BLM rehabilition (Nov5-Nov12) Fri
2007 Nov 9 (Fri) Written by hand in letter format to my sister. Mostly copied here.
Don’t remember if I described our campground woes in yesterday’s segment, but the campground we’re staying at — the same one as for our 4-day tour last week — has 2 host pairs. The host we found when we arrived yesterday didn’t know where they were supposed to put us (communication!), so they gave us some walk-in sites to set up in, which happened to be WRONG according to the other host pair. So we had to move to sites 19-21 this afternoon after 10 hours of work. There are six people per site with 6 tents crammed into what would normally hold one or two tents. Most everyone from our 6-month contract crew (screw7 for southern crew 7) is in a tent. Our partnering NCC crew (screw8), who started 3 months ago mainly decided to bag it, as did I. I can imagine coyotes licking my face at night.
My hands are sore writing this. But I have my fleece fingerless gloves on, and they are comfortable within them. They are chapped from wet, wind dry and also from the soil/sand/rock mixture that is the desert ground. I’ve gotten a few more stabs, pokes and living splinters — mostly from dead yucca/joshua tree leaves (youch!) — but most of the cuts on my hands are from either sharp rocks or just splits from being so chapped. My knuckles look like I got in a fist fight with a cat.
Some of my fellow crew members are burning an open Dri-Water that was going to be thrown away and was salvaged, which is silica-based. I’d be curious to walk over, but I’m not sure of the toxicity of the fumes. They’re doing experiments with it. Comments from the campfire have included “yellow flame!” and “that’s a good fire retardent.” I intend on looking up the MSDS if it has one on the internet when I get off on Monday.
Apparently tomorrow is our last planting day. Five of the crew are (supposedly) going back to Gold Butte to finish planting the zebas that didn’t have any materials. Six hours of driving for two hours of work. I’d volunteer to go because I want to climb around on the rocks.
I’m starting to get chilled, even with my wool hat on, so I’m going to bed.
