I'm rooting for trees

You may be curious as to what I've been doing for the past four weeks since I've returned to Sacramento, and now that my time on this project is finally coming to an end, I'm ready with a mega-update. You've heard very briefly about my wildland firefighter training, so I'll save that for another day. Half of our time since winter break has been with the Sacramento Tree Foundation, an amazing organization "dedicated to building the best urban forest for the Sacramento region." You can download our portfolio for this project here.


My team absolutely loved this project, especially after the cold, harrowing experience we had in Wyoming. It had everything we wanted in a project; we got to work outdoors, the sponsors were so fun and understanding, and the work was challenging and varied. For me, the latter part was biggest perk; even though the work was sometimes tedious, there was always plenty of new tasks lined up to keep me from getting bored. We worked at multiple sites through the city, including the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Mather Regional Park, and a greenbelt in the Laguna Creek neighborhood. Sacramento is in fact nicknamed "the City of Trees" and claims to have more trees per capita than another city in the world — even Paris, France.

Our first day we began at the Sacramento Tree Foundation yard, a huge fenced-off lot where the organization maintains a nursery of young seedlings. Our very first task was shoveling fresh soil into individual planters, which are used in one of the organization's many educational programs.







We also did a lot of cleaning up the yard: raking, pulling weeds, reorganizing the rows of plants. Though the nursery didn't seem all that dirty, this process took us the full two weeks to complete. Mud piled up in the most random places, and the job of cleaning out stray leaves and weeds was a never-ending duty.













The next day, we were sent to a regional park to dig up damaged irrigation lines along a cycling trail. They were having a serious overpopulation problem with the voles, who were chewing through the newly laid pipes. Our job was to dig up the old lines and dig trenches for new pipes. The day was rather cold and damp, but I enjoyed the hauntingly atmospheric fog, which made for gorgeous photos.

















It wasn't until the third day that we actually got to go out and plant some trees at different locations throughout the city. We enjoyed traveling to various sites and learning about the many facets to the issue of building an urban canopy. A lot of the work we did was mitigation, which entailed planting trees to replace ones that had been cut down for new construction. It was encouraging to hear how these plantings were being supported by the development and government communities, however politically motivated they may be. We planted valley oaks, a native tree found only in California. Sacramento was once home to an abundance of elm trees, but due to a recent bout of Dutch elm disease, there has been a renewed focus on planting oaks. Most of the seedlings looked like nothing more than a twig in the ground, so it was amazing to ponder how such a fragile thing could grow into something so grand and majestic. One of the things I admire about the Sacramento Tree Foundation is, unlike many other tree-planting organizations, they perform maintenance on their trees and have a 98 percent success rate with their plantings.











Before the day ended, our team visited another planting site overlooking a creek, and our task there was to clear out invasive weeds that might threaten the young trees.







Aside from tree planting, we also laid irrigation pipes, which was actually quite an ordeal. The pipe came in huge rolls, and it tended to kink up when we stretched it out.







The second week we worked was extremely rainy, so we stayed in the office for most of the time helping them clean out their storage areas, put together some planting kits, and sort through files, which will help them input their forms into an electronic database.











Even though we were inside, it turned out to be more fun than I expected. The break room where we worked had nice, comfy couches, and we had unlimited access to tea and hot cocoa. What made the day, however, was our introduction Barkley, the Sacramento Tree Foundation mascot. It started when we found a box of random props and hats, which were used for some children's program many years ago. We were having so much fun with those that one of our sponsors decided to introduce us to the Barkley costume. This all culminated with a team performance of "In the Jungle", which agreed to sing in exchange for free T-shirts.













We attempted briefly to work outside, but the rain proved to be too intense, at least early on in the week. I do have to give credit to the wonderful rain gear that AmeriCorps issued us. It did just what it was supposed to do; it was a cool feeling to peel off those layers after a day in the pouring rain and still be completely dry. Even though the week ended gray and drizzly, we stuck it out in the yard disposing of rotted stakes and broken irrigation pipe and cleaning out the nooks and crannies of the nursery.









This was a very satisfying project for our team and a refreshing change of pace from our experience in Wyoming. It helped a lot that we were living back on campus and had our own rooms, Internet access, and a full kitchen. I actually learned a lot about trees and about the really ambitious and admirable initiatives the city and the Sacramento Tree Foundation has started to build the urban forest. You can read about the benefits of trees to the city at this Web page.

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!

Let's talk about fire

My last project has been done for a month now, I had a fantastic two-week winter break, and now my team is back hard at work in Sacramento. I apologize to my faithful readers that I'm so behind, but before I start playing catch up, I want to first talk about fire.

As of yesterday, I am certified as a Wildland Firefighter, Type 2. Never mind that this is the very bottom rung of firefighting: it's been an incredible, mind-blowing experience — and still sounds wicked cool. We spent the majority of last week in the classroom as students of fire behavior, learning about how weather, terrain and fuel types can affect the the intensity and direction of a wildfire. The eight-hour days, spent sitting in a stiff-backed chair while watching PowerPoints and comically outdated instructional videos from the 1980s, were brutal, but we had some really cool, down-to-earth instructors who kept things real with their personal anecdotes from out in the field. They were seasoned wildland firefighters who had endured some pretty hard-core scenarios, and when the textbook didn't line up with their experiences, they gave it to us straight.

After completing a gauntlet of exams, the final day of the week consisted of a field training near the Eldorado National Forest headquarters. After talking to some of my teammates, we agreed that it is a struggle to explain to people how incredibly intense and exhausting this experience was. Unfortunately, of all days, this was the one time I forgot to bring my camera along to document the insanity. All I could muster were a few crappy shots and brief videos on my cell phone.



We began the day bright and early, donning the standard brush firefighter uniforms that consist of a yellow shirt and green pants made of fire-resistant Nomex fabric, a helmet, goggles, leather gloves, and boots. I must pause here to emphasize the boots since they are a significant reason the training was such an enormous challenge. For safety reasons, the minimum height of fire boots must be eight inches of pure leather tacked on to a thick two-inch heel; I was literally traipsing through the woods in platform shoes. In addition, the insoles are hard as rock with inexplicably high arches that killed my feet. This is how I justify spending $40 for two pairs of socks at REI today—which may turn out to be my best investment of the year. We also had to carry our 45-pound packs; which contained an emergency fire shelter, a space blanket, a sack lunch, and lots and lots of drinking water; on our backs all day long. Keep this in mind as I describe the rest of the day's work.



Our training was structured as a simulation of an actual wildfire. Our team trekked from the forest service headquarters helipad down an old trail to where we would cut fire line, which is basically a three-foot wide swath of land dug down to mineral soil level. By enclosing the hot spot within this strip of dirt devoid of fuel, we help contain the fire and prevent its spread. This is the bread and butter of wildland firefighting. The fire crew lines up in standard tool order, with the cutting tools like the pulaski in front, followed by scraping tools tools like combis, Rhino hoes (more commonly and vulgarly known as Chingaderos, or "f***ing tools"), shovels, and McLeods. It was a real effort to swing those heavy tools in mind-numbing repetition, but it was also amazing to see how the line grew so quickly and efficiently with everyone working together as a team. Our firefighter trainers also showed us how to dig trenches, and we participated in communication drills of passing messages up and down the fire line. After several hours of labor, we were forced to march up the slope back to the helipad, crashing through the trees with no discernable trail to follow. This hike alone already had me gasping for air, especially after factoring in the elevation change from Sacramento.





Fortunately, we finally got a chance to catch our breath back at the helipad and enjoy the breathtaking views while we broke out our lunches.







A few minutes into the much-needed break, our trainers put on a demonstration for us with some of the equipment they use to light fires during prescribed burns. While educational in purpose, it also played like a mini pyrotechnic fireworks show featuring fusees (or flares) and drip torches. Check out the videos I shot below to witness the sheer awesomeness that comes being a wildland firefighter.





At the helipad, we also had practice deploying our emergency fire shelters, which are used for survival only in the most dire circumstances to prevent the inhalation of dangerously overheated and toxic gases and burns from radiant heat. The overwhelming odds are we will never use them (if we even see fire at all), but it's better safe than sorry. These shelters look like metallic sleeping bags, and there's a specific procedure to opening and entering them that makes them easy to secure. The first two times we practiced deploying fire shelters, it was similar in nature to this demonstration:



The last time we deployed, they sprung the exercise on us by surprise. As we were walking back to the helipad at the end of the day, people suddenly yelled at us to drop our packs and start running. In a fog of fatigue and confusion, we had to sprint up the steep trail, grab our shelters, huddle up, and deploy as sirens blared and the instructors shouted instructions. This time, it felt a lot more like the following video; though I didn't shoot it, it does accurately capture the frantic urgency of the moment.



By then, I was so tired that it felt like I was running through molasses in slow motion. I'm almost certain that if there was a real fire, I would have been incinerated and probably would have welcomed death at that point. The rest of the afternoon, we went walked miles through the dense, steep woods cutting fire line for imaginary lightning fires. Just half an hour into the work after our lunch break, my legs were literally trembling beneath me. I had to psych myself up for every step I took or I would have collapsed right then and there. I kept waiting for a second wind, but it never came. I'm proud to say my team bore the day with quiet, gritted determination, but later I learned that pretty much everyone was as equally drained as I was despite the silent and valiant shows of resilience. Even so, one of my teammates had an asthma attack from the exertion of hiking back to the helipad, and another is seriously considering quitting the fuel reduction team after the rigorous experience.

For me, however, the day was invigorating as it was enervating. I definitely have a new respect for the guys who work so tirelessly to protect the environment and homes from wildland fires. I'll admit I've decisively ruled out firefighting as a career; I'm not cut out for work like this all at the time, but I do have a tremendous pride that I am able to participate in this noble work for however brief a period and will have fun being in the great outdoors. I'm loving this opportunity to challenge myself with something so entirely new and unexpected. Next week will be chainsaw training, which won't be as taxing but will hopefully yield some good stories. Before that starts, however, I'll try to backtrack over the course of the next few days and fill you guys in on what's been happening since I've returned!