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!

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Winona - 4/16

I feel like I have acquired a familiar.  Ever since I became a Team Leader in Training there has been a monarch butterfly fluttering about me.  We sighted it every day while we were working on Hercules Tower and here in Winona the same thing is occurring.  Chances of it being the same butterfly are a C-3P0 calculation, but what if it was?  Maybe if I take some tips from Gandalf I’d be able to summon me some giant eagles.

Anyways, today we headed over to Wolf Creek Trails to prepare the area for a 5k on Saturday.  I took charge, announcing I wanted 2 groups of 3—each crew equipped with a saw and a pair of loppers.  I also put myself in charge of one of the trios and made sure each team had a person with experience working trails and radios.  By asking for opinions we concluded each party should also bring a McLeod and that one group should start where we parked while the other drives down a ways.  Originally I was going to have us just leap frog each other… boy am I glad my team came up with a better idea.

Our contact estimated that we would be clearing 3 miles of trail.  While the paths he had us working on may be 3 miles from start to finish if one walked a straight line, the trail had more curls than… I got nothing, but there were a lot!  We ended up clearing 6 miles of trail.  The plan was for the first group to make it to the truck and then they would pick up the second group further down the way; when the clock struck 3 and my group (the second group) had passed the rendezvous I tried radioing the other crew.  No dice.  Luckily we all had amazing cell phone service so I just called them and found out they hadn’t made it to the truck.  As my team was just clearing extra trail at this point, Clare and I agreed that we would head back to where we started and work in their direction.  Turns out they had much thicker vegetation than we did, but thanks to some quick thinking and teamwork we managed to complete our task and make it to the truck by a little after 5.


It has been a long day.  I’m going to go turn in.  I think this program may whip me back into leadership material yet!  Night all!


No pics of the day, but here is a sneak peek into tomorrow!

No comments:

Post a Comment