— Modish Prover
I have this quote written on the inside of my helmet and my journal as a steady reminder that this is a great a profound challenge but I am getting stronger with every day that passes. It is something that has resonated with me and I hold close to my heart.
I have officially been on the job with Montana Conservation Corps (MCC) for a month and two days! In that time, I went through two weeks of training learining about everything I could possibly have questions about. From what we will be doing, what an average work day looks like, how to handle bears and other wildlife, everything I could possibly ever want to know about loons, how to poop in the woods and how to get along with your crew. Speaking of crew, I have been thrown together with six other individuals, two of which are my leaders. Ellie and August are our fearless leaders and I am a member joined by Alex, Walter, Carolaa and Jade. We all head out together for the next five months destined to become as close as a family with our own highs and lows.
Our first hitch was near Swan lake which was only 45ish minutes from Kalispell where I am living in an apartment with three other MCC girls that are not in my crew. We all just decided to get a place together and luckily connected right off the bat. We're good friends and I look forward to seeing and catching up with them whenever we are all in town. Our first hitch lasted ten days and focused solely on digging tread. Wielding your standard gold mining or seven dwarfs pick for eight hours a day. That thing weighs 6-8 pounds without the handle, and so add the handle onto that and after about two hours you're ready for a break. An average day out on hitch so far looks a lot like this: Wake up around 645, coax myself out of my warm sleeping bag, change back into the same work clothes I have been wearing for probably the last 4 or 5 days, tie up my boots, unzip my tent and head over to the camp stove to make some oatmeal and greet my crew members. We all sleep in our own tents which is really nice at the end of the day, it's really your only chance for privacy and very much becomes your little oasis. We have to be loaded in our rig (large truck) by 8, head over to the worksite and have a warm up to get out blood flowing and share saftey concerns of the day. We also have a question of the day to get our brains goin..these are usually along the lines of..."if you could live in a movie which would it be, if you could swim in a pool of any liquid what would it be or if you could bring back anyone in history to talk to who would it be?" Things like that to spark conversation and get to know your crew members. We then hike into our actual site, this could be a quick ten minute hike or an hour long high elevation gain trek...it just depends on where we are. Swan Lake was pretty easy and when we get there we get to work straight away.
There is a definite art to digging a new trail or tread as we call it out in the woods. I will upload the diagram I drew in a future post to emphasize this technique. For now, I will include a video of me walking through the woods on our first hitch. When the video begins, you can see I am in a forest area with pink flags mapping out where the trail should go, as I continue to walk the trail becomes more clear and more defined as I walk through areas that have been completed.
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