Greetings

Welcome to my little corner of the inter-webs! I just wanted to take this space to warn you that my posts will rarely be up to date. Due to the spontaneity of natural disasters and the unpredictability of when AmeriCorps' services will be requested I will be digitizing my journal entries whenever we return to St. Louis. Oh, and most of the pictures you see here were taken by myself. If ever I do use someone else's material I make a point to give them due credit though! That said, come, leave comments and be merry! I hope you enjoy your stay!

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Montana 10/6

Looks like I am a member of the blue team this week, which is both good and bad.  It is bad because I’ve gone from team yellow, to gold, to blue—just needs a little more green and white.  Ya know?  I jest of course.  There really isn’t anything bad about staying at Fleecer.  In fact, it is rather nice as I just found out this place has cell phone service!   I’ve already taken advantage of it and contacted my parents and Haley and it sounds like life back home is going pretty well.  It also sounds like I will be doing something other than preparing firewood this week, which will be a nice change of pace!

Weddings have been the theme today.  Chelsea Evans told us about how she met her husband, I told everyone about how I proposed to Haley, and I got a voice mail from a place inquiring if Haley and I were interested in getting married in Indiana.  It kind of made me feel like one of those highly sought after athletes that get offers from tons of colleges… only instead of getting paid or a full ride I would be the one forking over the bills.  I still felt cool though.  We also had the group of folks that went into town to do laundry pick up some movies.  They got The Wedding Singer and Wedding Crashers.  Like I said, it has been a wedding kind of day.

Despite today being my day off I have yet to find the will to bring myself to do anything.  I was going to go on a hike up a mountain with the guys, but by the time they got back from doing laundry I was feeling lazy.  I did get to sleep in today.  The sleeping bag made all the difference.  While I am still itching I no longer feel like things are crawling all over me.  Maybe they are just late developing seed tick bites.

Since we have a bit of down time I thought I’d bring ya’ll up to date on the wild life I’ve seen on this trip.  The first lil guys I encountered were prairie dogs.  A group of wild prairie dogs had taken up residence by a gas station in the Dakotas.  They were extremely interested in the football some of us were tossing around.  Whenever it was tossed they left their mounds in pursuit only to retreat when they noticed we were watching them.  It was pretty cute.  The next rare creature was the buffalo that were roaming the plains in Wyoming.  We only saw them in passing, same with antelope (actually called prong-horns) in Montana.  The real curiosity for me is a black and white bird.  It is a black bird with an Aztec-looking white tattoo of a bird on its back.  It’s a very pretty bird and I’ve only seen it in Montana.

Other than those, there are a lot of cattle.  Lots of horses and lots of cows.  There was one herd of dark brown (or red) cows with a random white goat in the middle acting like he owned the group.  Man, the cows here don’t give a crap about anything.  We have to drive down a couple miles of dirt road to get to our service projects.  Almost every time there are roaming cows in the way.   I felt bad for them when the snow storm hit; they just followed each other along the fence against the biting wind.  I was afraid one of the babies had died when we saw it lying on the side of the road, but it stood right up when we passed by. 



Tomorrow is my saw certification test.  I was thinking about going for a B certification which would allow me to saw unsupervised, but the group that took it today said that the instructor was being a little harsh.  So, think I will just play it safe and go for an A.  I can always go for a higher rank later in the year.  Regardless, I have to be ready to go by 7:00 am tomorrow so I’m going to go turn in.  Until next time!





Photos by me, Ben Barber, and Sean Kerr (last 2) respectively.

No comments:

Post a Comment