And the work begins!

OK I only have a few minutes so I will give a quick update.

Work is going great! the weather has been pretty nice so we have been burning a lot. Basically every year when it is fire season, the firefighters start cutting all underbrush on big chunks of land so it is less likely to burn if it is hit with lightning or whatever, and they pile all the brush up and let it dry for a year. The next year before the fire season starts (when it is still wet enough) they start burning all the piles to get rid of the fuel. This year they have 14,000 piles to burn! so we have been burning like crazy! we get all dressed up in our Nomex (fireproof gear) and packs and take our tools, and drip torches and hike up the the burn pile areas and start lighting them all on fire. It is a lot of really hot and smokey work but it is fun too. A couple of times the area has been too dry and the fire has started creeping around and cathing trees on fire. When that happens we stop burning and start cutting a big line down the the mineral soil around the fire so that it can't jump then line and spread to the rest of the forest. The people we are working with are soo awesome I am really looking foreword to the rest of the summer.

On a side note I went to San Fran last weekend with the boys, Jersey and his buddy Jason. It was so fun! We went and saw the Oakland A's vs the Indians and saw the Giants vs the cardinals!! I was so happy to see some baseball, wish it was the Sox though... but the Sox are playing the Giants in June so who knows!! haha

well I can't upload pictures on the computer I am on but I will try later because this computer doesn't right click apparently but I got some great ones so I will promise to try to get them up here

Hope everything is going well out there, my email address is finley.janes@gmail if anyone is trying to reach me and I will write when I can

ps
BRUINS MOVED ON IN THEIR SERIES AND THEY JUST WON THEIR FIRST GAME AGAINST THE FLYERS!

Up at Strawberry Valley.

So its Friday and this brings an end to the first week up at Plumas National Forest.

The Area is beautiful!!! absolutely gorgeous! So on Monday we packed the van up full and headed the short two hour drive from Sacramento up into the Sierra Nevada mountains where we were going to be working. About 45 minutes into the drive we get a call from the Forestry guys and they tell us is was snowing up in the mountains. This was a shock because it was suppose to be 60 and sunny but instead, as we get up higher and higher we end up having to take the chains out and chain the tires so we could get up some of the hills.

As soon as we got past the foothills we lost service on our phones completely. And that was the end of outside communication. When we reached the forestry barracks which is about 20 minutes from the engine house we were staying in, it was snowing so bad that the electricity had gone out up where our housing was so we ended up staying at the barracks for a night before we could move into our housing. the housing is very nice, its a small little house attached to the Strawberry Valley Engine House and it has a big kitchen which is perfect for all our food (because we eat A LOT!). I am sharing a tiny little room with my team mates Maggie and Warith. There are two beds in the room and a mattress on the floor for Warith but it doesn't really fit so Warith has to sleep with his feet under my bed hahaha. But its cosy and not bad at all.

The Mountains are really amazing. The whole town we live in has only about 20 structures. Two stores, and about 80 people in the whole town. The forest encompasses everything. Huge Ponderous pines with their trunk diameters up to 5 feet wide. Sugar Pines with pine cones as big as my forearm and my favorite trees, Medronas. There are 5 beautiful lakes near by and a stunning reservoir in walking distance, the water of the reservoir is a bright turquoise green because the soil is dark red from the cedar trees.

The guys we are working with are GREAT!. They are all really chilled out and relaxed and funny as hell. They really know their stuff about the forestry and firefighting and chainsaws and in the few days we have been here they we have learned so much already. We haven't done much work yet. They spent the first few days getting us certified to cut bigger trees down and teaching us more techniques.

The chain saw we are using is SO heavy! before this we have been using chainsaws with 24 in bars and pretty small engines. Two days ago I ran the new saw for about 2 and a half hours and my forearms were DEAD. Its the 460 which is one of the most powerful chainsaws so it cuts like butter but its bar is about three feet long and it weighs close 25 pounds which gets tiring to hold up all day. But I am excited to become proficient with it.

The nice thing about our schedule is that it is 4 days on and 3 days off. So I always have 3 days weekends! and we just work 7-5:30 during the week instead. Its great! and it will especially be great once the weather gets nice because then we can spend the weekends like fishing and playing games and hiking all over the national forest, I can't wait!


Ok well I can sometimes get service if I hike around a little bit, but I really am only gunna be able to get service/ web when we make the treck down to the foothills on some weekends so communication might be sketching. Good Luck all and

GO BRUINS!!!!

Tree Planting, Transitions and New project

Hey All OK

well I am back in Sacramento again for a week. But first I have a little re-cap on the past few weeks like I promised.

Ok So a few weeks ago we spent two weeks working at a non-profit camp called Camp Niwana. This camp was a sort of bastard child of camps mostly because it was underfunded and lacked a board of directories. Well due to the lack of funding the camp was forced to clear cut 35acres of forest. When we arrived it looked like a nuclear war had taken place there. There was just fields and fields of sticks and slash and torn up brush, really horrible. Our first week there a bit of a horror show. First off, the camp had planned to have us stay in the house that the camp grounds keeper stays in during the summer. This Camp was about 2 hours away from our other camp on Vashon Island and we had to take a ferry to get to it. But anyways, we we got there the staff, who had not been to the camp in 4 or 5 months because it was off season, realized that all the water pumps were broken so if we were to stay there we would not have water. So we ended up having to commute about 4 hours a day there and back. That was bad but the work for the first week was even worse. We spent 9 hours a day picking up sticks. And really it was nine hours straight (well lunch break) of picking up the branches and slash and putting it into neater piles. It was boring, monotonous work and it really wore on you. But It was only a week. the next week was great. We got to stay there so there was no more commuting and we started planting trees to reforest the area!
It was great!! Ever morning we would get up, do PT and then get to work. We would get these two big satchels that you strapped to your hips and filled with 2 year old saplings. We probably put about 40 or so baby trees in each satchel. Then we would take our dibble bars, which is sort of like a shovel except the entire thing made out of a heavy metal, and the end is thicker and narrower. We would slam the dibbles into the ground, wiggle it around so it made a big enough hole and then carefully slide the sapling into the hole making sure not to crush the roots and then stomp the soil around the tree.
After we got used to it, it would take about 40 seconds to a minute per tree. Between the ten of us we plants 5,000 trees, some Douglas Firs and Some Red Cedars. And we covered all 35 acres with new growth!


So Now as I said before we have left Vashon, which is sad because I loved it there but exciting too because it is GREAT to see all my friends back at base. This base weekend was a long weekend for us and my parents and my brother and my baby sister all flew out to meet me in San Fran!! It was so much fun, we saw all over the city, drove up to wine country and visited my campus!! Now I am back in Sac, besides all of the paperwork and meetings I have to go to, it is really really really really really nice to be back with my friends. But unfortunately we will be splitting up again on Monday. Because on Monday I am going to my next project!!!!!!!

My next project is going to be great. We are working with a Fire and Forestry crew that run Plumas National Forest in northern Cali! We are very excited because being with these guys puts us at the best chance for actually going to a fire. Also there is a different element to this project... usually all projects are from 2-8 weeks. I am going to be stationed in Plumas for four months!!! which is kind of sucky because I would like to move around more but is also good because this also gives us a better chance to see fire then if we were on any other shorter spike.
we will be living in a bunk house at an Fire Engine station near the forest in a town called Strawberry Valley. That's all we know now but I'll keep y'all tuned in

BYE

Work, Wood, and Bald Eagles.

So My time here at Vashon Island is coming to and end. We only have a week and a half until we leave. My feet are getting a little itchy to move on but at the same time I really have loved my time here. My activities have been pretty average, basically every day we take out the chainsaws and go to work on clearing all that defensible space I was talking about earlier but the place we live is so beautiful and the people we work with are so awesome that I am a little sad to leave.

There are five other staff living here on camp grounds too and three of them come down to our hang out place (we have a basement that is our dedicated chill place, it has kitchen, a fire place, lots of mice and could also be called a museum of couches through the ages) and chill with us all the time.

I definitely will miss hanging out with all of them but even more I will miss the landscape and community. It is the most amazing thing to be able to wake up in the morning and see bald eagles flying over the ocean as soon as you walk out your front door. Because there is rain and moderate temperatures all year round the forest grows all year round and is lush and green. The wilderness rises up on a ridge and really dwarves the camp. The forests here are full of fir and cedar trees three to four feet in diameter, ferns taller than me and the beautiful tropical-like broad-leafed evergreen, Medrona, which i think is my new favorite type of tree. Paths wind in and out among the trees, and there is enough land that you could hike all day and probably not see it all.

The best thing about being swallowed up by all of this nature is the amount of wildlife that I see daily. On average I probably see 10 deer, 2 raccoons, 2 otters, 2-4 Bald eagles, and a bunch of different bird species, daily. I love it.

Last week I saw something that I don't think I will ever be blessed enough to see again. It was about 7am and I was just finishing up my PT and stretching. I was inside our basement hang out place (its called Shutanka) and as I stretched (I think specifically I was stretching my quads), I was looking out the back windows of the room, which opens straight up onto the beach and the puget sound and as I stretched I noticed a little otter head swimming through the sound towards me. I watched it and as it reached the beach I saw that it was carrying a big fish; he struggled to pull it up on shore. Almost a soon as he was on the beach, there was a a fury of movement as a huge male Bald Eagle swooped down right in front of my window and started battling the otter over his fish.

I knew bald eagles are huge but I don't think that anyone knows exactly how big huge is until they see one up close. His wing span was wider than mine, his talons bigger than my own fist, he could have easily picked up a small dog in each of his feet. The otter, in seeing his enemy sweep down, sort of dropped and rolled out of the way, clutching his precious fish. The eagle, beating his wings so hard in order to stay hovering, so hard he was probably making the sand under fly around, dived and grabbed out twice for the otter but the otter escaped safely into a drainpipe that was sticking out the rocks onto the beach. The eagle flew away empty handed, no fish.

Ok well from request from the commenters of my last post (which I now was almost a month ago) I was asked to define why I like chopping wood. Ok well first off chopping wood is a lot better than using the chainsaws because the saws are so loud and heavy and there is so much exhaust. But that point aside, chopping wood is like a challenge and also there is such a feeling of satisfaction when you split wood. Because each stump is a puzzle kind of. You might have a big log a foot and a half in diameter and two feet high and depending on where you place your wedge or where you hit the log with your maul you could split the whole thing in only a couple whacks or you could spend like 20 minutes on it if you can't find the weakest spot. I dunno I just like watching the wood pile up next to me ahha

OK Well I have a lot more to so, about planting trees, murals and my next project so I promise I will write soooon!

From Washington!

Oh I'm Sorry I'm Sorry I'm Sorry!

I've been horrible and I havn't written for awhile but Here I am now, ready to update ya'll on my whereabouts.

Well I arrived safe and sound ( and in one piece) in Washington. The drive up was gorgeous. We were constantly driving up into the mountains and then into some deep foggy valley, just beautiful. We finally made it into the Seattle area, after two days of driving and then took the ferry from the mainland over to Vashon Island. It was breathtaking seeing the island arise out of the mist. The Island itself is tiny. One main road. a lot of back roads, and even more horses. Its pretty cool because the island population consists of rich old hippies so the island is covered with strange art, knickknack stores and coffee shops.

Camp Sealth itself is about 2o minutes away from town and then another 10 minutes down a long winding pot-hole ridden drive to the Camp. The camp is huge! 65 cabins, some heated some without windows or doors and all of them in some array of disrepair. There are about 5 or 6 staff living on camp with us and they are all AWESOME. So nice. All of them are a little rustic a little goofy but they have just been sooo welcoming!

The work we have been doing is pretty routine. We're using the chainsaws to clear ten to fifteen feet of defensible space (no shrubs, no trees, no fire) around all the cabins, the trees we cut down we are splitting for firewood (which is AWESOME!).

We've been going into Seattle every weekend, which is also pretty nice...

Alright I know this hasn't been a very descriptive message but I am exhausted. I will write soon.

Splitting Wood

My House, where we are living (boooya!)

Sacramento Zoo (and a little chainsaw too!)

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man. - johnny cash

I mentioned this before, but, I've been working at the Sacramento Zoo! We've been back here in Sacramento for about a month now and When I have not been in training for fire fighting, I've been spending my time working at the Sacramento Zoo! The sac zoo is a non profit organization that helps support the growth of endangered and vanishing animals, so they requested an Americorps team to come help them with maintenance and animal care. Over the past few weeks we have put in over a hundred hours with them and I love it! I think part of my attraction to the zoo has to do with the fact that I want to go into Animal sciences in school but on top of that EVERYBODY that works at that zoo is ridiculously nice and really cool.

The first week that I was there I was working on a team with the maintenance crew to help build an African Tortoise exhibit in between the giraffe and the Zebra exhibits. It was cool because as we worked, the giraffes became very curious of us and would meander over to oversee our work. A couple of times the keepers brought lettuce out for us to feed it to them. It is almost humbly to be beside such enormous and graceful animals. I've seen them from afar before and on TV but you don't know really how gigantic they are until you stand next to one. We also built a retaining fence for the Bongo yard, and raked all of the leaves in the bamboo grove around the red panda exhibit.

Before After


The next week we were there we actually got to help the keepers with animal care!!! The first day I was in the primate house, in the morning I cleaned out the orangutan and chimp dens as well as helped prepare all of the primates meals. The afternoon was sick because I helped with the 'primitive' primates (not as advanced primates as in lemurs, saki monkeys etc) I LOVED THEM. I got to go inside the lemurs exhibits in order to clean then out and feed them. The lemurs were bouncing off all the branches around me and hanging their tails in my face. I loved the black and white ruffed lemurs because there were so many of them in thier enclosure and they would all wrestle with each other. I also worked with reptiles; I watched the reptile keeper wrestle a dwarf crocodile out of his exhibit so I could climb in there and put in new rubber matting, I worked in Ungulates (hoof-stock) cleaning the stalls and pens of the Attic and Bongo Gazelles. Zebras, Giraffes and kangaroos. These animals were cool because you could pat them and feed them and they would lick your hands and clothes. Bird day was awesome because I was working in cages with birds half my size that looked like dinosaurs. and then of course, Carnivores! My day with the carnivores was a lot of cage cleaning and not much interaction with the dangerous animals but the interaction I did have was impressive. The Lions, Jaguars, tigers, snow leopards and Hyenas were enormous and highly dangerous and gorgeous. When the lion roared the walls shook and the glass in the windows clattered. The tigers when they stood up on their back legs were a good three feet taller than I was.

Mike with the Bongos


Red Pandas


Me and my joey, Joey



OK I know this is getting long so I'll recap on my week of chainsaw training quickly. It was Awesome!!! Basically we spent two days in the classroom just learning about chainsaw maintenance, safety, and techniques. And then for the next three days we drove out into the mountains and just cut stud down!!!! Here are some images for your enjoyment

I am A wildland firefighter

"Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money" Johnny Cash

First Off (as the title of this post suggests) I am now a certified wildland firefighter! Pretty sweet huh? I spent this past week in a windowless classroom about 8 hours a day. I took classes on Wildland fire behavior, basic firefighter training, emergency routines, dealing with hazardous chemicals and Fire line tools 101. We basically had a stream of wildland firefighters coming in to teach us how to read the weather and how the weather will effect fires, the different terms in firefighting and so much more. Each firefighter had a whole slew of interesting and scarey stories.

I had to take to written exams, one on weather and fire behavior and one on basic firefighting tactics. Then the final day of the course was a field day. We all drove out to the Tahoe BML, were split into groups of about 15 and then hiked out onto a helipad on top of a mountains. Then were given a scenario.

The Helipad was our anchor and the three teams were in charge of digging 30in fire lines around the 'fire'. The lines had to be down to mineral soil so that the fire couldn't cross it and large fuel items (branches, logs, saplings) had to be cleared three feet on either side of our line. If the hills inclination was too steep then our line would have to become a trench so that flaming debris would get caught in the trench rather than rolling across the line and starting a fire on the other side of our line.

We worked quickly especially because our Crew Leaders (the firefighters that were with us leading us) kept getting radio calls updating us on the changing and worsening conditions of the 'fire'.

We are required to wear a yellow long sleeve nomex (flame retardant) shirt, and green nomex pants along with flame retardant leather boots, flame retardant helmets, leather gloves and goggles. On our backs we are required to carry a pack. Mine was only about 25 pounds but that gets pretty heavy when your constantly hiking up and down ridiculously steep mountain sides and also swinging an ax (0r whatever line digging tool) non-stop for a couple hours. The contained extra gloves, extra nomex clothing, three water bottles, food, headlamp, fusees, firefighting emergency handbook and a 7 pound emergency shelter that I would have to deploy if I were not able to escape to safety and a fire was closing in.

So a couple hours into the drill we were told to work faster because the fire conditions were worsening; the relative humidity was down and the win

d had picked up. About 5 minutes after that order was issued we were told to ROT (reverse tool order, basically to turn around) and MOVE. We started to hike back up this mountain (I'm talking wicked steep) when the orders came to drop our backs and RUN!!!! packs went down, tools went down our emergency shelters got pulled out of our pack and we started to run. It was hot out, we had just worked about 5 hours digging trenches through the forest and we were running our to save our asses (because you need to train like you are doing it for real). I don't know how long we booked it up the embankment but it was long enough for my lungs to be burning, my nose to be running and for a lot of people to be dropping behind or dropping down. The hill was slippery, we were jumping over other peoples dropped gear and then finally we saw an area that our crew leaders yelled at us to deploy in, we grab

bed practice emergency shelters (because the real ones are one time us eonly and cast almost $200) and at a full run we ripped the shelters out of their brick sized containers shook them open and went down inside of them.

We were faced down on the ground inside a metallic burrito throat burning from running so hard and our safety glasses fogging up from how hot it was inside the shelter. It was really exciting and also scary. I started yelling to see who if anyone had their shelter near me ( I had been so focused on getting in my shelter I hadn't even looked around me when

I went down) I shouted and shouted "HELLO, HELLO WHOSE THERE" but over the sirens, wind machines and other yelling no one heard me till finally I heard Christina asking if it was me. We shouted at each other for the next few minutes and then finally they told us we could come out. We were all shaking and I was pumped.

I can't wait to start going into the field... but hopefully I am never in an emergency situation like that haha

Hi Ho! HI Ho! Its back to work I go!

"And the moon’s laying low in the sky Forcing everything metal to shine And the sidewalk holds diamonds like the jewelry store case They argue walk this way, no, walk this way" Bright Eyes

Wow it has been a long time. I've been so incredibly busy I can't find time to clean up my room never mind make my way down to the computer lab. Haha. But Today is my first day off since break so I made may way over to my blog.

So First off my break was great. Flying was a pain. I flew into a blizzard on my way home and out of a blizzard on my way back. While I was home I spent a lot of time with my family, which is always nice and a lot of time sleeping which was really nice since sleep is not always easy to find. It was pretty cool just being back in a place where you know everything. On my way back from Mass, I got stuck in Phoenix overnight because the US Airways flight attendants all decided to go on strike. Which was really inconvenient because I got back to the base a day late, which means I had to use one of my three leave days :(

Though I liked Utah, It is really nice to be back to my home base. The living conditions in Sacramento are so nice, I definitely appreciate them more. I get my own room so instead of sleeping in a room with 10 people Its only my and my room mate Maggie. And Its nice just being able to go out. If I want I can walk to go out for dinner or I can catch the Light rail and go into Sac with my friends. Its really nice that there are ten teams on base because its such a fun variety of people to hang out with. I went into Sacramento Last night for 2nd Saturday with about 10 people from all different teams. 2nd Saturday is once a month Sacramento's stores and art galleries all stay open late and people play music on the streets. Before that, Mike, from my teams Dad brought us all out to dinner because he was here on a business trip. We ate like Kings.

The only Thing sucky about being on campus is that we have Duty about once or twice a week. Which means we have to stay on campus all night cleaning the halls and securing the base, its just like a watch but ours was on Friday night this week and its gunna be on Saturday next week. Bleh!

Oh wow I have so much more to write to everyone! I've been working at the Sac Zoo, which is amazing and I'm starting my training to get my Red Card Certification for Wild Land Firefighting tomorrow, But I'll save those little stories for my next post BECAUSE Dadadaa Da (drum roll please) I FOUND OUT MY NEXT PROJECT!

So On February 8th we take a two day drive from Sacramento all the way up to VASHON ISLAND, WA! Its a pretty big Island in the Puget sound off the cost of Washington. We will have to take a ferry to get there. Apparently we are going to be staying at another Summer Camp, but this one, instead of in the mountains is on the beach literally. I am SOOOO freaking excited. I know its going to rain every minute of every day but whatever!

We are going to be building trails and also building fire lines (huge trails that fires can't hop) around the community for 8 weeks! I can't wait. Its pretty cool because I really wanted to go to the northwest but because we are FRT I didn't think we would be there, But now LOOK OUT WASHINTON!

This is an aerial view of camp Sealth where we'll be living.

And then here is the island!

Ok well that's all for now folks!