It's been about a month since I've posted so I'm just going to go over some of the highlights of what I've been up to. Since my last post I've had 3 projects. The first was invasive removal and re-vegetation on the Virgin River about an hour or so north of Las Vegas. This was an interesting project because we were camped on one side of the river but our work site was on the other, so we had to wade across the freezing water twice a day, once to get there and once to get back. The first time we went across was terrible for me because my feet have always been way more sensitive to cold water than other people's seem to be, so even though I was wearing a pair of old sneakers to help keep my feet slightly warmer and other people went barefoot, I was still in a lot of pain when I got to the other side and had to sit there for a few minutes taking deep breaths and waiting for the pain to subside. Then after we made the crossing we had a short walk to the edge of a seemingly endless forest of tamarisk (aka salt cedar, an invasive tree) that crews before us had cut paths and clearings into. The first day we used chainsaws to cut some more of the tamarisk, mostly cutting stumps that other crews had left behind, and then rest of the time our task was to cut willow saplings from other areas and stick them at least 3 feet into the ground in the clearings. To add another level of excitement to all of this, most of the area we were working was filled with mud and puddles of water, so the first day our feet were completely soaked from walking through the puddles. The other days weren't as bad because we started wearing rubber boots that one of the supervisors had thought to bring, and the boots also helped on the river crossing luckily, so none of the other days were as torturous as that first crossing. Here are a few pictures from that week.
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| My crewmate, Daisy, crossing the river |
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| A group of us working in one of the clearings |
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| One of the muddy pathways through the trees |
The week after that my crew had a local desert clean-up project, so we went home every night instead of camping and we spent 4 days picking up trash in the desert right outside the city. It was an interesting week and sometimes picking up trash could be fun, but at the same time it was discouraging seeing how much people take the desert for granted and just think they can use it was their own personal dumping ground. There were also several areas where people had come out to the desert to shoot things, so in those places everything was riddled with bullet holes or shattered into little pieces that were impossible to pick up because it would have taken way too much time to pick up every little piece. So the places looked better when we were done but I couldn't help thinking it would only be a matter of time before people trashed it again with their garbage and shooting targets. Here's a few pictures from that week as well.
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| My supervisor Corey carrying an old camper shell |
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| Definitely the cutest piece of trash I found: a tiny birdhouse! |
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| Me, Corey and the project partner, Melissa, rolling a water heater filled with bullet holes up a hill |
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| Afele's solution to the wind blowing our hard hats off: a trash bag bonnet. |
Our most recent project was an 8-day project working with the Bureau of Reclamation. We worked half of the time in Laughlin, NV, and half the time in Bullhead City, AZ, which was a little confusing because the two states are in different time zones, but we just tried to stick to Pacific time even when we were in AZ. The beginning of the week we worked at Davis Dam, which is a dam on the Colorado River downstream of the Hoover Dam. Our task was to remove vegetation from the dam because it is an earthen dam and having plants growing on it could weaken the structural integrity. While we were working there the project partner gave us a tour of the power plant section of the dam, which was really cool! Then the second half of the week we worked at a county park on the Nevada side of the river doing more vegetation removal, but this time it was mostly an invasive plant called brassica and we had to hand pull each plant that we saw. We did 3 full days of this, which basically is the same as weeding, so it got pretty dull at times, but overall it wasn't so bad. For one of the days we also did some trash pick up at a site where groups of people had been camping long-term, essentially making their homes there, for years and then the Bureau finally got around to telling them they weren't allowed to be there so they had to leave. For the most part they did a really good job of cleaning up after themselves but there was still a good amount of trash left over, so we did the best we could to make it look clean. There were some interesting finds, and it was a little weird at times, but also fun. This project also marked the last week of work with the crews we've worked with since the beginning of the year. It was a little sad knowing we were going to be working as closely anymore with the people we've spent the most time with up until this point, but it's also exciting because we'll get to spend time with different people and there are several new members joining the corps for the remaining 6 months. Again, here are some pictures from that week.
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| Crew pictures inside the dam |
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| Floodgates on the dam |
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| This is what's holding all that water back! |
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| A hallway inside the dam |
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| The spinning shafts that produce the electricity |
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| Outside of the power plant |
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| Maintenance workers ride these awesome trikes around the hallways with all their gear on them |
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| Pretty picture of the dam from a hill where we were picking brassica |
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| Group photo after the powerplant tour |
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| Another shot inside the powerplant during our tour |
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| They gave us pizza before our tour! |
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| Beautiful Lake Mohave, which is the lake that the dam created. |
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| A great find from the trash pick up |
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| Another great one. If you can't tell, that's a pair of shorts attached to a piece of wood. Very strange. |
Then in my spare time I've done some cool things too. A few weekends ago I went to see Zumanity, a Cirque du Soleil show. It was awesome, and really made me want to go see more Cirque shows. Then this past week, we had 7 days off because of our 6 days off after our 8 day project plus President's Day today, so I went on a road trip to California with 4 of my coworkers. I want to write about that but it's getting late and I have to go back to work tomorrow, so I will save that for my next post. This week begins the 3 months of leadership training for all of us who were selected as crew leads, so I'm really excited! It should be a great week of getting used to working with a new group of people, including 4 crew leaders who were hired from outside the program, and getting used to a new set up of our weekly schedule since we'll be focused more on learning new leadership skills than on physical skills and just working to get projects done like we're used to. So I will write about that in my next post too! But now it's time for me to get some sleep. Goodnight!
