This is Living

This might be a long one since it's been a while, sorry!

The last few weeks I find myself questioning less and less about why I am here and what I am doing.  Even driving down the streets of Vegas is starting to seem less dreadful than it was when I first got here.  I am still amazed that I get to explore Nevada and camp all while working and I can't believe that I actually get to do something so cool as my job.  These last two hitches have been the best so far, mostly because of the people and relationships developing.  My crew didn't mesh very well in the beginning because we are all such completely different people but everyone is starting to grow on me.  The cool thing about this program is that almost everyone is from a different state so there are so many interesting people but we all have this same thing in common, which is awesome. (I definitely still have times when everyone here annoys me and I miss my friends at home though.)
One guy in my crew is 40 years old and ended up stuck working a finance job that he hated because it was what he was supposed to do and he could never find a way out.  He finally decided to leave and do something with his life that meant more than making money.  Almost every day he talks about how happy he is to be here and finally hang out with people who share his interests and ideas of life, its so great.  Before going to sleep I will often here him shout "This is living!" and I can't help but smile. 

My last hitch we went to Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge which is a wetland, and the first hitch I've had outside of the Spring Mountains.  On one edge of the refuge is private land with rogue cattle so apparently the ranchers don't care much about where the cows go and they have been pushing the fence down and getting into the refuge.  This is bigger problem than it seems because they eat a lot of plants (which

I can't remember the name of) that this endangered southwestern willow flycatcher needs to survive.  The wetland is very important for migratory birds like the flycatcher since there is such little water in Southern Nevada.  That might sound boring but it is really cool to know that what you are doing is actually serving a purpose and that keeping these cattle in has such a long chain of effects. 

So in order to stop the problem of them escaping the refuge needs to put in a new stronger fence, and since the fence was basically straight through a muddy marsh with cat tails and thick grasses taller than me we had to cut a 6 foot path on both sides of it.  I didn't think this would be hard but try wearing giant waders with a heavy brush cutter strapped to your body and walking through what looks like grass but is actually mud with holes pulling you in up to your thighs.  It was super difficult yet the most fun I've had at work so far.  The best part was that our project partner actually worked with us everyday and taught us a lot about the area.  Most of the time they just show you where to go and that's it, but she ate dinner with us and the forest rangers even came and thanked us, which is a great feeling.  Especially since they all had bets that we wouldn't be able to complete it. 

Feeling like I was on an expedition and exploring new areas that even the rangers didn't know what to do about is really exciting and makes me love this job.  I can't get over h
ow amazingly grueling but rewarding this was, even being covered in battle wounds from sweating waders.  I also have to mention that one of the male cows (steer?) recently died so there were bones all over the ranchers side of the fence, which was really sweet!  There was a full skull and even a large piece of perfectly intact rawhide.  Okay I might be too excited about last week so I will stop talking about it!

   

Hitch Numero Uno!

This week I had my first real hitch of the year.  It was 4 days long and we went to the Spring Mountains to work on a trail called in the Middle Kyle Canyon.  We had to get a key to open the gate since we would be camping in an area that's not open to the public, so it was really cool knowing that we were the only people around.  Here's where I slept every night... pretty freakin sweet.

We had to hike a mile or so from camp to get to the trail we were working on everyday which was a nice morning wake up.  The trail was already created by a machine but there are huge berms on the side (piles of rocks and things) so the water gets trapped.  So we basically had to get rid of the berm, build a better back slope and tear out all of the trees and stubs in the path.  It was reallyyy hard work.  By the end of the hitch everyone was covered in dirt, sweat, scratches and blisters.  But it was a lot of fun!  Every time it was getting harder I just looked around and remembered where I was.  There were 10 of us working everyday (2 crews) and by the end of the trip guess how many miles of trail we finished?  0.3.  I was surprised that it was so little but apparently for the amount of time we spent working that is pretty good.  Of course it rained every day at about 2:30 exactly but Wednesday was the only day we had to take a 2 hour lightning break.  I'm starting to get a little suspicious about the so called dryness and lack of rain here.  The mountain weather is pretty dang cool though and I have about a trillion cloud pictures from the last few days. 

Other than working we'd get back to camp at 6ish, cook a delicious dinner, hang out for a little and then go to bed by 8:30.  It's funny how okay everyone is with just passing out after dinner and somehow 9 hours of sleep a night still isn't enough... I didn't think I'd start going to bed that early until at least retirement.  We got back Friday evening but normally we work Monday through Thursday and then have Thursday night through Sunday off, I CAN'T WAIT.

This weekend we only had 2 days off (a regular weekend just doesn't cut it for me) because of memorial day last week.  Since one of my roommates is on an 8 day hitch this week it was just my other roommate Jake and I home so we decided to go hiking on this Gold Strike Trail which is filled with hot springs and leads to the Colorado river right next to the Hoover dam.  This was one of the coolest places I've ever been, I was literally in awe the entire time.  A lot of the trail was so hard we had to climb down boulders and there was a rope tied on so you had to levy yourself up/down.  I'm covered in bruises.  There was this rocky peninsula that you had to walk through the water to get to so we decided to camp out there. There were rocks to jump from and giant fish and hot water splirting out of these colorful cliffs, it was so cool.  Unfortunately I was dumb enough to try and cowboy camp since setting my tent up sounded like a lot of work, and it ended raining the whole night.  Probably the worst sleep I've ever had especially since I kept waking up hearing animals scurrying around me and thinking of an escape plan for when a mountain lion approached.  Luckily I didn't have to put that plan into action because it was a bad one. I don't know what picture to add since none of them really show how beautiful it was but that's the rocky thing I camped on!  Oh and I just got a phone call from a guy saying that he found this message in a bottle that I threw into the river yesterday.  I'm so excited, I didn't think anyone would find it or call me to return it as I requested... maybe it's a sign that he's my soulmate?

Orientation Mon

This blogging thing is a lot of work, but I'm determined to keep up with it!  Since I've gotten here it's been pretty crazy and I felt like I was becoming bipolar or something being super happy one minute and then sad and lonely the next.  I didn't expect it to feel so weird but I guess moving to a location that you have only ever seen in movies will do that to ya.  Luckily my roommates are really cool and once we started doing things together it wasn't so bad.  We spend most of our time at home sprawled out on the floor since we have no furniture and murdering mini cockroaches so I think that's  progress.

Last Monday I finally started work but it was mostly involved hanging around, eating a lot, and learning about the wildlife in the desert.  We found out our crews at our field station, got an overview of the week and then went up to the mountains where we camped until Friday.  The first few days we listened to a lot of speakers from organizations that we will be partnering with this year discuss the types of projects we'll be doing with them.  We'll be doing a lot of trail building so we spent some time learning the physics behind how we build them and why.

Thursday the plan was to have a full work day of building trails but we ended up only working for probably an hour or 2.  We drove in trucks a little ways down the mountain to where we'd be working and then we had to hike in a mile or so with all of our tools.  We had barely started working when it started to lightning at which point we were told to drop our tools and disperse, sit down, and wait 45 minutes after the last lightning until we could resume work.  There's even a lightning pose for when you actually feel your hairs rise where you crouch in a squatting position with your heals touching and your hands on your knees.  Eventually it started pouring and after a while we heard a weird noise and then saw the head of a flash flood! It was pretty cool.  Of course it was going through a ditch at the bottom of the hill the went along part of the path we had to walk on to get back to the trucks.  The crew leaders decided that we couldn't work in these conditions anyways so once the lightning stopped we hopped through the flash flood and then walked straight back to the road instead of following the path.  When we were almost all the way back to the trucks there was a lightning strike super close so everyone dropped there tools and had to run the rest of the way back.  I live for this kind of stuff so it was exciting!

Other than that we spent a day learning wilderness wildlife training (which is pretty scary to thing about all the horrible things that can happen out there).  And we spent a lot of time cooking/eating.  I was expecting something along the lines of loaves of bread and occasionally some undercooked rice for dinner each night but it turns out we'll be eating better than I normally would at home.  We made pita pizza, pesto pasta, and falafal while camping whattt.  So that basically sums up my orientation week!  It was really fun but I can tell it will definitely be tough.


The cool thing about Las Vegas as that as much as being in the city kind of sucks you can do just about anything by only driving a matter of hours.  Yesterday my roommates and I went to see the Hoover Dam and then we drove through this abandoned town and went cliff jumping in Lake Mead!  Whenever I'm wondering what I'm doing here I look around and remember I'm in this amazing location surrounded by mountains and crazy landscapes and getting paid to go camping.  Woohoo!