Greetings from the Jawbone-Butterbredt ACEC!
The Jawbone crew, comprised of Tyler, Hailee, Riley, Dan and Natalie, have returned safe and sound from their 4th hitch in the Jawbone area doing restoration work on challenging and rewarding incursions. After a miraculously smooth transition from winter vacation to prepping food and packing the trailer for 10 days of field work in the desert, we were all happy to be camping and working once again. This time around, our crew finished 3 massive incursions, began work on a fourth and touched up a heavily trodden area of high vehicle use. All-in-all, we restored a total of 1203.65 square meters of desert landscape, patched up 125 meters of berms, constructed 442 vertical mulch plants and dug 456 seed pits! To describe the day-by-day activities, I have decided to write the hitch blog as a parody of Harry McClintock’s classic song “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” with one verse encompassing each day of our hitch:
(1) This morning as the sun came up, and our food prep fires were burning
Along came our hitch crew packin’; I said “friends we’re soon returning”
We are headed to our camp not so far away, on LA-2 east of the Sierras
Load the food & tools, and we’re headed to our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(2) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert, you’d better watch the tent!
Because our lantern cause a’fire and we took it out to vent
The soil out here is lithified and we’re working really hard
Got sore hands and knees and some Joshua trees
Deepdish pizza like you wouldn’t believe in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(3) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert, this incursion’s mighty long
Watch out for beavertail cactus and the riders out in mobs
Collecting spiny hopsage ‘cause there’s nothin’ else about!
So load your packs, we’re heading back
Towards camp where we saw those animal tracks in the Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(4) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert, the sky looked mighty weird
We saw mirages all around and the mountains disappeared
We found a sled and then Dan said “let’s go & pick it up!”
The incursion’s done, battle’s far from won
We took the sled and had great fun in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(5) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert we’ve made it halfway through
This morning sure was mighty cold and all our lips were blue
We all know Hump Day’s “Best Day,” and we started number 10
The berm was worn and our gloves were torn
And to get warm we popped popcorn in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(6) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert we jammed to Billy Joel
We had leftover chili for lunch and everyone was full
We spotted Friends of Jawbone, they worked as hard as us
As our hitch unfolds the Nutella froze cold
But our speed of planting is grand to behold in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(7) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert the wind howled mighty strong
We hardly got a wink of sleep and we froze all morning long
The sky cleared up, we warmed right up and we finished incursion 10
Cooked Indian food, cinnamon rolls too
Our field work days are down to 2 in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(8) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert Stephanie came & joined the crew
She brought her go-get-‘em attitude and a box of donuts too
The sun was warm, we could have sworn the day just blew away
We heard some booms, our last day looms
We cooked rice, cheese & veggies, mmm mmm mmm in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(9) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert, breakfast was quinoa and squash
We wrapped up work on incursion 12 and tidied up the wash
We started work on 11, but the soil was hard again
Wind blew once more, we couldn’t wait to snore
Our post-hitch day’s got a lot in store in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
(10) In our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert we packed up & headed home
We washed the buckets, coolers & bins and they frothed over with foam
Submitted all the data, and logged our hours too
Now we’re here to stay, got 5 days to play
Getting Mexican food for dinner, ¡Óle!, in our Good Ol’ Jawbone Desert!
