Nostalgia Trip

Last February I was camping in the mountains somewhere in Death Valley, working on some odd project involving carrying weird heavy metal objects in backpacking in the blistering desert heat. My time as Wilderness Intern was one of those jobs that was, sweaty, exhausting, fairly rewarding, and unglamorous. It didn’t seem like that sweet of a gig at the time—just a way to break even and work outside in a beautiful place, and learn something along the way. However, I look back on those four months living at the lowest point in the country as the highest point of my year (awwwwww I know I couldn’t resist).

Also made some pretty great frands.

While my fellow roommates were working in air-conditioned offices or interacting with the public, I was hiking in the wilderness and eating ice cream and bumping over crazy 4WD roads and getting weird tan lines. There aren’t many jobs where you can get paid to do that (paid is a strong word, though). My job took me to every corner of Death Valley. I didn’t by any means get to know the park well, because that would take a lifetime. I did get to see a huge variety of landscapes, from crusty geometric salt flats to sagebrush scrubland dotted with burros and chuckwallas. I got to sleep under some of the darkest night skies in the country during the work week, and I frequently took my lunch breaks in the shade of canyons. 

Here's a photo from park service orientation. Pretty sweet field trip to the Badwater salt flats!

My govnt truck hangin' out in some scrubby desert land.

Side note: I miss my lunches there almost as much as the work. Picture a fat sandwich loaded with hummus, lettuce, pepperoni, cheese, mustard, and avocado after a long day hiking up an alluvial fan dodging cacti and creosote bushes. That sandwich was better than the views some days, I gotta say. But on this day, the view was better:

But I guess I’ll stop bragging about how freaking awesome my job was by saying something about how National Parks are totally America’s Best Idea and I’m excited to be working on public lands all summer doing conservation projects. I’ll look back on Death Valley as one of those Golden Times in my life. Carefree desert living, only concerned about having a great sandwich and not dying of dehydration.

Me and Charlie and the Americorps crew on a hitch in the Wilderness. Capital W.

Earth Stuart

Today Team Bingo Bango Bongo aka Team Turtle aka my teaching team had our first day of teaching! It went fairly well, considering about half of our whole group caught a barfing plague, including Jillian (see her blog for a first-hand account).  She got better enough to come into the school today though, and miraculously did not barf in class. A Christmas Miracle!

Our lesson was simple: to introduce ourselves and the idea of Earth Stewardship. All kids in our program have to take the Earth Steward Pledge, which goes as follows:

I Pledge-

To care about the world around me

To understand and explore the world around me

To share my learning and do service

To make the world around me a better place for plants, animals, and people

I carry this commitment with me always

I am an EARTH STEWARD

Only issue? Fourth graders definitely don’t know what stewardship is. In our last class of the day we had to talk about how Steward and Stuart are two different things, and being and Earth Stuart is not a thing.

The joke about Stuart did lead to this character, which is sure to show up from time to time because he is now our group's inside joke. We think it's hilarious, and I hope you do too.

Team Turtle

Meet my teaching team! They are Dan and Jillian. We are Team Turtle and we do everything together. Every other Wednesday we cook dinner, and every other Thursday we are On Call for anything that may come up for facilities management (shoveling snow, picking up a food order, or some other project). On Tuesday and Friday we are in the schools doing our lessons and after school programs. And at all other times we are planning said lessons. And at all other other times we are having a weird photo shoot somewhere around the lodge!

Here we are cooking dinner last night. We made Bomb Lentil Soup (no pics because it looked suuuuper ugly but tasted great), rice and quinoa with sweet potatoes, and a large kale salad, and it was a hit! Even though we finished making it a whole hour early and didn't follow any recipe whatsoever.  More cooking adventures to follow, I'm sure.

Times we clapped

We clap a lot here at Bear Brook. Which is the understatement of the year, because it’s not just a lot of clapping, it’s clapping for EVERYTHING. We just really like encouragement, or something. 

To keep myself entertained during our training sessions, I kept a list of all of the different times that we clapped. I didn’t write down repeat clapping offenses, so this is by no means an exhaustive list for times that we clapped. That would be pages long. Also how many times did I write ‘clap’ in this blogpost? Anyway, here goes:

When we did our count-off successfully

When we failed at our count-off

When someone brought out more plates

When we finished with some skit

When someone finished their lunch

Anytime anything is announced

When it’s dinnertime

When we get to gather on the couches

When I was late to the meeting

When the guys were jamming on guitars

When Darren played violin

When Drizzy came up with the soup analogy

When Davis said “I told you the clapping would stop”

When Aimee didn’t get clapped for and was sad

When Bryan made some announcement

When Maya’s grandma sent chocolate

When we successfully counted off by 6

When I found my notebook hiding in plain sight

When anyone cooked dinner

Every time someone got a nametag

When we arrived at the DMV to get fingerprinted

When Levi got called for a fingerprint

When Levi passed the garbage truck on the road

Because Bryan didn’t have to get fingerprinted

When Ray succinctly explained our range of experience

When the lady got back up on the stage at the high school

When Bob Champagne mentioned people hooking up because it’s so cold

When we planned to go on a tour and then play dodgeball at our Salvation Army orientation

Because we are getting a drum set

When I volunteered to make a box for the memory box

Bouta pull Valentines Day names

Yummy meals

Clapping for snapping

To thank Jessie for organizing Valentines

When Drake wasn’t going to say it but he said it anyways

The genres in the movie collection are now labeled
When Levi volunteered as notetaker

and now that I am in internet land, here is picture in case you were curious of where I've been spending my time clapping in the past few weeks: