Wildcorps IX - 2010-2011

Work Totals:
16 sq. meters restored
14 vertical mulch planted
12 seed pits
15 check dams

Our final hitch in the field began with two days of Leave No Trace training in Joshua Tree National Park, including an overnight hike. After having all of the crews stay in our house throughout the season while they had their training and hearing about their experiences, we were very excited to get our turn. We arrived in Joshua Tree with our packs full of gear and our minds full of the new Leave No Trace ethics we had learned and how to teach them. On the hike to camp, Sara taught us how to camp and travel on durable surfaces, and then we set up camp for the night. The next day, on the hike out, everyone else taught their ethics to the group. We returned home to Yucca after lunch in the park. The next day was our travel day to the final All-Corps in Jawbone. Along the way, we stopped at the Desert Tortoise Natural Area and enjoyed a nice short hike in the midday sun, but unfortunately did not see any tortoises. We arrived at Jawbone a little later that evening and set up camp next to the Jawbone and Golden Valley crews. The next day, before Rands and Owens showed up, we all hiked Scodie Peak. When we got back to camp, All-Corps had officially begun as all the crews were present. The next three days consisted of building check dams on incursions to prevent erosion all day, and eating delicious food at night. It was great to have all the crews together and working again, however it was a little bittersweet due to the fact that it was the last time we would have that opportunity. We made the most of it, however, and fun was had by all. The last day we all gathered in the morning, for the last time, and reflected on our experiences throughout the season. There was a decent amount of laughing (and crying) as we each received our packets and T-Shirts, accompanied by a short story by our crew leaders. Then it was off to Lake Isabella, where the daring jumped in, and the sane stayed out. All in all, it was a fitting end to a fantastic season. Now it’s time to clean out our respective houses and head off on whatever adventure awaits us.

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We killed A LOT of tamarisk this hitch. Rest in Peace, my little Tammy’s. After a very long drive out to Saline Valley, (the beautiful views over Death Valley made the late night arrival so worth it), we began our work the next day in the Inyo Mountains Wilderness. We really enjoyed working with so many people this hitch too! It isn’t very often that we get to do that. The volunteers from UCLA as well as Friends of the Inyo helped us knock out a huge infestation of tamarisk in Cougar Canyon. Days of hacking away at what would otherwise be a very lovely plant if it weren’t so evil for stealing water from other plants was very satisfying. The no-see-ums weren’t our favorite, but the weather was quite pleasant most of hitch. The burro mating season interrupted our sleep that first night quite a bit, but it was still pretty cool to be so close to them and so easily observe them. They were surprisingly not skiddish at all for us. Another highlight of this hitch was getting to spend it with Marty, from the Ridgecrest Field Office and to really feel part of an ongoing project that she has been having groups work on for years. Seeing the before pictures of what used to be a tamarisk monoculture and is now only requiring light retreatment is very uplifting. The majority of our work was a part of the canyon that was densely vegetated with willows that we struggled to work around to get at the tamarisk. We were glad to have some chainsaw handlers to help us with the biggest trees while we worked diligently with our loppers and handsaws for a complete tamarisk massacre.

After three days in Cougar, we took a day in Pat Keyes Canyon down the road to do some lighter tamarisk retreatment. The highlight of this day was definitely the waterfalls, about ten or so, that we climbed up and over and later repelled down, thanks to the free climbing and gear that Todd, from Friends of the Inyo, provided. My personal favorite was the wet mudslide one that everyone else seemed to be able to repel down like the others, whereas I took a more muddy approach by slipping and sliding down it as I was lowered, laughing too hard to do anything about it. Some of us had some pretty “creative” landings but none quite compared to the muddy mess I was after that one.

We returned to Cougar the following two days and can say that it has now been completely treated at least once, and more in some places, up to the second falls. Die tamarisk, die! This is a feat that Marty was very excited about and we are all happy to have been part of it. We got to hit up one more canyon, Piute Canyon, on our last day in Saline Valley to finish off a bit more tamarisk. Because of time and the threat of rain (can’t spray herbicide if it’s going to rain) we had to leave some tamarisk behind, but some lucky crew in the future will get to finish that off one day and see the beautiful Piute Canyon too! We had a long drive home ahead of us and broke up the drive with a visit to our Golden Valley friends to check out their lovely fields of gold before heading back to the one and only, Yucca Valley. Until next time, WC.

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Work Totals:
13 Water Sources Monitored
49.48 mi. total hiked
22 Vertical Mulch plants
313.26 m2 total area restored
15.98m Long water bar constructed
515 lbs. trash/debris removed
74.23m total length of fenceline removed
3 segments of fence removed

Restoration? Wildcorps did restoration? Yup. And we rocked it, if I do say so myself. Our first hitch of a two-hitch water monitoring project in multiple wildernesses out of the Needles field office began with restoration in the Piute Mountains. We were at a beautiful site called Fenner Spring to start off the hitch. We spent three days there, restoring the area around the spring. Sam and Andrew were super excited to successfully vertical mulch several barrel cacti, and Andrew even managed to vertical mulch an entire yucca plant. After finishing up our work at Fenner Spring, we moved on to the Old Woman Mountains Wilderness, where we began our water monitoring. We split up into two groups each day over the next 3 days in order to maximize the area we could cover and the number of sources we could monitor. Intense hikes, vast landscapes, and awesome creatures were the norm in the Old Womans. We saw horny toads, lizards by the dozen, kit foxes, coyotes, and, last but not least, a BADGER! Although we could see a train from where we were camped, it was not hard to imagine that were alone in our own little world in the wilderness. We all enjoyed the weather, which stayed in the 70s every day, and we are all looking forward to returning back to the Old Womans and exploring the surrounding wildernesses in search for water.

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Work Totals:
Mining Sites Monitored: 52
Miles Hiked: 56

Water Sources Monitored: 4
Miles Hiked: 34

Miles of Boundary Monitored: 7
Incursions Monitored: 26
Signs Placed: 3

Hitch 6 was a hitch of opposites: it’s the middle of January, which at least where I’m from means layers of coats and scarves and mittens, and we were sleeping under the stars and wearing t-shirts in 80-degree weather; there were times I would wake up in the middle of the night convinced I was late for breakfast because the moon was brighter than the sun was during the day; and we were working with the rolling mountain ranges of the gorgeous Palen/McCoy Wilderness to our north, and the state prison glistening like a city that never sleeps to our south.
Despite the confusion, all WildCorps members are in agreement that this hitch has to be the smoothest and glitch-less so far. We’ve gotten into a pretty great routine with each other and the work – which I think is pretty funny since our expertise is basically being prepared for really anything whatever BLM field office we’re working for throws at us. The other DRC crews may be experts at restoration, but we’ve got days of continually getting lost in the desert with nothing but a moody GPS and our topos to guide us down pat! Which is basically what we did all hitch – chased after abandoned mine prospects, “water sources” (puddles in the desert), and any possible illegal roads leading into wilderness areas. Every morning we’d wake up to the moonlight, eat a quick breakfast, split up the days destinations, and set off into the wilderness – across desert pavement, through washes and canyons, over mountain ranges, down the occasional old mining road or animal path – not to return until the moon again rose over the Little Maria Mountains to compete with the headlights from I-10. I loved exploring old mining sites – despite the fact that we rarely saw what I know to be a mining entrance (most of what we were monitoring can only be described as piles of rock), the sites were endlessly fascinating to speculate on who these miners were and how they got out to these sites in vehicles when we could hardly cross the terrain on foot.
Honestly, I think we were all surprised when we looked up one day and realized it was time to come home. We’re all kind of workaholics when work means wandering around the desert, and it sure is hard being in a house in front of a computer screen.
Sure am excited for AllCorps!

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Work totals:
75.28m of trail drained of excess water and trail reestablished
2 trail marker signs placed

As a roving crew, we are pretty used to moving around more than once in a hitch and doing a variety of tasks throughout. It’s practically in the WildCorps job description. Despite this, Hitch 7 was still a challenge in that respect because it had 3 very distinct parts: All-Corps, Shoshone Conference, and working for the Barstow Field Office.
Hitch began with a bit of a rocky start due to car troubles – a dead battery. So while half the crew headed out to Blythe to meet the NewMexico crew at All-Corps, half of us worked things out with the dead Dodge in Yucca Valley. Several hours later, we were all reunited as not just a crew, but all of the DRC, descending upon the Midland Long Term Visitor Campground and setting up our tent city. WC chose, as usual, to refrain from setting up our white tent, and proceeded to set up our kitchen next to the trailer. It was a decision we would soon find not to be our finest, regardless of how awesome our new thrift store rug looked in our desert pavement open-air kitchen. Two days later, we found ourselves bumming kitchen space in the tents of other crews to escape George, as we have fondly come to address the constant blustery gusts of wind that blow for hours on end. (Thank you Rands and New Mexico crews!)
For the next three days, we attacked a hillside of 5 incursions with full force. Mixing up the crews and getting to work with new people was a great experience and something WC doesn’t get the opportunity to do. It was also nice to use tools for a change! Especially after the last few hitches being predominantly monitoring, hiking, and Trimbling. Passing rock bags up the hillside and then bags of dirt back down was how most of the hours passed those three days, even the one when George came to visit ALL day and night long. Potluck dinners each night were a delicious way to end the day and with each crew showing off their backcountry culinary flare, I think we all have some new recipe ideas to try out (seitan gyros, loaded baked potato soup, zucchini burgers, and seitan satay, just to name a few). All-Corps flew by pretty quickly and just as our little crew was getting used to the overwhelmingness of 30+ people in one camp, we found ourselves off to our next stop: the Shoshone Conference.
After a quick detour to the Kelso Dunes in the Mojave National Preserve, hiking up the biggest dune and sliding/running/falling/rolling/skipping/scampering/etc. down it, we piled back into the Dodge until reaching our destination in Shoshone, just southeast of the Death Valley region. The turnout was quite a sight for such a small town in the middle of such a striking landscape. Speakers from all sorts of groups, clubs, and businesses presented information and updates, many of them having to do with the issue of renewable energy projects in the desert. I did not expect wind energy to take such a beating from such environmentally minded groups, but there is certainly a right and wrong way to go about it. It was definitely good to hear that such a distinction was made between good “green” and bad “green” because in so many other situations, any kind of “green” is just blindly supported on no merit at all. Some of the most interesting talks, I think, came from groups like Desert Survivors, Protect Our Communities, Powers Engineering, Solar Done Right, Wilderness Land Trust, People Against Wind Zero, and the Sierra Club. It was especially exciting to feel the room alive with energy as Michael Brune answered questions regarding big solar projects. Even though it was a long two days sitting in a folding chair, listening to speaker after speaker, when we are used to really physical workdays spent outdoors, the conference was a really good reminder of the environmental and land issues and politics in which we work. It felt good to stretch our brains and be brought back to the social context of the environment, which most of us left behind when we graduated or finished classes last spring. I think it is important that while we, at times, do seemingly obscure environmental work (hiking for miles to find a GPS point that may or may not be a puddle of water?) it is still part of this bigger picture of conservation work and is in fact connected to what a lot of other people across the U.S. are working towards as well.
Nevertheless, it did feel good to get back out into the field on Sunday afternoon. Directly after the Conference, we met with Tim and Brad, our Barstow Field Office BLM contacts, to start working on a section of trail just outside of Shoshone, near Tecopa on the Old Spanish and T&T Railroad Trail along the Amargosa River. The trail cuts along a mountain and has stopped the natural flow of a spring, now no longer reaching the river in the wash below. Emergent grasses and reeds have further stopped up the area, but almost as soon as we began pulling out that vegetation, water began to flow. It was only a tiny trickle at first, spreading across the dirt like a spilled drink, trying to find its way downhill. And although it was completely instinctual and obvious, it was still amazing to see how the water, once free, turned into a gurgling stream within minutes, almost seconds. Working quickly, we coaxed it along the edge of our trail and helped it over the ledge and on its way to the river. A lot of vegetation removal ensued, as well as brushing, lopping, sawing, raking, and eventually, we reestablished our trail where we wanted it, in our newly drained area. Unfortunately, we had to leave with still a lot of work that could be done on the trail, including the lack of any sort of established trailhead - but that will be a project for some other crew, once the town politics work themselves out. We ended hitch with a delicious trip to the China Ranch date farm for the famous date shakes we have been hearing about for weeks. Driving out of the canyon, and eventually on our way back to Yucca Valley, I thought about everything we had done this hitch and then, as it is a half-way mark for the season, how our DRC life has been so different from hitch to hitch and is still always so interesting, from each day to the next.

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Work Totals:

The thirteen sites monitored were: Clapp, JP, Hidden, Willow, Carrizo, Ewe, Hawk, Noel, Cripple, Trap, Indian, Winter, and Chemgo.

Miles Hiked:
1. Clapp (Sara, Leah, Andrew): 6
2. JP (Emily, Sam): 5
3. Willow & Hidden (Emily, Sam, Andrew): 8
4. Hawk & Noel (Sara, Leah): 8
5. Carrizo Spring (All): 3
6. Ewe, Trap, & Cripple (All but Emily): 8
7. Indian, Winter, & Cripple (All but Emily): 8
8. Trap & Ewe (All but Emily): 8
9. Chemgo Guzzler (All but Emily): 5

Well, that was a fun hitch! So our job description for the past few days was essentially to walk around in a beautiful wilderness area and look for water in the desert, sweet. We headed south out of Yucca Valley on the twelfth of December in the year twenty-ten on our way to the El Centro district, which is on the Mexican border for all intents and purposes. The downside was that it meant a multiple hour car ride, the upside was that it was gonna be warm, real warm.
Partly because of that warmth and partly because of our transient nature this hitch, we moved campsites almost everyday, we decided to leave our white tent, a DRC staple, sitting in the garage. Turns out that leaving the tent was a great decision. There was far more room in the trailer for packing stuff and it meant we did not have to go through the whole set up and break down process multiple times during the hitch, which was a major time saver.
The weather was beautiful and, as I said, warm, with daily temperatures in the upper seventies and nights as warm as the fifties, just idyllic. The work also seemed too good to be true. We literally hiked around in the wilderness following little arrows on GPS devices, functioning as modern divining rods, which led us to various water points within the desert. Ok, so it was not quite so simple, mostly because technology has a way of not always doing what one wants it to. The Trimbles and the Garmins, our two forms of GPS, were finicky at times. The Trimbles had a program on them for monitoring water sources, essentially a form to fill out, and decided that they would stop letting us use this program, on the first day that is. Then, praise be to some god, one of the Trimbles allowed us to resume use of the program, rendering us mere cripples instead of completely infirm. The other main techno problem was the coordinate systems we were using. There are two primary systems that we use, one from 1927 and the other from 1983. We started out in the 1983 setting, which was leading us to blank rock faces and empty stream beds. Even when we changed the setting to 1927, which is a time consuming process, we were still finding these useless sites. Then, on the fourth day, I tried something new, entering the coordinates after switching the system, turns out that was the ticket! We immediately began finding water, where before all we were led to was bare rock. It was quite a morale booster, even if it did mean revisiting places we had already been to. My only wish is that I had figured out the trick earlier in the hitch, which would have allowed us to find an monitor more of these sites, however, hopefully next hitch we will be able use what we have learned and knock out the remainder of the sites.
The other really cool thing about this hitch was our wildlife encounters. We saw a rattlesnake, a coyote, multiple tarantulas, more burros than I care to think about, and a 30 pound catfish! The rattlesnake was a big guy, at least three feet long, although we only saw him when he was all coiled up, and thankfully we saw him when it was cold and rainy, so all he did was sit there and stick his black tongue out at us. The coyote was also quite impressive. We saw him in the middle of the day, as he went streaking across the wash right in front of us. He had a big bushy tail and all the elegance and beauty one would expect of a wild beast. The tarantulas were, as always, hairy and gargantuan. The burros were, in my opinion, one of the coolest things, at least the first few times I saw them. They had this majesty about them that one would not expect from a donkey, or relative thereof, at least not after encountering domesticated ones. These creatures, unlike their servile cousins, held themselves erect with honor and dignity and gazed with a sense of superiority and self-assurance across the desert washes they call home. Of course they scattered like bunnies the second we came within half a mile, but from a distance they put on a very good show. The catfish was a treat. We met two campers who were posted up next to the Colorado River, did I mention that we drove by that on our way to work most days, and doing some sport fishing. They were a delightful couple, Linda and, since we can not remember his name, ‘Catfish Man’, who regaled us with stories of their youth and adventures in the region for a good while. He had caught a big, thirty pounder the night before we dropped by and was more than happy to drag the struggling ball of muscle out of the water for us to gape at. Sadly, however, this story has no fairytale ending and upon returning to their campsite the following day, under invitation of course, we discovered that the big guy had got away. Apparently he bent open a welded steel ring and made for the hills, or the depths of the river as it were. It was sad, but Catfish Man took it all in stride, merely saying that the next one he caught would certainly not be given that choice of escape!
All in all a very successful hitch, and as soon as we finish cleaning up here we will begin parting ways and heading out for the Christmas holidays!

Hitch #1
Dates: 10/28/10-11/5/10
Field Office: Palm Springs
Report Prepared by Emily Frankel and Sam Wright
Corps Members Present: Sara Tamler, Leah Edwards, Sam Wright

Hitch Overview:
10/30/10 Arrival in the Beauty Mountains at Adobe Springs, around 4 pm. Lock on gate was cut and replaced.
10/31/10 2 sites of fence repairs.
11/1/10 Met Kevin, Palm Springs contact, at Twin Lakes for Tamarisk removal and treatment. Knocked down a motorcycle jump, visible from the legal route.
11/2/10 Began fence and gate work at Twin Lakes with Chris. Dug 4 holes, leveled and erected the gate, and cemented it into place. Also leveled and cemented the horse step over. Jen Taylor came later, and helped with the fence construction and removal of old fence line.
11/3/10 Started restoration at the North OHV site. Moved rocks into place, collected mulch, decompacted, and planted two vertical mulch.
Continued fence work. Dug 7 holes with an auger and jack hammer. Leveled and cemented the metal poles.
11/4/10 Strung cable and made stress panels on one side while holes were dug, poles were leveled, and cemented on the other. Finished stringing cables and contrusting stress panels. Removed fire rings.
Continued and finished the North OHV Restoration site.

Work Totals:
Repaired 103.82 m of fence line.
Removed 3307.16 m2 of tamarisk.
Removed 19.61 m of fenceline.
Constructed 30.63 m of fence and gate.
Removed 2 fire rings.
Removed 1 motorcycle jump
Removed 1 sign.
Installed 1 sign.
Restored 147.93 m line of sight with 9 vertical mulch and 6 m of rocks.

What up ya'll! Hello and welcome to the crew post for the first Wildcorps IX hitch, whoot woo! So we were, as the title implies, stationed in the beautiful Beauty Mountains wilderness this hitch working on everything from tamarisk removal to jackhammering holes for fence posts, pretty sweet eh. But, first came business, in the form of a BLM orientation.
Now, I am not going to say that the orientation was not fun, because it was, in a way, just that when your itching to get out in the field an office meeting room just does not cut it, no matter how many powerpoints or how much food the hosts throw at you. The orientation was, however, very informative, and we learned much about the regions we will be working in and what to expect. My personal favorite was the hydrologist, who gave us a nice little summary of the region's water usage and told us about the danger awaiting the pup-fish if something is not done to conserve water more efficiently. The archaeologist was also a blast, because she brought in some toys, in the form of lithics, for us to play with. Yes the BLM office was fun, but we all slept a little better that night knowing that the following day we would get to.
The next day was preparation day, and what a day it was. There was food to be packed, tools to be inventoried, gear to be gathered and loaded, and plenty of administrative and technological material to keep Emily busy for most of the day. It was fairly stressful, but very rewarding to see everything slowly but surely fall into place as the day went by. We slept even better that night knowing that the next day we would actually be on the move!
The drive down to Beauty Mtns was quite an experience. We set off in plenty of time, and made our way south speedily enough, but were struck by some serious ill fortune when we got close to where we would be stationed, for there was no gas for miles. (Gas? My apologies, I meant Diesel). Well, the lack of a service station sent us on an epic odyssey to the town of Anza to try and find the elusive lifeblood of our Dodge 2500 monster of a Ram. We did, finally, find the fuel we were looking for, but only after wasting a good hour or so in the truck, but once we were stocked on the diesel we were ready to hit the dirt road, which would take us to our humble abode for the next few days.
Our campsite was fantabulous. We were in a grassy field with plenty of flat area for the trailer and group tent and a sloping hill behind for our personal sleeping arrangements, tents or otherwise. There was a lone tree standing guardian near to where we set up camp, and he became quite the companion over the days. We set up camp in the near dark and were happy to escape into the warm of the ‘white tent’ (synonymous with group tent) and cook up a delicious meal or Spanish rice and Carribean black beans, a symbolic reconciliation of the old kingdom and its long lost colonies.
The following day we were up with the crack of dawn and rip roaring to get out and do some work. We spent the day playing with sharp metal and expensive GPS toys, aka doing fence work and taking data. It was a delight to be out working again and the entire crew responded to the opportunity to get their hands duty with great enthusiasms and intensity. We replaced a fair number of wires in a fence marking the wilderness boundary that some vexed user had had the decency to dice up for us. The work took the whole day, but was most rewarding and seeing it completed was quite satisfying.
The following day was tamarisk day with Kevin, the delightful BLM specialist of weeds from Minnesoooooooota. He was quite the fellow, very jolly and friendly and more than happy to follow us around with blue dyed herbicide as we went through the area chopping up the vicious invasive. We focused our attention around a small pond about a half-hour from our campsite, half-hour by dirt road, so only about two miles, and did an impressive job chopping up and neutralizing the tamarisk, aka salt cedar. By the end of the day we were tired, happy, and speckled with blue, from where we had come into contact with the blue herbicide (no worries, it is non-toxic).
The following day brought new excitement in the form of Chris, another BLM employee, who was using us to put in a gate and section of fencing to block off a pond from the road, the same pond we had rescued from tamarisk. He brought plenty of toys, aka power tools, for us to play with. My personal favourite was the electric jackhammer with which we dug holes for the fence poles. It was an experience to be holding that heavy piece of equipment and driving it slowly but surely into the solid earth, knowing that each inch you dug out was another inch of solid concrete to secure the fence we were placing. His other toy was a two-person auger, which was used for drilling the initial portion of the hole, also a blast to use. We got a fair amount done that first day, and were able to set the gate up and concrete in some posts along with it.
The next day brought a morning of restoration and afternoon through evening of fence work. Chris was unable to get out to us until mid-day, so we spent the first half of the day working on an incursion into wilderness. We collected plenty of vertical mulch and rocks, but only had time to plant a few pieces before we galloped off to continue working on the fence. It was a long afternoon, but very rewarding, including plenty of hole digging and much concrete mixing. We set seven or eight posts through which we were to string the cable that made up the fence. The jackhammer ran almost non-stop from midday till five, and we were right there along with it. It was tough going, and we did not start heading home until past sunset, but though tired, everyone was quite satisfied with what we had accomplished and were ready for the coming day. The final day was a race to the finish for the fence. We had to finish setting posts, pour concrete, and string cable through it all. And once again the Wildcorp crew stepped up to the plate and smashed the ball miles out of the park. By the time we left that day, not only was the gate set, the cable strung out on either side, but also the restoration we had left off the day before was complete and we removed two fire-rings, never to be seen again. It was another full, but rewarding day, and we all went back to our humble campsite tired but happy and ready for the break to come.
Post-hitch day went so smoothly I am still not sure if it was a dream. We were packed and ready to leave by eight and home before mid-day (no diesel detour this drive). While Emily and Sara tackled the stacks of dishes to be cleaned and piles of food to be sort, Sam cleaned and inventoried tools and gear, and Leah ran all over Yucca in the truck, doing everything from refilling propane tanks to emptying out the sump toilette. (Funny story about that toilette. So Sam (aka me) and Leah went to dump it at the campground in Joshua tree and, it turns out, were not sufficiently equipped to do so, for we were missing a hose attachment. The result was fairly graphic and I will spare the details, but the point being, bring hoses to dump excrement with or things can get pretty messy pretty fast!)
After the long days of hitch and the final epic clean up the gang felt like giving itself a little treat. We decided that the time had come to finally visit the notorious Harriett and Pappy’s Pioneertown Palace! We spent a few hours there, shooting pool, taking in the atmosphere, chatting with the locals (plenty of whom will not likely remember ever meeting us, but they were a fun crowd), and generally relaxing and enjoying ourselves. It felt good.

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After living in big cities for most of my life, I always figured it was a fairly time consuming task to set up a community - Rome wasn't built in a day and all that. Well, while Great Falls was not the most permanent of cities, it definitely will go down in MY history books as one of the most pleasantly efficient places I've lived yet for any extended period of time. And boy did it go up fast (take that, Rome)! By the time Wildcorps rolled in on day 1, we already had: a grand dining hall (camp chairs arranged in a circle), a decked out restaurant with a WORLD CLASS chef (a combination of camp stoves, trailers, trucks and easy-ups), numerous classrooms (two tents and a cave), luxurious bath-houses (6 port-a-potties set up among the shrubs) and endless public lands for exploration (thanks, BLM!).

I've got to say I was feeling a little nervous going into an All Corps training that Wildcorps was going to be the odd crew out - as the only crew based in Yucca Valley for the moment, and with three members to the other crews' six, I felt like we were already at something of a disadvantage. But as I keep realizing and re-realizing, the DRC means what it says about being a family and a community. And you know, I don't know if this was a happy special accident or the intentional secret genius of our trusty project leaders and staff, but if I were to summarize the most important thing I learned at training, sure it would be a RESULT of all the concrete and crucial facts and experience we got, but really it was that we, a group of strangers, all learned to trust and respect each other as a community. And in 17 days!

The first week of training we spent building a relationship with the land we'll be working to restore and the people we'll be working with to restore it. It's extra important to uphold a strong Leave No Trace ethic while we're out living in the ecosystems we're preserving - it'd be pretty counterproductive to leave more of an impact than we're helping to reduce - so we spent a lot of time talking about our impact while living and working in the desert. One of my favorite discussions of the week was our stellar chef Raven's food talk - how to buy and eat food with a conservation ethic and stay happy, healthy, and not feel guilty about it.
We spent two days getting a little taste of exactly what we'll be doing in the field for the next 7 months - though it's a little different for Wildcorps because we move from project to project. Then we got a few days of Community and Leadership with Steve, though I missed half of it because, I kid you not, I was injured playing Rock, Paper Scissors and had to go back into civilization for a day at the medical clinic (talk about feeling dirty when you walk into a hospital after a week or so in the middle of the desert!).

We spent the following 8 days in WFR training. What an experience! Half lecture and half scenario training, it was such an absorbing process that after day two or so it was pretty hard to remember that we were all together to restore the desert, not to become Backcountry EMTs. I think we all learned a ton of invaluable skills and will feel more comfortable going to remote locations where, if something were to happen, a hospital wouldn't be right around the corner. On top of that, I think we all got so much more comfortable with each other - seeing how someone else responds to emergencies, or any medical issue minor or major, really tells you something about them. I'm happy to say there's no one in the DRC now currently brandishing their WFR certs that I wouldn't put my full trust in!

Well before I jet off to Wildcorps IX Hitch #1, I've got to say that one of the hidden perks of setting up your own Rome like we did at Great Falls is you really live on your own time. One of the first things we did when all five crews circled up for the first time in the parking lot was synch our watches. At first there was a bit of confusion - "but my watch is two minutes different than yours!" - but Golden Valley project leader Shannon quickly pointed out that out there, we're not on satellite or cell phone or Pacific time - we're on DRC time. We kept to a rigorous schedule, but it was OUR schedule, not the corporate world's (literally, what is a weekend?), and boy is it strange to be back in a city not made of tents, sitting at a computer. Luckily, we have 7 more months of working on our own schedule, and you can bet I'm keeping my watch set to DRC time!

--Sara

My name is Andrew Godbout. I’m 19 years old, and I am currently taking a year off from the University of Vermont, where I was a freshman last year. I decided to take a year off to make some money and discover myself. I have spent the past 3 months sweating in a kitchen and making that dough. Now it’s time for me to escape to the desert and learn about and help preserve a completely different ecosystem from that in Mid-coast Maine. I have been outside my whole life, be it mountain biking in the fall, skiing in the winter, lacrosse in the spring, or sailing in the summer. I am super excited to meet the Wildcorps IX crew and share the next 7 months with them.

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