gravel. Thick sandy gravel. Thick sandy gravel that goes on a slight incline the whole time. Colin’s plan was to hike all the way out to the end of where he wanted us to work, then work our way back. Luckily he didn’t need us to go the whole 5.5 miles, but we went about four miles. Four miles hiking uphill in sandy gravel is really pretty hard. There are times when the trail went up out of the wash, but the wash was the majority. And the times when the trail went out of the wash, it was usually a much steeper incline. Yeah, it was hard. It took a good part of the morning just to get there, leaving not much time for actual work. The work itself was just brushing like we did on the Window Trail. The main thing that needed to be removed from the Blue Creek Trail was Cat Claw, a devil plant. It’s just a thorn bush but the thorns literally look like cat claws, with a thicker base that curves into a VERY sharp point. Once you’ve cut a branch off, if you let it grab you, it doesn’t let go without a fight. You get one claw out and three more grab on. Needless to say, we all have arms covered in scratches. Most of us even got a few scratches on our legs through our army-style uniform pants. Saturday through Wednesday were all spent on that trail (we have weird work weeks, remember?). Obviously, the hike wasn’t four miles every day. The hike got shortened by whatever work we had already done, but it kept being pretty darn hard. Especially because we had to work in our steel toes but no one wanted to hike in them, so most of us wore hiking boots to get there and carried our heavy steel toes in our backpacks. It was a pretty tough trail, but we managed to get the whole thing brushed in our remaining five days of work that week.

Last Wednesday was our last day of work for the week so we decided to go out in Terlingua, the 600-person town 30 miles from the park. There are three bars in town and we went to two of them. The Starlight Theatre used to be a theatre but now it’s a bar and restaurant. The stage is still there and we thought they probably have live music there sometimes, which would be awesome. We then went to La Kiva, a kind of underground bar where Alex had told us there would be an open mic that night. Colin and Alex told us about how open mic at La Kiva was a great chance to see some desert hippies. Who would say no to that? It was pretty cool. The people who played were all pretty good, but we all got tired pretty early. We were used to being in bed by like 9pm at the latest because that’s when it had been getting dark and COLD at night, so no one wants to do anything but curl up in their tent. So we were all tired by like 10:30 and left.

Thursday was our day to make the two-hour trek into Alpine to do laundry and get groceries. It turned into a pretty ridiculous day. Everyone had different places they wanted to go and different things they wanted to do, so everyone was scattered. We finally got everything done then moved on to grocery shopping. We have a pretty big food budget because the National Park Service supplements our AmeriCorps budget, so we have $1600 for every two weeks. We had like 6 or 7 carts full of food and the total was like $1560. That’s pretty much an absurd amount of food, but we all eat a lot. Most days when we get home from work, everyone heads straight for the food cabinet and just eats for a while. We all took pictures of the back of the cargo truck filled with grocery bags, the as-tall-as-a-person receipt, then the floor filled with grocery bags when we unloaded them at home. It was insane.

On Friday, everyone decided to hike up the the top of Casa Grande, an interesting-looking mountain behind our campsite. Colin had told us that if you start up the Lost Mine Trail and take a right onto a “beaten path” at trail marker number 10, you can get to the top. Also, at least a third of the path up, maybe even half, was SUPER STEEP and the ground was just loose rocks. You have to just get down as low as you can and use your hands and feet to scramble to the top. There were a few times where I seriously considered just turning around and going back down because I didn’t think I could go up anymore without falling off the mountain, but I did it! The view at the top was AMAZING. You could see for miles and miles. Colin had told us that to get down, the best way was to just ski down the rocks. I thought that was probably a good way for me to fall off the mountain, so I decided to ski in like a squatting position, with my weight on my feet but my hands on the ground to push myself along. It was actually pretty fun. The only problem is that I ended up with a GIANT hole in the seat of my AmeriCorps pants, which I decided to wear that day instead of my own pants. So that will be fun to stitch up later, but it was totally worth it to not feel like I was going to fall off a mountain. It was a pretty awesome day.

I know I’m not caught up with the current days, but I’m about to leave my internet source so I’m just going to go ahead and post what I have written. Yay for Texas!

And the List of Why Texas is Ridiculous Grows

Well, I can't remember what happened the rest of the week. I think on Thursday we had to do our brief for this project, but two days in a van make details fuzzy. Oh, I also remember that I think on Thursday night, TK took me and Lindsey along with Erin and Ryan from our new team to REI to get some gear. I got my first ever pair of hiking boots! They're super comfortable and I think they're pretty nice looking also.

Friday after whatever we did all day on campus, my old team and I left for Calwood! Christina had called them for us to see if we could come stay the weekend and get a whole bunch of ISP hours. All of us except Marquis went. She had also offered the opportunity to Davis and Marie from my new team, because we're all assuming we won't be able to do any ISP in Big Bend. She even got approval to take a van up there, so she dropped us off on Friday night. It was sooo nice to be back. Becky, Michala, Rob, Davis, Marie, and I were the only ones that went in the van. TK, Lindsey, Jess, Heather, and Tomm all came later that night in TK's car because TK and Lindsey wanted to go to a concert in Boulder and the others just wanted to hang out downtown. When the van crew got there, pretty much all we did was play a few card games in the lodge. None of the staff were there because it was the weekend and they were off, and the interns who were there when we were last year were gone, with new interns taking their place. We met a couple of the new ones, and they seemed nice, but not interested in hanging out with us. So we basically had the whole place to ourselves. Card games are of course always fun. I taught the others how to play Oh Hell, which is a pretty difficult game to explain to people who have never played. We also played BS and Go Fish, then went to bed.

We got up bright and early on Saturday to get to work. Angie had left a long list of jobs to do and said we could basically just choose which ones we wanted to do, except for the two most important. She wanted two people splitting wood the whole time we were there, just like last time. Also, near Rafa (the executive director)'s house, they had been cutting down lots of trees for fire protection. We had to bring the fallen and cut-up trees all down and stack them by the road. Later in the afternoon, Rick would come with his truck and we would load them up for him to take to the splitter. Bringing the rounds to the road was kind of fun. The road was downhill from where most of the rounds were, so we made a game out of seeing how far we could roll them down the hill. The ones that didn't roll, we threw. I don't know why, but there's just something enjoyable about throwing logs.

After lunch, Rick met us in the truck. This part was not as enjoyable. Throwing logs down a hill is fun, but throwing them into a truck that's almost as tall as your shoulder is pretty hard. I wasn't counting, but it took at least 10 trips with the truck to get rid of all the rounds. That means at least 10 loads of throwing logs into the truck. Also, I worked at Calwood for four and a half weeks when we were there before, and I don't think I ever got tree sap on myself. The one day I go back, I get sap all over both forearms. Let me tell you, tree sap doesn't wash off easily. It is Tuesday as I'm writing this, and some of it is still there.

We all went to the Merc for dinner that night, partly because we didn't have much food. Christina gave us the food we had left from New Orleans, but there wasn't a lot and it was pretty random. We had plenty of pancake mix for both mornings, and peanut butter for lunch, but no bread, just slightly stale tortillas. If we had dinner from what we had, it probably would have consisted of rice, potatoes, and onions. Obviously, the Merc sounded much better. It was pretty fun. There was a menu this time, instead of just the one option for dinner like it is on Thursdays. There was supposed to be a band, but they didn't show up. I think I'm glad they didn't, because then it would have been loud and hard to talk to everyone.

On Sunday we got to tackle the rest of the work list. They were mostly just little odd jobs. I think I chose the right one. There's a little building called the Homestead which is across the road from the lodge and up a hill. None of us ever went over there during our project. Apparently, it was a house that people actually lived in during like the 1800s. Now Calwood keeps it as one of those see how they lived things. There was an upper floor over half the building with a railing that was falling apart. Rob and I went over to repair it. We looked around the little cabin and took pictures first, then got to work. The only tools we brought were a drill and some screws, because the work list said the railing just needed to be screwed back together, but that wasn't entirely accurate. The vertical poles between the top and bottom of the railing had been nailed together but were now coming apart. We really needed a hammer to get the nails out because they were in the way of putting it back together. We went back downstairs and somehow found a super old hammer outside in a little shed thing behind the cabin. It was quite a project to get these ancient nails out, but we managed to fix the railing well enough. We then had plenty of time to poke around at all the old stuff in there. I'm glad I got a chance to see the Homestead. After we finished there, I helped Heather and Marie carry these old boards over to a pile near the lodge, then called it a day because we were leaving before too much longer and it was really cold and starting to snow. As in the tradition of NCCC, we got more done than people expect. The list Angie left said something like she knows this is a lot of projects, but this way we could choose which ones we wanted to work on. We got the whole list done!

Oh, and the Calwood staff made us a big poster that said Welcome back Sun 4, with all our names on it. There were also pictures drawn of things we did when we were there. There was a dead elk, a bird box, a giant pile of split wood by the splitter, and a picture of a pillow with a dinosaur head on it. (Remember when Tomm got his velociraptor tattoo? When he woke up the next morning, there was a perfect imprint of the dinosaur head on the Calwood pillow he was using.) The group in TK's car took it when they left, so I'll post a picture if I get one. We were all so excited when we saw it.

So, we got back to campus on Sunday afternoon and had to pack. My team wasn't packing our cargo truck (we get a truck again, like the one we used at Calwood! They're so fun to drive!) until 9pm, which was actually not good for me. I have this problem with packing, where the more time I have, the more I over pack. I'll just keep thinking of things to bring until it's time to leave. Scott, my new team leader, had said that since we had our own cargo, we could bring the giant red AmeriBag as well as another duffel or something. I was originally going to try to only bring the red bag, but I ended up filling my duffel also. Oh well. There were just so many things that I don't NEED, but that would be nice to have. Like my laptop, which I am typing on right now in a hotel room.

So, the list of why Texas is ridiculous. The first example comes from our trip home from New Orleans, which I forgot to mention. We spent a night in Amarillo again on the way back to Denver. Heather had heard of something called the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, where there are cars sticking out of the ground. The girls on my team all went (the boys decided it sounded dumb and stayed at the hotel), and it was pretty weird. There were about 10 cars, all in a straight line and sticking up at the same angle.
Yeah, pretty ridiculous. Heather said the Cadillac Ranch was just made by some guy who is super rich and likes to do random things. Also, On this trip, the entire Sun Unit and several other teams all stayed at the same hotel in Amarillo. Since the drive from Amarillo to Fort Stockton, where we are now, wasn't very long, Scott had looked up some things to do. Odessa, TX had a couple attractions. Scott found out that there was a replica of the Globe Theatre and a replica of Stonehenge, all in the same town. Both replicas were supposed to be really accurate. Well, let's just say they weren't. The pictures I took are trapped on my camera right now which is really unfortunate because it's hard to describe without pictures. Apparently Odessa just really likes terrible replicas. Also, Scott's regular team who was in Texas doing taxes last round, said that Witchita Falls, TX boasts the world's smallest skyscraper. That's pretty much just a building. Amy, who was also on that team, told us today that there's some story where the architect got the money to design a skyscraper but designed it in centimeters instead of inches or something, then took off with the money. Texas managed to turn it into a tourist attraction. Texas is just ridiculous. (If anyone reading this is from Texas or anything, I mean no offense. But seriously, your state is kind of silly.) I'm looking forward to spending the next two months here and finding more things to add to the Ridiculousness List.

So, that's the story. We are currently in Fort Stockton, which is an hour from Alpine. Alpine is the nearest town to Big Bend, two hours away. We'll get to the park tomorrow afternoon and start our camping adventure. I think we'll spend the first few days with orientation and classes, then start work.

Also, we found out our mailing address! It is:

My name - AmeriCorps NCCC
General Deliveries
Big Bend National Park
79834

Apparently, if you make sure to have AmeriCorps NCCC on it, the post office will know how to get it to us. I'll be living in a tent in the desert. Any mail anyone wants to send would be greatly appreciated.

So I'll update this thing when I can, but it won't be more than every two weeks. That's how often we'll make the two-hour drive to town to do grocery shopping and whatnot. I'll hopefully be able to find internet during those trips, but no promises.

Wish me luck!

Goodbye NOLA

Tuesday March 2nd was our last day of work. Tomm and I were back with Brian on Painter Street with Christina when she wasn't running errands. There was a new group of volunteers there that day from Julliard. They were an interesting group. All the ones I talked to seemed either really ditsy or really nerdy. I was assigned to just cut all day again. I don't really remember anything special happening that morning until right before lunchtime. Christina got a phone call that panicked her and she wouldn't tell Tomm and I what had happened. We started walking home because the Painter house is only a few blocks from ours and the van was at another work site. The rest of the team came home for lunch at right around the time we got there, and Christina still wouldn't tell us what happened. Christina left in the van, and there was nothing for the rest of us to do but just eat our lunch. We found out later that one of the other Team Leaders in New Orleans had been having hard time with her team and that day was especially bad for some reason, but obviously Christina wouldn't tell exactly what had happened. Whatever it was, it meant Christina couldn't run the errands she needed to do in the afternoon so she assigned TK and Becky, the Assistant Team Leaders, to do them. She also needed the cargo van, which was at Dani's team's work site (we were sharing a cargo van with them, which is a whole other story). Team Leaders can drive the vans alone, but Corps Members need to have at least one other person with them to drive. The plan was for TK and Becky to drive Lindsey and myself to Dani's work site so we could pick up the cargo, drive it back to our house, then walk back to Painter Street to finish the day with Brian. Well first it took forever to get to Dani's site because of traffic. Then when we got there, some of her team had just left with the cargo to make a delivery or something. We waited a while then decided to go ahead and get gas in our van, which we really needed. We came back and the cargo still wasn't there. We waited another fairly long while then called Christina to tell her why it was taking so long. She told us not to worry about it and for TK and Becky to just come back and drop Lindsey and me off at work. By the time we got back to Painter, about two hours had been wasted. Also, Brian didn't have enough work for all of the Julliard kids and most of my team, so we had to track down somewhere else to work. We called Scott, the manager guy for Habitat, and he said a few people could go do something at the house on Mandolin (the house we worked on with Dan and Forrest when we first got here). So TK and Becky then had to drive Rob and Marquis over there before doing their errands. There really wasn't much for us to do on Painter. We filled in some missing nails on the plywood that had been put up on the wall frames, but that was it. We walked home at the end of the day.

We had some PT (Physical Training) scheduled for that day. We were going to play soccer with a team from the Fire Unit, who we had done PT with before. Even after this ridiculous day, and horrible freezing damp weather, and everyone but TK and Heather hating soccer, we still had to do it. Luckily it was a short game because the other team had to leave for ISP or something. It ended up being more fun than I thought it would be, but it was just really cold. Becky and I had a pretty good strategy. We stayed kind of over on the side of the field (out of the way) and just ran up and down the field in whatever direction the ball was moving. We even both managed to kick the ball a few times. The other team totally won because none of us really cared, but I think we all had a fairly good time. TK, Heather, and I even still went to the YMCA that night.

We didn't work on Wednesday because we had a lot to do to get ready to leave on Thursday. Everyone started cleaning and packing Wednesday morning. Becky, Heather, Tomm, Christina, and I all did a little excursioning also. We went to the Habitat office to get the last bit of mail, to the post office for Heather to mail a package and for me to buy stamps for letter and postcard writing in Big Bend, and to Walgreens. Then we went home and picked up everyone else, and went to Target. We had a lot of money left over from our food budget so we all got to get $10 worth of snacks for the three-day van ride back to Denver. It was pretty nice.

That evening, TK and Heather had a soccer game. Dan had told them about a 6 on 6 soccer league he plays on and invited them to play. They've had soccer games every Wednesday for almost the whole time we were there, but none of us ever went to watch. People would be too tired, or it would be cold, etc. Becky, Michala, Lindsey, Christina, and I all wanted to watch this last game. We picked up Carl from Dani's team who also played, and headed over there. It was really fun to watch. I sat by Becky and we just talked about all the various players the whole time. TK and Heather had said that there was another Habitat staffer who played on their team named Andrew, so Becky and I spent a good portion of the game trying to decide which player we thought was Andrew. We settled on the tall, slightly gawky guy who was wearing an orange hat, so he became known as Maybe Andrew. Another guy was Probably Not Andrew. There was a blond guy who we thought could have been Andrew if Maybe Andrew was not in fact Andrew. He was known alternately as Blond Guy and Maybe Andrew. (We needed names for people for when we cheered quietly for them.) The only girl on the team besides Heather had blond hair. I had a Phish song that TK frequently plays in the van called Susie (or maybe it's Susie Greenberg - I'm not sure) stuck in my head, and the blond girl looked like she might be a Susie, so that obviously became her name. The last player on their team looked like Michael Ian Black (an actor), so that of course became his name. The only player on the other team we got around to naming was wearing bright yellow shorts, so he was just Mr. Yellow Shorts. We enjoyed quietly cheering for Maybe Andrew, Probably Not Andrew, and Michael Ian Black. It was a pretty fun game, especially after three goals by Carl and a pretty decisive victory for our team. Christina even let us all get dinner from our food budget at Felipe's, a pretty good taco place we went to on the day of Mardi Gras.

That night, since we had already packed everything in the cargo besides our overnight bags that we could keep in the van, including our cots, we slept on the floor. (We had also kept our sleeping bags out of the cargo for the night.) No cots and no stuff made for pretty empty bedrooms, so Becky and Michala came to Heather, Lindsey, Jess, and my room for a sleepover. It would have been more fun, but we went to bed much later than we usually do and everyone was tired. It was a nice last night though.

Thursday, we woke up bright and early so we could leave the house by 7:45. We had to drop the cargo off at Dani's house so they could pack their stuff in it, then we wanted to go say goodbye to Dan and Forrest. They had a new work site they've been on, I guess since the Mandolin house was finished. It was pretty sad, but most of us hadn't seen Dan in a while. He wasn't at the soccer game the previous night like he usually is. He said that we were a really great team, and that he's had NCCC teams before and hasn't really been impressed. He was very complimentary about how hard we work and how fun we were to have around.

Thus, we bid adieu to the great city of New Orleans (New Orleans, LA - NOLA. Get it? I didn't know people called it that until like three months ago). The only noteworthy part of the trip home was the yellow car game. Pretty soon after we got to New Orleans, Heather told us about a game she plays on road trips. It's pretty simple: just spot a yellow car and yell "yellow car!" before anyone else. Whoever finds the most yellow cars wins. Taxis, trucks, and buses don't count. It's only personal vehicles. They can be parked, but not at a car dealership. The whole time we were there was practice, just to get used to looking for yellow cars and calling them. The road trip back to Denver was the real game. Becky made a sheet to keep track of how many everyone had. You could only call yellow cars when you were driving or when you were ATD (assistant to the driver, in the passenger seat) because it would be too crazy with a van full of people calling yellow cars. The game mostly came down to the area you were going through when it was your turn to play. I got 45 by the end, which I think put me in like 3rd or 4th place. I think that was pretty respectable considering the fact that every time I drove was through the middle of nowhere where we barely ever saw any cars, let alone any yellow ones. The game was pretty close until Heather and Tomm were driver and ATD for the last leg of the trip, coming into Denver. Heather was by FAR the winner of the yellow car game. She stopped counting when she hit a total for all three days of 99. And now, for at least the next few decades, I'm pretty sure I'll think of AmeriCorps pretty much every time I see a yellow car.

On Sunday, a lot of people went downtown to the Tattered Cover Bookstore. They have a lot of used books there, but unfortunately I didn't find any I wanted. I got a crossword puzzle book and a sudoku book, as well as a small journal thing and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I've been wanting to read for a while now. Also, when we were almost ready to leave, I spotted Nature, and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson for $3.50 and decided it would be a really good book to read in the desert.

Monday the 8th was the beginning of the always-thrilling transition week that we always have between projects. On Monday pretty much all we did was get ready for our project debrief and have a unit meeting. Exciting exciting stuff.

Yesterday, Tuesday, my team had our project debrief. It went well, and we were done by 9am. We then had nothing to do until 1:15, when we had to check in all the tools and supplies that we had checked out. After that, we got put into our shuffle teams for the first time. The team that I will be spending seven weeks in the desert with is Scott, the Team Leader; Lindsey from my regular team; Elena, Tabitha, Ryan, and Marc from Julie's regular team; Marie, Erin, and Davis from Dani's team; and Amy and Churchill from Scott's regular team. I don't know all of these people very well, but I think it'll be a pretty good group. We also found out a tiny bit more information about the project. We already knew that the schedule was nine days of work then five days off. And we knew that at least one of those nine-day periods would be a trip up into the mountains with mules. Scott said that for the first nine days we would be working near our base camp, so we can stay there where we have showers, toilets, and a sink. All the rest of the nine-day work weeks will be the taking-mules-into-the-mountains kind. Should be interesting!

Today was Life After AmeriCorps Day. After a community meeting in the morning, we had workshops all day. There were five choices of workshops both before and after lunch and we had to choose one for each time period. In the morning, I went to Creating a Strong Financial Future. It wasn't bad. The speaker runs a non-profit community credit counseling place. He was a really good speaker, very smart and funny, but he was going REALLY fast. It wasn't his fault though. The community meeting had run way too long due to a guy who was NOT a good speaker, so we were all about half an hour late to the workshops. Our guy was just trying to get through everything in the shortened time. Some of it didn't apply to us much. He talked about buying a house a bit too much considering our current situation, but there was a lot of useful information. In the afternoon, I went to International Service and Study Abroad Panel. It was ok. They talked a lot about the Peace Corps, which I've already looked into a bit. They gave us a couple good websites for finding various programs, but that was mostly all I got out of it.

After the workshops, everyone had to go on a site visit. There were 11 to choose from, but there were only two vans going to each place. We had to sign up for one on our way to lunch. Because I stayed behind in the financial workshop to ask the guy a couple questions, I was a little late to lunch. By the time I got there, the only vans that weren't full were going to the University of Denver and the Red Cross. Julie's team's project last round was with the Red Cross, and I've heard enough stories about how much they hated it to make me want to go to the university. Jess came in to sign up when I did, so we signed up together. It actually ended up being kind of fun. We had a guided tour of the college, which I haven't done in about five years. I was suddenly regressing to being 18. Our tour guide was hilarious though. He was a senior and really didn't care about tours anymore. And since the school is on a quarter schedule, they're in the middle of finals week right now. Our guide, Troy, looked and acted like he had just woken up from a nap and said he hadn't gotten much sleep the last few days and apologized for being incoherent (which he really wasn't). Jess and I both thought he looked and acted like a 4-year-older version of Tomm. The school was actually really nice, but I would have been fairly annoyed at the waste of time if it weren't for Troy's hilariousness.

And...now I'm caught up again! Woo!

How Could I Have Forgotten?!

Oh my goodness. I typed out that whole last entry and forgot one of the most important things that happened. How did I do that?!

Christina had the conference call with the other team leaders to figure out the teams for next round on Thursday morning, but they couldn’t tell us until Friday evening at 6. Christina said it was so the team leaders could have a day just to think it over and make sure they had the right teams. So…what project did I get? Big Bend National Park! Yep, I’ll be camping for two months in the Texas desert working on trails. Also, there is some kind of nine-day project that is even more in the wilderness than the campsite where we will normally live, so we’ll go make a campsite there and carry our stuff on mules. I’m not kidding. I think it seems like a pretty good team also. Lindsey is the only other person from my current team who will be there, but the other people seem cool. So I’m definitely still intimidated, but getting excited also. When else in my life would I ever have a chance to do something like this?

And now getting back to the present. We had an ISP scheduled for Monday the 22nd at Audubon Zoo. Christina had told us that she had to really fight the other team leaders to get us one of our top few choices because apparently my team is the lowest in the unit for ISP hours. Christina said she had a hard time getting a few of us (especially Lindsey and I) one of our top few choices for the next project because we were so low. Before Monday, I had 42 of the required 80 hours, and I think Lindsey had 40. Christina has told Lindsey and I multiple times that we really need to get our ISP hours up as much as possible before we leave for Big Bend. If it’s 100 miles to the nearest grocery store, there will be pretty much no way to get any ISP while we’re there. Luckily, we had 7 hours of ISP at the zoo scheduled for Monday working with the horticulture department. We arrived at the zoo a bit late after an epic journey that our GPS took us on. We’re using Dani’s personal GPS because Jane, my team’s British-accented government issued one, got stolen when our van got broken into last month. Imposter Jane, Dani’s American-accented one, is not very reliable. She tried to take us across a ferry to get to the zoo. We were first sent across the street to Audubon Park to rake some rocks into the lake. This did not make for a very promising day. We all really wanted to work in the actual zoo. Luckily we were only in the park for about half an hour then sent back to the zoo. We worked mainly on Monkey Hill, which is indeed a hill, but with no monkeys in sight. There were some plants along a stream that needed mulch and some palm trees that needed trimming. While Christine, one of the workers, cut off surprisingly large and heavy palm fronds, Jess, Rob, Heather, and I loaded them into a truck. TK and Lindsey spread the mulch. When we filled the truck we rode over to the elephant area to dump the palms. Apparently elephants eat palm trees. Sadly, we just unloaded them outside of the cage and didn’t get to go into where the elephants are. Much of the day was actually just spent riding with Christine and Brandi, the workers we were assigned to, in golf carts and trucks back and forth across the zoo. The zoo is closed on Mondays, which is why we were able to volunteer that day, so it was kind of like having the zoo to ourselves. We got to see a lot of animals while working and also had a super long lunch (11:45-1:00) where we got to wander around a little and throw a Frisbee around. After lunch, we just continued the same work, except for Heather and Lindsey who got to cut and kill elderberry plants with some pink poison. It was pretty much the best ISP ever.

On Tuesday the 23rd, I was sent to Painters Street to work with Brian. That’s the house where we worked with those really intense guys who used to work for Habitat last week. Brian had requested someone to just work the saw all day, which is exactly what I did. There was a group of volunteers from a college in Michigan as well as a slightly elderly couple from San Francisco. The woman from the couple, Midge, was assigned to be my helper. Like many volunteers who just get assigned to be helpers, she was not terribly helpful, but very nice and fun to talk to. Since the floor had been done by the intense guys, the Michigan group started putting together wall frames. The day wasn’t very exciting. I just cut stuff and talked to Midge all day. And it is Wednesday March 3 right now as I’m writing, so it’s getting hard to remember details from last week.

On Wednesday, Tomm was at Painters with me because Brian is like his favorite person. Tomm got put on the saw all day while I got put in charge of volunteers. Brian even let me wear his extra tool belt, which is much more comfortable than the nail pouches that Habitat volunteers wear. It also helped me look important and made the volunteers ask me lots of questions. Thursday and Friday were also pretty much the same I think. Tomm and I being at Painters with Brian and the rest of the team split up putting up chain link fences and laying down sod at houses that are almost done.

On Saturday, Christina had said that Tomm and I would be at Painters again. All week, she would drop us off there first because she had to get his keys to unlock wherever else people were working. When we got there, I guess she got a phone call or something, but she told me that I had been requested by Pete, the Habitat guy we only worked with for an afternoon, who we all dislike. Apparently he needed someone to lead a whole bunch of volunteers he was getting that day. (I figured out that Christina was stretching the truth a bit about him requesting me. I remembered that he never asked any of us our names that day we worked with him, so there’s no way he could have requested me. Christina just chose me for this little project.) So she dropped me off by myself at Pete’s worksite. He and Brittney, his AmeriCorps Direct assistant, did indeed have a lot of volunteers that day. When he was first making announcements to them, he said he needed 15 people to go with me to another site. At least 20 people ended up coming with me, and they were all med students from LSU. Can you say intimidating? We went a few blocks away to a house that had been finished and the family moved in a week ago. There was an ENORMOUS pile of sand that had been dropped off there that needed to be spread out under the house to level it out. (Habitat houses in New Orleans are all built on 3-foot pillars, remember?) It was as high as my shoulder with a diameter about as wide as I am tall. There was a day a few weeks ago when we were at the house on Music Street that had a pile of sand that we had to spread out over the yard. There were only like 7 people from my team there, and this pile seemed infinite. It took us all morning to spread. The pile at this house with the med students was easily three times as large as the infinite pile on Music. We had two wheelbarrows with broken and flat wheels, about 25 people, and lots of shovels. It really wasn’t that bad. The family that had moved in (a mother with two sons and a daughter) was there working with us and I got to talk to the mother a lot. She was SO EXCITED to live there. Like most Habitat families, this is her first time owning a house. She loves the house, the location, and the neighbors. It was really nice to talk to her because I think a big part of the fun of working with Habitat is getting to meet the homeowners, which I haven’t been able to do with any of the houses we’ve worked on in New Orleans so far. Anyway, the med students leveled out the ground under the house really quickly, and we still had about two thirds of the pile left. I had to start making up where else the sand should go. Luckily, Pete came to check up on us part way through the morning and said that I was doing exactly the right thing. I also had to make up answers to the many many questions the med students asked. Why do they need sand under the house? How does this improve the house? Why is there so much sand? Why do they use sand instead of dirt? It was ridiculous. Apparently, I’m pretty good at making things up. Somehow, this gigantic pile of sand was all dispersed by lunch time. I send the med students to lunch with instructions to go back to Pete’s worksite afterward, not back to this house. While I had been talking to the homeowner, she kept saying that I should come inside and see the house, and I took her up on it. It was the same layout as the house on Mandolin we worked on with Dan and Forrest when we first got here and it was really nice to be able to see what it looks like finished. The last time I saw the Mandolin house, the interior still just had wall frames. It’s had to visualize a house when you can still see through the walls. The homeowner was so happy to show me around and tell me about her plans for where to put furniture and everything. It was pretty nice. Then the family had to go run errands during lunch and I had to wait by myself on their front steps kid-who-got-left-at-school style for Christina to pick me up.

That Saturday was also Lindsey’s 21st birthday. She had been wanting to go to a nature preserve nearby, so Christina arranged for us to take the afternoon off from work to go (if you call it service learning, we still get work hours for it). It was really cool. We walked a trail through swampy areas on a tour guided by a ranger. We even got to see two smallish alligators. Really all we could see was the tops of their heads poking out of the water, but it was still exciting. And it was a beautiful day, so it was really a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

It is currently Sunday, March 3rd as I write this, so details now are getting really fuzzy. I think Sunday Feb. 28 was spent just being lazy. I think some of us went to the YMCA like we usually did on Sundays, but that was about it.

Last Monday, March 1st, was another ISP at the zoo. It was the same group as last time, with the addition of Tomm. This time we worked outside of the Tea Room, which the zoo employees said is a place where people like to have various conferences and things. There were several plants and bushes outside that had just died in the cold weather New Orleans had been having lately. We had to dig up roots for a while then help plant a few new trees. I got to use a leaf blower, which is oddly satisfying. We got so much dirt and leaves on the nice brick patio, but then it all just blew away so easily. Also, since we were so far from the employee area, we got to use the public restrooms which proved rather entertaining. Inside each stall was a poster thing that had facts about various animals’ bowel movements. Seriously. We learned all sorts of poop facts. We decided that each project round, we should endeavor to create new national policy and learn some kind of poop fact. (Background on that: Apparently the higher-ups didn’t like that we had any sort of participation of the elk hunting at Cal-Wood while in uniform. Christina said that something about it was going to be added to the next NCCC handbook. Also, one day at Cal-Wood, we were going along a trail with Angie for her to tell us what all needed to be done that day. There was a lot of animal scat on the trail, and she used the opportunity to teach us how to tell the difference between deer poop and elk poop. Thus, national policy and poop fact of Round 1. For this round, obviously Christina told Vaughn about the gunfire that took place near our worksite that one day, and some kind of policy is going to be created about that. And after last Monday, we also have all kinds of new poop facts. Ridiculous.) It ended up being a short day. The only thing we did after lunch was go into a little space in the employee area where banana trees had been growing. There were a lot of rotting branches or something, so the employees cut down the icky branches and we loaded them into a truck. They let us go after that because it looked like it was going to start pouring any minute and they didn’t want us to get started on another project.

I am now going to end this post and start a new one. I feel like no one (except my parents, of course) will want to keep reading when the posts are so insanely long. So…the end (for now).