I'm on a Roll...

Evidently I am really hard on trucks.  I mean, I think it might have something to do with my job and the terrain on which I travel, but I can't help but feel partially responsible.  As you have probably guessed, I am back in Laramie, with a (once again) malfunctioning truck.  But let me back up, because last week I did go to the desert and was somehow able to stay out for the full 5 days as I had intended (despite the desert's best effort to break me down), and this week I did get a whole 2.5 worthwhile work days in...so at least I'm making progress, albeit in short and frustrating bursts.

So last week I left for the desert on Monday, got there late afternoon, and managed to put in several productive hours of happy and distraction-less inventorying.  I was feeling good, I was remembering everything I love about the desert, and I was really enjoying it.  It felt great, I had my positive energy back!  By day two my positivity was flagging, as I wrestled with a pounding headache in the 95 degree heat of the desert, shadeless and unforgiving.  I drank roughly 3,596 gallons of water, took a 10 minute power nap mid-day, and powered through, still somehow putting in a 12 hour day, but feeling decidedly less happy about the whole thing.

Day 3 proved a tad frustrating when a swiftly deteriorating supply of gas sent me out to town and then, because I was already down that way I tried to access the southern part of the unit and found first that an oil/gas road had been built on top of a portion of one route that I had hoped to use for access, causing the latter half to be difficult to access and therefor abandoned.  Then, a second effort landed me on the path of an old two-track that had also since been buried by a large constructed oil/gas route, but one that had been abandoned, and if you have ever done any traveling in the desert you know that these constructed roads do NOT age well.  After the first washed out and rocky hill I felt hesitant, but continued.  The second had me paying attention, and the third washout left me concerned that I might somehow get myself into a place that I would find I could not get out of.  Frustrated I paced around the truck, mulling over my options: Waste half a day driving back to the part of the unit I knew I could easily access, waste half a day hiking the remainder of this route to decide if traversing this washout would simply land me in the thick of several more, or wing it and risk getting stuck.  Just as I was stomping around proclaiming to the heavens that "this s#!t only happens to me", a wild horse happened by and my puppy exited the truck via a flying leap out the window and took off running through cacti and sage brush to see if it would be her friend.  Fortunately she's a smart dog, and she quickly realized that the retreating horse was not interested in her friendship, so she turned around and returned to the vehicle, not the least bit sorry for having ignored my angry screams for her to come back.  That was it, I loaded her into the truck, buckled her harness into the seat belt (she did not like this), and turned this whole mess around for territory that I knew would present far fewer challenges.

Day 4, opened with a long quiet walk, cool and pleasant just after sunrise.  On a winding road alternating through sand dunes and clay flats, I strolled along happily with my puppy.  A small threatening exchange took place with an offended wild horse, much to the confusion of non-horse-savvy puppy, but other than that the walk was pleasant and uneventful.  And so I naively thought perhaps the entire day would follow suit.  By 2:00 pm the wind had picked up to such an extent that attempting to take a photo with the I-pad became akin to resistance strength training and large, Audrey Hepburn style sunglasses were required just to keep my contacts from blowing out of my eyeballs.  I have no way of knowing, but I'm confident that these winds were in excess of 50 to 60 mph, as they were consistently rocking the entire pickup truck and opening the windward door became exceedingly challenging.  By the end of the day a great deal of dust had blown into and around everything that composed my entire view of the world, my teeth were gritty, my ears had small beaches in them, my hair was an absurd rat's nest of sand and dust, and my normally black dog was an awkward shade of khaki.  It was 5:00 pm; when in the field I usually try to work 6:30 to 6:30 and so I had an hour and a half to kill but had found myself at the mouth of a road leading into the WSA (Wilderness Study Area) where mechanized transport is forbidden, and I knew I had a walk of several hours to capture the entire road.  Rather than quit early I decided to inventory the road as far as the first spur route to a reservoir, and capture all of that so that tomorrow I would be able to race through the first part and start just beyond that spur.  After quickly stuffing water and maps, snacks and a compass into my pack I set out, puppy by my side, onto this two-track, and straight towards an ominous looking cloud.  Experience told me that this giant cloud would, despite it's best effort, drop only 10 or 12 raindrops on the desert floor, the rest evaporating in the insanely dry air before ever reaching the ground, so I felt confident in my choice to continue on.

Unfortunately experiences breeds confidence that some might describe as "false", and in this case that would be an accurate assessment.  Although I was correct in assuming that very little of the rain would reach the ground, I was incorrect in assuming that this would cause no problems for me.  You see, immediately preceding those 12 drops of rain was a wall of wind the likes of which I daresay I have never experienced on foot before, and carried along by that wall of wind were millions upon millions of grains of sand.  So literally the instant I reached the spur route that I had intended to hike I turned to see a dust storm reminiscent of those I encountered in Mauritania, headed my way.  I quickly turned and quite literally ran, full backpack on and dog leash in hand with a confused, frolicking, and tug-of-warring puppy on the other end, back the way I had come, hoping beyond hope that I would reach the truck before the sand reached me.  I didn't.  10 breathless, awkward, lumbering minutes later I dropped to my knees and wrapped myself over my doggies eyes as the stinging sand blasted the outer layers of skin off the backs of my legs.  To make matters worse, the winds barely slowed throughout the entire evening and picked up with a vengeance sometime after 11:00 pm, shaking the truck of side to side and generally destroying any hope I had of getting a good nights sleep.

The final day of this trip was uneventful, ended early, and I was back in Laramie by nightfall.  Thunderstorm warnings kept me from returning to Adobe Town this Monday morning, and my return Tuesday went well; I was even able to get in two full, uneventful days before disaster struck again.  This time I was camping somewhere near the center of the entire unit, but at the southern end of the WSA, generally speaking in the middle of nowhere, on a little eroded two-track route that was frequently buried in sand dunes.  In the morning I got up, fed my pup, and cooked my oatmeal all while still cocooned in my sleeping bag in the 40 degree desert morning.  When I finally felt ready to emerge and take on the day, I stalled out the truck.  Odd, I thought, I've been driving a standard since I was 17, shouldn't I be able to get the truck moving without stalling it out at this point in my life?  A second effort yielded the same result, and on the third I stamped the gas and completely let off the clutch immediately and rolled away without incident.  Now that I was moving I decided to investigate the clutch pedal, because that's apparently how my priorities worked out in my head: 1) get truck moving, and 2) now determine whats wrong with it.  Seems wise.

I found I had no tension in the clutch pedal anymore until the very last instant, and sometimes even with the clutch to the floor it continued to move.  If you knew me when I lived in Saint Thomas, then you know that I have experienced such issues before, only that time with our old jeep, aptly named the adventuremobile, and stuck in bumper to bumper cruise-ship-day-traffic.  So this time at least I didn't have seven safari trucks full of tourists on all sides to watch me shove the darn truck into gear with all I'm worth and quietly pray my way through every stop sign, at least there was that.  At any rate I was so far in, on a road I had already inventoried the far end of, and I really didn't want to have to drive it again.  So I parked the truck and went for what I thought would be a two hour but turned out to be more like a four hour long hike, to finish that road, all the roads coming off of it, and a reservoir smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  When I got back to the truck I locked in the hubs, and wrestled it around, and slow and steady, picked my way all the way back to a county road.  There I called my pops to talk me through adding some clutch (brake) fluid and carefully headed for the highway, and eventually home.

So here I am again, back earlier than I intended, heading back out later than intended, but Grimace the purple truck needs his R&R time too...so that's that.  And hey, at least it wasn't a tire, so I didn't have to go back to Walmart, which I don't think my delicate psyche could have taken at this point.

If you are reading this and thinking "man, somebody should get that girl a better truck!" then I urge you to go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation, and feel free to send us an email requesting that the money be spent on fixing up poor old Grimace.  Alternatively, you may call any wealthy friends that you may have and ask them nicely if they'd like to buy me a new truck.  You also might be thinking, "man, that girl kills trucks, I would never hire her to do anything ever because she just destroys everything she touches" but I assure you that I asked a reputable source and I am under the understanding that there is no way the slave cylinder could have been caused to leak by my driving, and it's more likely that it was a re-manufactured part that was faulty and failed well before it should have, regardless of how it was driven.  So if you feel that way you should still go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation and let them know that you know I'm not a truck killer, at least not on purpose...

Here, I'll even give you the link!  Because I'm so thoughtful!  http://www.voiceforthewild.org/page.php?id=donate#.UcTlQ_ksmys

Wild Horses

Wilderness Doggy

That's some strong dirt!

Adobe Town

Adobe Town

Sunset Road

DUST STORM!

Ominous cloud...

Adobe Town

My Faithful friends

Sunset

DUST STORM!

Adobe Town Valley

Help me get the word out!

Do you want to give mother nature a really great Christmas present this year?  Do you love Wyoming's wild places?  Do you wish that you could make some sort of contribution to offset that inherent damage that your energy consumption does to the environment in the extraction of fuels? Are you apathetic about the environment but love me? Well boy oh boy do I have an opportunity for you!  Here's the deal: The little non-profit that I work for in Wyoming is trying to get a grant this winter from the EnviroKids program by Nature's Path Foods and we need your help!  Because we are such a small organization working in a not very populous state we start out with a handicap right out of the gate, we just don't have influence over the same number of people that a non-profit in say NYC or San Francisco has.  Last years winner won with something like 27,000 votes and we operate in a city that barely has that many people in it.  BCA fights for the responsible management of public lands in Wyoming, but the pocket gophers, wolves, elk, deer, and sage grouse can't vote, they don't have facebook accounts.  YOU do.

We could be the underdog story of the year!  I have no facts to back this up, it is merely conjecture, but I'm pretty sure a non-national, Wyoming based non-profit has never won a FB voting based grant on any sort of a large scale.  I can't confirm nor deny this, but no matter how many different ways I google "Wyoming non-profit wins grant through facebook voting" I still come up with nothing.  Help us change that, BCA does a lot of good work, with only a few great employees, and a severely limited budget because we can't imagine not doing it; this is our passion and our life's work, help us keep it up!  

MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS WHOLE POST BELOW:

How to Vote:

1. Go here.

2. If it doesn't come up automatically, find the project titled: Protecting Wyoming's Wildlife from the Oil Industry by Erik Molvar

3. Click "Vote Now"

4. Do it again every 24 hours until Dec 15th at midnight

"P-p-p-p-please help BCA help us!" -Pronghorns

Yet Another Call to Action...

"For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?"  ~Aldo Leopold

I know that I have always been conscious of the quiet, but steady destruction of wild places that human consumption necessitates, somewhere in the back of my head there has always been an awareness that natural places that I have known and loved in my life will not always be there.  Its a reality I have been uncomfortable with for a long time, but one that I know I thought, and I think most people think, that they can do nothing about.  How does one person stop the inevitable grind of progress in defense of the wild places they have come to love?  This is an adversary against which the average person cannot possibly compete, right?  But in my more recent work I am beginning to discover the ways in which each of us, in our own way, can make a difference.  I am finding them, and I want to share them, because this is a fight that is truly worth fighting, not just for the environmentalists and the outdoors enthusiasts, but for everyone and let me tell you why.  

I recently listened to an episode of the podcast called "Too Much Information" with Benjamen Walker called "4 Big Ideas From Sept 17th, 2012" and I highly recommend it to everyone, and I mean everyone, not just environmentalists, even though I know that my audience of the 4 people who read this blog is heavily biased on the environmental side, please share this, because this matters.  It's about the book Small is Beautiful by the British economist and author E. F. Schumacher and it talks about economics of scale.  My favorite quote from the episode is by the author Andrew Sims, who says: 

"If a business goes bankrupt you can set up elsewhere, if the biosphere, if the ecosystems upon which we depend are bankrupted through over-exploitation, well, there might be no coming back from that."

I love it because I think it completely explains the sense of urgency I feel about protecting the planet that we depend on, not just because I am a nature-loving tree-hugger, but because I can see that in a very fundamental way this planet sustains us, and if we don't take care to preserve at least some of it, eventually we will bankrupt it.  Consider this statistic:  According to the Pew Environment Group 6000 acres of open land are lost each day...each day!  That is 2.19 million acres of land that are lost each year, every year or alternatively 250 acres per hour...until somebody says that's enough.  I'm saying that's enough now.  We cannot live as though our resources are infinite, we cannot assume that growth is always the answer.  Try to imagine a world with no open spaces, no wild lands, no wilderness.  It should be unimaginable, because it is illogical and unnatural, but I've met people who say they would prefer it.  I think this is a preference borne of a lack of understanding.  

So what can you do to help change this?  

Educate, teach your children about the environment and wildernesses that you love, your parents, your friends.  Talk about it, tell people why you care.  I can't help but be passionate about these things, and it just bubbles out of me all the time.  Ask any one of my friends, I am one of the most annoying hiking buddies ever, because I just spout information about ecosystems, air quality, endangered species, habitat loss, and anything else that pops into my head.  I can't help it, but I like to think that every once in a while I inspire someone else to care, and that is the best outcome that I can think of.  

Support, not everyone wants to do the kind of work that I do, and that is absolutely fine.  Not everyone has to, but if you support the efforts that people in my line of work are making, show it.  I know so many people who agree with what I do, and congratulate my efforts to protect these wild lands, but getting people to lift a pen and share these feelings with others is like pulling teeth!  Writing a letter to the editor, blog post, facebook post, or tweet about a local wilderness area that you love can be so inspiring to someone like me who spends their days making efforts that most people never even notice.  Like the Campaign for America's Wilderness on facebook, find the person closest to your area who is out there inventorying public lands to find eligible wilderness areas and shake their hand, write them a thank you letter, or donate to their organization.  Write to your congress person urging them to give lands near you wilderness protection.  These things can take 5 minutes, but if you don't show anyone that these issues matter to you, no one will ever do anything about it.  

Warning: Shameless plug of my own work to follow...

If you are in Wyoming, have traveled to Wyoming, or want to travel to Wyoming, consider doing me the favor of writing something about your appreciation of the lands that I have inventoried.  If you hunt in Wyoming, consider voicing how crucial winter ranges for big game need better protections so that there will continue to be healthy populations of game for sport hunting.  If you appreciate desert landscapes, consider writing to the to a local paper and expressing how important it is that we realize deserts are not simply wasted space, sitting on top of possible energy reserves, but are instead valuable habitats and ecosystems.  If you like backpacking and back country camping, write to your favorite magazine or publication urging readers to recognize that many of the areas they enjoy are not yet protected, and could in fact be developed at any time.  

Do something!  Do anything.  Express what you care about in your state and why to anyone that you can, because tomorrow's 6000 acres could be the forests and fields of your childhood, and if you stay quiet today you'll forever regret it when that fateful tomorrow comes.  

"The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed."  -E. F. Schumacher

Wilderness

I have been on hiatus for....oh since about the day that I got to Wyoming and moved into a truck in the Red Desert.  My truck-inhabiting days are coming to a swift close though, thanks entirely to the Wyoming winter that dropped 8 inches of snow on us over the last 2 days.  So now I feel it is time to share some stories of my wilderness inventorying and of what this has all come to mean to me.  First, a bit about what I really do, because I have come to find out that many of you have no idea, and that is okay!  I am quite happy to educate you all!  Below is an excerpt from an article about my work that I wrote for the winter newsletter sent to members by the non-profit I work for, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, to read the whole thing please consider joining BCA and supporting the great work that we do!

"Even those who are conservation minded don’t always have a strong grasp of what a wilderness inventory is, and why they are important.  So what do I really do?  I map routes, roads, and human influences in otherwise predominantly un-human influenced areas.  Why does this matter?  Because if I can prove that these areas possess “wilderness characteristics” such as outstanding opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation, than I can potentially be a catalyst in their lasting protection, and what more can I give to the generations to come than the joy of a wild place preserved?"

So this is what I do in a nutshell, but what I really seem to do is take a lot of photos of roads and change a lot of flat tires.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my job, it is perfect for me, I love the challenges and the beauty, and the fact that I have the real potential to bring about lasting change for at least 5 small corners of the beautiful Wyoming Wilderness.  And I am really good at changing tires.  Here's the wonderful part, I think when you are doing good work, good things come to you, and although I have had 3 flat tires in the course of this summer, at least 2 of them happened at just the right time.  By this I mean that when I am in the desert I rarely have cell phone service, and I tend to stay out for between 4 and 8 days at a time, i.e. longer than the accuracy of the weather forecast that I checked before I left.  Rain in the desert means slippery and dangerous roads and no chance of getting any work done, not to mention a greatly increased chance of getting stuck. The second to last flat tire that I got forced me to leave the desert 4 days earlier than planned, but just in time to miss 3 straight days of rain.  The last flat tire was this Sunday night, in the dark I might add, and it sent me into town 6 days early and just in time to find out that 3 cold fronts were headed right for me; dropping not only temperatures, but also several inches of snow.  So I appreciate my flat tires, for all the trouble that they have caused, I suspect that they have saved me from quite a bit more.

Plus I love the challenge, changing a truck tire is no easy task, and I've had some doozies, tires so flat that I can't fit a jack under them, in darkness, and rain, and cacti were often involved.  Every time I finally get through changing a tire I feel like a rock star; yeah, I just did that, all by myself, and I could do it again if I wanted to.  I love that, almost as much as I love the feeling of completing an inventory, now that is a victory.  By the time I am done with an inventory, I know every route, road, fence, and structure on a property; all the folds of the topography, and all of the property bounds.  I can navigate like a pro, I can hit any little 2 track road, no matter how small, and know exactly where I am, I can point to every hill I hiked and every arbitrary property line that I surveyed.  I love that, I love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with the completion of something like that; yeah I memorized those 12,000 acres, and now I'm going to go do it again with 10,000 more, no big deal.

It's not all fun and flat tires though, the advocacy side of things (what I'm getting into now, since my field work is wrapping up) is a challenge of another sort.  The term wilderness means different things to different people, and many tend to visualize pristine mountain streams and dense forests when wilderness is brought to mind.  That's great, because those are wildernesses and also deserve protection; but a desert is too, although many have trouble recognizing this as wild land and not waste land.  The definition of wilderness that I follow comes from the Bureau of Land Management, because they are the ones who will make the call as to whether the land that I wish to protect qualifies for wilderness protection, but folks who have no experience in wilderness designation and its official definition tend to have a definition more like this one in their heads:

wil·der·ness  (wldr-ns)
n.
1. An unsettled, uncultivated region left in its natural condition, especially:
a. A large wild tract of land covered with dense vegetation or forests.
b. An extensive area, such as a desert or ocean, that is barren or empty; a waste.
c. A piece of land set aside to grow wild.
2. Something characterized by bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion: the wilderness of the city; the wilderness of counterespionage; a wilderness of voices.

I resent this definition, especially part 1.b., which describes wilderness in deserts as "barren," "empty," and "a waste."  These are the attitudes that I face in my efforts to encourage others to protect these areas, a sentiment that there really isn't much there worth protecting.  It's not their fault, usually they have never been, have no idea what is or is not there, and some of them don't even know that Wyoming even has a Red Desert, at least not beyond the run down gas station at the Red Desert exit on interstate 80.

There is a lot more to this area than what can be seen from the I-80 corridor, acres and acres of beautiful buttes and sage brush country, wild horses and pronghorn herds, startlingly beautiful sunrises and sunsets, million upon millions of stars in the night sky.  These beautiful natural treasures are slowly being encroached upon by various energy and mineral extraction developments in such volume that it will take decades for the land to recover, if ever.  Below is a picture of the Jonah Field, the poster child of inefficient and destructive energy developments, from The Daily Climate.  This is the kind of development that I wish to prevent.  Don't get me wrong, I am not "against" the energy industry or fuel extractions as a practice, I am a realist and I know how heavily we depend on them in every facet of our lives.  The goal of my work is not to stand in the way of energy development (wilderness designation is one of the few designations that protects land from energy and extraction based leasing) but I am hoping to encourage innovations in smarter growth and development.  In short, I know I'm not going to stop the interested companies from getting at the fuels in the earth underneath my proposed wilderness areas, but at least I can ensure that in order to get at it they have to be smart about it and not destroy the land above it.

So this is my life these days, each day a wonderful adventure trying to protect the Wyoming wilderness.  Obviously I am enjoying it, but I am also saddened by it too, the mere fact that I need to fight the fight that I am fighting means that despite how far we have come as a society, in general people still forget that without this beautiful planet we would be nothing.  Nature has created a perfect, balanced system all on its own that we are slowly taking apart, one piece at a time; the least I can do is to try to be the proverbial barefoot hippie girl, trying to hold my ground against the bulldozer of development.

"The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." 

-Aldo Leopold

I've hit a wall.

I've had the wind knocked out of me.  I read my horoscope today and it told me this would happen, it literally said that the wind would be knocked out of me soon, but somehow I was still surprised.  I was at the dinner table with my folks, talking about my impending move and dreaming about purchasing a functioning stereo for my car, when I had the nerve to crunch some numbers.  Never a good idea, especially not when you've been keeping a blog called UNEMPLOYED in a small town for nearly 3 years now, but I plugged on, hoping I could find money in my budget to purchase an $89.99 stereo that would let me listen to my i-pod in my car.  What I found was this: I can't afford to leave home.

Lets briefly recap my life, for those of you know who don't know me well.  I graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in environmental engineering.  I turned down at least 2 standing job offers to join the Peace Corps because I "wanted to help people."  I moved to West Africa for 15 months, where I learned more from the experience than anyone learned from me, and was evacuated before my project got off the ground.  (It wasn't a complete loss though, my project inspired my local partners to continue with it even though I'm not there anymore...and I can say good morning in 5 languages!)  Evacuation from Peace Corps thrust me back into the now floundering US economy where I spent 6 months job hunting and eventually landed an AmeriCorps volunteer position that gave me the three things I thought I needed most in a job: student loan forbearance, health insurance, and a chance to pseudo-finish the 2-year volunteer commitment I had made to Peace Corps.  I did that for a year and had a fantastic time; I learned so much, I experienced so much, met so many great people, and I learned all about restoration and environmental conservation work and that went on to inspire me to alter my career goals from engineering to conservation and restoration.  After that I had an opportunity to drive back home to VT with a friend, and since I had no clear career plans where I was, I jumped at the chance to go on a two week road trip across the country with one of my best friends.  Half way home I decided I didn't really want to spend much time there, and neither did she, so she called in some favors and landed us a job in St. Thomas at a hotel.  Six months I lived down in paradise with some great friends and a decent job.  I enjoyed it a lot, but one thing that I struggled with and that eventually drove me to head home, was the lack of meaning.  I need to have a purpose, and I don't feel right unless I'm working toward something that I believe in.  So, once again, I packed my bags and headed for the frozen north, home to my folks, to regroup.  I've been at home since, working at a ski resort and trying to get my ducks back in a row.  I'm planning on staying here until my brother's wedding in June and then had fully planned on moving on, to something undoubtedly new and exciting and as of yet, undiscovered.

For four years now I have been a professional job seeker, adventurer, and often full time volunteer.  I have also been broke.  I never thought it mattered until tonight.  Money has never registered high on my list of priorities, I can live very cheaply when I need to and I am very proud of that.  Today though, I took a step back and looked at my life.  I'm 26 now.  I haven't been to a doctor, dentist, or eye doctor in over a year, I'm still wearing focus daily contacts that I bought a 6 month supply of 4 years ago and have made last until...now, I don't have glasses because I broke the pair I got before college a few years ago and haven't replaced them, I'm running in the same running shoes I bought 8 years ago, a lot of my clothes have holes in them, I wear leggings every day because I can't afford jeans, and there are at least 4 things wrong with my car that I'm just not going to fix.  My net worth, all I own, minus all I owe in student loans, is negative $20,000.

All of a sudden tonight, I realized that money does matter to me.  Not in the way that I thought it would either, the old clothes, beater car, and questionable optical practices don't bother me.  Mostly I just want to stop relying on the kindness of others to keep myself afloat.  I'm not a sponge, and I desperately want independence, because no one should have to pay for my choice to live this way but me.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I found myself crying in my pea soup at the dinner table tonight.  My poor parents, stunned to silence, just watched, with no idea what to say.  And what should they say?  We're sorry that you've selected this life for yourself?  We have let you live here rent free, utility free, even fed you, for the last 6 months (not to mention the first 18 years of your life), but is there anything else we can do?  We whole-heartedly supported you in all of your insane pipe dreams, we held our breath and our tongues when you boarded a plane for West Africa at 22, picked you up at the airport when you gave us 12 hours notice that you were being evacuated and would be on our doorstep the next day, we funded your road trip out on your random move to Cali for yet another volunteer job, we bailed you out when your shitty car crapped out on you in Cali, we sent care packages to you while you were playing in the virgin islands, and we STILL pay your cell phone bill, but how can we make this easier for you?

So when I put it like that I sound a bit ungrateful...but I think I have been a bit ungrateful.  It's not as though I'm irresponsible, I rarely ask for help when I'm not living at home, but I have taken this home for granted, and I have forgotten to be appropriately thankful for it. I have always had this place as my fall back, but I have forgotten to acknowledge how lucky I am to have that.  So tonight my horoscope has won, it said the wind would be knocked out of me and it was, but it also said I needed it.  It said that this would be a good thing, that I would learn from it and move on, no worse for the wear.  Well horoscope, I'm not usually a strong believer in what you have to say, but this week you hit the nail on the head.  I cried, I whined, I felt sorry for myself, I did all those things you are supposed to do when life slaps you in the face.  Now though, I know what my challenges are, I've had my setback, and I'm going to move forward, no worse for the wear.  I'm intelligent, I learn from my mistakes, I work hard, and there is no reason why I can't learn how to be a slightly more responsible version of myself.

So thank you, to everyone who has held me up, helped me out, and reminded me how lucky I am. Thank you to my parents, for doing all of those things, and listening to me whine about it all along the way.  Thank you to my brother, who has done so much for me over the years that I can't even begin to make it up to him.  Thank you to everyone who has ever been there for me when I needed them.  I am so lucky to have such wonderful people in my life, and I am so excited to get myself back on my feet and back out into the world, and to start paying back some of the favors that I owe.

I'm not giving up, I am going to move out.  I can't afford it now, but I'm going to make it affordable, because I'm an adult, and as tricky as it can seem, taking responsibility for your life is not impossible.  I'm going to take a deep breath, find a paying job to get me through the next few months, and then follow my dreams on my own dime.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” -Maria Robinson

(this is a repeat photo, because sunrises just make me feel so empowered!) 

Thanks for listening...well...reading.  

Onward and Upward

I have officially departed St. Thomas.  Bittersweet as always, I look forward to moving on but if I wasn't sad about leaving than I would have done it a long time ago.  I had a great time with a lot of great people whom I will miss intensely.  I learned a lot about hotels and hotel management and island living, and so much more.  I get a little misty every time I think about the fact that I can't just pop over to St. John on my day off anymore, every time I think about what I'm going to miss this winter (Gremlin's Birthday first and foremost, but also the beginnings of my friend's new business, all the boat trips, discovery days, and local events), whenever I think about all the fantastic friendships that I made there, and every time I consider how freaking cold it's going to be at home!

So here I am, unemployed and adventuring once again...first big question I need to tackle: to go abroad again or stay in the US...or maybe another US territory...Guam anyone?  Next:  to grad school or not to grad school?  And finally, if yes on grad school, what exactly do I want to study?  I know I already have plenty of options open with just a bachelor's in engineering and if I study something different but similar it would open up new doors without closing existing ones - so for me that would be ideal, the more doors the merrier!  I love doors!  Options are my favorite, except for times like now, when I am paralyzed with indecision at all the options that I do have.  I think the most important thing I need to remember right now is that all of my options are not going to pan out, that's life, so perhaps I should just apply for every single thing I am considering and see what I get before I get too caught up in making up my mind.  For that I will need a list of everything I want to do (or what I want to do the most right now because I'm pretty sure making a list of everything I want to do is impossible...because I would like to do everything eventually...) So here goes:

Grad School - either here or abroad, in an environmentally or developmentally relevant field either in the state or abroad....if I go abroad I would like to go to either England, Ireland, Australia, or perhaps Poland or Belgium or somewhere else entirely....

Job - entry level environmental engineering job...sounds tempting but also very scary because that had the ring of career to it, and if I'm finding something career worthy I damn well better love it.  So in this area I have every right to be, and definitely will be picky.

Volunteer - You all know my Peace Corps term got cut short...it was pretty devastating in the moment, but now that I've had a few years to work and travel and generally work towards recovering from that, I think I might be up for another go...I also adored AmeriCorps and would be just plum thrilled to do that again for the right opportunity as well.

Short Term Job - temporary solution, all about having money in the here and now.  Tempting, as something to hold me over in the moment, but also tough to commit to because it can make things so easy in the moment that its hard to move on to the bigger future-making and goal-relevant type ventures.  I have done this a bunch of times (ie. Seasonal trail guide, UPS holiday helper, sales person at pet store, grocery store sale tag changer, etc) and every time it gets me through the moment but also slows down the real hunt for my next adventure (with the exception of the grocery store one, I hated that job so much it made the hunt for a new adventure more furious and I put in my notice 3 weeks early because I just couldn't wait).

And those are just the broad categories of options, within those categories there are a million possibilities!  I love potential, it's like all the things you are capable of being and doing quietly waiting for you to reach out and pick one thing to strive for.  The important thing is that whatever I do next I give it all I've got, and learn everything I can from it, because that is what life is all about!

Wondering what I'm doing now?  Hanging out at my friends place in Tampa, FL, dreading my return to the great frozen north, and playing with her puppy dog while she's at work.  Got a few excellent shots of little Gizmo yesterday...included below.  Taking pictures is my favorite.  Someday I'll make that my job, when I win the lottery.  For now - Gizmo glamour shots are still a hobby!

New Adventures!

As usual, my enthusiasm is building for new adventures and the possibility of more fulfilling work.  I always start a job hunt with such optimism!  Of course there is no other way, optimism is essential to surviving the semi-employed life.  I took (and totally owned) the GREs on Thursday and while I don't get my official scores until November, I'm (as usual) pretty optimistic.  I'm hoping to meet with professors at a number of different grad schools until I find a program that will (1) let me work outdoors for the rest of my days, I just can't bear to be a full time desk jockey for any kind of long term assignment, (2) inspire me and encourage me, I just want to do good, rewarding work.  Is that so much to ask? And (3) not double my student loans, ideally I'd like to get rid of those suckers some day, and unless I stop adding to them that may never happen.  So, onwards I go, to work or grad school, or to study and take the FE in the spring and then get an engineering job, or to do or go wherever else the wind might take me.  I can't wait. 

I'm leaving this beautiful little rock in the middle of the ocean known as St. Thomas in just under 2 very short weeks to go celebrate a friends birthday with her in Florida and then on home a week later.  I'm looking for work in Vermont so I can put some money away while I am living at home and keep working on my student loans.  Money down here has gotten quite tight and it was certainly time to throw the towel in.  So now, during my final 2 weeks, I am trying to get as much last minute  adventuring in for as little cost as possible, all the while also trying to work as many hours as possible to put away a bit of cash for Florida.  My life is a fabulous give and take resting on a delicate balance of funds and possibilities that I just adore.  I have never once gotten in over my head, I have learned my limits and limited my spending and worked hard to become as financially independent as possible and loved every minute of it. 

So now, back to the old job hunt and back home to bake some bread and walk my doggies, and to try to work my butt off, if I can find a job that will let me.  See you soon Vermont, in all your below freezing glory.  Goodbye beautiful Caribbean, white sand beaches and shiny sunshine...you're amazing, but just not for me.  I can't wait to have seasons back! 

An Airplane over Charlotte Amalie Harbor

New Adventures!

Well helllllo there...did you miss me?  I have been doing a terrrrrrrible job lately of keeping my blog updated...things have been just plain crazy busy!  Between Halloween celebrations, pub crawls in Reno, NV, work, and potluck Tuesdays (a weekly themed potluck dinner that I started having in my old house before I moved and am happy to say has grown into a regular weekly gathering of fantastic people and tasty food!) I have barely had time to settle into my new place, let alone update all of you on my comings and goings!  So here comes a long winded one, certain to have some priceless kodak moments captured for your enjoyment out there on the other coast...gosh I miss being even in the same timezone as my family!

Anywho, as you all know, my AmeriCorps service year is coming to a close this December (oh soooo soon!  I'm not ready!) So I jumped right back up onto that job application bandwagon that includes roughly 10% of all Americans these days...my heart goes out to those who have not been as lucky as I have.  I have met plenty of college graduates with impressive resumes waiting tables and working seasonal temporary jobs only to spent the other 6 months of the year unemployed to know that I have been plenty lucky to end up where I have getting the experiences that I am.  I have not ruled out the possibility of finding a "real job" as my pops and brother put it ("Shelby...don't you think its time for you to get a real job?" - the easy answer is no...) as I know that a steady income and comfortable home cannot be discounted, and believe me, I'll get there, as soon as I'm good and ready and find what I'm looking for.  I have applied to several federal jobs, dozens of private jobs, and a few temporary placeholder type jobs, and I'm in a somewhat similar position to the one I was in last year at this time.  I'm running out of time to make a decision though because this time I have bills to pay, I'm 3000 miles from all the people that would put me up for free until I do find something, and my health insurance is expiring (a terrifying thought in America today).  So, because I know you are all curious as to what may come next, I will tell you.  I am considering, quite seriously, completeing a second term of AmeriCorps out here with the Conservancy.  Now before you go jumping to any conclusion about me taking the easy road, shirking responsibility, and staying so damn far away from everyone, keep in mind that I am a responsible and rational person and I have never done ANYTHING that I didn't know was the right decision, and while I am not completely settled on this yet (so yes, please keep sending me jobs if you see them, and thank you so much to those of you that already have!) I do know that if I go for it, it is because it is absolutely what I want to do.

For you doubting-thomases out there, here is why I believe that I will have made the right choice.  First and foremost, this job has been the luckiest result of my first job falling through that I could have asked for, I have learned a whole new skill set in environmental monitoring, I have learned of a whole new possible career path in restoration (where environmental engineering tends to clean up after and/or regulate the damage irresponsible (and really all) humans do to the environment, restoration aims at returning the natural environment to its pre-influenced state, a subtle but significant difference), and I have met a group of incredibly smart and kind and interesting people, full of knowledge and happy to share; you cant ask for a better work environment!  More than that, with AmeriCorps I have the flexibility of making my own schedule, running my own days, and coming and going as I please, which I love, but has not once slowed me down...still working the occasional 60 hour week mostly because I enjoy what I do and don't mind putting in the time it takes to do a good job.  Today, with the economy the way it is, so many people have been forced to work jobs that they can't even stand going to just to pay the bills.  I'm young, I have no major obligations, I can afford to live in the low income manor of the perpetual volunteer, and for now, I don't mind.  This seems a small price to pay for a job I enjoy, meaningful experience, and incredible learning opportunities.  All that seems like enough, and it is, but theres more!  I live in what might be one of the most beautiful places in the entire country, Lake Tahoe.  There are tons of recreation opportunities and I have already fallen in love with backpacking and hiking in the Sierra Nevada, and these are mostly free once you collect the gear you need!  Plus I get a $5,000 education award for each year of service...meaning that after 2 years of AmeriCorps plus my brief one year in Peace Corps I will have knocked out $13,500 worth of my student loans.  Now I'm not an accountant, but I think thats probably significantly more than I would have paid off had I just taken one of those job offers at graduation and started with regular payments.

So there you have it, my justification for my life that no one has asked me to justify, but sometimes you just need to explain these things to someone else as a way to explain them to yourself.  Anyway, its been quite a ride thus far and I'm not quite ready to give up the possibility of finding a job that actually pays AND makes me happy...but until then I will settle for ones that I love that don't pay, because happiness is more important than money, and I truly believe that.  Here are some images of my adventures, a recap of some of my favorite old ones and some new ones, a celebration of all I've done since college:

Dusty evening in Mauritania

Ramadan Fete with my Host Family...I miss them so!  Plus I was good friend with that sheep, so sad that he ended up in my tummy, vegetarian no more!

Epic battles with insanely large spiders

Back to Vermont winters with my wonderful parents and adorable doggies!

A road trip across the entire country with my Papa Bear

A few months spent learning to live alone and finding new friends in Placerville

Exciting new adventures in a beautiful new home in South Lake Tahoe

And more recently: Watching the Kokanee swim upstream only to lay their eggs and die, while the mallards stand by to eat those eggs that the fish gave their lives for as soon as they are left in the gravel

My first trip to the biggest little city in the world, and my first pub crawl dressed as a zombie too!

So this is what I think I would look like if I were among the walking dead...

Hope you all had a fantastic Halloween weekend and a wonderful week, and I promise I will start to update more often again (sorry for the delay Momma!).  Sorry for my long-winded explanations but I can't expect you all to continue to support me in my adventures without explaining to you why they mean so much to me.  So I hope you are looking forward to more stories to come, because I'm not done living yet!  More pictures and adventures to come, I promise!

Much love and happy thoughts to all who read this!

~Shelby

brief hiatus

As you may or may not have noticed, I have not been posting lately.  That is because this week has been a headache of epic proportions.  Work is going great, and so naturally something else would have to go wrong right? right.  On Sunday night my room mate Reyna's cat was accidentally let out of the house after I went to bed and before she got home.  Reyna has had this cat for 5 years and she has never gotten out even once until about 2 weeks ago, when doors were being left open and Jicima started getting out with alarming frequency.  Conversations were had and notes left, but the problem did not resolve itself.  At this point we hold out little hope of ever finding Jicima (Tahoe offers many predators that make the hope of finding pets after even a few days almost futile).  This has been the last in a string of difficult personality differences between us and our third room mate and we gave up hope on that too.

The beautiful Jicima, may she someday find her way back to Rey.

Last night, against my better judgement, I followed my heart out the door and, with the help of a few friends, moved out of the house in a matter of hours.  Reyna and I stayed with a friend last night and will be spending the weekend in the San Francisco Bay at Reyna's family home.  We will be house-sitting and couch-surfing for most of the month of October and then will hopefully find a room to share somewhere.  Sharing a room will hopefully let us save money and recoup the losses we are taking on this move, the loss of our security deposits and the bills that we have already paid.

Anyway, during this period of limbo I will have trouble updating my blog regularly as I won't have consistent internet access, but I will do the best I can.  I am going to be getting my etsy store  up and running again hopefully.  I have posted some of my photos, all old ones, but I'm hoping to get some Tahoe photos up there soon too.  If you would like to buy something from my etsy store, send me a conversation on etsy saying that you read this blog entry and what you would like and i'll make a new listing for you with a $1.00 discount on the item (this offer expires at the end of the month).

Anyway, thats my life update for right now, and as I sit here in a little Cafe and drink my coffee and look out the window at all of my worldly possessions piled in my very small car, I feel oddly free.  I have nowhere to go and nowhere to be and my life (well most of it...) still fits in my honda civic.  I have my reservations, but I still think I made the right choice for me.  Its time for a new adventure, and despite the fact that I no longer have a kitchen to bake in or a bed to sleep in, I have some great friends and some big plans...and everything will be all right.

vegetation monitoring

Okay, veg monitoring is not my favorite activity (when I learned how it was just Lauren and I one by one cutting all the plants out of a 2 square foot frame on the ground and sorting them by type, sunburning my knees and making my back ache; we finished our first (very diverse) plot in just under 3 hours and we knew we had 7 more to go) but today I found that it can be a lot better when there are 5 people all cutting in that same square.  We set an all time record, finished a (not so diverse) plot in just about 10 minutes.  We finished all three of the plots we were supposed to get done today with time to spare, and we only have 9 left to go!  

I'm talking, of course, about my project that I am leading with participants from the Tahoe-Baikal Institute's Summer Environmental Education Program.  This afternoon we spent a half day doing our vegetation monitoring out in the meadow, they will finish up tomorrow and on Wednesday morning while I am away at a training and then I'll be back on Thursday to begin mapping remnant stream channels in the meadow with GPS.  We work on this project for a week and a half, spend 2 days creating and practicing a presentation (I'll be the advisor, not a presenter) and then my group will present their findings on the state of the meadow vegetation with relation to groundwater levels and their recommendations as to which historic channel would be most beneficial for use in a possible future restoration project.   

This is one of the participants, from Mongolia.  She is holding a Stadia Rod for scale, to show the height of vegetation.  I chose this one as my photo of the day for today because I just love the clouds.  

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And Happy Mauritaniversary to all the RIM Pirates who set out with me on that fateful day to begin a 2 year journey that lasted only 14 months.  Heres a throwback photo for nostalgia:

Me and my We.  

Funny how sometimes it feels like living in a different culture in a far away place speaking a different language felt more comfortable than trying to understand the complexities of my own.  

Sad News!

Dear followers of my daily photo project:

As I have moved in to a house that does not have internet, and as I have limited access to the internet at this time, I think I might have to go on a short hiatus from my project for the time being.  What does this mean?  I will still be taking lots of photos, and I will still post some when I can, but I will not be counting these towards my one photo per day.  Starting from the last photo I posted, I will count all of the days that I miss from then until I get internet at my house (1 month, tops....I hope...) and add them on to the end of my challenge.  I have taken photos over the past week and a half that I am unable to post right now, but I will post them at some point, only I will not be counting them towards my one photo per day, as in the craziness of training I missed a few days (GASP!).  So thank you for following, and keeeeep it up, this is NOT over....but i'm going to need some time to get back into a routine after starting a new job in my new home with no internet and lotsssss of stuff to do!  Afterall, patience is a virtue!

Thanks for reading!  More to come, oh so very soon! (....I hope....)

edu-ma-cation

Yes yes i know, I missed another day, wooooopsy!  I stayed the night in Auburn with a friend and didn't have access to my computer...but I did take a photo.  So here's yesterdays photo:

And then today I spend all day at school, teaching 2nd and 3rd graders all about the water cycle with the help of my lovely AmeriCorps sitemate, Sara.  So for todays photo, a shot of that.  This was an activity showing what quantities of water there are on earth, big bucket of salt water, 25 tbsp of fresh water, of that 25 only 8 tbsp are ground water, and only 10 drops are surface fresh water.  Crazy!

Photos Posted: 114
Days Left: 251

spinach and feta pockets!

The other day at the grocery store, I was inspired by a dish my grandma had made me before I came out here (spinach and feta in puff pastry) and what Melissa made last weekend (olive taupenade and herbed goat cheese in filo dough) and I bought spinach, feta, and some filo dough.  I had a bunch of other bits and pieces left over from the veggie lasagna I made last week and this afternoon I just kinda made these up as I went along, and they came out pretty tasty!  Heres a rough guestimate of the recipe:

• About 1/2 bag of Raw Spinach, torn up
• About half a can spinach (you can use all fresh, I just had canned left over from lasagna)
• Tub of crumbled feta
• A handful of diced sweet onion
• Seasoning to taste (I used salt, pepper, parsley, and a dash of nutmeg, cuz thats all i have)
• Filo dough, thawed
• Melted butter

Start by tearing up the spinach, and stirring it together with the feta, canned spinach, onion, and seasonings (i added a bit of fresh grated parmesean too, another lasagna leftover) and let it sit for a bit so the spinach starts to wilt, add more if it looks necessary.  Lay out a single sheet of filo, paint half of it with melted butter and fold in  half.  Paint the top of the sheet with butter too, spoon a bit of the feta mixture onto the end of the doubled filo and fold the filo around it like a flag.  Bake them on a cookie sheet at 375 for 10-15 minutes, until the filo is browned and the center is warmed through, and gently sizzling.  Now enjoy, but be careful cuz they're hot!

Yummmmm!

Photos Posted: 111

Days Left: 254

Happy Easter!

Today I borrowed a friends family to spend my easter with, since mine was so far away!  They were incredibly nice and welcoming and I'm so lucky to have been a part of their holiday!  They even made me a little Easter basket and sent me home with hardboiled colored eggs!  On the way home I caught my first glimpse of the golden gate bridge, and snapped a quick photo.  It was cold and rainy here all day, and this photo reflects that pretty well, still, its the only one I took today so it'll have to do.

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optimism

when i look back now its almost funny, how easy it was for me to be optimistic in peace corps.  that serial optimism of college and peace corps and whenever else i had it feels like its deserting me.  i mean seriously, in mauritania i found a putrefied rat carcass inside the foam of my bed and we all had a good laugh about it, scraped it off, and then i slept on that bed and was thankful for it, even though it stunk to high heaven.  when a spider the size of my hand fell from my ceiling and starting racing around my room, i collected myself, and took it as a challenge, to face my fears and find that spider myself!  when i spent 4 days in taxis or broken down on the side of the road on a journey that, with proper roadways and vehicles, should have taken about 10 hours, i made friends with my fellow passengers, told stories about sea monsters, slept on roadsides and in the back of cars, and soldiered onward until i could get back to my site and share my adventures with pride.  

what happened to that here?  why is it that all of a sudden a little thing like my supervisor getting laid off and an uncomfortable work environment are shaking my normally steady optimism?  

for two years now there has been no plan in my life, no forethought, just impulse, and as a result, very little continuity.  Since i graduated from college, i have lived in 4 places on 2 continents and 3 coasts, been to 3 countries and 18 states, spoken at least pieces of 7 languages, gone on 4 road trips, visited dozens of friends, applied for hundreds of jobs (worked 4), taken thousands of photos, met many new faces, seen many new things, baked my first cheesecake (and my 2nd through my 5th), learned to cook without a recipe, made my own potato chips, taught myself how to knit, become penpals with my grandma, snowshoed in the desolation wilderness of lake tahoe, learned the history of the sierra nevada, backpacked through southeastern senegal, collected and eaten wild mushrooms, started my first (albeit very small) garden, learned to identify ferns, stayed in a beach house in senegal, crossed the continent in my little red car, started sewing my first quilt, climbed ski slopes just to get cell phone service, walked a 5 mile round trip to walmart to buy a single plate, painted feet on sneakers, become a brunette, held a monkey, presented a model of a watershed to 100 kindergarten students, given up vegetarianism, catered a christmas party, tailgated my first NFL game, and so much more.  i have a list of 100 things i want to do before i die, and in these last 2 years i have checked more things off of that list than in the previous 22.  so optimism, i don't know where you've been off to, but i'm going to need you back.  having you around has been pretty good to me! 

sometimes you just have to stop, and make that list for yourself.  it doesn't have to be things you've done, it can be people you love, things you're thankful for, reasons why you are lucky to be you, it doesn't matter, as long as you finish it with a smile and an "i can do this" attitude.  

my chocolate wrapper says it all.  keep your chin up, all the smiles you need are already in your heart!

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days left: 260