Spring Breeeeeak in short

Spring break just ended, and I’ve had an awesome day back on the job—hauling enormous rocks with people power and rock bars on a trail in Bear Brook. We are building a staircase! But anyway, I’m about to go off to bed before 9 pm because I am so very tired from many nights of sleeping in different places. As I’ve leaned from my years working at camp, your brain does not adjust to a new place on the first night of sleeping there, so it’s often hard to get a full nights sleep. Luckily I was exhausted every day of break and had little problem passing out in my sleeping bag each night, but I didn’t quite have a restful break (I never slept in!) So, here is a list of all of the places I slept over my break of travels. Adventure!

Friday: my car parked in Portland

Saturday morning: the airplane to Atlanta

Saturday: my friend Aly’s tent at Wildrose Campground in Death Valley

Sunday: the ground in the desert at Alabama Hills

Monday: the front seats of our rental truck at the Buckeye Campground

Tuesday: the boy’s tent at Lake Lamarck in the John Muir Wilderness

Wednesday: my hammock at Grandview Campground in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

Thursday: my friend Nicole’s futon in Portland

Friday and Saturday: Yuka’s guest bedroom (TWO NIGHTS!!!)

Sunday: my car at the rest area in Kennebunk, Maine.

Now you have a good sense of what I did over break, right?

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.

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!

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.