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.