The Weeks Flew By

Well we just finished the end of the second month this past weekend! you last heard about my Day crew. this past month i was on a camping crew leading 8 15-17 year old doing projects for a month! my crew was great. we had a rough start but by the end they had bonded and i loved them all. This job is probably the hardest i have had, and i cant deny that there are moments when i wonder what i am thinking, but those are followed by moments with the kids bonding or just seeing them grow or work or laugh together and as cheesy as that is, it make all the hard times worth it. i have found ways to relate to these kids that i never ever thought i would.

If you know me you probably know that i didn't do that great in high school and the only reason i tolerated school at all was for my friends, this trip i had a 15 year old kid who had been dealing weed and his parents signed him up for the program. one day while working with him he started talking about school and stuff. we had very similar stories when the work day ended he asked if we could talk about it more. i was able to encourage him and maybe boost him up a bit so he can realize that he has still time to work hard in school and it is ok not to be the student your teacher expect because people learn lots of different ways. after the trip i talked to his mom for a few min and she told me that he seemed like a different kid and that the trip was so good for him. this is what makes me love my job!

i originally was meant to go right back out on a camping crew on sunday but due to lack of work they had to cancel one crew, so for this week i get to go to the farm that SCC shares and help out harvesting a weeding there with one of my house mates. its amazing having some time away from kids and be able to just hang out with another girl. next week i will go help the one camping crew so they have a female leader, and the week after that i get time off to go to my dear friend Anne's wedding witch i have been counting down to for a while now!

after summer ends i get an internship so will be moving to either Albuquerque or to lakewood ( just outside denver) i will be either working with the BLM or forest service depending on what one i get. so another move and another town, saying good by to my crew who i have lived and worked with for the past 8 months! it will be a big change so i am enjoying being here now in this great town with great friends. i really do love my job!!!!!!

oops, i forgot to blog.

hi sorry everyone i have not blogged in so long! life has been crazy. i am now living in durango CO. actually the address from my other post is for the office and i now have an apartment, so if you want to send mail directly to me you can at:

apartment 1

2250 w. 3rd ave

Durango CO

I love getting mail and will write back!

so here is an update. since being here we have had a lot of training and working in the area getting use to the air (Durango is 6,500 ft above sea level) and lots of fun. this past week was the first week of leading crews. i am currently the leader of a community crew made up of 10 middle school students. we are building a garden and learning all about water conservation. the animas river runs right through town here so we get to do lots of hands on stuff. we also get to bike all over town as a little gang looking for plants and exploring the river. the next two days we are going up to Silverton CO to do a project up there. its been a lot of fun even though getting kids ages 10-14 to work is NOT easy! i love this town, its gt lots of outdoorsy people the mtns are so close and tons of outdoor activites to do. we can walk to town from our house or take the free trolly. i bike to work every day, and its nice to feel like a local in a toresty town. its small enough that i se people i know already. (in fact on of my participants is sitting to my left with her parents.) over all i am very happy and am excited to see where the summer will lead. ill try to update more! thanks for reading!

Moving forward

>The picture is my crew on our last day of work. They finally let us cut our t-shirts so we got creative. From left to right: Meg, JR, Chase, me, Danielle, Jared
So last friday was our last day of work in Tucson, saturday i packed up and left the great state of AZ headed for denver, stopped for the night to camp outside of Albuquerque and finally arrived at the house of the wonderful Anne Elizabeth Taylor (soon to be Biddle) early sunday afternoon.

Leaving Tucson was sad but i was ready for vacation. i am going to miss the sunny sky every day and the the warm winter though at this point it was getting a bit warm. I am going to miss the Volkels and there wonderful home. i am going to miss silver shoes, the old man we saw at every good live show we went to who danced like a champ and wore shinny silver sneakers. I'll miss the thrift stores i spent to much time at and Kaylie who gave us free pizza at our favorite pub that we went to after work every thursday. Most of all i am going to miss our new friends Sam and Chris, our only real tucson friends, they are the best!

our last hitch was great we did a lot of old revegitation in the desert of old roads used by drug traffickers and immigrants. it was essentially a modern day underground railroad. as you can probably guess it brought up a lot of ethical questions. the last two days we picked up trash, the things we found were crazy. in two days we found over 250 empty backpacks all in one small area. the area was littered with the same items. cans of sardines the same black water jug for everyone back packs, the same spanish drink, mayo jars(this confused us) and all kinds of clothes. We found the bones of a cow and two skills of what i hope was a coyote and not a dog. The things we found that were upsetting was diapers and baby socks. someone told us that it use to be just the dad would come up for work and go home when the season was over but with more strict security its to hard now so entire families are making the trek through the desert. the stash where we found all these things was on the boarder of a reservation, with a horse trail along it. driving on the dirt roads out to the sights was quite the adventure, we would stop to pick up trash we saw along the road as well. At one point we stopped to pick up a bag, but this one was different. In this bag we found fresh limes, a new pair of shoes and cans of beans and corn still in the Walmart bag they were bought in. the person belonging to the bag had probably heard us coming and ran off to hid in the mtns. It made the whole situation a lot more human. there was a man out there who was depending on that food and water and we were told to take it. would this force him to go get more supplies, would he get caught, or worst of all would he make it out? It defiantly made the crew think hard about what we were doing. despite the intense nature of the hitch it was fun and eye opening.

So now we have a week to relax and have some time away. this is the longest we have gone without seeing each other since we meet in january. its nice to be away but odd as well, my crew has become like family. i feel like i finally know what its like to have brothers. ha ha. on sunday we all come together again in Durango at our new apartment, and monday its back to work. my schedule is different this summer, we have three weeks of different thing then the summer leading kids starts. ill be leading with one other core member a group of about 6 middle school or high school students doing work like i was doing before. i am excited and a bit nervous for this step up in responsibility. It is sad to be done with our time un tucson but i was ready for a change in pace and ready to experience Durango.

Back to vacation time. Ill try to do another update soon! I LOVE MY JOB!

Here is my new address in CO:

Emily Bauder

Southwest conservation Corps

701 Camino del Rio Suite 101
Durango, CO 81301

updates to come :)

Edward and I

No No no, i am not referring to the shinny vampire but the great author Edward Abby. I read his book Desert Solitaire, and i LOVED it. its a non fiction book about his time in the desert. The way that he describes things it like a song, his language is beautiful. and to be reading his book sitting in a desert wash or high up in a cotton wood tree bring the experience to the next level. To live the way he does and to be able to relate to him as he describes the beauty surrounding me was awesome. can you tell i liked the book? ha ha

So hitch 7 i believe just ended and we only have one and a half left. it has been crazy how time has flown by. I still love my crew and my job so that is good. i have not written as much as i wanted to do but i am writing now. i don't know that it is worth it to tell you all about my last hitches, there is A LOT that went on so ill give a very brief update and then tell a story.

We have been everywhere around SW AZ. and have done lots of hiking, trash pick up and trail maintenance. We removed over 70 carsonite trail signs and replaced them with steal ones. yeah thats right steal. its great it will last forever and looks nice but, each one weighed about 25 pounds. that is SO heavy to carry for miles on a trail and there is no good way to do it. they are about 7 feet long and have a pointy end, not fun. but we did it and now the San Pedro Riperian Area looks great with spiffy new signs. we have seen all kinds of wild life, like, mule dear that hope more like kangaroos, and tons and tons of birds, and rabbits, a few frogs in the river and fish, we have seen a few coyotes and heard a lot more. we also saw a few scorpions, one was a bright lime green and about 2 inches long! and we have seen snakes, rattlers and not. its been cool to be outside 99 percent of the time.

Last week one day we helped this guy named chris at one of the historical sights at San Pedro, we were moving lumber from a house from the 1880s on to a truck so he could go fix an old coral. the house is not open to the public cause its falling apart but it was really cool with old cracked walls and high ceilings, the floor boards were rotting so we had to watch our step, you don't want to twist an ankle in the creepy space between the ground and the boards, but twisted ankles were not the real concern.

after we finished moving the lumber we were enjoying the cool shade of the building and i was sitting on a stack of wood that we didn't need, i glanced down at a whole in the floor and noticed a scaly looking thing, my first reaction was "oh look a toy snake" that reaction didn't last long as i jumped up from my seat yelling "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh snaaaaaake!" my group gathered around as i rushed to the farthest corner of the room. it was a snake and a big one, a diamond back to be exact but it wasn't moving so naturally the guys grabbed the nearest stick and started poking it. we couldn't see the whole thing, so agains my please the guys lifted it out of the floor boards and we discovered it had no head! a worker before us or some animal must have gotten to it be fore us. it was really cool. i still stayed about 10 feet away while my group touched it and laugh as maggots oozed out of the skin, we cut of the rattle to keep and my crew leader wanted to take it to get the spine out to make a necklace, but when we bagged it and put it in the van it still smelled like rotting flesh so we tied it to the trailer hitch. So that is my snake story, not as exciting as it could have been but when it comes to snakes dead ones are exciting enough for me.

Part two: Hitch three

This is me and Danielle with our pics taking a quick break to get a pic. Those are the classy helmets we have to wear and the gloves and pants all in the hot sun but you know safety is important.This is where we were working in Saguaro National Park finishing the final portion of the AZ trail ( goes from Mexico to Utah) we built rock walls and cleared trail moving tons and tons of prickly pear.
AMAZING sun sets every night!
This is the view from our camp sight. We stayed at the professional trail crews private camp sight is was NICE!
This is our kitchen tent complete with horse shoes right outside. we had a tournament on our rec day and me and JR won... not going lie i can throw a mean horse shoe... apparently.
So that was last hitch, it went great! so now headed in to the 5th i will try to get the 4th hitch update up tonight! thanks for reading/ looking!

The Forgotten Hitch

So last Hitch i didn't write anything so here is a quick update of what went down. The first few days of hitch we were in the black hills finishing up a section of the AZ trail (goes from mexico to Utah) that a crew before us had built. we camped right in a wash on the trail. Below is JR sitting by the fire. the picture to the right is a cairn (the rock thing, not sure how to spell) our helmet and a stump we cut with our crew name. i cant add all the pictures so another post will have to come soon for part two.