surveying

Today I learned to survey cross sections on Trout Creek.  I snapped this shot through the viewfinder of the autolevel across the creek and into the willows.  

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"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."

Its only appropriate to start this one out with a John Muir quote, as he traveled to and loved all the places in the Sierra that I'm about to show you (and many others that I haven't had the opportunity to visit yet...), but more than that, he is quite possibly the reason many of them still exist today.

Friday:

Spent the morning at work, that afternoon packing, and the evening on the road to Mammoth.  Here's a shot from my morning at work, taken of Lake Tahoe from the Upper Truckee Marsh...if you look closely you can see a raising hot air balloon in the center of the photo:

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Saturday:

My first day in Mammoth!  We spent the morning on the Owens River (me learning to fly fish, everyone else successfully fly-fishing...) after a few hours I got impatient with the wind impeding my learning and read a book instead.  So as not to feel as though I was wasting the $12.50 I had spent on a fishing license for that day I gave it another go before lunch and then threw in the towel after lunch and we took off to check out some local attractions:

The Owens River (aka. our fishin' spot)

Convict Lake (where we went after, so named for a gang of fugitives who escaped Carson City Prison in the 1870's and holed up in the mountains around this lake)

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Sunday:

After getting up early to hit the dusty trail, we hiked into the John Muir Wilderness and out to Sherwin Lakes, then to a pond, followed by Valentine Lake.  We met a couple on the way who warned us that Valentine lake was small and disappointing, all grown in and not that exciting.  We think maybe they made it to the pond and mistook it for Valentine Lake...What do you think?

John Muir Wilderness!

The Pond (still pretty beautiful...)

Valentine Lake (even more gorgeous than this picture in person and, in my opinion, well worth the 10 mile hike)

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Monday:

That brings us to today!  Another morning spent fishing by the Owens but since my fishing License was expired I spent it reading a book and painting in the beautiful river valley.  After we left Mammoth at lunch time we headed off to Lee Vining to see the famous Mono Lake (a Sierra salt lake whose glassy surface and unique "tufa" make it a California favorite) which I found to be incredibly beautiful despite its large fly population and pungent odor.  Next we headed home over Monitor Pass and then it was "back to life" time and I spent the evening unpacking and unwinding and getting ready for work tomorrow.  

Mono Lake

View from the top of the Eastern Slope of Monitor Pass

View down of the Western Slope. if you click and enlarge you can see smoke in the middle of the mountains from what we can only assume is a small forest fire...apparently they are commonplace to these parts but I'll never find then anything short of arresting and unnerving..)

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break

My life has gotten sneakily stressful lately because of the approaching deadline to determine what I will be doing next and the added distress of my inability to contact my African host family out of fear and cowardice.  I have done and redone my resume about 12 times and looked at plenty of options, but been very picky about applying.  I will not be forced to apply to a job that I don't want just because I can!  So with all that in my head I have decided to take a little break since this whole "job-hunting" thing has been really cutting into my leisure time.  I was invited to join a friend of mine on her trip out to Mammoth to meet her brothers.  Because her brothers will come visit her and I can't get my family out here for my life, I have decided to join her and borrow her family for the time being.  This means I'll be leaving tomorrow evening and probably not coming back until Monday, and I'm not sure if I'll have access to internet but I'm thinking either way I'm not going to bring the computer.  SO a photo will be taken every day, but it is fairly likely that none will be posted until Monday night.  Thanks for your patience, and since I'm back on the job hunt, please send me any ads you see for jobs that you think I might enjoy!  thanks all!

Todays photo:

Epilobium Brachycarpum

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souvenirs from better times

I missed a call from a friend in Africa the other morning and I realized that its been over a year since I left and I have still been too much of a coward to call my host family and just show them that I care.  Its not that I got here and forgot them or didn't need them anymore, its just that its painful to think that they're there and i'm here and there's probably very little chance that I will ever see them again...ever.  And that hurts too much to make it real by calling them and hearing them and talking of hope and ending with "see you soon" and pretending that i'm not collapsing inside with grief while we greet and pretend our lives still make sense to one another.  

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fail.

I took a picture yesterday, but I forgot to post.  I forgot to take a picture today, but I remembered to post.  I'm in the midst of an existential crisis, so you'll have to forgive me if I get a little scatter-brained.  Here is my dilemma:  I was thinking of doing a second year here, in AmeriCorps but I just found out that the job I have this year didn't get approved for a second year (not all that surprising since they wrote it for me when my first job fell through, but a let-down none the less).  That leaves me a few options:  I could aim for a different AmeriCorps position and stay in Cali (and be poor but probably pretty happy) for another year, I could go home and job hunt from Vermont while living with my (hopefully happy to have me again...) parents and hope for the best, I could stay here in Tahoe and put in my dues as a waitress or cashier or something until some job comes up here, or I could do something totally off the wall and move to Tampa or Austin or Ireland (for a job if there is one, or grad school, if I can decide what to study and justify the new loans).  So many options!  I keep telling myself that these options are something I should appreciate while I have them but all the uncertainty certainly takes its toll.

At times like this I start to feel a little less at home where I am every day, until I figure out where i'll be next and can finally relax again.  I paid nearly $200,000 for my degree and yet I can't seem to find something to do with it that would make me happy.  Is life about learning to settle?  Am I supposed to be learning that an office and a cubicle and several 400 page documents about wastewater and erosion control BMPs is the best I can do?  I hope not.  I won't settle for money and the mundane!  I want something that makes me feel good, I want to be proud of what I do, I want to be broke and happy...not financially sound and mentally miserable!  I hate that I live in a time and an economy when that is almost too much to ask for.  Perhaps another round of AmeriCorps is the best I can do right now...but i guess thats not so bad...

Photo for thought:

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day of rest

today was my whole weekend, and man did i need it!  I slept in (all the way until 8:30!) and then I took a little walk to see if I could see the snow (rumors told me that it should be not far up in the mountains).  This is what I saw:

But then later, when I went back out I saw the snowww!  Yep, thats right, snow.  In August.  Ick.  And here it is below, up on the mountain!

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Crazy week(end)!

I just might have missed a few days in the daily photo thing recently, but its so hard to tell because I have just been so busy that all my days are running together!  This week I started my macroinvertebrate monitoring (only the thing I have been planning for since I moved up to Tahoe in May) and we are working SO much faster than I had planned, getting 8 entire 250 meter reaches done in 3 days (not to mention closing up day three early to go pull invasive weeds in the Upper Truckee Marsh to support another AmeriCorps volunteer in his event)!  Sounds impressive right?  Well it kind of is, but it also involved 2 twelve hour days and one 11 hour day, but thats okay.  That was Monday through Wednesday, and then on Thursday our AmeriCorps training starting with trail building on the Tahoe Rim Trail which involved an early morning and some hard work (fortunately I was able to leave early for that work picnic I made the pie for and the pie was a pretty big hit!)  Then we headed off to the beach to meet up with the rest of our AmeriCorps group to have some dinner.

That brings us to Friday, a full day of training on like after AmeriCorps (job hunting, resume building, interviewing, etc).  The most important lesson I took away from that was to keep in touch with everyone you meet ever because you never know who might prove to be a great contact later on (plus you know, having friends is pretty cool...).  That was a rewarding but very long day that ended with a reception for the Sierra Nevada Alliance Conference attendees and AmeriCorps volunteers which was very cool.  I met and spoke to a science teacher who is also a GLOBE trainer and was utterly fascinated by his stories!  It brought back wonderful memories of some of my science teachers that really inspired me back in the day (shout out to Mr. Grotto and Mr. Mitchell!)

Anyway that was yesterday and that brings us to today, when all of us AmeriCorps folks got to be conference attendees for the day which was a very cool experience!  I learned a lot, met some VERY interesting and amazing people, and learned that my Mom isn't the only one who reads this blog!  (which gave me all sorts of guilt about having not updated for a few days...) I handed out all sorts of business cards that I knew I had printed for a reason, and felt very inspired at the end of the day, after hearing about all the wonderful things all these organizations are doing!  The conference officially ended for me at 4:30 pm and now I'm home, and it really feels like weekend, which I needed after this week because its back to monitoring on Monday and while it is amazing and fun work (can't complain about playing in rivers all day), it is thoroughly exhausting and we are getting reports that it will be cold enough to snow here tonight as low as 7000 feet (that is unconfirmed rumors of course, my favorite information source!) and that could make Monday extra frigid!

Anyway today I have taken several photos to make up for my few days of silence, and I figured it has been a long time since I gave my Mom a garden update so here are my little kiddos:

Basil Flowers

Yellow Tomato Babies, even though I bring him in out of the cold every night he's still having a very hard time figuring out how to redden up his tomaters!

My Snap Dragons, now so tall that they are bent over and flowering upside down!

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