Although we are called Jawbone we spent our third straight hitch not in but in the THC land once again, our last time working there. We camped at a different site than our previous two hitches. Our campsite was situated behind a knoll that hid us from the main road. Contrasting with the campsite from our first two hitches where we would see amazing sunrises, this campsite let us view marvelous sunsets of beautiful colors. Some shocking, bizarre, and unfortunate things occurred on this hitch. Our first day of arrival was the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving weekend is a haven for OHVers. When we turned on the main road that led us into the THC land, the landscape was littered with white dots from RVs and a cloud of dust hung over the area from the OHV use. They prominently left on Sunday to return to civilization. For the first time on hitch we experienced the wonder that is called rain. Some of us had forgotten what rain actually was. At midnight of one of the nights we heard the magical raindrops on our tent. None of our belongings got wet due to the durability of our pup tents. The rain provided the morning with tremendous fog. Vegging (where we go out and get dead branches for vertical mulch) in the morning was like walking in a horror movie; we could hardly see our surroundings. It did not rain the rest of the hitch, but the desert would be coated with a layer of moisture in the morning and the morning skies would be dark, cloudy, and ominous. Hopefully, this will lead to beautiful wildflowers in the spring. Even with the rain and cloudy days, the weather was much warmer than our previous two hitches. It never got below freezing which was a blessing and provided for some nice nights of rest. One of the most bizarre and unusual encounters happened on the evening of day 10. Coming back from a long day of work, we saw a Toyota Prius on the side of the road and remarked how odd that was. Later that evening, the Prius was parked near or rocket box and eventually the Prius rolled up to our camp site. Andy and Emlyn were the first to talk to him and the rest of us were soon to follow. This man loved hearing himself talk. He was out there to hunt coyotes by attracting them with various animal calls. When asked if he ate the meat, he claimed that he didn’t but he hangs the pelt on the wall and says to himself “well there’s one less coyote.” Then he proceeded to bust out a few packs of cards and show us magic tricks for at least 20 minutes. Some of things he talked about were how his wife and child were “weak,” prison wine, his experience on pain medication, and making fun of us for doing this job. He never gave us his name but I nicknamed him Magic Mike. He shall never be forgotten. This hitch was plagued with sickness. I was the first one to get sick with a sore throat and the sickness spread to some of the other crew members. Because of the sickness, and because we were done with the work that the THC set out for us, we were able to leave the field a day early. For the actual work part of our hitch we worked on incursions in the area for the first seven days. On day 8-11, we went back a check out previous incursions we worked on in our previous hitches. We found that some had been run over by OHVers which was a huge disappointment but most of the incursions we worked on were intact. The THC land was interesting and provided us with many bizarre moments but it will be comforting to return to Jawbone, a place we have not been since Septoberfest. I started playing Pokemon Red to catch all 151 Pokemon. My Pokemon count is at 45. -Jason Matott
