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