Never a Dull Moment

Holy crap this month has been crazy! Brace yourselves for a long one, folks.

A lot has been going on. I turned 26 on the 8th of June. I am now closer to 30 than 20. It’s kind of depressing. I spent my birthday with my family which is always the best way to spend it, in my opinion. Peter and I drove down to Bountiful and went to Hogle Zoo with my parents, my brother Danny, my sister Michelle and her one-year old, Riley. I haven’t been to the zoo in years so I really enjoyed myself. Riley seemed to be enjoying the zoo a lot, too…at least up until she had a bad experience with an elephant. There’s a new exhibition for the elephants at the zoo, and out in front is a big elephant statue. It makes snoring sounds like it’s asleep until someone moves in front of its trunk. Then it starts emanating a noise that sounds like a trumpet, but in a rhythm to resemble sneezing, after which it sprays water out at the person who happens to be standing in front of it. Well, we didn’t know that it did that, and my father put poor Riley’s face right up in front of the trunk so she could touch it and hear the noise, and well…I’m sure you can guess what happened. I’m not sure who felt worse: Riley or her poor grandpa. My dad felt horrible because it made her cry. The whole situation was kind of funny, though.

After the zoo I met up with my in-laws who took me and Peter out to dinner. We went to The Old Spaghetti Factory in Trolley Square. It’s one of my favorites and I was having a craving for Mezythra. I always have a lot of fun with my husband’s family, especially his brothers. They’re a riot.

My mother turned the big 50 on the 10th, and unfortunately I had to miss it. I had to spend her birthday sitting in seasonal orientation meetings all day. That was not so much fun. Orientation is a lot of bureaucratic drivel with emphasis on safety and appropriate/inappropriate behaviors while working for the Forest Service, and everyone has to attend. Not only was it boring, but it was really cold. It has been raining just about every single day up here, and because of that it has been exceptionally colder than usual. Orientation was held at the fairgrounds but the little building we were in had no heat. Bernard, one of the permanent staff and a really nice guy who looks like Grizzly Adams, must have noticed me shivering because he gave me the liner to his hunting poncho to keep me warm. It actually helped quite a bit, because like I said, it was COLD. I did have several people giggling at me because I was the only person there bundled up in a camouflage poncho, but at least I was a lot more comfortable.

The one nice thing about orientation is that you get to mingle with lots of people who you would normally not interact with. Not from a personal choice, at least on my part, but because it’s a big forest and everyone has different jobs to do. All I have to say is that there are a lot of characters working for the F.S. That’s one reason I love my job. I get to meet some really interesting people.

Thursday night after the last day of orientation we had a little mini-potluck at my house. We had a few of the seasonal guys over who live in the bunk houses and we ate all kinds of tasty food including road kill.

Yeah…I’m not kidding.

One of the guys on the rec (recreation) crew brought some stew that he had made, and it was absolutely delicious. I was happily through half of my bowl when he announced that the meat in the stew was venison from a fawn they had accidentally hit with one of their trucks. I of course had just put a big spoonful of stew in my mouth when he said this and it took some effort to swallow it down without gagging. I finished my bowl of stew so as not to offend him, but I didn’t go back for seconds. He got a big kick out of feeding us road kill, I think. Like I said…we have a lot of characters on the forest…and that stew really was the tastiest stew I have ever had…even if it was a little redneck.

In other news, Peter now has his red card (and his $400 smoke jumper boots finally arrived too, happy birthday, Peter) so he can help fight forest fires if we ever have one on our district. The way the weather is going, though, it seems unlikely. We have a lot of dead pine trees due to the mountain pine beetle epidemic, but everything has been so wet that the threat is low. The only thing I can see happening is if later in the summer it gets really hot and all the lush green plants, which are growing now because of all the rain, dry up. That could be a problem.

Speaking of the ranger station…I’ve had quite a bit of excitement recently. First of all we had two bear sightings that I had to call the district ranger about, and then last Sunday there was an unfortunate incident that I had to call the police about. I won’t go into specifics here, but the phone call I made had to do with accusations of child abuse. Not a fun phone call. I got an hour and a half of overtime because of it, too. I couldn’t close the ranger station at the normal time because I had several officers using it as their base of operation where they took statements and such. Then later that day, after I was finally able to close up and work on some paperwork to turn in my money for the week, I heard a knock at the backdoor which was really odd. The only people who use the backdoor are employees and they all have keys. So I cautiously unlocked and opened the door to see a woman about my age holding a fawn in her arms.

My instant thought was, “Oh dear (no pun intended) here we go…”

And what did she have to say?

“Hi! I found this baby deer by my cabin!”

*sigh* Instant headache.

I had this very same thing happen last summer when a Boy Scout leader brought in a fawn he had found out in the woods. I told this woman the same thing I told him. Deer often leave their fawns lying in grass or vegetation while they forage for food. Go put it back where you found it.

I don’t think the woman realized that she had signed the poor little baby’s death warrant. Hopefully the mother deer will find her baby and will still accept it even though it has human scent all over it. I doubt it though. The woman had good intentions, but unfortunately her ignorance probably killed that deer.

This Saturday was just as crazy. I had several opportunities to use my first aid skills. The first incident was a young man who came into the ranger station and the first thing he said was, “Is there someone here who could drive me to the hospital?” That’s usually not a good way to start a sentence. I asked him what was wrong, and then noticed his hand that was wrapped up in a shirt. He then told me he had cut his hand pretty badly when he fell on his machete. Luckily for him he hurt himself on the same day we were having the annual Over the Top bike race that starts in Kamas and ends in Evanston, and there were a couple of ambulances already up here. He had driven himself to the ranger station but was in no condition to drive himself further because he was feeling pretty shaky and woozy. So I drove him up to the ambulance that was sitting conveniently two miles up the highway. Later that afternoon things got even crazier. The weather turned pretty ugly during the bike race, and I got a radio call telling me they were sending several hypothermic cyclists my way. You’d think that the 20th of June would be a nice sunny day, but no…it was raining and sleeting with temperatures in the 40s. It was cold. So I had several wet, shivering cyclists in my ranger station trying to warm up. I scavenged towels and blankets from my cabin for them to use and gave them all warm beverages to drink until they were picked up and taken into town by shuttles, Forest Service employees, or police officers. What a great way to celebrate the first day of summer, eh? I'm pretty tired of all this rain we've been having. We've had only one day this month that was sunny and warm. Most days its been in the 50s and 60s and raining/hailing/snowing. It's been insane!

Aside from all the craziness and weather I'm still enjoying myself. There's certainly no end to excitment around here, that's for sure!

Hurray! It's June!

I don't have any pictures this week because my camera is being stupid and keeps telling me my battery is low when I put brand new, fresh batteries in it. I guess I need to invest in a new camera this summer. I really wish it was working because we've had these crazy thunderstorms every day for the past week or so and the effect of misty clouds in the mountains, and wet green leaves made me want to take pictures of all the beauty I am surrounded with this summer. I am so lucky to be where I am.

I've been working at the ranger station for about two weeks now. It's been awfully slow. It's still a little chilly up here and the highway is closed because of snow. I can't tell you how many people I've had come into the ranger station and ask me whether or not the highway was truly closed. I bit my tongue and withheld my snarky comment, "No...the dozens of signs you passed coming up to the ranger station saying "Highway closed!" were there just to mess with you. We lied. Go right ahead and drive yourself into a snow bank!" I'm not a mean person, or at least I don't like to think I am, so I would politely tell them that it was indeed closed further ahead because we are at a higher elevation (the Bear River Ranger Station sits at 8,444 feet above see level, and the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway reaches somewhere around 10,000) and there is still snow on the highway further up. They'd then get annoyed like I purposefully put the snow there just to spite them and mutter, "I drove all the way from Salt Lake for nothin'!" Well, that's your fault for not planning ahead. Not mine. I have no control over the weather, nor do I have control over UDOT and when they plan to plow the highway.

My supervisor told me a story about a man who had called her and told her about a beaver that was building a dam in the Stillwater Fork up by Christmas Meadows. He then asked her if we just let the beavers build their dams wherever they want to.

No. the beavers must first sign a petition to receive a permit and then submit their blueprints for their plan.

Of course the beavers can build their dams wherever they want! As long as they're not flooding any buildings or campgrounds they can do whatever they want! They're beavers!

People sometimes don't think before they open their mouths.

This last week I've been busy training the new girl who will be staffing the ranger station along with me. She's 19 years old and I unfortunately don't have much in common with her. She's easily bored and fills up the empty time with lots of chatter about whatever comes into her head. I find myself saying things like, "Uh huh...yeah...alright...huh" a lot. She's a nice enough girl, though, but I miss Sharon who I worked with last summer.

Peter has been busy with all kinds of odd jobs. I call him their Random Task Man because they send him off to do random things all the time. Last week he was looking for Northern Goshawk nests. These birds look like this:

They're mean birds and they will let you know if you get anywhere near their nest because they'll either attack you or shriek at you. They're an indicator species though and so it's important to know if they're in your forest. Peter found three in one week and showed me one that was actually occupied. The female had eggs she was incubating so she was trying to go unnoticed but she had her red eyes focused on us the entire time we were there.

So Peter hasn't actually done anything "timber" related yet this year. This week he's in Huntsville, UT going to fire school this week. He left me to fend for myself in the woods. It's kind of lonely up here without him.

We've had a lot of couples move up this week. One young married couple is occupying the cabin next to ours and we've made friends with them. We've had barbecues a few times and last Sunday we got together with them and another retired couple, who are volunteering for the Forest Service, and played games. It was a lot of fun. One nice thing about this couple is that they're from Logan, too. So hopefully we'll keep in touch even after the summer is over.

That's pretty much all that's going on right now. We're still alive and doing well, and so far this summer looks like it's going to be a blast!