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!