Jawbone 2010-2011

My name is Carolyn D'Aprix. I am twenty years old and hail from upstate New York. After spending a year at the University at Buffalo, I took some time off to reorganize my thoughts while working in some of the country's most beautiful places. Within the past six months, I have managed to float around the country, spending time in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania. Currently in California, I am excited to continue working outdoors in the beautiful, yet intriguing environment we all know the desert to be.

Hitch 11 provided the Jawbone team with a well-deserved break from restoration. As an alternative, we tried our luck at constructing a barbed-wire fence around Jawbone’s coup de gras: Robber’s Roost. For anyone who doesn’t already know, this striking geologic feature is closed from February 1st through July 1st every year for raptor nesting (‘raptor’ means birds of prey). This undertaking was nothing short of eye-opening; the learning curve was quite steep, indeed. Praise Allah our ever gracious BLM liaison was there to direct us on our first work day.

Aside from the occasional night of gale force winds attempting to blow away the white wall, the weather was amazing: plentiful sunshine. The Jawboners certainly got plenty of vitamin D. Furthermore, this was one of a few hitches so far in which we stayed (more or less) dry. ATV training was definitely a high-point of the hitch. It was exponentially more fun than chainsaw training, and emphasized the value of occasionally “hot doggin” it. Our instructor, Eddie, was very entertaining and did a great job of keeping our attention.

Finally, I have to acknowledge the impressive progression of the group’s hacky sack skills over the course of Hitch 11. We’ve come a long way, people. It really is remarkable.

Hitch 9 was an exciting hitch for the Jawbone Crew. Most importantly we are now once again a full crew. Carolyn and Kevin join the Jawboners for the remainder of the season and we could not be more excited. By Day 6 we were already in a groove and it felt like they have been here a lot longer than half of a hitch. Jawbone itself should be renamed the “In Crowd” as we now consist of: Amelyne, Madeline, Carolyn, Erin, Kevin, Garth and Matt (some name changes may be in order). The addition of more “ins” has already made calling someone the right name infinitely harder. Pre Hitch and preparation for LNT training went smoothly and led us to a very early morning out into Jawbone. With the Golden Valley crew in tow to refresh our memories on how to fence and a visit from our BLM contact Steve Gomez we completed a fence around the PCT, on perhaps the windiest corridor ever. We were so lucky that Golden Valley and Steve were around when we “pulled a Jawbone”, reasserting that Steve is the best BLM contact ever as he not only brings us treats but also lifts our trailer when it falls off a jack. During dinner we were joined by our final member Kevin all the way from Wisconsin. The next day we were back to our old routine, however we again had to hike about 30 minutes to an incursion to see that it already had been restored by Friends of Jawbone, so we hiked back. Carolyn and Kevin soon learned the joys of vertical mulching as we worked on 2 new incursions and touched up an old one.

We were soon back in town to do our post hitch work and prepare to go down to Joshua Tree National Park for LNT training. During our stay in Yucca Valley we wrote our “Jawbone Manifesto”, became LNT trainers with Darren and Jamie leading the way and celebrated a birthday. All in all an eventful hitch with many changes to the JB crew, setting up for an excellent end of the season!

Day one was a pre-hitch day, and we kept ourselves busy with preparations for the long drive to Blythe. About six hours of our second day was spent in the car, but we arrived at our campground near Blythe just in time to set up camp and enjoy the fantastic dinners prepared by all the DRC crews. Luckily for us, because we soon found out that we would need all the energy we could muster for the next three days. The Allcorp project was to restore five separate hill climbs and to construct a post and cable fence around the base of the hill. All the DRC crews members were mixed up and reassigned to form six Allcorp ‘pods’, each of which would tackle a different area of the project. The first day of Allcorp, each pod began moving vast amounts of rock and dirt to fill in their respective incursions. On the second day, it began to be apparent that some incursions would need more attention than others. Some pods combined to add more man power, and together we fought the strong winds and nonstop dirt to the face. Fire lines were formed, and bag after heavy bag, all full with rocks and soil, were passed up and down the incursions, filling in eroded areas, and matching color to the surrounding areas. The third day continued much like the previous two, and we all felt the satisfaction when two of the incursions disappeared into the hillside and three others neared completion. The fence was constructed, posts cemented into the ground, and cable threaded from end to end. A riotous ‘Ugly Sweater Extravaganza Competition’ ended Allcorp, and the following day, each crew departed Blythe, feeling sore and still reeking of garlic from our Ajo Fiesta dinner.
After another full day of driving, we arrived in Shoshone for the Sierra Club conference. We listened to a variety of presenters speak on topics such as renewable energy, wilderness areas, and more. It was an interesting and educational two days, and we felt very welcomed and appreciated for our conservation work there. On our last work day of Hitch 7, we went back out to our long neglected Jawbone campsite, and continued work on our hard barrier. We will all be looking forward to next hitch, when this project is finally completed.

The holiday season brought snow, snow, snow and cows to our slopes of Jawbone. Even though we were back on our side of the mountain, the far side was still reaching us. Morning of day three, windshield had to defrost, and when the ice had cleared there was a ginormous crack. Had to get that replaced. Day five, Eric goes off for a run, comes back limping, took off his shoe, he had an extra ankle bone. Undaunted, we restored on, braving the sun turning into wind turning into cold and back to sun again. It’s nice when the chemtrails come out and it’s consistently chilly. Marko showed us all the stars (like Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer? No.) for his EE. On the last day of hitch we said farewell to Eric, who had made plans to leave after this hitch, because his New Hampshire mountains were calling to him.

Hitch 3 was a mixed bag of outreach, volunteering and restoration that kept the hitch very interesting. While permitting in the Rands we got to talk to a lot of OHV riders, and some of us met Goat, the owner of the local pizza joint, and had lengthy conversations with his charming friends. The two days of outreach also provided extra warmth in our house, which did not prepare us for the cold nights in Jawbone (18 degrees!). However, while out at Jawbone we saw some awesome sights and Matt found some type of missile head/bomb thing that brought the BLM archaeologist, Danny Tyree, out for a visit. While at Jawbone the crew restored 3 incursions along SC37 continuing polygon JB26. The first half of the first day of restoration we split into groups, half went on a scouting trip up the rest of SC37 while the rest started collecting data. The last two and half days at Jawbone were spent restoring incursions while a group split off and worked on scouting the rest of the polygon and collecting data on SC47. The last third of the hitch was spent doing volunteer work for the Kern River Preserve where we got to spend some time in the woods chipping branches and removing an old fence line, and we were again very happy to be in a wonderful warm house provided by the Southern Sierra Research Station.

There are a couple “interesting facts” about working in Jawbone that are taken like a slice of homemade bread. Rather, these “interesting facts” should be taken as a forewarning, like a jawbone on a front door, where it makes you pause, wondering if this is the right house, knowing that it obviously is. In Jawbone, there’s the LA Aqueduct , which is the closest thing to sliced bread here. Then there’s the wind, which made upside down cake out of our white wall tent during the first day of restoration work. Sandbags and stakes be damned, this is Jawbone, where the wind can take a sunny day and transform it into the winter dredges. There's nothing quite like having fifty mph wind exfoliating your face. And then there was the night a helicopter circled our camp three times. I can see, with us out in the middle of the desert living out of a big white tent and a cluster of army tents, why someone wants to check us out, but in the moment it was an alarming and alert, "WTF" that crossed my mind. The nighttime entertainment continued on our last night when Eric called our attention upwards. Marko let out a surprised comment before I also saw the odd formations of light crossing the twinkling night. I immediately thought of Star Trek First Contact, and finally thought that I would have conclusion to my long held reservations about Leonard Nimoy. Yes, the naval weapons base is not too far away, and while they are the logical explanation, it’s also fun to think we spotted aliens.

And yes, surrounding all of this was pretty restoration work. While our days are consumed with our purpose in Jawbone, it is not what has defined them. We've come to know from our first time in Jawbone during First 5 that the ordinary is the extraordinary. So be forewarned when coming out to Jawbone, it’s bound to be more than what you expected.

Erin Kunze was raised on a small farm in Kentucky where she discovered an immense love for the outdoors and an equally great disdain for shoes. Although she was often preoccupied with riotous tunes and spontaneous dance parties, Erin managed to graduate from the University of Kentucky, where she studied lots of things, but Sustainable Agriculture was her favorite. In fact, Erin has lots of favorites. These are some more: digging in the dirt, food, spinning around in circles, going on neat adventures, big rocks, goats, and dandelions.

Garth hails from somewhere between the "Sweetest Place on Earth" and Amish country. In 2007 he took time off from Pitt to do a NOLS Semester in the Rockies, and has been climbin', dirtbaggin', Americorpsin', conservin', and couchsurfin' since. Mom and Pop were proud of his degree, and he used it to work at a climbing gym and an Ethiopian restaurant before moving on to the SCA. He enjoys the outdoors, music with LOADS of energy and spirit, and seeing what all he can ferment within the confines of the law.