I'm writing to you from Idabel, Oklahoma. We moved, yesterday. Coming to Oklahoma this round we knew we were going to be camping the first few weeks, with the AmeriCorps NCCC requirement that we would moved to an air conditioned location in a timely manner. The temperature keeps rising and with the possibility of us going on fire, AmeriCorps wanted to make sure we had an air conditioned place to sleep at night. I'm not complaining! I was sick of going to sleep and sweating in my tent. Our last week has been eventful, not necessarily in the work, but in everything else.
Tuesday night we had a storm! Living in a house, I maybe wouldn't have even woken up for it, but living in a tent is a different story. I woke up to Alex shining his light through the screen door on my tent telling me to wake up, that Nick (my TL) wanted us all in the camper. I headed down to the camper and saw the radar on Nick's phone and knew we were in for some not-so-fun weather. About 30 minutes after he had us all corralled in our itty bitty camper we got hit with rain, thunder and lighting that lasted for 2 hours or so. The thunder was so LOUD! Around 3:30 it subsided and we all ventured back to our tents to assess the damage. I had some water in my tent, but nothing too bad, so I went to bed and work the next day. When I got back from work on Wednesday, Melinda and I realized we were definitely hit the hardest. Both of our tents were soaked. And we were two of the people that prepared the most for the rain, we had tarps tucked under our tents and our belongings in bags. Some of my team mates didn't even have tarps and their tents were dry. We were definitely jealous.
Wednesday we were supposed to get another storm (this time with hail), so Nick decided we were packing an overnight bag and getting out of our tents. We went to one of the work centers and parked our sleeping bags in the garage where the Type 6 Engine usually resides. It was basically a team sleep over. We played cards and had made the best of it.
Friday (yesterday) we moved! We are now in Idabel, about 90 minutes south of our prior housing. We're still in the Ouachita National Forest working for the USDA Forest Service, but now we're focusing more on working with the south office. We've met and worked with all of the south employees previously on prescribed burns so it's basically just a new location to us. We report Monday at 10 am for a staff meeting, and we'll see where the week takes us from there. We still have our team in the computer system to go on a detail, so it could happen anytime. And with the way wild fires are going this summer, I feel like we could get that call any day.
Internet is much more accessible now. We're a 5 minute drive to it, as opposed to the previous hour drive so I'll do my best to post a bit more frequently. And I'm going to try to remember to put my camera in my pocket every morning to spice these posts up with pictures!
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