Pictures

Here are some pictures from my teammate, Melinda.

Burt taught Melinda and I how to fell trees.

Sam's grandfathers uncle, or some relation of that sort was a wanted outlaw.  We found him in a museum.

Seriously, what a name for a middle school.

So tasty!

AmeriBums outside the bookstore.  

Max is on a quest to get some 'game' with the ladies.

Our first prescribed burn!  

You can see the person with the drip torch starting the back fire in the background.

Randy and I after the burn.  He showed me the ropes.

Aren't the forest service trucks a lovely color?

Steven and Jody.

Talahina, OK

Talihina is the closest town to us, about 20 minutes from camp.  It's where we go to the gym, do our laundry, and pick up stuff we need at the Dollar General.  

Talihina is also home to Pam's 'Hateful Hussy' Diner.  Yes, it may be my favorite place in town. 

We made the paper!

We made the local paper!  I don't think there's too much going on in Poteau, so they take anything they can get to fill up the daily paper.  

I don't know how to rotate it, deal with it.  

Debris Shelter

Larry, one of our supervisors, is a survival class instructor and we've been picking his brain about survival techniques since we learned about his expertise.  Friday after we completed our sawing we had some time to kill so he and Sarah showed us how to make a debris shelter using sticks and ground debris.  

Our shelter from above.

Alex taking a break in the completed shelter.

Weekly Update

I'm back at McDonald's to get internet again.  Gross, but necessary.  Corps member problem.

We had an exciting week here in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma.

Monday started off with a bang.  We completed our first prescribed burn!!  We had our classroom stuff last week and we were more than ready to get outside and do some stuff.  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos because I was busy making sure I didn't get burned up.

For the burn each of my teammates and I were teamed up with forest service guys to learn the ropes.  I was with Randy, and we were in charge of 'stripping'.   Stripping is taking a drip torch and walking through the area to be burned, lighting the ground on fire as you go.  Google Image search 'drip torch' and you'll get an idea of what I was doing.  The 1.5 miles of terrain we covered was quite hilly, and that coupled with Randy's fast pace equaled one tired Nathalie at the end of the day.  It was fun though.  634 acres in the book!

Tuesday we headed back out to burn again. I did more stripping with a drip torch, but a bit more independently this time.  The fun part of the day came when we got a 'spot fire.'  A spot fire is when an area of land outside of the designated burn area ignites.  Usually if it's windy there's a good chance of a spot fire.  We headed over to where it was and grabbed our tools to dig a hand line.  A hand line is when tools are used to build a line around the fire down to mineral soil to contain the fire.  When all of the fuel is consumed, the fire will go out.  Remember, we're out in the middle of nowhere, so water isn't available and isn't an option.  Anyway, back to the hand line.  I was the last in our little line and used a rake to clear the line and make sure it was all down to mineral soil.

Did you follow that?  So much lingo, makes me seem like I actually know something about fighting fire.

Wednesday was quite interesting.  We got stranded at the boy scout camp!  To get out of the camp we drive over a little bridge covering a little stream.  Well, after a heavy night of rain that little stream wasn't quite so little anymore.  Ernie, the camp caretaker, told us it was best for us to just hang tight for the day, so that's what we did.

Thursday was rainy again so we had a classroom day on Emergency Management.  It put most of the team to sleep, but I thought it was pretty interesting.

Friday was back to chainsaws.  We went back to the area where we felled our trees to limb and buck them.  (There I go again with the lingo)  Of course, Steven and I had the heaviest chainsaw so at the end of the day my arms were pretty darn tired.

Here's Steven with the saw.

Saturday we had a volunteer project with Friends of Ouachita Trail (FOOT).  We built a bridge over part of the trail.  It looks really neat, I'll try to get a picture from one of my teammates to show you.

I'm not quite sure what's in store for us this week.  We usually don't know our schedule for the next day until the end of the present day.  Good thing my team is really flexible.  

MLK Day: A Day On

For AmeriCorps NCCCers, MLK day is a day on, not a day off.   There weren’t any organized celebrations out in the middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma, so we took off early and headed to Fort Smith, Arkansas.

There was an event at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith we attended and then helped to clean up after.  One of the neatest things about the day was a march honoring Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr.  Everyone in attendance marched around campus lead by ROTC students displaying an American Flag and the UAFS drum corps.  Being aware of the freedoms we have today, that we were able to march without fear of police brutality, was pretty neat.  We’ve come a long way as a country, but we’re definitely not at the end of the road yet. 

After the event, we figured we had driven the hour and a half to Fort Smith so we better check out the town.  We headed to Fort Smith’s cluster of National Historic Sites.  Part of the National Park Service.  We were also pleasantly surprised to find out it was a free admission day due to MLK day.  Score for our small stipends and us!

The most recognizable place we saw was the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.  According to my informational brochure: In 1987 Congress established this unit of the National Trails System, commemorating the removal of five Eastern tribes and their forced journey to Oklahoma. 

We also saw the courthouse and jail that Judge Isaac C. Parker presided over.  The most interesting part of the section was what was constructed just outside the jail/courthouse.  Gallows.  A reproduction of the 1886 gallows serve as a reminder of the chaotic social conditions that existed at the time.

The gallows were designed to hang as many as six condemned criminals at a time. In all 79 people were hanged at the gallows.  When we walked into the gallows area, we took note of the 6 nooses.  Only on anniversaries of hangings are the nooses displayed.  In the history of the gallows, only twice were 6 people hanged at once.  We just so happened to be there on one of those days.

Pet Skunk

Only in Arkansas, right?  The woman who owns this skunk, named Archie, also has another sunk called Flowers. 

Don’t worry, the smell glands were removed!

My Address

Here is my mailing address for the next two months.

Nathalie Besse
52175 US Highway 59
Hodgen, Ok 74939

Anything letters sent to the Denver address will be forwarded periodically, but not packages.

Chainsaw Training

We arrived in Oklahoma on a Sunday night and our sponsors informed us that Monday afternoon we would be heading to Lake Ouachita State Park in Arkansas to do chainsaw training with anther AmeriCorps NCCC team working there.

We unpacked and packed our bags for our 3 day stay in Arkansas.  Chainsaw training consisted of a day of classroom training, and then a day in the field.

The field day was fun.  We worked in the area of the park that was tornado damaged so our work was most definitely beneficial.

When we got back to Oklahoma we headed out to the field to do some actual felling.  It was nerve wracking but our sponsors were right there next to us going over everything we had learned and making sure we were being absolutely safe.

This is the tree I felled.  Crazy, huh!?!

Mom - Don't worry, we're being really, really safe!

Oklahoma!

We took off for Oklahoma at the end of transition week and made the trip in two days.  Stopping in Kansas on the way.  It was nice to only have two days of travel this round as opposed to the three when we went to San Antonio.

We stopped at a gas station in Kansas that had fake palm trees outside.  What's up with that, Kansas?

Our sponsors are nice again this round, although I don't envision them dropping off baked goods like Mark and Peggy did.  I'll talk more about our sponsor, the U.S. Forest Service in another post.

We're living at Camp Tom Hale, a boy scout cabin in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma.  It's pretty neat.  We're 20ish minutes from the nearest town, which has a couple of gas station and a Subway.  We're about  45 minutes away from a McDonalds that has wireless Internet.  It's about a forty minute commute to work each day.

We're living in the nicer staff cabins, which have bathrooms!  A definite pro.  There are four cabins we have access to, the 3 other girls on our team and I have a cabin.  Then the boys split up in threes in the other cabins and we designated one as our hang out space.  We've dubbed in the Command Center, as we lovingly refer to our team leader as Commander Connolly (his last name).

I've upgraded from a cot to a bed!

The camp is huge!  It was finally nice enough out to explore yesterday so Max and I checked the place out.  I'll write up another post about it soon when I get more pictures of it.  Below is a sneak peak of the  amphitheater.

One of the biggest con's of the camp is that there is no running water in the commercial sized kitchen we cook in.  There is also no heat in the kitchen/dining hall, so for the past two days that's been a pain. We've learned to bundle up for dinner.

This is not a joke, this is how we actually bundle up for dinner!

Seeing as we don't have internet, I'll do my best to write weekly updates when we 'head to town' for our weekly Wal-Mart trips for groceries.

Transition Week

After a two week Christmas break home in Minnesota it was back to Denver for transition week.  It was a few meetings with a lot of hurry up and wait in between.  

My team chose myself and my teammate Melinda as Peer Helpers for our team so we had a training for the position.  It reminded me a lot of RA training.  We're not expected to give advice, just to be there to listen when needed.

It was also fun to see the friends I made during training.  We headed downtown Denver a few times and had a good time.