A week to go!?

Dear Internet,

List of things I can’t believe:

1. I only have a week left of ERT.
2. I’ve already been in Montana for over a month.
3. I haven’t posted since then... whoops.

It's good to be back at lovely Fleecer!

Neighbors.

Montana has been awesome, as expected. Since we’ve been here, I’ve been doing a variety of jobs - trail work, fencing, cutting firewood, even building a ski jump at Maverick Mountain. I’ve mostly stayed at Fleecer Station, our base camp, except for one week spent in Lima, MT (tearing down the wrong fence and reconstructing it the next day... it happens).

In Lima, MT. The mountains turn red in the evening.

I spent three days in Helena (which is only about an hour and a half’s drive from Butte) for my VISTA orientation. It was cool to see the place I will live - I even got to visit my future office - and I think will help with the transition from ERT to VISTA. It was pretty basic stuff we covered - our rights and roles as VISTAs, what poverty is and means, etc. There are five or six VISTAs serving in Helena out of I think 41 who were there for training. The rest serve in other parts of Helena - Billings, Butte, Missoula, Bozeman, and other smaller towns. There were some very interesting people there, so it should be fun to serve for them - though in a totally different capacity than I’m now used to in ERT.

As a group we spent one week near Elk Horn Hot Springs for our graduation ceremony. The crew that was hired in January as permanent Joplin staff (until this December, anyway) was there, so it was cool to meet them. We had two days off to hang out and to travel to Lemhi Pass to graduate. It was a nice ceremony, with time to reflect on the year and awards handed out to people who had done exceptionally well. It was, however, a bit premature as we still had two weeks to go in the program - but that was the time that everyone could be there, so that’s that.

At graduation, after we received our Year 18 shirts, designed
by two members of the team.

We have had several Sundays off and have done a few very cool things: the Montana Folk Festival and Evel Knievel Days in Butte, hikes up Red Mountain and Sawtooth Mountains, and a day spent in Helena to scope out the city a little better than I did when I was there for orientation. I even found an house with a really nice live-in landlord/handyman that I think will work out for the next year.

At the Folk Festival in Butte.

Hike up Red Mountain.

At the top: recreating our shirtless picture from Mount Fleecer
last fall.

The ridgeline on top of Red Mountain.

Anyway, moral of the story is that Montana has been going really well. There are lots of things that I will miss next year and lots of things I won’t. With only one week left - we’ll depart for St Louis this coming Friday - the transition is becoming real to me. I start as a VISTA on the 27th of August - that’s two weeks from now, roughly.

Evel Knievel Days in Butte.

Hiking up Sawtooth Mountain.

View of Sawtooth Lake from the top.

One of the historical sites we passed one day during work:
a group of kilns used for producing charcoal to smelt iron
just down the valley.

Twin Lakes, another site we passed during work.

I’ll miss this sense of community. I’ll miss 35 people being around me at all times, even though they drive me bananas sometimes. I’ll miss the ease we all have with one another. I’ll miss the freedom of working outside all the time and leaving my work at “the office.” I’ll miss campfires and the feeling of being really tired at the end of the day. I’ll miss seeing new places and learning new skills all the time. I’ll miss chainsawing. I won’t miss the control that the program has over my life. I won’t miss some of the petty politics that goes on. I won’t miss never having a spare moment or an Internet connection.

It’s been a great year and a tough year for me, and I’ve done things I never thought I would do. I’ve learned to build fences and bridges, to use a saw, to build a trail; mostly, though, I think I’ve learned a lot about the way I interact with people and how to do it better. Hopefully that can help me a lot in the future.

Here’s to one bittersweet week left of ERT.

xoxo Liz