Updates from the past month...

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.

My crewmate, Daisy, crossing the river

A group of us working in one of the clearings

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.

My supervisor Corey carrying an old camper shell

Definitely the cutest piece of trash I found: a tiny birdhouse!

Me, Corey and the project partner, Melissa, rolling a water heater filled with bullet holes up a hill

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.

Crew pictures inside the dam

Floodgates on the dam

This is what's holding all that water back! 

A hallway inside the dam

The spinning shafts that produce the electricity

Outside of the power plant

Maintenance workers ride these awesome trikes around the hallways with all their gear on them

Pretty picture of the dam from a hill where we were picking brassica

Group photo after the powerplant tour

Another shot inside the powerplant during our tour

They gave us pizza before our tour!

Beautiful Lake Mohave, which is the lake that the dam created. 

A great find from the trash pick up

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!

Red Rock Canyon, Death Valley, and Snowboarding

The last several weeks have been a whirlwind of activity as I went from one place to another for various reasons, so I will catch you all up on my travels recently. As I mentioned the last time I wrote, the week before Christmas break my crew spent 6 days at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area with 3 other crews doing trail maintenance. The trail we were working on was already a well established multi-use trail that is mostly used by mountain bikers, and we were adding drainages at intervals along the trail in places where water could pool up or cause erosion on steeper areas so that instead of staying on the trail the water would be diverted off. Here are a few pictures courtesy of my crew's work camera to give you an idea of what we were doing:

I'm in the foreground working on one drain and the 2 guys in the back are working on another one, which you can see to the right of them.

Me and Sondra working on a drain. We are standing in the drain and the trail is behind us.

It could get monotonous at times, especially one day when my partner and I got stuck on one drainage for almost a whole day, so at times motivation was in short supply but for the most part I was able to keep a positive attitude, and it helped knowing I would be going on break as soon as the week was over. The same night that I got back from the project I flew out of Vegas on an overnight flight to Florida to visit my mom, where I spent 5 days seeing some sights (including Epcot, my favorite Disney park!) and getting some much-awaited relaxation time with my mom and her dog, Jake. Then I flew to Massachusetts, where I stayed for about a week with my dad and got to see family and friends around the area, which was a lot of fun, as well as a good amount of relaxing on the couch and watching tv which I don't do much of normally. Then I flew back to Vegas on the last day of break on a flight that was supposed to get back to Vegas at 10pm, which I realized after I booked it was a really bad idea because it didn't give me any time to relax from traveling before going back to work the next day. My flight ended up being delayed by about an hour, so including getting my bags, getting back to my apartment, unpacking and repacking for work the next day I didn't get to sleep until after midnight (which felt like 3am eastern time to me) and then had to wake up at 4:30 to get ready for work. So needless to say I was very tired the next day, but luckily we had several hours of driving that day so I got to take a good nap, and I don't usually get bad jet lag so I didn't have to worry about my sleep schedule being thrown off.

So given all of the traveling and not having much sleep or time to ease into my regular schedule again, I thought the first week back would be really hard to get through because I would be tired and missing home and my family, and it was also an 8-day project instead of a 4-day. But it actually turned out to be a great week! It was in Death Valley National Park, which is one of the places I really wanted to visit while I'm out west, and we were using chainsaws to remove invasive tamarisk trees, so it was a type of project I enjoy a lot more than the trail work we were doing the week before break. I also ended up being very refreshed after break and ready to jump back into work, so it wasn't hard to motivate myself or readjust to working and camping like I thought it might be. The week was a lot of fun and went by pretty quickly, and on the last day we got to go to the visitor center and see Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the park which is also the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that spot, but I do have some other pictures from the week from the crew camera:

Crew picture in front of the visitor center...I ruined it by not being able to see in the sun haha.

Crew working picture: Justin is in the foreground and Corey and Afele are in the background. This is what the area that we spent most of the week in looked like. We had to cut down the tamarisk while fighting with the phragmites to be able to get close enough to the tamarisk. 

Me carrying a chainsaw. 

Me making a snow angel! Not really, it's actually salt not snow, but it looked surprisingly similar so I had to. 

When seen from a distance, it really did look like snow, which was especially strange because it was 70 degrees. It was disconcerting to come back from Massachusetts, where it got down to below zero while I was there, and go directly to a project where it was so warm. 

Now it is the last day of my 6 days off that I had after the 8 day project, and I did lots of fun stuff this week, including taking a ballet class for the first time in probably a year and a half. It was tons of fun, and I really want to try to take dance classes as often as I can, although with my schedule it is very hard to consistently do things outside of work that happen on a weekly basis. I also went back to Red Rock Canyon, this time to hike. We hiked Turtle Head Peak, one of the most difficult hikes at Red Rock, but it was so worth it because the view from the top was amazing! Pictures never do things like this justice, but here they are anyway:

View of Vegas from the top.

Panoramic!

I also went snowboarding yesterday, which I hadn't done for over 10 years! We went to Brian Head in Utah, about 3 hours from Vegas. It was a little scary when I first started because it was a feeling I wasn't used to anymore and I was pretty wobbly, but after  few runs it came back pretty well and I wouldn't say I was back to the same level I was at when I was younger, but I got pretty comfortable and didn't fall too often. It was lots of fun and I definitely want to try to go again this winter. I also want to try skiing too, which I also haven't done in a long time, even longer than snowboarding, but I remember being better at skiing than I was at boarding, so I want to try both and compare to see which one I like better. I was not used to how much snowboarding works your legs and the stress it puts on your ankles and knees to push yourself along and hold the board up on the chairlift, so I was pretty sore by the time we left, but in a good way, and I'm actually not sore today like I thought I would be. I took a few pictures at the top of the mountain with my new iPhone (I finally was able to replace my stolen iPhone since I was eligible for an upgrade in January!! So I will now be able to take pictures of all of my adventures again):

The view was amazing, with the snowcapped peaks and red moutains. 

The view to this direction wasn't quite as spectacular but I wanted to get the chairlift in the picture too. 

The other important news in my life at this point is that I got the crew leader position I applied for! I'm so excited! That means that in February I will start 3 months of crew leader training and then for the summer I will actually lead my own crew. I will still be an AmeriCorps member and it doesn't change my contract or how long I will be out here for, but it means that I will have more responsibility, learn a lot, get great leadership experience, and also get paid more for the summer months, which I'm not complaining about! I will of course keep you all updated on all of that once training begins. Until then, we have 3 more weeks left with out current crews, which is a little sad because I've really enjoyed being with my crew members these past 5 months. But we'll still get to see each other once crews get mixed around and I'm really excited for crew leader training and getting to know all of the other crew leaders better.

The Nevada Conservation Corps goes to...Arizona?

As I mentioned in my last post, this past week my crew went to Arizona for our project. I'm not sure if other crews have gone there in the past, but it seemed quite unusual to me because I didn't think we would ever leave the state for any of our projects. The reason we did was because we were working with Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which is located in both states, and it just so happened that the work they needed us for was over the border. I wasn't complaining though because it meant that we got to see another amazing place that I never expected to see. The scenery where we were working was breathtaking because we were right where Lake Mead NRA meets Grand Canyon National Park. The work we were doing was road decommissioning and installing barriers to keep people from off-roading in the areas we were closing off, and for the entire week anytime we were working we could just glance up and see the mouth of the Grand Canyon where the river flows out of the Canyon and meets up with Lake Mead. You can't ask for a better view than that while you're at work. It's things like that that are constantly reminding me how lucky I am to have a job that allows me to be outside so much seeing new places and having new experiences.

One part of the experience recently that has not made me feel quite as lucky is the cold weather. It did get colder much more gradually in Vegas than I am used to from New England but usually it is slightly colder than Vegas in the areas where we work, and this week was no exception. I don't know exactly how cold it got during the nights but it was definitely below freezing (which was quite apparent when the milk in my cereal began freezing to the side of the bowl while I was eating breakfast). Sleeping in weather that cold can be quite uncomfortable, so I've taken to sleeping with all of my layers on, including hat and scarf, and using my sleeping bag liner inside my sleeping bag to add more warmth (this past week Corey lent me his liner also so I had 2 liners in addition to my sleeping bag), then pulling my sleeping bag over my face to keep it warm. My feet also get very cold during the night so my strategy for that is to put hot water in my metal water bottles before bed and stick them in the bottom of my sleeping bag to warm up my feet. Unfortunately the heat usually dissipates completely by around 3:00 am, but for those first few hours my feet stay wonderfully warm. The morning also presents several challenges of it's own, other than frozen milk. Since we have to wake up before dawn it hasn't started to get warm yet so getting out of the sleeping bag can be a challenge, although sleeping in our Carhartt work pants instead of changing into more comfortable pajamas makes it slightly easier because you don't have to undress or put on freezing cold pants in the morning. The boots are a different story though. There is no good way to keep boots warm during the night, even if they are inside the tent, so putting my boots on in the morning can feel like putting my already-cold feet into ice boxes. Then breakfast involves trying to eat as quickly as possible so I don't have to expose my hands to the cold for too long, and then on the last morning of the week when we have to pack up our tents it can be a difficult choice between trying to finish taking the tent down without gloves on before your hands are completely frozen or fumbling with the buckles and clasps wearing gloves and possibly taking twice as long. On these cold mornings it can be a blessing when the worksite is far enough away to require driving because then we can put the heat on in the truck to warm up. As much as this might sound like a terrible situation to deal with, and sometimes it feels pretty terrible, it's worth it because it's all part of the experience. If there were no challenges the job would not be as rewarding, and by the end of this year of service I will feel very accomplished being able to say that I lived in a tent most of the year in all types of weather.

I realized that I haven't written many posts specifically about what our experience is like at camp when the work day is over, so hopefully this post gives you a little bit of an idea of what camp life has been like recently at least. I'll try to remember to add some more about camp life in future posts. This week we have a 6-day project (my crew will be working with 3 other crews at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area doing trail maintenance), and then we get 2 weeks off for Christmas! I'm really excited for the break because I've been missing the east coast a lot recently so I'm looking forward to going back.

Pictures and update from the past few weeks

As promised, here are some pictures from the Ash Meadows project and my Grand Canyon trip. It took me a little longer than I thought, but better late than never, right? Here they are.

Ash Meadows:

This is a really bad picture of Devil's Hole, where those endangered fish live that I mentioned in my last post. We could only see if from a fenced in walkway above the hole so that we weren't disturbing the fish. 

This is inside the facility we toured where they are doing research related to the Pupfish. That's me in the picture to the right. 

This is one of the amazingly beautiful springs that are all over the place at Ash Meadows. They are breath-taking!

Big Horn Sheep!

Grand Canyon (these are a little out of order, sorry):

It was snowing where we camped for the night. This is what it looked like in the morning when we woke up. 

The place we camped, on Forest Service land outside the park. 

The edge of the Grand Canyon. We couldn't see down into it because of the snow. 

During our hike. 

At the bottom. I was so excited!

Another shot from the beginning of the hike when it was snowing. 

Lunch break

Yay Grand Canyon! 

Another snowy shot

This is when we just got to the river. I really like this picture. 

Our campsite at the bottom of the canyon.

Now for an update of things since the last time I wrote. The project after our Grand Canyon trip was at Desert National Wildlife Refuge, which is only about an hour from Vegas. We were there for 4 days, which has started to feel really short compared to working for 8 days, and we worked on putting down concrete on a wheelchair accessible trail and removing Russian Olive, an invasive tree. We got to use chainsaws for the tree removal, and it was really cool because I felt like I had a breakthrough in my comfort with using a chainsaw, and I got to the point where I didn't feel the need to ask my supervisor, Corey, what I should do before making each cut, and he felt comfortable letting me work without watching me the whole time. 

That weekend my roommates and I went to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. We camped there one night and spent the next day doing some hiking, and even though it was a short trip we got a good taste of the beauty of the area and how cool the rock formations are there. Here are some pictures from that, although they are from Facebook so the quality isn't great, and as always pictures never quite do the place justice. 

The week after that we got even more chainsaw experience because we spent most of an 8-day project using them. We started out the week in Alamo, NV, using chainsaws to remove invasive tamarisk, or salt cedar, and then spraying the stumps with Garlan, a pesticide designed to kill the roots when it gets soaked in so the tree can't re-sprout. We did that for 4 days, but then on day 5 it started to rain and get too windy to safely use the chainsaws and chemicals, so we moved to the next project site in Carp, NV, where we spent 2 1/2 days building a barbed wire fence to prepare an area for invasive removal and native plantings. Then we went back to the first site for the last day and a half to finish that project when the weather improved. That week was usual for several reasons, first of all having to move our campsite twice because of the weather changing our plans, and we were also working on private land. Usually we work on public land but this time we were working with a woman from the Fish and Wildlife service who works with private land owners to do conservation projects on their land. So it was a different experience because we got to meet the landowners, one of which was quite a character. It was also the most difficult project we have had so far for many reason. It was the first time we had spent multiple days in a row using chainsaws for the entire day, and by the end of the week my entire arms were in pain and my hands kept cramping up, especially while I was sleeping. Then even when we weren't chainsawing for those few days, I thought my arms and hands would get a break, but having to hold onto the barbed wire to twist it around posts and things like that made my hands cramp up even more, so by the end of the week I could barely do anything and had to stop using the chainsaw for the last few hours because I couldn't even grip it without being in pain. It was also some of the worst weather we've had on any project. It rained for about 3 days, and the first day it rained it was really windy too and when we got back to our campsite my tent had blown about 10 feet from where I had set it up and the wind had driven rain into one side of it under the rain fly and the bottom half of my sleeping bag was wet. So that night I had to sleep curled up in a tiny ball in the top half of my sleeping bag to avoid getting my feet wet. Even though the conditions were not great, my crew did a great job of staying positive and keeping each other motivated. We had several nights where we ate dinner in the truck and just sat there for a while being completely ridiculous and silly, and I think that is what saved us from letting the bad weather and hard work get to us. By the end of the week though I was ready for those 6 days off!

For the 6 days off I went to the San Francisco area to visit the Hanley cousins for Thanksgiving! It was great to see all of them, and I was glad I was able to spend the holiday with family even though I'm so far away from home. On Thanksgiving morning I ran the Turkey Trot 5K with Terry and Will, which was really fun, and it was the first race I've run in so it was a great new experience! Over the weekend I also got to see a friend from college, Julia, who I hadn't seen since graduation, and it was great to catch up with her, even only for a few hours. It was a great trip, but then on Sunday I had to take a 13-hour bus ride to get back to Las Vegas, so I didn't feel very rested when I had to go back to work the next day. Luckily the work this past week wasn't hard, so it was a good recovery week after 2 weeks of not much downtime, but I wasn't as into it as usual because I was looking forward to being back in Vegas and just getting to relax and catch up on everything I hadn't gotten to do in the 2 weeks before. The project was at Ash Meadows again though, which is one of my favorite places we've worked, so it was still a fun week. We were removing Coyote Willow, which normally isn't something we'd remove because it's native, but Ash Meadows is removing it because it's been growing near water in several places and shading out important fish habitat. It's an interesting situation because they basically had to choose between two species that they normally would want to keep, but in this case the fish won because they're threatened or endangered, I can't remember which. We were using loppers and handsaws this time because we were mostly just taking out small sprouts that had come up since the previous treatment, so it wasn't physically hard, which was good because my arms were still recovering from the chainsawing we did, and we got to hang out with Abram and Will, two guys who work at the refuge who are really fun to work with, so over all it was  fun week but I was really happy to get back to Vegas and relax this weekend. I haven't done anything exciting this weekend but that's fine with me, I've just relaxed and gotten errands and things around the apartment done that I've been putting off. 

Then next week is another unusual one because we're going to Arizona. Interesting since we're the Nevada Conservation Corps, but we're working with the BLM on Lake Mead land so it's an area that crews have worked on before, it just happens to cross the state line. Then after that we have one more project where we're working at Red Rock Canyon, and then we have Christmas break. I'm really excited for that because I've been getting homesick recently and I can't wait to go home and see family for Christmas. I will try to write again at least once before Christmas, but I can't guarantee anything based on how infrequently I've been finding time to write. If I don't write before then, Happy Holidays everyone!