Christmas Break - 12/29

Hello all!  Just wanted to wish all of you a belated Merry Christmas and an early Happy New Year!  There is no service to report at this time on my end, but if you are in the St. Louis area and are looking to share some holiday spirit with those less fortunate, our Warming Shelter will most likely be open for a couple of the days between now and the 6th of January and I can hook you up!  Currently I am over in Lansing, Michigan, which has just had a little disaster of its own.  A major ice storm made its way through the area and everything is coated with ice.  Much of the city was without power for a couple of days; my family was without it for a week, but as of yesterday electricity has been restored to most of the area.  While it made for a harsh Christmas it also made for some incredible scenery.  I will post a couple of shots my brother took at the end of this entry.

You’ve reached the end of this entry!  Really I just wanted you all to know that I am doing well and will be returning to the field on the 6th of January.  Hope you are all enjoying time with your families like I am.  Also, if any of you know of a good and affordable masseuse… the right side of my neck has been both annoyingly painful and stiff.  Talk to you all soon!  Happy Holidays!

All photography credit goes to my brother Stephen Stauffer.

ACSTL HQ - 12/19

We had the first part of the Show Me Conference today.  It was pretty cool.  We met up with other AmeriCorps organizations in the area like Red Cross, International, and College Bound and shared tips and tricks about scenarios we all have to deal with.  The most bothersome bit of the day for me was when we talked about poverty.  I realized I have not and will not be getting above the poverty line any time soon… which was a little depressing.  On the bright side I have been more than frugal enough to live comfortably so far—but if I were to factor in a family, well, I have some time to figure stuff out.

Other than the poverty talk it was a great day.  Lots of good food too!  I had my first taste of McGurks’ food and I have decided it is passed time that I make a trip to the famous St. Louis bar.  I mean it is only a couple of blocks away and there is a group of ERT folk that head there regularly on Sunday so I have no excuse not to make the trip.  I think I will make that a priority when I return.  For now though, I am going to go be social with my fellow AmeriCorps members.  Later!

Forest Park 12/18

We finished the trail!  Kinda!  We completed a route and after the fact we found out our contact intended for us to split the trail.  Still, I’m very happy that we have something to show for just a couple days’ work!  Now I have something to point out to folks when they or I visit St. Louis in the future.

Fascinating fact: Forest Park is spread over 1300 acres.  For those of you who have been following me since my beta blog days that were sent via emails, that is over 6 times as large as the park I used to live by—Tower Grove Park.  Josh gave us a nice tour after our work on the trail through the nature reserve areas and pointed out some of the popular spots along the way.  The Grand Basin made my favorite fountain spot over in Tower Grove look like a water sprinkler.  I hear it is also a great sledding spot so we may have to hit that up after our winter break.

Going to call it… sleepy.  Talk to you all soon!

Forest Park - 12/17

~Look down, look down, don’t look ‘em in the eye.  Look down, look down, you’re here until you die~ Haha, the conditions we served in today weren’t nearly as bad as the Les Miserables lyrics may suggest.  The whole swinging motion resulting from the proper use of the pick over the shoulder just brought the song to mind.  It worked as a nice little metronome.  Anywho, we continued our quest to rid a particular portion of Forest Park of woody invasive species and Maples up until lunch.  I didn’t have my saw today *sad sound*, but I did get to play with a brushcutter.  It is more or less a weed whacker on steroids that can cut down anything up to an inch to 2 inches in diameter.  I also got to wear a harness which distributed the weight of the device evenly and made that part of the day much easier than it would have been otherwise.

After lunch we started on the trail.  Yesterday we got all of the larger stuff out of the way with chainsaws and brushcutters so today it was all about working on crafting the path.  Using pick axes, McLeods, and fancy shovels we scraped the roots away and created a nice 5 to 6 foot wide clearing.  We’re a little over half way done I believe, but we also need to angle the trail slightly downhill to help prevent future rain from pooling.  I have been having immense difficulty with the angling because every time I take away a little more dirt, more roots come to the surface.  My back is throbbing.  I have to say I have never felt older.  Half a decade ago I could go through these simple tasks and hardly break a sweat but now I am left with lingering aches.  Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.  After all, by the end of the 10 day I was able to keep pace with the leaders of our hikes.  Hopefully the muscles being built from our service work will make their presence known soon!

I’m heading off for some relaxation.  We’re getting up bright and early tomorrow to try and finish up the trail.  We got a conference on Friday and I hear we may be helping to set it up the day before, which leaves us a jam-packed day tomorrow if we want to get everything done.  Later all!

Forest Park - 12/16

Well ain’t this something?  I’m posting on my blog the day of an entry!  This is weird.  Huh.  Well as the title may suggest, the crew I’m in is staying in St. Louis this week and working in Forest Park.  I have driven through this park before, but only after today have I even begun to grasp how large the place is.  I do not have the stamina to attempt describing the park today—let’s just say that it was aptly named and come back to it another time.  As for what we are doing in the area, we are removing invasive species and putting in a trail.  In addition to the Honeysuckle we cut out, we were also told to take out Maple saplings as there is no shortage of them in the park.  There is one thing I’m curious about, however.  While Josh, our contact, told us to leave the Black Locusts alone because without the proper herbicide it will just grow back—he still had us cut Honeysuckle and some Winter Creeper, which also come back in a Hydra like fashion.  I feel like it would be rude to question his tactics, but I think I will ask Chelsea about it tomorrow.

Making trails is a lot harder than I thought.  Instinctually I want to cut into the soil to sever the roots, but if you go too deep then you have to fill the hole and the whole process takes even longer.  The proper form requires skimming the surface of the ground with a bladed instrument.  I’m still working on it.

In other news, I really like things that fit.  Today I was carrying around a handsaw in a leather sheath and I had a little too much fun unsheathing and re-sheathing the serrated blade.  It just felt cool… and kind of natural.  Another favorite of mine is sliding batteries into a 360 controller, but really anything that fits nicely will undoubtedly garner my attention.  With that, I’m going to go watch some Monday night football as such opportunities will be a rarity this year.  Later!

Roaring Rivers - 12/11

Last night I had the weirdest dream.  Power around the world had been lost like in the TV show Revolution—no electrical trinkets worked what-so-ever.  I was the hero who managed to turn it back on.  Oprah, thrilled to have the opportunity again, started a new talk show and invited me as her first guest.  I don’t remember any of the questions or what my answers were, but after a couple of minutes I decided to just start flying.  Not only was I flying, I was dancing—something those of you who have been around me awhile know I don’t normally do.  There was just something about doing it in the air like I couldn’t fall so nothing would appear clumsy or down right odd.  Anyways, Oprah wasn’t too keen on me hogging the spotlight so she motioned for a commercial break and I flew back stage.  Everyone wanted my autograph.

I awoke with a headache; I guess my mind’s eye took one too many flashes from the paparazzi’s cameras.  Since today was our last day on project I just tossed back a couple of pain killers and got to work.  We hiked in to Blazing Star again and repeated yesterday’s festivities.  There were a couple of alterations.  The first is that Slagathor worked for me… for one tree.  I ended up needing to do some precision-like surgery on that Red Cedar to take it down so I’m glad we were able to temporarily set aside our differences.  After I had put in a face cut that was a bit deeper than I anticipated and a solid back cut (a result of 2 quarter cuts) the tree would not budge.  I hammered my only wedge into the back cut.  Still nothing.  I remembered Jim, the sawyer instructor from Montana, saying that in situations like this you can bore through the middle of the holding wood so long as the holding wood on either side remains intact.  I gave it a shot and it worked!  I found out after the fact that I had another miniscule wedge hiding in my chaps’s pocket… oops.  I’d like to think I did everything right under the circumstances as I went with the main lean and the branch lean.  It was certainly good practice.

The second difference was that I wore my Nomex today so after lunch I was the fire keeper.  I was put in charge of monitoring and condensing our burn piles.  I did a pretty good job as 2 of the 3 fires were a log away from being out by the time we had to roll out, which was less than usual.

Other than that, we got to watch 2 eagles flying about while chowing down on our lunches.  It has been a tough week with the cold, but a great week in every other category.  Until next time!

Our sawing mentor from Montana, Jim.  Photo credit goes to Sean Kerr.

Roaring Rivers - 12/10

My head and that space between my shoulders hurt!  Maybe I’m suffering from Mako poisoning.  Maybe I am about to sprout a wing and have an identity crisis—the outcome of which may determine the fate of the world.  Most likely it is just the effects of day 9 of our 10 day seeping in… although now I can’t stop thinking about the Lifestream.  Well, we will just have to see what the final day has in store in terms of my well-being.

I do think I am going a little crazy though.  Yesterday I thought I heard Chelsea tell us to wear regular work clothes today for our service project.  It wasn’t until Kelly Kaufmann asked me why I wasn’t wearing my Nomex 2 minutes before we were supposed to leave that I realized everyone else was dressed in theirs.  Chelsea’s solution to my befuddlement was to have me chainsaw all day.  So I did.

I ended up cutting down 9 adult Red Cedars and some 20 to 30 adolescents.  Sadly only the adult Cedars get a tally mark so my day doesn’t look that great on paper.  I would have done even more but Buford ended up dying on me after lunch while I was preparing a tree and Slagathor was just being a nuisance.  He would just start up and shut down when he pleased.  So we’re not on speaking terms right now.  Hopefully the cold shoulder will knock some sense into him.  Anyways, my trophy for the day was another Red Cedar 18 inches in diameter (tied for the largest I’ve done).  It had limbs that would have needed face cuts had they been planted in the ground.  Limbing up that sucker took over an hour no thanks to a certain chainsaw *glares at Slagathor,* but we got it done.

After watching Richard and Chelsea play Cribbage throughout our 10 day I decided I had a firm enough understanding of the rules to give it a shot.  It was a little different as I always watched 2 people play it and we had 3 players, but I caught on quickly.  I gave her a run for her money, but Chelsea came out on top.  She usually wins Cribbage, but hey, coming in 2nd place on my first try isn’t bad either!  Time to drift off though.  Here’s hoping a bit of sleep will cure my ails.  Night friends!

Roaring Rivers - 12/9

The hills are alive with the sound of burning Cedar.  At least they were over in the Blazing Star Glade while we were there.  From starting time to finish I manned the burn piles and made sure the flames didn’t get out of hand.  It was fun work and surprisingly tough.  The fires burned so fiercely that there were times I couldn’t reach the flames without quickly recoiling.  My face was the hardest hit.  Just looking at the contained infernos made it feel like my eyebrows were going to combust at any minute.  Fortunately they, like me, survived the experience.

I feel like we have made a lot of progress at Blazing Star, but the Red Cedars there were bred for one purpose: to destroy the world of men.  That might be a little extreme.  Let me rephrase.  They were bred for one purpose: to take up an unbelievable amount of time on behalf of the Emergency Response Team.  At least it’s fun work; fun, but tiring.  I’m going to turn in early tonight to try and recover my strength.  Good night all!

Roaring Rivers - 12/8

Way to go Spartans!  I knew you could do it.  In addition to getting to go to the Rose Bowl on its 100th anniversary you can claim that you were the first team to beat the Urban Meyer led Buckeyes.  Sorry I wasn’t able to witness the victory first or even secondhand, but you can count on me tuning in to the game on January1st.  Go Green!

Ahem, I suppose we can now return to the field.  There are trees, lots of them—though not as many as there were at the start of the day.  The temperature got up to a balmy 23 degrees while we were serving over at Blazing Star Glade.  I personally cut down 4 large trees and at least half a hundred smaller ones.  Only one of my Cedar’s gave me problems.  I failed to calculate the hill when I put in my back cut which resulted in the back cut on one side being lower than the face cut.  It would have been lower, rather, as I noticed it before I put in my 2nd quarter cut.  So, I just used the latter step method—cutting a level above the other quarter cut as to not interfere with the wedge.  The Red Cedar fell right where I wanted it to.  I am starting to feel like I am either very lucky when it comes to felling or very intuitive as I know my technique needs work.  Here’s hoping it’s the latter!

Good news is I’m not feeling weak or sick anymore; bad news is the very center of my back hurts something fierce.  It feels like someone is hammering a wedge in between my shoulder blades whenever I try to lift anything with some weight to it.  Maybe it’s karma for all those trees that have fallen to these hands.  Regardless, these next two days are going to last an eternity if my back doesn’t fix itself.  Maybe sleep will do the trick.  Night friends.

Photo credit: Matthew Mitchell/MSU Athletic Communications Matthew Mitchell/MSU Athletic Communications

Roaring Rivers - 12/7

Crystalline trees and brush blanketed in soft white velvet.  The sights around here are eye openers, make no mistake, but the beauty is partially masked by the menacing cold.  Winter Storm Cleon has come and gone but the temperature has yet to take a turn for the better.  I believe it was about 5 degrees when we set out for the Blazing Star Glade this morning.  My hands felt like they were on fire and it took an incredible amount of will power to get them to function.  If that isn’t a good enough indicator for the weather—the bar oil was on the verge of freezing!  Thankfully my parents sent me some hand warmers… but they chose to remain idle for the first half hour of service.  While my fingers had seen better days, once we got a fire going and jumped into the swing of things the chill was tolerable.  Everybody has had great attitudes about the whole situation and that makes our daily journeys infinitely better.

I admit I was not at my best today.  I’ve felt weak since getting up this morning and nauseous on the hike in.  I’ve been drinking water, eating, and wearing the appropriate amount of layers so I’m not really sure what to make of it.  One of our teammates has been feeling ill these past two days so it is possible that I’m getting whatever she has, but she has been out-of-commission sick… Anyways, hopefully by tomorrow I will be better.  Today I took it easy and just made burn piles.  I’m hoping to be a greater contribution tomorrow.

So it’s off to bed for me… after a shout out to my Spartans that are fighting for their lives in the Big Ten Championship game.  Release the Spartan Dawgs and create some opportunities.  You want a statement win?  What better way than by beating the number 2 team in the nation!  I know you can do it.  Dig in, dig deep.  This is for all those 11 win seasons in recent memory where we’ve gotten nothing but the cold shoulder from the BCS crew.  Good night and good luck!

Roaring Rivers - 12/6

If you guessed 5-6 inches go out and treat yo’ self as you were right *pats himself on the back*.  It didn’t stop snowing until about 1:00pm, which made for some very picturesque scenery but also added to the cold factor.  Something about being wet results in a loss of heat… but I forgot the scientific explanation.  You should have seen me when I got back.  There was frost in my beard and the lower portion of my pant legs were frozen solid.  I’m very grateful for Chelsea Catalano checking up on me a good 15 minutes into our hike out there as I would have become a human popsicle.  Wore one too many layers and was sweating way too much.  That little bump aside, today was gorgeous.  Our eagle friend stopped by to say hello again as we crossed one of the bridges.  It was just as majestic as the day before.  My life would be a little more complete if he (or she) perches on a branch level to us.  I feel like it has some amazing stories to tell.

We’ll have a tale or two to tell ourselves by the time this year is through; like today.  We probably could have taken a snow day, but we trudged through what ended up being 8 inches of accumulated snow in some parts.  To keep from freezing around lunch time Chelsea Catalano and I started a campfire.  Red Cedar burns very well and very fast.  I was constantly rummaging through the snow to find more fuel for the fire’s insatiable appetite.  It worked well though and the bountiful snow provided an easy means of extinguishing the flames when it was time to go.  Onward to the land of dreams!

Picture taken by Kelly Kauffmann.  Our vehicle was inoperable so we just hiked our way to Blazing Star.

Roaring Rivers - 12/5

A special shout out to our team that was dispatched about three weeks ago to Washington, Illinois.  They were sent to assist in the recovery process after an E4 tornado tore through the area and, as a result, missed our Thanksgiving break.  The thing is they were all given the opportunity to switch out with another ERT member so they could go home to see their loved ones and they unanimously decided to stay.  I can only hope that if I am ever placed in a similar position that I would be able to do the same.  Amazing job all of you, those initially dispatched and those who volunteered to lend a helping hand over Thanksgiving break.  Your dedication and hard work has done the “A” proud and I am honored to be in the same organization as you.

So, remember that winter storm from the other day?  It has been given a name: Cleon.  At first I thought it was Klingon, which I took to mean major trouble due to the nature of the race.  But no, it’s just Cleon.  Still whenever a storm gets a name you know it’s a big deal.  There has been freezing rain, sleet, or snow falling since 10:00am.  It is now 9:00pm.  I’d say we have a solid 4 inches of snow out there with a sheet of ice beneath it.  Despite these frigid conditions though, we are planning on hiking to a new glade tomorrow, Blazing Star.  Hardcore, eh?

Before things got too bad we drove over to our future service project site and scouted it out.  It had the makings of a winter wonderland only instead of a partridge in a pear tree we had a bald eagle.  The bird was just flying along our truck on the way back from our recon mission.  It left me in a very tranquil mood.  I know Bruce says it is a good omen whenever a hawk is present on a journey so I can only hope this larger bird of prey is a sign of something incredible.

Anyone want to guess how much snow there is going to be when I open the door tomorrow?  I’m feelin’ 6 inches.  Night all.

Most of the group that went to Washington, Illinois.  

Roaring Rivers - 12/4

Winter is coming.  Tomorrow through Friday night we have a winter storm advisory.  On Thursday we are predicted to have freezing rain throughout the day and a couple inches of snow.  The ice is our major concern because the stage designer in Mario Kart created the back roads in this part of Missouri: lots of twists and turns and hills.  We even found the shortcut that is included in many of the maps… but it was very treacherous.  Buckhunter barely made it down that goat trail and there were more than a couple of moments we toppled down the steep hillside.  Somehow I don’t think a Lakitu would have put us back on the course so we lucked out.  But I digress; tricky roads and ice here would make it nigh impossible to reach Glade 10.  Will have to wait and see if the forecast changes.

As for the here and now, we did light off a couple of our burn piles.  I think we crafted them a little too well as we were only able to light 5 of them before lunch.  Those 5 ended up burning 40 minutes beyond our intended stay time and would have gone longer had we not intervened.  After the fires were cold we raced the sun’s waning light back to the truck.  We won.  Barely.  I think we have at least 40 more piles ready to burn and have to construct at least double that to finish the glade so we will have our hands full in the days to come.

Think I’m going to pass out.  Before I do, I thought I’d tell you who all is on my team this week.  There is Chelsea Catalano, Richard, Kelly Kaufmann, and Danielle.  They have me smiling almost nonstop even when ascending those towering hills.  Although my remaining time in Roaring Rivers is going to push me physically, with this crowd I think the overall experience will be an enjoyable one.  Night all!

A find on the interwebs.

Roaring Rivers - 12/3

Goodness.  I’m beat.  To get to Glade 10 we had to hike down a very steep incline.  Hike is probably not the best word as we were doing all sorts of shuffling and sliding to make our way down.  My vocabulary has been stunted… I guess my mind is as tired as my legs are.  The way back up- that was a hike.  Thankfully Ranger Shane flagged us a route that brought us to a much easier hill to scale.  Even so I needed to call for a break and go at my own pace to keep myself from overexerting.  Right now I’m just thinking 7 days.  No eerie calls or static screens involved, that’s just the number of times I will have to make the trek.  I almost regret my comment the other night about wanting to climb around—almost.  One thing’s for sure, I’m going to come out of this 10 day stronger than I went in.

As for what we did while we were in the Glade, I can’t tell you.  We did some top secret stuff for Shane and the Rangers of the North.  Something involving the hindrance of some Dark Lord and his finding of a golden trinket.  Whoops, I just had a Hagrid moment.  In all seriousness, we created a number of burn piles out of Red Cedar.  Tomorrow we will be lighting them and I’d like to imagine it will look something like the beacons being lit in The Return of the King.  Maybe Rohan will lend us some horses to get out of that ravine.

Time for some rest.  The name of the game this week is pacing.  I’ve never been particularly good at it.  Practice makes perfect though or so they say.  Night all, hope you’re all having fun wherever you may be.

This picture is a throwback to my 10/31 entry in Cape Girardeau.  The photo of the double headed snake was taken by Sean Kerr.

Roaring Rivers - 12/2

Roaring Rivers, Missouri, team yellow: new destination, new team.  Today marks the start of my first 10 day project for AmeriCorps.  From what I’ve gathered this doesn’t necessarily mean that our task will be more intense, the extended time is due to the location where we will be serving.  These projects are lengthened because they typically take a day to reach and depart.  Anyhow, today was pretty much a day of travel.  When we arrived we met our contact, Tim, who showed us where we will start the following day.  They termed the area Glade 10.  It looks like we will be doing a lot of limbing, bucking, and burn piles during our stay.

Our lodging and the state park we are staying in are beautiful.  The only downside is that it appears there is no cell phone service where we are sleeping.  I feel bad as I texted Haley right before we hit the dead zone.  Sorry Haley!  I will have to see if I can sneak in some time to call while we are out on project.  But yes, clear rivers, walls and slabs of giant stone spread throughout the greenery; I would love nothing more than to just climb around the varying landscapes.  Maybe I will get my chance.  For now though it is time for bed.  Good night all.  Talk to you tomorrow.