National Audubon Society - Jan. 12th, 2012

Day Seven. I can't believe that I'm sitting here after our very last day of work here at Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch. This entire experience has gone by so quickly and has been so surreal... I feel like our first day of work was years ago! Words cannot express how sad and bittersweet it is to have to leave, or how thankful I am for have being given this experience.

We began our last day at the Ranch by meeting Roger at Headquarters. Our project for the morning was to build an erosion control structure, which isn't nearly as fancy as it sounds but is very important in maintaining land integrity. We used an erosion control method that has been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years by Native Americans and other cultures. Roger took us to a spot off the side of the dirt road that had been eroded and became a site for water runoff. He even let us drive the Gator down there! Our job was to scavenge the surrounding area for rocks with a flat bottom that can be wiggled into the ground. We collected tons of rocks and put them together in this eroded area, kind of like putting a puzzle together, to make a structure resembling a stone pathway.

The structure helps prevent soil erosion during the rains by slowing the water runoff enough so that it begins to deposit its silt. I think I remember reading about the same thing happening in Africa in Wangari Maathai's book "Unbowed: A Memoir". Europeans had chopped down so many trees and replanted ones that were, in their opinion, more economically useful to launch the logging industry on this new continent. The root systems of these trees couldn't hold the soil as well as the native trees, so an alarming amount of soil erosion occurred -- the trees changed the integrity of practically the entire continent. We see the exact same problem to a lesser extent here at the Ranch with the invasive grasses and plants. It increases the rate of dust storms and erodes the land of Arizona. I really think the U.S. -- and the world -- should take more care of their land to plant native flora. We've become too selfish to concern ourselves with the good of the planet and the land that actually supports us.

We took an early lunch and, then, focused our attention on removing the half-mile of fence post that we de-wired this week. Roger found the fence post puller, which is basically a big lever. It definitely made fence-pulling easier! I pulled a few more out bare-handed because they were already loose, but mostly I got to clobber each post with a sledge hammer to loosen it a bit from the soil. It was satisfying to finish our big project of the week! We did finish pretty early, though, so Roger drove us back to the Grassland Center at Headquarters and we chatted with Linda for a little bit. She is so sweet, I commented that I liked the potted cactus she had at her desk and she turned around and plucked off a piece for me and verbally instructed me on how to replant it in a pot for myself. To be honest, the level of excitement that I feel about going home and planting my own cactus is probably a bit excessive, but it was probably the greatest gift I'd received on this trip!

We went home and lounged around for a while, and then Roger and Linda showed up and surprised us with National Audubon Society T-shirts and homemade Certificates of Achievement! Each certificate had a picture which Roger had sneakily taken of us while working throughout the week. They are so sweet!! After dinner, we began deep-cleaning the bunkhouse so we can pack up and go early on our tour day tomorrow. I am excited to see Tombstone -- a touristy Old-Western town -- and I am absolutely stoked to hike at the Chiricahua National Monument!

I really don't want to leave for Albuquerque tomorrow, but it's what the group decided and, honestly, it would be nice to get home an extra day before school begins. Another thing that's bumming me out is the fact that my camera broke. Beth is going to take tons of pictures for all of us tomorrow, though, so it won't be too bad. I was just looking forward to taking tons of pictures at Chiricahua for my scrapbook. I'll just have to work it out some other way, I suppose! I've already packed most of my stuff and it's so depressing because I love it here so much. This entire experience has been so rewarding, and I am never going to forget Roger, Linda, and everything they've taught me. Maybe I'll come back, someday! Perhaps I'll be one of their visiting researchers, or I'll just come to help with odd jobs and learn about the land like we've been doing all week! Who knows...

National Audubon Society - Jan. 11th, 2012

Day Six. I don't know why I'm extra exhausted today because we actually didn't work as hard as we had been working earlier this week, but it's 8:30P.M. and I am about to pass out! We finished the last segment of the fence in about an hour and a half for a total of half a mile of fence removed. We were going to pull out the actual fence posts, but they're pretty far stuck into the ground and Roger couldn't find the fence post remover. I actually pulled a couple out with my bare hands. I am the Hulk!!

It was cloudy this morning. After we gave up on pulling fence posts, Roger drove us back to the bunkhouse and ran off a couple project ideas for us around the bunkhouse. We had an early lunch and a quick nap (which is pretty typical for lunchtime, nowadays), and got to work. Beth, Jenna, and Steph measured all the rooms of the bunkhouse for Roger so that they can re-carpet/tile it. Michelle, Becky and I started re-graveling the paths that are landscaped between the bunkhouse, the lab, and the casita (a small one-room house). We basically just shoveled a bunch of rocks from a pile of gravel into an old wheelbarrow, dumped them on the path, and spread them out.

Afterward, we all went over to the Swinging H House and continued painting the wall around the garden. Roger actually took the time to give us a tour of the buildings we haven't seen yet: the casita, lab, and the inside of the Swinging H House. The lab is just for the researchers that come to the Ranch. There was a freezer with a ton of dead specimen inside: mice, quail, rattlesnake, etc. There was also a frozen dinner in the freezer... No comment.

So, mostly all we did today were easy jobs, so it wasn't too labor-intensive. We went on a hike when we ran out of paint because we finished pretty early and still had some daylight left. We hiked to the top of a hill and had a wonderful view. We are completely surrounded by mountains and hills. When we got back, Beck and I made dinner: Mac and cheese, grilled veggies, and broccoli. We do not go hungry in this house! Then, we finished decorating the backs of our T-shirts. They all turned out really cute. It was nice to bring out our creative sides. Mine is kind of off-center, but I'll get over it! I drew a barbed wire fence on the front, and a cactus and agave tree on the back. I don't really know what else to write tonight because I'm so tired.

I'm actually sad that tomorrow is our last work day here and I really don't want to leave. I love it here! I love the bunkhouse, and I especially love the work I get to do here because it's a cause that's important to me. As we reflect, we talk about how much we like Roger's appreciation of us and just how fun it is to listen to him talk. We can all tell that he really cares about what's going on at Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch and the cause it represents with the National Audubon Society. Roger actually found the fence pulled, so I think we're going back and pulling the rest of te fence posts from the ground to complete our half-mile mission! Apparently, Lawrence got its first snow on the ground, and I am so glad I am not there to drive in it and bear the cold.

National Audubon Society - Jan. 10th, 2012

Day Five. I still can't believe it's only Tuesday. Wow! I am going to mark down another fabulous and successful day at Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch. We woke up bright and early and were picked up at 8A.M. by Roger (who fixed our leaky kitchen sink, which was so sweet of him!) to head to work. I wasn't nearly as sore as I though I'd be. Honestly, I mostly just felt fatigued. Roger and Linda had taught us about how this land was once used to raise cattle, but that the grasses of Arizona don't do well with grazing. The U.S. Department of Agriculture developed the "perfect" grass to withstand the heat, dryness, grazing, etc. It is now called an invasive species, and has overtaken a huge percentage of the Ranch and of Arizona, in general. It grew on slopes and in a bunch of other places it wasn't supposed to, and outcompeted the native grasses. Plus, apparently, no animal likes to it it, so it seems to have been a total bust. Nice job, America!

For our mini break, we chopped down invasive honeysuckle from the Kansas ecosystem, but this is different -- you cannot just go around and rip out handfuls of grass or mow it all down because it's too time consuming, costly, and it'll just grow back. Our mission, today, was to lend a helping hand to an Arizona grass -- Sacaton. This grass, unlike invasive Bermuda Grass, grows in tall clumps and has a pretty sturdy root system. It is very used to Arizona's climate and it's frequently flooded and coated with topsoil during the monsoon season.

Using our knowledge of sacaton, we worked to help bring it back to dominance at the Ranch. First, a large circle is cut out of the bermuda grass with the weed-eater. We cut it down to the dirt to give it as little chance as possible of growing back. We rake the dead grass back and dig 10 holes for each mowed circle. That was hard work, digging hole after hole! Not "hard", really, but raking and digging for a while is just physically exhausting. Roger had to uproot some well-established sacaton from a plot and from the middle of the road, and we had to trim the grass down to about a foot tall and break up the root system to get small handfuls of the plant. Those roots are very tough and breaking them apart was nearly impossible at times. We did it, though, and planted them in their nice little holes.

Since the plants are used to the monsoons and floods of topsoil, we used a hose to

practically drown everything in the circle plot so that they have more of a chance of survival. Finally, we used the dead mowed grass as mulch around the transplanted bundles to keep moisture in and keep weeds out. The hope is that the sacaton prospers and outcompetes the low-laying bermuda grass for sunlight. Roger said that from each of the dozen plots we mowed, dug, and transplanted (over 120 plants, total!), a high success rate would be for two or three from each plot to survive. The war against bermuda grass will be a long lone.

I'm bummed because the group decided at lunch to leave a day earlier than scheduled for Kansas because I don't want to leave here, but I guess it would be nice to have a day to bum out before school starts. Beth and I climbed an epically steep hill to get a view of our work, and it was amazing! Climbing it was challenging, but the view was totally worth it. We "rock surfed" down the hill and back to work, I'm surprised I didn't wipe out on the way down.

After work, we took a mini road trip to Sierra Vista's Walmart (about a 45min drive) for some last minute groceries. Becky and I got an ice cream cone from the McDonald's there, and we spent the last twenty-something dollars of our grocery money, with 23 cents to spare! That's what I call "budgeting". The ride back was kind of hilarious because as we were entering the dirt road to the Ranch, we kept seeing this fire glow in the sky. It looked like the top of a volcano or a giant fire behind the clouds. We kept asking "what is that?!". I finally pondered "is that the moon...?", and it clicked. The moon was just rising over the mountains, it was flaming orange and bigger than I've ever seen. We all freaked out and pulled the car over to take pictures and marvel at the night sky -- it is so much more amazing when you're so far away from civilization. We made pizza for dinner when we got to the bunkhouse.

Another highlight of the night was making T-Shirts. We'd all brought a plain T-shirt and Beth brought a ton of puff paint. Our shirts look so cute, everybody tried to incorporate something from the trip -- barbed wire, mountains, the moon, etc. This is the point where my camera broke, so I didn't get any pictures for the rest of the trip =(

National Audubon Society - Jan. 9th, 2012

Day Four. Today was our first day working with Roger! We spend the entire day tearing down an old barbed-wire fence. O.K., it sounds boring and weird, it it's actually very important for the safety of the wildlife. Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch has built all new fencing around their 8,000-acre plot that follows certain guidelines and standards for the safe passage of wildlife. I read a little bit about it online before coming here, and it also relates a lot to immigration. The wall that the U.S. government uses/will use to separate the U.S.-Mexico border is a barrier to both people and wildlife, and the National Audubon Society does not support the latter.

The old fencing at the Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch had to be removed because the spacing of the barbed wire is dangerous to the animals. New fencing is high enough from the ground to allow javelina (a small mammal resembling a wild pig) and other small animals to navigate underneath, but short enough for pronghorn and deer to jump. Also, the top two wire strands need to be a certain distance apart, correlating to the anatomical length of the deer and pronghorns' heels, so that, if they do catch their foot on the fence, it's much less likely for them to get stuck and hung up on the fence.

Removing the fence was definitely hard work; a few of us had to go ahead and pull wire "stays" out of the fence by untwisting them from the barbed wire of the fence. A few followed and rolled up the barbed wire into loops and tying them together as Roger clipped the barbed wire from the metal fence posts. Everything was very rusty and hard to untangle after sitting out in the middle of the Arizona grasslands for thirty years or so, and I can't tell you h

ow many times I ran into a spiny bush and destroyed my legs. Ouch.

Roger had us take a break and he

took pictures with us and showed us around the Ranch a bit. It was beautiful, we hiked for a while around a creek that he pointed out to us. I could listen to Roger talk about the plants, the birds, and the rest of the wildlife all day! He always has some interesting story to tell us about the history of a particular dried-up creek or a funny-looking plant. We've spotted white-tail deer, agave trees, lots of cacti, birds that look funny when they fly, and even a coyote on the horizon!

There's a training camp very near the Ranch near Huachuca Fort in the Huachuca Mountains where military learn to fly small unmanned aircraft called "drones". Linda told us about them yesterday. I have to say, I felt like I was in the middle of a dystopian novel when we found them flying over us. "A cold, lifeless wind stung my eyes as I fought tirelessly against the rusted barbed wire. I was surrounded by nothingness, but the drones buzzed overhead with their lawn-mower growl". Honestly, I find it kind of creepy. Linda tells us that they have some unbelievable high-definition cameras on them (so we'd better hide under a tree if we have to pee!), and some are even equipped to drop bombs. I think it's horrible that we even need this kind of technology, and it seems banal and unfortunate to say that we can travel so far away from life and civilization only to be given the constant reminder that they can monitor everything we do.

In any case, I am already starting to feel the soreness! The wire was just so thick and rusty and we only had handheld wire cutters to work with it. Even when taking stays out, the wire had pretty much been glued together with rust. Everybody seemed to do well with the work and appreciate, or even enjoy it. I think we'd de-wired almost half a mile of fence today, and it felt like such an amazing accomplishment. Multiple girls commented on how they felt like they "saved the deer" today, and they're right! I am so exhausted, though. I even took a nap at lunchtime. Tomorrow, we plan on planting sacaton (a native grass), so I'm sure I'll have a lot to talk about regarding the reasons for planting it, its benefits, and it's history, thanks to Roger! We'll see if I can still move my arms tomorrow.

National Audubon Society - Jan. 8th, 2012

Day Three. Today was our first day of working! I was kind of surprised because it was brought up by the group that they'd rather not do our tour day today and that they'd rather do it on Friday. I don't have a problem with that or anything but, honestly, it's pretty frustrating to me that nobody brought that up months ago when we were planning the trip, especially since I asked multiple times if Sunday was O.K. with everybody for our tour day before sending our schedule to the directors of the ranch. Then, they seemed to indicate that they'd rather leave the same day as our tour day because they don't want to drive as long (which is understandable) and they want to get back to Kansas a day early (which I don't...). I'm just frustrated because we've been talking about this trip since October or November and everybody had agreed on the schedule. It really isn't a big deal, I know people change their minds all of the time, but I just felt really bad calling Linda the morning of our ex-tour day and rescheduling on her (especially since today is Roger's day off).

It was all O.K., though, we found Linda and she took an hour or so to get herself organized and came over to the bunkhouse. Probably my favorite part of the day was listening to her talk about the Ranch's research, history, and such. She brought up Rachel Carson -- one of my idols -- and her book "Silent Spring" -- one of my favorite books -- and really seemed to connect to all of us. She's such a fascinating woman, and it felt very rewarding to work with her today. She seemed ecstatic to get out of the office and work with us. We cleaned up the area of an old burnt-down barn because they want to turn it into a campground. Then, we painted the veranda and the outer wall of the "Swinging H House", which is another bunkh

ouse across the driveway from ours. The wall we painted surrounded a cactus garden, which was gorgeous. The entire area is beautifully landscaped and filled with cacti. Each cactus was unique and beautiful!

I couldn't get over the view of the grasslands and mountains; I wish I had this view surrounding me all the time. I took some pictures! We finished painting at sunset and went back to the bunkhouse and made Mexican food for dinner. At the table, we all discussed our favorite parts of the day. I was happy to hear everyone's own experience. One of the things discussed that really hit home with me was how we've noticed that we really feel appreciated here. Roger and Linda have worked so hard to make us feel welcome and like our contribution matters. Seeing the difference in the barn site and painted wall grounded that sense of accomplishment, because a lot of volunteer work doesn't generate such a visible difference. Without us, Linda and Roger are pretty much alone on the Ranch, and they would have had to do all of that work by themselves. I think I feel more appreciated with this cause than others because we are making a visual impact and our coordinators are so kind and appreciative. Some other causes -- while still worthy -- go through so many volunteers that you don't always feel that you've made a huge difference, and that was another point upon which we touched at the dinner table.

Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to working with Roger to tear down some old fence!

National Audubon Society - Jan. 7th, 2012

Day Two! We're sitting around the table of the bunkhouse telling weird stories and it's a blast! This day has pretty much been an adventure. Becky made spinach and cheese stuffed shells, which were delicious.

I need to start at the beginning of the day... We woke up at the church around 7:30 and left around 8:00. I was right -- Albuquerque is really pretty in the daylight. We got a quick breakfast and hit the road. I feel like today's drive (7hr) was longer than yesterday's, which is weird. Maybe it was the anticipation! I remember feeling a little less enthusiastic today because everybody seemed to be very preoccupied with their phones and internet. Maybe I'm just weird, but I didn't come here to be glued to technology the whole time -- I feel like it causes a lot of isolation. Anyway, the scenery was awesome! I pretty much stared out the window and listened to music while the other girls read or listened to sports radio or whatever. I'm sure that we were all just too sick of riding in a "mom van" to be very social, which wouldn't surprise me.

I loved looking at the mountains and the desert, the scenery was just surreal. Even the little towns through which we'd passed were cute and interesting! Hatch, NM is overflowing with chile

peppers and quirky shops and restaurants. We stopped in a town called "Truth or Consequence", which is such a weird name, but it was a cute little town. We got some food, refilled, out gas tank, and went on our way.

The next adventure began in Benson, AZ, where we'd planned a Walmart stop for our week's worth of groceries! We planned all of our meals in the car so we knew what we needed, it was just kind of hectic trying to find everything, keep track of the money, and determine how much of everything we needed. However, it was fun, despite the craziness, and we got to witness an "extreme coupon-er"! (We left before her, though, so I don't know how much money she saved.) Fitting it all in the car was a whole other challenge...

We finally found the ranch, but Roger (the Assistant Coordinator) wasn't at the bunkhouse and there is no cell reception (they call it "The Vortex") so that was a small dilemma. However, we found the headquarters and he was there, so all was well! We put his adorable dog, Zeke, while he gave us a quick run-down of our jobs, gave us fresh bed linens, and explained a little bit of the history of the Appleton-Whittel Research Ranch! It was interesting to learn of the work they do, his field (herpetology - study of amphibians/reptiles), his background at the Phoenix Zoo, and about some wildlife we may see here! The ranch is breathtaking -- desert grasses surrounded by mountains and clear skies.

The bunkhouse is great! We have a fully-stocked kitchen (coffee maker, two refrigerators, stove, oven, dish- and clothes-washer, the works), a living area with fireplace, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. The entire bunkhouse is solar powered. I also love that there's no cell service because I think it'd be great to just get away from life for awhile. I mean, that's another reason why I'm here! I don't think the girls currently utilizing the bunkhouse Wi-Fi would agree, but everybody is different :)

After dinner and showering, we made friendship bracelets and chatted. I mostly listened because I was pretty engrossed in making my first friendship bracelet! Beth taught me how to make them, and now I've made two, which pretty much makes me an expert. I'm kind of a quiet person unless I'm one-on-one with somebody, but I like listening to everybody's stories. Now I'm in bed and Michelle, my bunkhouse roommate, is trying to sleep. I'm tired, and I feel bad for keeping the light on, goodnight!