Americorps recognition day

I spent all of yesterday at Hampton Beach on the Seacoast of NH. It was amazing and full of speeches, free schwag, free food, the ocean, and sun. I came back with full belly, a new americorps mug, and a nice sunburn. I totally forgot all about putting on sunscreen the entire day. It was not good, and I'm paying for it now. But at least I had fun. I've also been working on applying for jobs after this SCA position. So far I've applied to High Trails near Big Bear, CA in the San Bernandino forest. I'm pretty psyched, and hopefully will be interviewing with them next month after my next hitch when I'll actually have constant cell phone and internet access. I'm pretty psyched right now.

Pictures from Saint Gaudens

I've posted some new pictures in a new photo album on Picasa. There's a link on the side of my blog, so everybody should check it out. There are pictures from where I was camping and the work I was doing in Cornish, NH. And now I'm off to enjoy my 4 days off.

St. Gauden's National Park

I've finished my first week working in St. Gauden's National Park and it's been lots of fun. We're camping out in the Blow me down Mill house (I think that's what they said it's called) and it's absolutely gorgeous. Our view is off a large green lawn, the Connecticut River, Mt. Ascutney, and a bald eagle that likes to perch on a dead snag right on the river. It's absolutely amazing! We don't have access to the big house, but we do store our food in the pool house that's right next to us. The only thing that sucks is that our tents in full sunlight and we roast in the them. We have to keep our rainflies on, because it rains at least a little bit each night, but not enough to really cool us off. The highlights of this week have been:
*Cutting down a large hemlock (~26 DBH) after it got hung up in other trees (it took us 3-4 hours total to get it down.
*Watching one of the logs we had cut roll down the hill towards all of our belongings and tools (it didn't hit them, a downed log stopped it)
*Running three large and heavy logs down a high line to stop #1 slowly, but safely.
*Showing up at an SCA building opening ceremony and not knowing ahead of time if we were going to be welcome, and then walking away from it with 2 giant containers filled with meat that we couldn't possibly eat.
*Getting invited to a dinner party at the house of a lady who works in the park.
*Adventuring with Kacie to find access to Connecticut River and in the process rescuing a crayfish, discovering and feeling stinging nettle, walking through a cornfield, and walking up a hill and attempting to avoid the patches of poison ivey
Luckily, I have not gotten a rash from poison ivey yet, but I still have 3 more weeks here and it is all over where we're camping and working. It's pretty crazy.
I've taken lots of pictures up here so far, both of us working and where we're living, so those will go up when I get back from this hitch. I'm currently in the Lebanon, NH public library using their internet on my day off.

Second Clean up hitch

We're about halfway through this hitch now, and it's been lots of fun so far. I've participated in 1 volunteer event and helped to organize another one so far. The first one was in the White Mountains, which a group of high school seniors, who wanted to do a service project with SCA during their senior week. That was lots of fun. We cleaned up campsites by picking up any trash we found, cleaning out the fire rings, and "downsizing" all fire rings to a manageable size for backcountry camping. It rained the entire time we were there, and of course none of us thought to bring an extra pair of clothing with us to change into when our clothing still got a little wet, even though we were wearing rain gear. The next event was one that our group planned entirely. We had about 25 City Year interns come out and help to clean up various trails in Bear Brook State Park. That was lots of fun, because in order to plan the event, we had to hike all of the trails in the park, so we knew what needed to be done and where. It was pretty sweet, although it also rained for the majority of the day. One of the best parts during that event, was when we were eating lunch at Smith Pond Shelter, and we watched the sun breakthrough the clouds over the lake. It was pretty awesome. For the beginning of this week, we've worked on various projects around camp like creating new raised garden beds and planting our whole garden with over 100 plants that a local farm gave us in exchange for us doing manual labor for them on random weekends. We've also worked on organizing and inventoring parts of the toolshed for hitches that are coming up and sharpening tools that are in the toolshed. I'm pretty sure that that's all that I've done recently, but it's been alot, and really tiring. Tomorrow we're going to go back over to the school I taught at and doing a workday outside with our students putting in and reviving the butterfly garden. That should be really fun, and it'll be awesome to have it over with finally. Then we have the Great Parks Pursuit on Sat that we're volunteering at and then we get Sun and Mon off, which will be amazing!!!! I also got a new sleeping bag, it's a wiggy bag, and it's awesome!

Alot has happened since the last time I posted. I cut my hair really short, kept it that way for a week, then shaved it all off for St. Baldrick's. I've also been out camping for the past two weeks. The first week, we were camping at Charlestowne, NH where SCA headquarters in located. Then this past week we camped in Greenfield State Park in NH and worked on cleaning up campsites from the ice storm in December, before all of the campers arrived Friday. We were still working on cleaning up campsites when campers started arriving Friday morning, but we managed to get all 252 sites cleaned up enough for people to camp on them. It was pretty impressive. I spent 12+ hours raking trying to clean up the campsites, and to have them up to the fire codes (clear out 8ft from all fire rings in all the sites). It was lots of fun, and I loved camping with no hair, because it makes your mornings go so much faster. Plus, people can't tell whether or not you've showered recently, so I looked cleaner than most people, even though I didn't shower until the morning after we got back. For our next hitch, I'm going to located at Bear Brook, so I get to stay in my own cabin for the majority of the time, unless they're working on the roof of my cabin, which I hope will happen.

I'm attempting to upload more pictures to facebook from the past month, but it's going very slowly. I might go to the library tomorrow to upload a bunch of pictures, but we'll just have to see how I'm feeling. I currently have about 10 pictures up, but working on more.

So one of our LNT instructors is really sick, so our trip was canceled. We're still going to go hiking and camp overnight, but we won't be able to get the certification for awhile, if ever. And we didn't go to the Whites to do everything like we were going to do. Instead, we're just going to go camp on Smith Pond, which isn't very far from where we currently live. At least we're going hiking and camping though, I guess. I'm also going to be camping on Smith Pond this weekend with Hannah and Bear, because Bear wants to test out his primitive survival kit, but wants a back up incase something happens.

This Friday, I'm going to teaching at a beading party at my teacher's house. It should be lots of fun, and I'm glad that I now have somebody to bead with up here. Now, I'm just trying to kill time until 10 when we're going to helping out the interpreters with their nature hike they're going to do with the kids that are coming tomorrow.

My conservation season training began last Wednesday with grip hoist/rigging training. By the end of the three days, we had created an aerial system that transported rocks from the top of a hill to the bottom, by lifting them up and then belaying the rocks down. It was pretty cool. I also learned how to climb a tree just using slings that I put up myself and an arborist's ladder with a rope you flip up the tree to keep you from falling. Today, I've been learning about the basics of chainsaw maintenance and preparing for my leave no trace backpacking trip tomorrow. We're driving up into the white mountains then meeting our trainers and backpacking in about 2-3 miles while learning about the leave no trace principles. After Wed, I'll be a certified leave no trace trainer. Which means that I will be able to teach other people about the leave no trace principles.

Just a reminder, I'll be shaving my head May 15th for St. Baldricks.