3rd Round

I found out this week that I will be headed to the J. Austin White Cultural Center in Eudora, Arkansas for Shuffle Round.

I will have 9 new people on my team, majority of them I've never had a conversation with.  The team leader I have meet and I'm excited to be working with her, she seems really great.

For the project we'll be working from 7:30 am to 11 am in elementary school classrooms, and then from 2:30 to 6:30 at the Cultural Center leading after school programs.

I update more about the project when I know more!  :)

The Countdown Starts

Two more weeks and my team will be departing Oklahoma.  It's starting to sink in and we're all a bit sad to be leaving, and anxious to be a part of a new team during shuffle round.  I think if we were given the option to stay here working with the Forest Service for the rest of the year, we'd take it.

This week was a good one.  Believe it or not, it started off with a snow day on Monday.  As you may have been able to guess, Oklahoma does not deal with snow nearly as well as Minnesota does.  They also don't get nearly as much as we do back home.

This was enough to get us a day off, what!?!

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent preparing for a 6900 acre prescribed burn.  Everyone on my team has our fingers crossed we don't get rain and we're able to take part in this burn before we leave.  We spent time raking around snags (dead trees) near the road that could potentially fall into the road if they were burned.  We also dug line for 1/4 of a mile down a STEEP slope where the dozer couldn't reach.

Digging line is quite the experience.  My team of ten gets in a line, each person with a tool in hand.  For this particular line, the first two people had pick axes, then a couple of shovels, some council rakes, and we ended up with two leaf rakes.  Our goal is to get a line about 3 feet wide dug down to mineral soil, all while trying not to fall down the mountain.  Good times.  The purpose of the line is to cut off the fuel for the fire preventing it from burning.  Usually we'll walk with a drop torch along the line at the beginning to start the fire so it's not too big and won't jump the line.

You never know what you'll find in the middle of the woods.

Laura was brave enough to open the freezer chest in front of this 'cabin.'  

Luckily no dead bodies, just empty beer cans.

Thursday and Friday we spent working at Sandy Lake Campground.  We had cut down some dead trees previously and it was dry enough to be able to burn the brush from them.

Fire #1.

We spent almost all day on Thursday raking up this darn beach and moving the piles.  

Not so much fun.

Friday was excellent.  It was a beautiful day out and Alex, Amanda and I were in charge of sitting next to this pile all day to make sure it was stoked and burning well.  

Our fire tending tools.

Another week down.

Another Week in the Books

Another cold and rainy week in the books in Oklahoma.  My Minnesota roots are paying off as I know how to dress for this kind of weather.  Layers have been my friend.  Good thing I brought my long underwear back.

Monday we worked at clearing an old cemetery.  That was an interesting experience.  Small trees and brush were overgrown, so we cleared away and raked out debris.  The gravestones were sandstone, and quite old so grave markers were reduced to plain rocks on the ground.  There was one gravestone that actually looked like a modern one and had a name on it.

Here is what most of the gravestones looked like.

The one big gravestone.

What the area looked like after we cleared it out.

Just as we were finishing up at the cemetery a man who lived nearby came to check out what we were doing.  The archaeologist we were working with didn't know much about the origins of the cemetery, and had assumed it was an old Choctaw cemetery.  The man who lived nearby was able to shed some light onto the origins of the cemetery for us.  He told us an old wagon train passed by this area back in the day and a bunch of people got sick and died from something, and this was where they buried them. Interesting stuff.

The rest of the week was pretty rainy so we did some more clearing at work centers and things like that.  Nothing too exciting.  There was some tornado damage we cleared up left from last year's tornado here.

Friday we were able to do some burning, so that brought a fun end to the week.  Burning is something I'm really enjoying doing.  Who woulda thought?!  

Max with one of the fires.

The biggest highlight of my week was most definitely the packages I received!  Two of them.  I am now set on candy for quite a while.  Thanks mom and Janet.  

Yum!

Janet, Sonic was delicious.  I treated my teammate Laura, too.

The Week of Manual Labor

50 some bags of trash kept my team busy this past Monday.  This is what we had collected by lunch.  Not my favorite thing in the world to do so I just kept reminding myself of the AmeriCorps motto; "It's not about me."

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we kept ourselves busy clearing scenic vistas on the Talamena Scenic Byway.  Getting the area ready for the upcoming busy summer season.

We cut down tons of trees that were blocking the views.

My weapon of choice.

The remaining stumps... and garbage.  I refused to pick up the bottles filled with pee.

Here's the before picture at Horse Thief Springs.

And the after.  It's hard to tell, but we really did clear out a ton of trees and brush.  It's just a steep hill down so it's hard to see.

Here's the Horse Thief Spring, surrounded by a stone enclosure built by the CCC.

It was clogged up so Bert the Archeologist headed in to try to unblock it.  No success though.  He said he'd come back another day to try his luck.  The water also has a ton of iron it and is a not so beautiful shade of orange.

Larry informed us the spring is on the list of places people are able to get water on the Ouachita trail.  This sign recommends boiling it for 10 minutes at least before consumption.  No thanks, I think i'll pass on that one.

We also spent some time camouflaging social trails people had started blazing and using.  We want people to use the designated trails so we spent a little time making the social trail seem like it never existed.  We covered it with sticks, leaves, and rocks to make it not so convenient to get down.

A picnic site built by the CCC, we sort of consider them the grandfathers of our program.

Another week in the NCCC record book.  It's crazy to think that we're already halfway through this project and we'll be onto something new come the second week of March.  I'm glad we're able to come back in the summer for another round.  Oklahoma is pretty neat.

Janet, thanks for the card!  Made my day!!