A Bang and a Fire, But Mostly Fence
Hitch 3 started off with a bang which, unfortunately, we found out later was the sound of an overly ripe baby watermelon exploding in the trailer on the way to the campsite, and the bangs kept up, just as we kept working in the Grass Valley Wilderness. We were once again amidst the random sonic booms often heard as fighter jets fly overhead (for some reason no one seems to enjoy them as much as I do).
No kit fox sightings yet, kind of a bummer, but hope still remains that sooner rather than later, they will be kind enough to grace us with their cute little faces and obvious desert god-like characteristics, and not just leave their tiny poops near the water spigot and rocket box anymore.
For a couple of days we worked to finish up a fencing job along the edge of the Grass Valley Wilderness area aimed to keep the desert wilderness relatively untouched by humans as it has been designated, it was a really nice moment to observe the fruits of our labor and to feel a sense of accomplishment spurring from the completion of a quality, long-term restoration job.
Once the fence was done, we moved on to a couple of effectiveness monitoring sites to see how the previous restoration had held up. As we drove right past the first monitoring site without even noticing the previous restoration it became pretty obvious that they had held up very well, as it blended in so well to the surrounding area. The rest weren’t easy to notice either, which helped to exemplify the success of our work out here and keep spirits high within the crew.
Moving on from the monitoring sites we worked a couple of incursions, adding some restoration work of our own, perfecting our “creosote weave” methods. All the while we were thinking about, and quite often singing “Dreamweaver” by Gary Wright, unfortunately it never lasted very long as we found ourselves to be quite limited in our lyrical knowledge and realized we only knew the first two lines of the chorus.
“Hey, is that trailer over there on fire?”
This question alludes to one of the more interesting mornings that I’ve had in a while. In the wee hours of day 6 as we all awoke we noticed about a half mile to the west our private property neighbors had a nice little fire going. I even remember remarking to someone as I began my morning routine “Hey check it out, our private property neighbors have a nice little fire going”. As the sun rose we noticed that there was a lot of black smoke coming from their property, it was discussed within the crew that that was no ordinary fire and that they might be burning trash. We decided to Sherlock Holmes the situation and grabbed the binoculars from our fencing bucket, and before we left the campsite to head to work, we concluded that something that resembled a trailer home on the property was on fire. Low and behold, we drove toward the our fence project and came up to the private property and just as we had suspected their trailer home was completely engulfed in flames. A lot of theories were speculated throughout the day, much of it nonsense that consequently fit right in with the other extremely random topics that were explored throughout the hitch (desert life provides for some very odd conversations trust me), but that event really came to showcase just how interesting and full of surprises the desert can be sometimes. And I’m speaking for the rest of my crew as I say this, but I feel like we can’t wait to see what the next 11 desert hitches have in store for us: So bring it on! (As long as it’s not flat or glocky).
Signing out (nap time),
