Training in Flagstaff and Ready for Texas

Hello family and friends!

I thought I would include you all in one general update.  As a reminder, I am now an AmeriCorps Professional Development Corps Member with American Conservation Experience, living in Flagstaff, AZ.  I will serve for 900 hours (~6 months), and will receive an education award at the end of my term that can go towards loans or other types of education (possibly including WFR, NOLS courses, or other fun things as well...).  I arrived in Flagstaff on Feb 28, and since then have been doing various trainings and orientations to prepare me for my service period with ACE.

It was below freezing the Saturday that I got to Flagstaff, and Sunday and Monday brought 12+ cumulative inches of snow causing the ACE office to push back the training for 16 new corps members since the roads were fairly treacherous.  By the following Saturday, we had filled out all our necessary employment paperwork, gone through an expedited Wilderness First Aid course, learned how to safely use herbicide and brush cutters, and completed our specialized trainings - one group learned the basics of building trails, and the other how to safely wield a chainsaw.  I was part of the chainsaw crew, and feel confident in my ability to safely fell trees on restoration crews for the next 6 months.  I am looking forward to my first project which leaves this coming Wednesday.  This project will include working as a part of the South West Exotic Plant Management Team (a partnership between ACE and the National Park Service) to mechanically remove and apply herbicide towards invasive Tamarisk trees on Lake Meredith in the panhandle of Texas.  We will be camping in a front country campground, where we will have access to washing facilities for our work clothes after using herbicide.  

The scheduling is done a month at a time, and I know that my second project will be on the gulf coast of Texas at the San Bernard and Brazoria National Wildlife Refuges for a 5-week hitch.  The project description is not up yet so I don't have many details as to what we will be doing there, though Tamarisk is a problem at other coastal refuges in Texas and is a likely target for removal.

In the middle of that 5-week hitch I will be going to Austin, TX for the wedding of Thomas Nelson and Katherine Tanner, in which I have the honor of serving as best man.  As of this moment I do not have concrete details on how this will work out, but I have made my commitment clear to the higher ups, and I may end up driving a rental car from my project site up to Austin instead of my previous plan to take a flight from Flagstaff.

Flagstaff is a great town, and there is plenty to explore both within city limits and radiating out in all directions.  I have met some great people both in my training process and those living in ACE housing who have been with the program for at least a few months.  In the past two days I have met people at the climbing gym downtown, at a pick up soccer game on the campus of Northern Arizona University, and on an even closer field for an impromptu game of ultimate frisbee to celebrate the sunny weather that has replace the slippery snow of last weekend.  I live in a house between downtown and the university with other ACE corps members and crew leaders, which places me within walking distance to restaurants, bars, concert venues, sports fields, climbing gyms, outdoor gear shops, grocery stores, coffee shops, and even the university library.  However, there are also lots of outdoor playgrounds close by, and I will most likely find someone to go on a rock climbing trip for a few days when I come back from the Texas panhandle.

Here is a picture of my chainsaw trainer Marieke Flynn and me from our last day of saw training this past Saturday.  Marieke and I were housemates for a summer at the Parkland Palace; she came to ACE soon after graduating from PLU, and has worked her way up to being the regional chainsaw trainer for the organization.  There is room for ascent for those with the motivation, and I plan on setting a good example and giving my best effort to the conservation projects assigned to me.  Look for another blog entry after I come back from my first hitch, I hope all of you are as safe, healthy, and happy as you can be.  Until next time!