Happy New Year!

Dear Internet,

Happily, the work here in Joplin has increased a LOT! We have a couple of big volunteer groups coming in next week, as well as a surprise group for the past two days, so Ali and I have been scrambling to line up work for them to do, coordinate with homeowners, and update our databases. But it's a good kind of scrambling :)

We've also been dealing with a few problems over the last few days - oir only working truck,  Pickle, breaking down twice; our workers messing up homeowners' property, getting in crashes, messing around on the service site, being unreachable by phone - but when I say "we," really I mean Ali and Cody. I've been able to NOT have to deal with it, which makes me very happy!

So I've been really enjoying full days and meaningful work, the feeling of actually getting important things done for Joplin. The three of us are currently flying along the highway in Cody's Jeep, heading back to STL for New Year's with our ERT buddies who will be back in town. I get to pick up Will at the airport tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to, and I get to see a lot of other neat people that I've been missing. This is going to be a great weekend and a great new year!

I'll just leave you with this photo - last night Ali and I went to visit our ERT friend Marty and his family in Springfield. They fed us a great dinner, including sending us home with some red velvet cake, which we ate about an hour ago while driving down the highway.

xoxo,
Liz

G- G- G- Glamorous

Dear Internet,

I hope your Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/etc was wonderful. I was able to fly home to see my family in Virginia, which was great! I was just there from Friday night until early Monday morning, but it was great to be at home, kicking it in my pajamas with my dad on Christmas morning. We ate a lot of food, we opened a lot of presents, we baked a cheesecake ("adventure pie;" we'll pretend it really looked like this), we played Bananagrams. It was a great weekend.

Adventure pie.

Aside from teasing you with this delicious Salted Caramel & Vanilla Baked Cheesecake, I wanted to post a few other pictures of my home and office here in Joplin, since I haven't really done that yet and Mom asked me lots of questions about "living arrangements." So, Ma, here you go: the glamorous world of disaster relief.

Our humble abode. Technically it belongs to the city and I
think referees at the nearby baseball field used to use it to change
before/after games, so it was unoccupied most of the time. We're
pretty sure some unsavory types used to hang out on
the front porch there...

The office, from across the street.

Volunteer Reception Center

AmeriCorps Recovery Center (ARC) = the official name for
the office.

One of our regular volunteers, Chuck,
carved this for us.

Volunteers signed the banner

Our job boards - for debris removal, tree work, or special projects.
There's lots to do!

My desk!

AmeriCorps St Louis <3 s Joplin

xoxo,
Liz

Holidays are Surreal in Joplin

Many of you probably know about the EF5 tornado (EF5 being the highest ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, meaning that winds were in excess of 200 mph) that hit Joplin, MO on 22 May 2011. It was one of the deadliest tornadoes on record, causing around 160 deaths and destroying a 1-mile by 6-mile strip of the city. I’m proud that ERT responded within 8 hours of the tornado, arriving in Joplin around 2:00 the morning after the tornado, and is still there.

I’ve been in Joplin for about a week now (with AmeriCorps friends Ali and Cody), but what with the holiday season upon us and the cold weather, there is not very much going on here. Going into the affected areas or looking at photos of how it used to be is simply unreal - this doesn’t feel like a disaster site, it feels like an office.

I guess I should back up a bit and explain what I’ve been doing. In general terms, ERT manages the volunteers in Joplin. The city set us up with an office and housing for our members, and we receive volunteers who come in to help out on a daily basis.

Of course, this involves a good bit more - coordinating with homeowners on what needs to be done, acting as a liaison between homeowners and the city, keeping track of all volunteer hours, tracking down heavy equipment to perform demolitions, and these days, taking applications for and planting new trees at homes.

Getting ready to plant our largest type of tree, the silver maple.
It was so big it didn't fit in Pickle's (the truck's) bed, but
instead made Pickle a unicorn. Clare, Cody, and Ali ready to go!

Since the tornado and up until about November, we would regularly have 300-400 volunteers on a weekday and up to 1,000 on weekends.

Not any longer.

Since I’ve been here, we’re lucky to get one or two volunteers a day. According to our databases, this is just a holiday slump and the volunteerism should pick up again in early- to mid-January.

My job specifically is to handle homeowners’ applications for new trees, and with cold weather fast approaching, there are very few new applications coming in; many people just want to wait for the spring planting season.

What we do at the office when there's nothing else to do,
apparently. Chuck, his son Brandon, Rolla Wayne, and
Chainsaw Wayne are regular volunteers with us, and Keith
(in the driver's seat) works here.

So with the exception of Cody, who as our only AmeriCorps-certified driver, still has enough to do in the field, Ali and I have mostly been hanging around the office every day with not a lot to do. There is some paperwork to be done, but to be honest, it’s dreadfully boring and I take frequent breaks... possibly too frequent.

But then every once in a while we go out to the field - to help Cody plant trees, or to help an evicted family move out of their FEMA-issued trailer, or to visit Cunningham Park, where the tornado hit and where a memorial was built - and seeing the destruction still there is simply surreal. It’s worlds away from my mundane office life and difficult to reconcile the two, but it does remind me of why I’m here. This need is incredible.

A hospital building that was shifted 4 inches off its
foundation during the tornado

At the memorial in Cunningham Park; a list of those killed
in the tornado

Cody and Ali looking at the displays made of debris and a
dedication to the volunteers rebuilding Joplin

"A Tribute to the Volunteers" at Cunningham Park

Some of the destruction near Cunningham Park. Many
structures were not even standing anymore

A specific tribute to AmeriCorps - note the "A" on the helmet.

A reproduction of the Rebuilding Joplin wristbands, dedicated
to "The Miracle of the Human Spirit." I got one at the office
and plan on wearing it for some time.

So, mostly for Joplin’s sake but also for the sake of my sanity, I really hope we do start getting a little busier soon after the holidays. Besides Christmas weekend (I fly home to Virginia this Friday-Monday!) and New Years’ weekend (Cody and Ali and I will drive back to St Louis to celebrate with the rest of ERT), I’m probably going to be in Joplin until mid-January. It’s enough time, I hope, to start seeing a little more action out here!

Christmas spirit (and Ali scootering around) at our housing

Community

Dear Internet,

One of the great things about ERT so far has been the community we’ve built. Sure, it’s kind of weird and involves a lot of Cheez-Its and references to the movie “Stepbrothers,” but it’s a place where we all, for the most part, fit. I realized this yesterday. But let me start my tale where I last left off.

Over the last few weeks I’ve done two back-to-back ten-day spikes, each followed by four days off. The first ten-day was at Peck Ranch doing chainsaw training (see previous post), followed by some excitement. We were supposed to go meet a crew working on a part of the Ozark Trail, but as we pulled out of the parking lot at Peck Ranch got a call from the director of ERT, Bruce, saying that conditions were very good that day for a wildfire and that we needed to be on fire standby in cell service range. We all put on our Nomex (a set of fire resistant clothes we were issued to fight fire) and fire boots and spent the day, uncertain, spraying invasive species at the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) office in Eminence, MO.

It turned out that no one set a fire (arson is a big problem ‘round these parts) and we proceeded to drive to the Ozark Trail to meet the other group. It was kind of a relief and kind of a disappointment... we were so ready to go, you know? We probably won’t see fire till the season for it starts in late winter/early spring.

We hiked in to the campsite, where this other group had been living for about a week while they built the trail. We arrived to find them dancing around a huge campfire, waving tools and chanting - just to freak us out, but it was pretty funny. We reunited with our friends, had some dinner, and settled into tents for the night.

The next morning we woke up and hiked to the next part of the trail that needed work done and merrily worked for about two hours, until the gunshots seemed too close.

For. Real.

Hunting season was at that point in its last few days and the land we were working on was not protected. At one point we heard six shots in quick succession -  a semi-automatic not really aimed at much in particular, it seemed - just over the next ridge from us. Our team leaders opted to get us out of there, thankfully. We all hiked back to the campsite, packed up, and drove back to Johnson’s Shut Ins.

At the Shut Ins, the excitement was pretty much over as we spent a few days maintaining another part of the Ozark Trail before heading back to St Louis. It had been a long ten days and everyone was relieved and happy to be back for Thanksgiving!

My Thanksgiving weekend was pretty relaxed and fun. Besides talking to my family on the phone and cooking/eating a lot of food (at a friend’s Thanksgiving feast for those orphans who didn’t go home to their actual families for the holiday), I got to hang out in St Louis a lot, which was pretty nice. I spent a lot of time with my boyfriend Will (a second-year ERT member), going ice skating in the park (it was far too warm and there was a layer of water on top of the ice after a few hours), seeing the Muppets movie, and visiting the zoo. If I couldn’t be at home in Virginia, it was the next best thing :)

My next ten-day spike was at the same campsite and working at the same part of the Ozark Trail we had left a week ago. Hunting season was over but snow had arrived! I could not believe that it snowed on us the first night we were there, but the next week or so was not too bad - frosty in the morning but clear and crisp during the day while we worked.

Snow at our campsite

Snowing one morning - we had to cross these relatively
unstable "stepping stumps" to cross the smaller
part of the river...

...so we could use this bridge to cross the bigger part of the
river. We were pretty sure for the entire spike that
someone would fall in but no one ever did...
knock on wood for the next crew to go there!

The last few days were rainy and we even saw some sleet/hail, but we were able to take a half day of work and go to Eminence to warm up in a certain gas station with delicious fried chicken when the weather got really bad.

The river area behind our camp, with the bridge in the back.
Camp is on the right side of the photo and the trail on the left.

Amelia, me, Jason, Saul, and Sam

The work of hacking a trail out of the side of a mountain is not terribly exciting - in fact it’s pretty repetitive and backbreaking - but it’s satisfying and gives a real sense of accomplishment. You can literally, at the end of the day, walk the trail you worked on all day. Plus, when the view out of your “office” is a forest and a mountain, when you’re breathing all that fresh air, when your lunch break is spent exploring a cave you found in the woods, when you’re looking forward to roasting your dinner over a campfire on a leaf rake - nothing is too bad. Life is simple, life is good. I might not have said exactly that when I couldn’t feel my toes every morning, but looking back, it was a great week.

At work one morning on the trail

Getting back to St Louis was a relief for the simple joy of taking a bathshower - you guessed it, a combination bathing experience complete with candles. That second ten-day spike was, I’m sure, the longest I have ever gone in my life without showering and I had developed a really attractive “hairmet” - hair greasy to the point of staying in place... much like a hard hat.

Since my bathshower I’ve spent the last four days relaxing and hanging out with friends and Will, pretty much just enjoying some (well-earned) time off. Yesterday Will and I decided to go to Memphis, TN, just for something interesting to do. We met up with my friend Amy from college and did a lot of walking. We visited the gates of Graceland

Will & I at Graceland

and a really cool museum about the history of fire in Memphis, committed a minor crime by jumping the fence to visit a place called Mud Island (with a scale replica of the Mississippi River and the cities that line it!),

Amy and Will walking the deserted pedestrian bridge
to Mud Island

watched the ducks march out of the fountain in the lobby of the famous Peabody Hotel, ate gumbo, and listened to some live music. What a day :)

Memphis skyline from Mud Island

I guess it was in talking to Amy about life in ERT yesterday that I realized how much of a community we’ve built up. ERT has its own stories (how about the time Dee went to sleep in Sam’s bed?) and sayings (“Firewall!”) and jargon (Pumper, Nomex). We see each other all the time and know way too many details about each others’ lives. I guess it could be invasive or cloistered but it’s oddly comforting. It’s like having a gang. A gang that knows how to operate chainsaws.

At the same time, I kind of like that my apartment is about two miles from Soulard, the neighborhood where almost everyone else in ERT lives. I hang out in Soulard, I can step back and have a life outside of ERT at my apartment in Shaw. I rarely do, but at least the possibility is there :)

Long story short - the people in ERT are great, and are quickly becoming family. I can already tell that saying goodbye next August will be weird and prickly and difficult.

xoxo,

Liz

P.S. Sorry for the lack of photos in this post. I had to get my camera cleaned, but I will try to snag some from other people's Facebook albums and put them up. Toodles!


P.P.S. I took some photos from Ivy's Facebook - thanks Ivy!

Girl Got Skillz

Dear Internet,

I think I start every blog entry with an apology for the amount of time that has passed since I last wrote. So this time, I’m not sorry.

Just kidding :)

All I can offer by way of an excuse is that I’ve been very busy. Since returning from Montana, ERT has fallen into a pattern: by and large we are gone during the week on one project or another, and during the weekends, we’re at home sleeping, catching up on errands, or hanging out together. Somehow we pack in all our “normal people” activities - going grocery shopping, stopping by the library, picking up a new pair of work pants, etc - into two days when what we really want is to sleep and relax. It’s been hectic, but I love being busy, so it’s been great too.

A few weeks ago I was able to get time off to travel to Rochester, NY to see my cousin Kurt marry his long-time fiancée. Congratulations, guys, it was great to be there!

Kurt & Tia's first dance <3 

Angie at the Shut-Ins

In between weekends, we’ve been doing some pretty cool projects. Two weeks ago I went to a State Park called the Johnson Shut-Ins to maintain a fireline for a prescribed burn. the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) regularly burns land to get rid of old, dead material and fertilize new growth; the line keeps the fire in check. We used backpack leaf blowers and bush cutters to cut out the line, which was actually pretty fun! I just wish I could be there when it burns :)

Ali, Ivy, Angie, and Warren celebrating fall at the Shut-Ins

After we finished the fireline, we worked on a little light trail maintenance, and our team leader, Dustin, let each of us first years cut down a tree - my first one! I went last, which of course just built up the nerves while I watched everyone else fell trees. I talked through the tree felling guidelines (counted on fingers: size up your tree, size up the surroundings, find your escape routes, decide on a technique, and execute!) with Dustin, took a deep breath of the acrid and surprisingly sour smell of fresh-cut cedars, and... broke the chain on my chainsaw.

Womp, womp.

Dustin said that the chain broke because I rocked the bar while the chain was running inside the tree. I didn’t think I did that... but I guess so? It was disheartening, but we went back the next day and I got to cut it down for real. Success!

My first tree

The next week, I was based out of St Louis at the Busch Conservation Area, cutting invasive honeysuckle bushes. We used bush cutters, which was pretty fun - I swear, half of the fun of ERT is the toys we get to play with - but it became insanely boring. The thing about power tools is that they are loud, and that generally you work by yourself when you use them. Doing a relatively repetitive and menial task all day gets pretty boring with no one to talk to. Although it wasn’t a bad project - and it was really cool to see the wide swath of cleared land once we’d cut the honeysuckle bushes - I was glad when it was done.

This week, we’re at a park called Peck Ranch, working on more fireline. I was able to cut down two more trees... and more invasive honeysuckle. Only here at Peck Ranch, we get to spray it too so it won’t come back. Luckily, most of what we’ve been doing has been training.

Training on a variety of topics has been a theme since we returned from Montana. Immediately after we got back, we started training on wildland fire ecology; later, we learned about wildfire behavior, safety, and firefighting techniques. This includes things I wouldn’t have thought of, like weather, topography, and fuel types and their effect on fire. The training is pretty interesting, but after being used to working outside all the time, staying awake in a darkened classroom or during an online course is not easy!

We’ve also been trained on how to run a volunteer reception center (VRC) like the one AmeriCorps runs in Joplin, MO to cope with the tornado this past May. When the tornado first happened, our role was mainly clean up, but now we generally direct other volunteers who show up to help. We have a group of four in Joplin now, and I’m looking forward to being there for Christmas.

Gettin' down with a chainsaw

For the past two days at Peck Ranch, we have also been doing a lot of chainsaw training. Although I’ve heard most of the safety and mechanical information before, repetition is always good and now I’ll be certified to cut on MDC (Missouri Department of Conservation) land. No, Mom, this isn’t my official chainsaw cert - that is done at the federal, not state level (safety regulations are different) - we’ll be doing the official certification sometime in the near future. But I did get to cut down another tree today, using a more complicated technique called a bore cut. I’m getting a lot more comfortable felling trees, which I guess is the point of training!

My bore-cut tree

After a tree fell in the forest... the sound is incredible!

Finally, some of the trainings that I look forward to the most are the random things that come up as we work. For example, before we went to Johnson Shut-Ins we realized that the brakes were out on the one truck left for us to take, Cactus. We took the wheels off to take a look, figuring that if it was too complicated or if the damage was too severe we’d take it to the shop for a professional job. But by the end of the afternoon, we had replaced four brake pads and two rotors, all of us learning how to do it on the fly. I’ve learned more about engines when we do our pre-trip vehicle checks, and got a refresher on how to jump a car when the truck wouldn’t start in a parking lot.

Warren is in the back working on Cactus; in the front,
the old brake pad (left) and a new one (right). Eek.

I love accumulating all these random, totally useful skills. It’s one of the things I’m looking forward to for this year: learning how to take apart and maintenance small engines and car engines, run a chainsaw, control a wildfire. It’s crazy how much I’ve learned in just two months, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year. Just don’t expect to hear from me too often, what with all this running around and learning stuff!

xoxo,

Liz

Fleecer? I don't even know 'er!

Dear Internet,

You may have noticed my absence from this blog over the last three weeks - maybe not, but we don’t have to talk about that. I’ve been having a fantastic time in Montana and I don’t even know where to start telling you about it.

I guess the beginning will be okay.

The view over Butte, MT - our base camp was about 30 minutes away

We took two days to drive to Fleecer Work Station - a former Forest Service Office near Butte, MT - through Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming. When we arrived, the second years (there are several members from last year who signed up to serve again this year) who were already there with chili and a campfire (and a running joke: “the funny thing about chili... is that it’s hot”). We slept in a giant tent called a yurt, or under the stars.

Sunset and a drive into the mountains - aaaahh.

At our base camp, Fleecer Work Station

The next morning, a bunch of us went for a hike to some rocks with a great view of the area, and came back to a pancake breakfast and some talks about what to expect over the next few weeks.

Hiking

Summit!

How do you manage living with 29 other people in one small cabin, a yurt, and assorted other tents - with only one shower and two sinks? The solution is that you don’t bathe much, for starters - once every four days was about normal. You also sleep outside and grovel at the feet of whoever decides to cook for you.

Fixing the yurt

Lucas and the yurt: thumbs up!

One of the housing options at Fleecer: Cowboy Camp

We were also told to expect to “spike out” in smaller groups on projects several times, and a few days later, my group got their assignment. With Quinn, a former member who now manages the rest of us (she’s kind of my immediate boss; Bruce, featured later, is one step above Quinn), three other first years and I were going to the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) at the Idaho border.

The area where we were stationed - I can't resist all these landscapes!

Ready to serve! Quinn, me, Andrew, Cody, Angie, and Jason.

Personally, I think we got the best spike. It was a long drive to our service site, and then  a long walk down a large mountain with heavy packs, but Deadman Lake, where we camped, was just beautiful. Working with the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC; they work with the Forest Service and do all the conservation work that AmeriCorps does, but not the emergency response stuff), was an interesting experience, and it was fun to have some new people mixed in with our group.

Can you even see this hill?! We had to walk down it with giant packs on.

But Deadman Lake was worth it.

The Big Dipper, viewed from our campsite

Our project was to build about 5,000 feet of the CDT up to a saddle, or the space between two mountains. The area is a proposed wildlife conservation area, so those in charge of the project didn’t want to bring in heavy machinery to do the job. There was an ATV track already there, but it went straight up the side of the mountain, so we made a more hiker-friendly trail with switchbacks and a lower grade.

View from the "office" window - the CDT

Hard at work!

Building trail is tough work! Over the two days that it took us to build the trail, we learned to use hand tools to literally scoop a walking path out of the side of a mountain. We were at a pretty significant elevation - I don’t remember exactly but it was somewhere around 8,000 or 9,000 feet - and although the first day of work was beautiful, the second rained all day. We saw some incredible rainbows, but it is tough to grip a tool when you can’t feel your hands! We were achey and sore at the end of each day, but it was really rewarding to reach our goal after only two days of work!

Leaving the area proved to be a bit trickier than arriving - because of the rain, the roads we’d taken to Deadman Lake were muddy and traction-less. Plus, we had to hike back up the hill we’d come down three days before with packs that did not seem any lighter, since we packed way too much food and still had a lot of it with us. That was a blast and a half, let me tell you - I believed for most of the trek up the muddy, almost straight-up-and-down path that I would simply topple over backward and land back in the lake.

But we made it back to our truck, trusty Buck Hunter (all the trucks in AmeriCorps have names - I’m thinking of being another one, Blue Hulk, for Halloween). Then we still had to drive, slowly but surely, back to the paved road. For the most part it was fine - some minor washboarding, what can you do - and then we came to a part of the road that had been completely flooded out for about twenty feet. It was deep, too - probably three feet in some parts. I was starting to think that this was going to be a real issue - we’d have to camp here until it dried out, which could take who knows how long - when Quinn jumped in the front of Buck Hunter and barreled through a narrow path between some aspens to the side of the road, missing the low-hanging branches by inches and finishing with a spectacular dodge of a tree at the end of the path. Thus we named her Quinn Diesel.

We spent that night at Elk Horn, a recreation area where another AmeriCorps group was building a fence. After our few days sleeping in tents in the rain, their cabin with its fireplaces and foam mattresses was heaven. They scoffed when we told them that they were living the high life, but they hadn’t been eating dehydrated food for two days. And to top it off, they had... hot springs. Oh yes. We went as a group to what looked basically like a heated pool, and then a hotter pool, and then a sauna - and then, mercy of mercies, a shower. It was delicious.

A cozy cabin, clothes drying by a crackling fire, and friends nearby.
What could be better?

Back at Fleecer, we spent about a week working as a huge group at a recreation area nearby called Sheepshead. We tore down and rebuilt several fences, hauled felled trees out of the area, and learned how to make good burn piles of discarded wood (like a teepee). It was fun working as a big group and we got a lot done (our crowning glory was an entire jackleg fence that we built to protect a streamhead from cows in a single day).

Look at those burn piles! Magnificent!

An evening at Fleecer

The jackleg fence, keeping cows out like a boss

I also liked being based out of Fleecer again, because it meant that I could meet up with my Uncle Mark, who lives in Missoula! He made the two-hour drive one Saturday night and picked me up from Fleecer so we could go to dinner at this awesome gourmet pizza place called MacKenzie River Pizza Company. It was great catching up with him since I hadn’t seen him in over two years. Thanks for dinner, Uncle Mark!

The next day - an unheard-of day off! - about fourteen of us hiked up Mount Fleecer, near base camp. It was a long and very tough hike - we crossed two rock fields and a lot of snow, and the top was windy and freezing - but it was also awesome and exhilarating. Funny how that works.

Relieved and frozen on top of the mountain

Oh, yeah. We did that. Me, Clare, Andrew, Sam, Jason, Marty,
and Saul shirtless on top of Mt Fleecer

Mount Fleecer

After about two and a half weeks, it was announced that most of the group would be heading back to St Louis so they could get to various other projects, including Joplin, MO, which is still recovering from the tornado in May of this year. Eight of us, including me, were to stay for a few more days to finish up several projects. For the first few days we split up, half of us working based out of an area called Horse Prairie, and the rest of us based out of Fleecer and working to finish a nearby bridge project that had been ongoing since we had arrived in Montana.

The bridge was to be for an ATV trail, and all of the foundations had already been laid by earlier groups. We had help from a very inventive retired guy named Harold, who works with the Forest Service a lot - a great way to spend your retirement, if you ask me!

Warren, Travis, Harold, and Angie at work on the bridge

Harold's inaugural drive over the finished bridge

To finish the bridge, we had to get down in the water under the bridge to drive screws as long as my arm through the spacers on the underside, then nail the decking in place, install rails (which were so warped that we had to rig up a system that involved me and another girl, Angie, sitting on a rockbar chained to the lumber to twist them back into place) on the sides of the bridge, and flatten the trail on either side of the bridge with gravel. It was awesome to finally see the project done - Harold and various other AmeriCorps people had been working on it almost every day for over two weeks.

Me and Angie on the rockbar, working hard as paperweights

Angie "wacky-packing" the gravel so it's compact

Harold, Angie and I at the finished bridge! Hooray!

Once we and the other group had finished our respective projects, we set about cleaning up Fleecer. After three weeks of thirty people tracking in mud and water and spilling beer and forgetting where they had put their leftovers - let’s just say that it was a pretty long and disgusting job.

We finally got everything packed and cleaned and put away, then said goodbye to Fleecer and headed to our last project, this one at Elk Horn Hot Springs again. Last time we had been at Elk Horn after our spike to the CDT, Quinn had felled some trees for use in a snowmobile bridge, and now we were there to build that bridge. We spent our first night there relaxing at Jackson Hot Springs (because of their ginormous TV, so we could watch the Cardinals play in the World Series), Bruce’s (my boss’s boss’s) treat.

Warren, Ivy, Angie, and Ali relaxing at Elk Horn

The next day, we built the whole bridge! Quite a feat for a group of nine (including Bruce). I think it’s pretty cool that we used all logs felled in the area and decking left over from a nearby construction site, nothing treated or imported. It looked pretty great at the end of the day, and I think my right arm is at least three times stronger after pounding in approximately 150 8-inch nails. We named the bridge the Great Travisty, in honor of Travis, a member of our group who celebrated his 29th birthday that day.

(picture of the Great Travisty coming soon)

After spending the night at Elk Horn, we packed up and headed back to Fleecer the next morning, so we could pick up the trailer we’d left there two days earlier, then into Butte to get the tires on Cactus (another truck) replaced and return the Forest Service vehicles we’d borrowed. Bruce treated us to lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza Company,  which was delicious yet again. By the time we left Butte, it was 4pm - needless to say, we weren’t getting very far on the road to St Louis. We overnighted at a YMCA in Sheridan, Wyoming, and were on the road again early the next day.

Somewhere along the road

We left a note at the YMCA in Sheridan, WY

We drove to Devils Tower, in Wyoming, and spent about two hours walking around the base, jumping around on the rocks, taking photos, and eating lunch out of the cooler filled with leftovers from the fridge at Fleecer. It was fun to do something touristy instead of just driving all day - we had hoped to see Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota as well, but ran out of time and had to book it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to get to the church where we were sleeping (called Falls Church, it was like going home!) in time. The next morning we treated ourselves to breakfast at Cracker Barrel (yum) and drove through Sioux City, Omaha, and Kansas City to make it back to St Louis by dinnertime.

Devil's Tower!

And another one, with the leaves :)

The Eight: Travis, Ivy, me, Warren, Cody, Will, Angie, and Ali

I really, really enjoyed the trip to Montana, especially the last week or so with just the eight of us. It was really cool to get some time with Bruce - he’s not around us members a lot, since he is constantly scouting out new projects or dealing with partners, etc. So spending a few evenings drinking and talking and listening to music with him was really nice. The other seven in our group were all really great as well - the night before we left for St Louis, I was trying to decide who I wanted to ride with and literally couldn’t. I loved the extra bonding time for us and am looking forward to working with all of them this year.

Sunset in the rearview mirror: perfect.

Overall, Montana was a great taster for the year to come, and I’m still kind of processing the ways this trip has changed me and the ways this year will continue to change me. Mostly it made me very, very sick of the chocolate chip granola bars of which we had an overabundance, as well as more appreciative of the simple life than I’ve ever been.

For example, when we came out of the woods after working on the CDT and went to a gas station, I was overwhelmed with the number of choices and colors and smells... it all seemed so unnecessary. Why do you need 35 different kinds of candy bars when having just anything sweet after dinner is such a treat? It seemed bright and garish. The feeling didn’t last long, but sometimes I still get a tinge of it walking into huge superstores.

Likewise, the trip made me really appreciate things like sleeping indoors and running water. It turns out that you really don’t need a shower every day and that sleeping on some chairs pushed together like we did in the sanctuary at Falls Church is really something to be thankful for - at least there is a roof over your head, you are warm, you are safe. Electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating - all these things really are such a privilege. I hope I hold onto that feeling for the rest of my life.

I also learned to deal a little better with the uncertainty, the sense of spontaneity that comes with this job. Not that I don’t think I’m a flexible person, but you really have to be ready for anything when you’re on the ERT. Although we’d been told that we’d have the rest of the week off, except for maybe one day of training late in the week, I’m writing this from the back of Buck Hunter on the way back out of town for two days of training after only one day off. Well, probably two days. Maybe three, who knows?

Peace, y’all; I’ll see ya when I see ya.

xoxo,

Liz