We're pretty excited because both our project and our sponsor seem really great. The project is right up our alley - fuels reduction work/trail clearing in the snowy mountains with chainsaws. Chainsaws and snow?! Ok! We're mostly going to be bucking and clearing instead of chopping down trees, but it'll mean a good deal of time just handling the saws and getting us ready for when we start to use them more in a fire line capacity. Not to mention that we'll get a great workout just from shoveling snow! We're 20 minutes from the south gate of Yosemite and we're up in the mountains - I cannot wait to play in the snow. Dead serious.
In other, semi-related news, Silver 5 is walking a little bit taller lately and it has everything to do with these guys:
Fire boots! We received them, along with a lot of our other fire gear, last week which was something we had been waiting for since we found out we had all made it onto a Fire Management Team. We broke in our boots and our new uniforms while hiking this past weekend in Auburn, CA which was a bunch of fun. I for one was thrilled to get off of base (transportation here is way trickier than in Portland) and definitely excited to get hiking! Luckily we're going again this weekend - a longer trail this time, but the elevation change won't be as dramatic.
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| Silver 5 (minus Rick) at the turn-around point on our hike last Sunday |
We've also been busy with chainsaw training. After two days in the classroom we got to try our hand at actually operating a saw. By the end of the day I had felled a tree! I can't deny that it felt pretty awesome. We had great instructors from one of the hotshot crews from the nearby El Dorado National Forest. They were very thorough and safety-conscious which, I'm sure, makes my parents feel better! During classroom training we heard a lot of stories from our instructors (this time from the Bureau of Land Management). If the stories didn't end with "...and that's how he died" they ended with "...I said, "I'm not comfortable with this" and walked away". So now not only do we have a vague idea of what we can do with a chainsaw but we also have a clear view of what we cannot, should not and must never do with a saw, which is equally (if not more) important.
There is still more fire training in our future, but the rest of this week has our team focusing on pre-project stuff and day-long interim projects. We had one interim project last week at the Danny Nunn Community Garden. Together with Green 6 (a fellow FMT) we got the place spruced up and laid the ground work for pathways to be constructed by another team later this week. We have another interim project tomorrow with Blue 4 (again, a fellow FMT) at a nearby museum doing some as-yet-unspecified fuel reduction work. With an Independent Service Project on Saturday, a long hike on Sunday and the MLK Day of Service on Monday, the team is taking advantage of some of the downtime today to recuperate from last week and to prepare for this "weekend".
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| Harvesting at the Danny Nunn Community Garden |
But we're still having fun! We had a Mandatory Team Fun Night last week and we spent it playing Murder in the Dark (kind of like Mafia just...mostly in the dark) with some Blue 4 kids. Blue 4 and Silver 5 also took turns cooking for one another last week. It has been really great to get to know some of the other teams here especially since we're going through fire training together (example: our chainsaw training yesterday was with Green 6).
That'll about do it for tonight! Hope all's well with everyone, and take care!
Cheers =)
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