Alone Again (sort of...)

After spending our last two hitches working in conjunction with the Owen's Peak Wilderness crew, we of the Golden Valley crew were excited to once again spend a full hitch alone in our wilderness constructing our beautiful fence. Oh yeah, I should mention we were visited by the Rands crew for a day, DRC Program Coordinator Darren Gruetze for two days, our BLM contact Marty, and we also left to recieve ATV training. So maybe a hitch by ourselves was wishful thinking.
In all seriousness, all of the diversions were rewarding and enriching. The Rands crew taught us how to do restoration and joined us for dinner. Darren came with us on a 3 mile cross-country full moon night hike to Cuddeback Dry Lake, which was a surreal place to visit in the crystalline moonlight. Marty discussed our work, future projects, and conservation with us. We had fun flying around the desert on ATVs, and left our training with a new perspective on those loud and aromatic machines that periodically fly through our wilderness.
Oh yeah, we also constructed some fence this hitch. We were happy to finish up the second of two fencelines along private property boundaries, thus finishing our days of assembly lining tons of fence materials miles into the wilderness. We lined out a 1.5 mile stretch of fence along BLM road RM 1444, which will be our final stretch of fence. We also began, with the help of the Rands crew, our first restoration project, which is quite large and will take some time to complete, but thanks to the Rands crew we are off to a great start.
I can't end this entry without mentioning a very special bird that we've become closely acquainted with: the Loggerhead Shrike. A very unassuming bird with a beautiful repertoire of songs we were treated to every dawn and dusk emitting from the tamarisk trees that boirder our campsite. Oh yeah, it also likes to impale its prey, and we found some very interesting evidence of this throughout our wilderness.

-Marko