Farewell, Wyoming

Since I was in such a hurry to leave for the winter break, I'm afraid I failed to give Wyoming a proper online farewell. I'd like to take the time now to sum up our month-long stay and what Silver 3 thought of our project. To get the official overview, please download a copy of our project portfolio. It summarizes all our accomplishments and might give you more details than you'd get on my blog. I spent a lot of time writing and designing it, so I hope you enjoy it!



My fellow team members have made no secret of their antagonism toward their time in Sheridan. While they insist it was a terrible experience, I, being an optimistic schumck, actually rather enjoyed my time out on the Western range. The version of events I post on my blog is definitely filtered through my own rose-colored lenses.

That's not to say that they aren't justified in their opinion since we did face our share of hardships. The work, as I've mentioned in previous entries, was tedious, and it was very easy to get discouraged and frustrated. But it was much more than that. The weather was by far the coldest I'd ever experienced. I had always thought I wanted to live somewhere with white Christmases, but I quickly learned the folly of my thinking. The air was so frigid that it stabbed my nose, throat and lungs like sharp needles when I breathed. After just a few minutes outdoors, my fingers felt like they were being slowly sliced off with a frozen knife, and my face managed to go numb and hurt at the same time. The ephemeral snows, while lovely enough while they lasted, left the ground a muddy slush when melted and clogged up my boots with brown sludge. Getting up at 5 a.m. shivering in a communal basement shared with 10 other people in a stranger's home was no picnic either.



The distance was also an issue; Wyoming is not only the least populated state in the Union, but also one of the largest. Everything is so far away for each other, and it takes forever to travel from one town to the next, leaving you feeling very isolated. Compounding the issue is that our government van is limited to a 25-mile radius from home, so even though the Bighorn Mountains were just an hour drive away, we weren't allowed to go without official permission.



Despite the shortcomings and trials, there are things I will miss, like waking up every morning to a spectacular view and the wide-open Western skies. In Wyoming, the sky just feels bigger, even when it's interrupted by mountain peaks. The light is more diffuse and the colors more vibrant at sunset and sunrise with a distinctive color palette that is unique to the state.





I'm also a sucker for the small-town atmosphere where everyone knows your name. Being from the big city, I think I'm more easily charmed than most by quaint locales, and Sheridan was definitely one of them. Main Street, lit with Christmas lights, looks like it was taken right out of a Rockwell painting. Moreover, it had a feeling of vibrancy that many small towns lack. Despite the small population, there was a sense of high expectations for this little city. The shops buzzed with activity, and restaurants were packed with people waiting for tables. Any visitor could tell that citizens here took pride in their hometown, from the modern library to the abundant public art.



As you've read in my previous posts, the people are incredibly welcoming and generous. Whatever faults we may have found in our sponsors, it definitely wasn't a lack of hospitality. Our project sponsors invited us out for dinner three times over the course of the month and made delicious home-cooked meals. I didn't even write about my experience visiting a local church in Sheridan, where the folks literally didn't let us out of their sights until we had eaten a delicious potluck lunch and received our visitors goodie bag. One fine elderly woman even fished cash out of her purse — bills and lots of change — and insisted we take it as pocket money. On our last evening in town, we were invited to the Habitat for Humanity Christmas party at Java Moon, where we were recognized for our work, got to eat lots of yummy party food, and received gifts of travel coffee mugs.







So, yes, Wyoming was cold, dreary, and tedious. The work was hard, and there were some internal conflicts within the team as we adjusted to one another's personalities, values, and modus operandi. The tension got so bad toward the end that we had to use one of our evenings on the road trip back to Sacramento as one big venting session to air our grievances. This turned out to be rather constructive, and in retrospect, I don't think our problems are all too uncommon, especially for a group of complete strangers forced to live and work together. As our team leader describes it, AmeriCorps NCCC is a bit of a sick social experiment, or perhaps a bizarre reality television show. Either way, it's been an adventure and a really challenging growth experience. I can't say it's what I expected going in, but I'm glad for the opportunity to learn to survive outside of my little comfort zone. The project in Wyoming really set the stage for the rest of the year, and I think I'm better equipped now to face whatever comes my way next.

Farewell, Wyoming!

A Weekend of History and Food

This past weekend was an eventful one that gave me a deeper look into the area's rich history and filled my belly with tasty holiday food. On Saturday, we visited Kendrick Mansion at the Trail End State Historic Site in Sheridan. Built in 1913, it housed the family of John B. Hendrick, a former Wyoming governor and state and U.S. senator. Originally from Texas, he pulled himself up by the bootstraps, working as a cattle drive trail rider and working his way up the political ladder. On the day we visited, the mansion was having a holiday open house, which meant the house was aglow with Christmas lights, choirs sang traditional Christmas music, and we got free figgy pudding and hot apple cider.









The site also featured a special exhibit called "Wedding Belles & Beaux" that gave a glimpse into marriage traditions of the 1900s. Several wedding dresses and gifts were on display, along with fun facts and informative displays. You can check out the entire exhibit online here.





The mansion was essentially one giant dollhouse trimmed and decorated to early 20th century perfection. The information was very well synthesized, and it was fun to fantasize about the rich and famous. Despite its size and grandeur, the place had a warm, homey feel with its dark wood panels, leaf-motif wallpaper, and rich, burgundy wool rugs. You can take a virtual tour of the house here.

After the mansion, we attended a Community Holiday Dinner at the local Holiday Inn. This local tradition provides a free meal to anyone in Sheridan and serves more than 2,000 people annually. It is hosted by the local chamber of commerce with the help of generous donations from the local businesses. We had a really great dinner of turkey with gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, green beans, broccoli, salad, and a roll, followed by ice cream and coffee. It wasn't a fancy ordeal, but it was festive and filling.





The following day, we drove north across state lines to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. I'd of course heard of Custer's Last Stand but really had no idea what it was about or why it was important. The actual events of the day are notoriously complicated and controversial, but the decisive victory by the Native Americans was the beginning of the end for the indigenous Plains Indians. Despite their overwhelming win, the battle turned the full wrath of the U.S. against the Native Americans and their way of life.







We watched an informative orientation video that briefly went over the events of the battle, and it was really cool to go outside and look out over the hills knowing that we were on the exact site where the fighting took place. In the visitors center, there was a small but interesting exhibit about the times and culture, along with dioramas, timelines, and artifacts taken straight off the battlefield.







We took a road tour through the battlefield, following along in our trail map and brochure to figure out where all the important sites were. Large portions of the site have been turned into a national cemetery to mark where soldiers fell. My very favorite part of the trip was visiting the Indian Memorial, a relatively new addition that honors the Indians on both the Indian and U.S. sides who died in battle. It's a really unique and beautiful piece unlike any that I'd seen before.

















The weather was freezing with the wind chill putting temperatures well below zero, so we actually saw most of the site from the warmth of the van. It was so cold that after literally just two minutes outside, the cold cut painfully through four layers of thermal, fleece and down, making my whole body numb. The hilly terrain was beautiful but monotonous; it was really not much different than what we saw along the drive up, but the history made the area significant. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a trading post which sold souvenirs and hot food. I had some traditional Native American fry bread, which tastes a bit like a beignet, along with creamy potato soup with big chunks of ham. It was greasy, but perfectly filling and incredibly tasty.







To complete our weekend, one of the board members from the local Habitat for Humanity chapter invited us over to his home for dinner. He and his wife live in the far-flung outskirts of Sheridan; we had to follow a guide down winding, snow-covered roads to find the cozy little house, which the couple built themselves. It was a very warm and cozy evening, with an enormous dinner of fragrant pot roast with mashed potatoes and carrots and an apple crisp and pumpkin pie a la mode for dessert. From what I've seen, I've come to the conclusion that everyone in Sheridan lives in beautifully rustic lodging, and our hosts were absolutely delightful and inviting.

On the News

Check it out...we're on the local news! One of my team roles is the media coordinator, and I managed to attract a television news reporter to our work site. You can link to his story here.

A Day in the Life

On most mornings, I wake up at around 5:30 a.m. to get ready for the day. After a breakfast of Total cereal and orange juice, our team heads to the YMCA for our daily physical training. We are usually left to do our own workouts using the excellent cardio and weight training facilities there. After an hour, we hit the locker rooms to change into our AmeriCorps uniforms and head to the work site.



We hit the work site at around 8:00 a.m. and meet up with our Habitat for Humanity project sponsors, who give us a quick overview of what we need to do that day and any problems that need to corrected from previous days. We're working at two houses at once, so our team is split between two sites. When we first arrived, our first task was to hang drywall. It wasn't a hard job, but it was very time-consuming since we had to measure each wall, cut the drywall down to size, then screw it on to the exposed studs. We had plenty of faulty cuts and measurements, but eventually we got the hang of it. It was also challenging getting the ceiling pieces in using a special lift to jack the drywall into place.











Currently, we're working on mudding, which is using joint compound to fill all the screw holes and seams between drywall pieces so the walls are nice and smooth. It sounds easy enough, but it's a very time-intensive process since you really have to have each surface flawless. Even with two teams working for more than a week, we still aren't done with the job. Each seam, corner, and all the outlets and light switches must be lined with tape, which is adhered with mud. That also takes a really long time since you can't have any air bubbles, and the angles near the ceiling are really hard to get right while perching on ladders. We have a contraption called a banjo that coats the tape in mud, but it's a pain to use since it's heavy and unwieldy. The ceiling and corner pieces then need to be rolled and glazed before it's knifed. This process is repeated three or four more times throughout the entire house. It's become a very tedious process, but we manage to get through each day.









For one day last week, when the weather was (relatively) warmer, we got to do some shingling and got one entire side of the house done. This involved nailing on roof shingles using pneumatic nail guns, which were a lot of fun to use. It was probably my favorite day of work since we got to be out under the sun, and we had a great view of the surrounding landscape from our perch on the roof. It was also fun to scramble around on the slanted surface and on the scaffolding.











We just finished our first full week of work; last week was interrupted by the Thanksgiving holidays. Our team works from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday since the weekend is a popular time for volunteers to come out. I was dreading it at first, but then we got into a comfortable groove, which made the work tolerable. We have a radio, so we can blast tunes and hook up our iPods. Even more fortunately, mud cannot freeze, so the houses are heated while we work.





Every Thursday, we have a meeting with our project sponsor, Jessica, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of the Eastern Bighorns. We've only had two meetings, and they've been casual question-and-answer questions that have been really informative. We've learned a lot about how Habitat works and the process aspiring homeowners have to go through to complete the program. We have a lunch break from noon to 12:30 p.m. We used to bring our own lunches and sit on the street to munch on our sandwiches, but lately we've had local folks bring in really tasty, hot food for us to eat. At first we felt a bit guilty that people were going out of their way to make us lunch, but then we learned that preparing food can be counted as volunteer hours toward the completion of the house.









It's been a great learning experience so far, and I feel fairly confident in my drywall and mudding abilities after the weeks of labor. Hopefully we'll get to learn a little bit about wall texturing before we leave since one of our on-site construction mentors is a pro at it and has been really talking up the different kinds of finishes we can do.