on the radio

I’m going to be honest-- I came into this job with few expectations or goals for my three months here. Sure I hoped to learn about the management of the 3.1 million acres of wilderness in the park, but I didn’t really give a thought to what else I’d be learning or doing. I’m kind of glad about that-- it’s all been a surprise, plus I really think you can’t go wrong by living in a national park for free for a season. But, turns out am am learning a ton! Who woulda thunk it?

Aside from driving a truck, the most tangible skill I’ve gained here in Death Valley has been how to use a radio. I always carry a handheld radio for work, and the radio always has to be on while driving government trucks. Just by driving for an hour, which is typical for a morning here, one can get a great sense of all important park happenings. There’s a little list in the truck of all of the call numbers of employees here, so if someone calls in you can check your little list and find out exactly who is saying what to who. It’s the ultimate place to go for your daily dose of gossip. And at 9 a.m., the Morning Report gets broadcasted! With all the important weather information and road closure info that you ever needed! 

For those who don’t know how a radio system works (like I didn’t), I’ll give some background. There is a central dispatch that you call in order to get help, give information, and get information. They are called San Bernardino-- that is their call number. My call number is 275. The 2 is for the Resources division of the park, the 7 is for Wilderness, and the 5 is just cuz. You also have to say which transmitter you’re closet to, and have a good enough sense of where you are to turn your radio to the appropriate station. So here’s a sample of what I would say if I was going off the pavement for a day (as I do most every day). 

Me: San Bernardino, 275, on Rogers.

SB: Go ahead.

Me: Myself and 5 Americorps are heading into the backcountry at Copper Canyon, should be out by 17:00.

SB: Showing 275 and 5 Americorps in service at Copper Canyon.

And that’s about it. Then all I have to do is call in when I get back on pavement and tell them that I made it out alive. Easy peasy. 

The only problem is that I hate hate hate the thought of everyone hearing my voice over the radio. Especially when something embarrassing happens, like if I have to call in to San Bernardino to ask for the Mile Marker of the canyon I’m trying to get to. True story. Everyone heard that I had no idea where I was going and didn’t have a detailed map and was driving aimlessly. But all public humiliation aside, the radio is probably the most important tool I use, and I’m so glad that I’ve gotten to get practice using it. Also when I'm not thinking about how everyone can hear me, I feel pretty dang cool using it.

Death Valley's cabins

Death Valley has dozens of abandoned cabins within its borders, in various states of disrepair. Our group typically sees two cabins per week, which is way more than the average visitor sees. We’ve spent the past couple of work camping trips cleaning up trash and piping from around a couple of these cabins. Many of the cabins have names, sometimes relating to the last person who inhabited the cabin, and sometimes for an unknown reason. We’ve been to Weston Cabin, Rita’s Cabin, Madeline’s Cabin, Rebecca’s Cabin, Claire Camp, Hunter Cabin, and many more that are related to mining that I didn’t catch the name of.

Aside from tetanus and dehydration, our biggest health worry on these work trips near the cabins is Hantavirus. It’s spread by inhaling dust from rodent droppings, which are abundant in cabins. Luckily, there has not yet been any death linked to the Hantavirus in Death Valley. Unluckily, there is no cure. All Hanta worry aside though, it’s been exciting the explore the cabins, with our mouths and noses covered. It’s fun to imagine what kinds of characters decades ago decided to build a ramshackle home in the rough desert and live in total seclusion. I tip my NPS Volunteer hat to them for trying to make it work for at least a little while. But still, did they have to leave so much trash?

Here we are with all the junk we backpacked up from the Weston Cabin. Lots of piping, propane bottles, magazines, and even a couple of chainsaws in fair condition!

Home #5

As I was driving back from Vegas on Sunday, I realized I was looking forward to going home to Death Valley. Right on cue too-- I had just passed the three-week mark of living here. I suppose the list of places that I can call home will only grow now-- it’s looking like I’ll lead a pretty seasonal life for the next couple years. The magical thing about living a seasonal lifestyle in a park is that everyone who I live with is doing the exact same thing. I don’t get the same quizzical reaction here when I discuss future plans, or lack thereof. No one here quite knows what is coming next in their career, but they know that they’ll end up in a beautiful place with a solid community of people who are pursuing similar national park dreams. That’s the mentality I was chasing when I left DC. It’s good to be here.

a week in the life

I've been here for about three weeks, and I can safely say that this is the most unpredictable job I have ever had. Things I have control over/ can predict:
-my lunch and snacks for the day (alllll of the beef jerky)
-how much water I bring/drink
-I'll probably have to drive the truck to the site
-I'll always have to grab the sat phone, my radio, and work gloves
-it's going to be sunny

Aaaaand that's about it. Every day here is completely different. I'll write out my past week to give you a sense of how I spend my days. A bit of background: My boss and I work with a group of 12 Americorps members pretty much every day. Sometimes the numbers fluctuate, sometimes I'm "in charge," and sometimes we're working with random other park people who need assistance for the day.

Monday: 7:30 am, I drive us on very windy roads with crazy drop-offs, down a dirt road with beautiful Joshua Trees, onto a 4WD road, and then switch with my boss and he takes over for the intense last bit of the 4WD road. One conservation I had with Charlie, my boss goes as follows:

Charlie: How did that driving go for you? 

Me: Pretty well, I think! Uhhhh how do you think it went for me? 

Charlie: I think it went well, but you drove like a 90-year-old grandma!

Despite my driving, we made it to our worksite for the day: a plane crash clean-up! The plane crashed in the 80's, and we were tasked with picking up the bits of aluminum that were scattered a huge distance along the hillside. We carted it out in backpacks and buckets and sorted out the trash, then drove back.

Here is a portion of the aluminum debris we collected.

Tuesday: Organized the aluminum and other metal recycling with Charlie, then loaded up 2 trucks and drove them to Pahrump, NV to weigh and recycle the metal. We went out for Japanese food and then drove back.

Wednesday: Drove out an hour to a hillside in the south part of the park to cull invasive Sahara mustard with a couple of invasive management employees. Transect the hillside all day long and pull out any Sahara mustard we find (our group won!), see lots of lizards!

Thursday: I'm kinda in charge, so I lead the group to work with pulaskis and McClouds to hack up some burm on the roadside that we're trying to turn into a trail. Then we get a tour of Scotty's Castle, a big tourist attraction in the park. We drive to Ubehebe Crater and pick up trash along the edges, then drive the hour back home.

Friday: Big day-- we're off at 7:30 to meet up with a large group of Sierra Club volunteers. Drive up a pretty rocky 4WD road to the mouth of a side canyon where at an undisclosed location a couple of miles up, there is a marijuana grow site for us to clean up. I radio in with a law enforcement ranger who is at the site for directions, as I am in the lead with three Sierra Club volunteers. I almost lost one of them, and I learn how to use my radio in the process. We pack out a lot of irrigation tape and hike it back out, and drive back. I get invited to the Sierra Club potluck afterwards, where they feed me and ask lots of questions about my life in front of the whole group (my favorite pastime).

Weekend: Backpacking trip with friends from the dorms! We hiked up a beautiful canyon that turned into a smooth slot canyon. Played frisbee, ate chocolate, and slept under the moon. And got back in time for the halftime show, of course.

notes from the road

Direct from my notebook! This is everything important that happened on our grand road trip, pretty much.

“toilet”

why are there all there cars parked on the side of the highway

shootout in the highway- texas

Truck Driver in Texas-- “wish we could’ve met under better circumstances”

when will I be a good enough driver so that I can drive w/o my palms sweating profusely

gas for 1.74!

why haven’t we paid any tolls?

Fartella

why are there so many tires

objects in the mirror are… rainbows

wish the TSwift CD was twice as long

New Places, Newly Resurected Blog

Hello blog-land! It has been a while, as per usual. But for real, I am going to try and blog often here. I'm gonna go ahead and say every week and fingers crossed I stick to it. Here's a preliminary post about just getting here, but stay tuned for one about the road trip, and one with more Death Valley deets.

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For basically our entire trip across the country, Amelia and I would get into each new city after dark. The upside of this was that we got to magically wake up in a totally new place each morning, and view the city and landscape after a few hours of sleep. 

I experienced the same pattern here in my new home of Death Valley. I drove in at twilight, after a stressful couple of hours shopping and gassing up and getting an emissions test done on my car in the “nearby” town of Ridgecrest. All I saw after crossing the border into Death Valley were signs about the elevation-- climbing up in the mountains and then dropping to Sea Level just before I got to my dorm.

All I really wanted to say in this post is that waking up here is incredible. Driving around and pinching myself and realizing over and over again that I live here is incredible. It’s the harshest of harsh deserts but I’m loving it. Even when I wake up completely parched every morning, I get to look outside and see this:

Bam.

Stick-with-the-plan Soup: The Backstory

On our big Western road trip, we invested a fair amount of funds in food. Mostly we just wanted better lunches than PB&J every day. The end result of our varied lunch endeavor was that we had to cut back a bit on other meals. This cut was most felt at breakfast, where we ate 'gruel' for weeks on end. We called it gruel because after a week of liking it, it got hard to stomach and we had to mask it with copious amounts of salt, nutritional yeast, and sriracha.

Gruel face.

So but anyway I am supposed to be writing about Stick-with-the-plan soup (which coincidentally also involves large amounts of salt, nutritional yeast, and sriracha). Before I talk ingredients, I have to talk Ed Abbey. Our trip was in the fall, which meant that the sun set earlier and earlier. So immediately after dinner, there was nothing more enticing than our sleeping bags... at 7 pm (8 pm if we really pushed it). Lying under the stars on the slickrock, we took turn reading out loud from Desert Solitaire and assorted stories by Terry Tempest Williams.

After about a week, we had grown to love Ed's cantankerous musings. We got a huge kick out of a line from his essay about The Moon-Eyed Horse in which Ed says to himself:
"But you're not clever, you're stupid, I reminded myself: stick to the plan."

This line especially hit home for us, because it was reflective of our lack of any planning whatsoever. We never found a campsite in advance, we never had a solid plan of future destinations, we never planned out our dinners. This lack of dinner planning combined with the random bits of food we had all brought from our previous trips and our aforementioned stinginess on breakfast and dinner led to some interesting meals. There were a few points on our trip (which for some wild coincidence happened directly before a trip to the grocery store) where we had to really scrounge for dinner in the depths of our food crate. What could we mix together to make an appetizing and filling meal?
The answer came to us in the form of Stick-with-the-plan soup. This soup/stew consisted of anything and everything that could potentially taste good together. Dehydrated peas, hominy, soy sauce, bouillon cubes, month-old cabbage, potatoes, rice, lentils, you name it! Bonus if cooked on a fire and some ingredients fall out into the fire because the pot is so full. We discovered that if you put enough salty ingredients in, it will taste delicious. Hominy not cooked, soup looks like sludge? No matter, it was still hot and filling. And it came about from having no plan.

Can you spot the soup?

Anyway, this is all to say that I named my Tumblr site 'Stick-with-the-plan Soup' because it is a smattering of trips and nature shots from my adventures over the last few years. Most pictures are from random wanderings, where there was no plan and yet it all worked out in the end. Just like soup. Ya know? 

So check it out!  I post pretty regularly with pictures of life at camp and of past adventures. As much as I want to update this blog with stories from camp all the time, it just ain't gonna happen. Until next time!