Today we were working in what felt like the arctic tundra. It was cold. Very cold. I seriously considered amputating my toes in order to survive. It hurt. The feeling in my feet alternated between pins and needles, and burning fires. And its not like I wasn’t prepared. I wore two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks (one of them wool), two long sleeve shirts and a hoodie, under my heavy fire jacket, as well as a hat, and the face/neck covering Americorps provided. Still cold.
We were working on an environmental conservation project. We were working to protect a playa from grazing cattle. A playa is an area of land that naturally collects water during periods of precipitation. At the playa (which, to me is indistinct from the surrounding area of dead grassland and tumbleweeds) there was a barbed wire fence, with the barbed wire mildly tangled, and the posts leaning in from weathering several seasons in this windy area.
First we unclipped and untangled the barbed wire. (We were also to replace the bottom string of barbed wire with unbarbed wire. This is considered more “antelope friendly” because the antelope crawl under barbed wire fences, instead of trying to leap over them). Then we pulled up the posts, and replaced them with straight ones. We worked at this until the auger broke and we couldn’t pull up the wooden corner posts anymore.
Then we drove to a different stretch of barbed wire fence (seriously the only landmarks differentiating pieces of land) to “prairie chicken proof” it. On the way there was a cattle stampeding along with us. No lie…we drove in the middle of a cattle stampede. This slowed us down until Russ stopped, and he, Clay, and Josh got out of the truck and told the cattle to stampede in the other direction. And by told I mean, shouted at the animals, and stared them down. It was probably the most hilarious thing to happen all day.
At our destination we clipped white pieces of leftover siding to the barbed wire. Apparently the prairie chicken, is in danger of becoming an endangered species, so we are making an effort to save them. The prairie chickens often fly into the barbed wire and decapitate themselves. Stupid chickens. Theoretically marking the barbed wire with the pieces of siding (white) will allow them to see it easier and save them from self mutilation.
Because of all the snow we got today, tomorrow we will be able to burn the pile of wood we collected from our first two days tearing down fences. Yay fire!
Yeah I know what you mean Love! We were in the same area and it was a frozen hell for lack of a better word. What really got me was even though I was wearing two socks and gore-tex boots, the socks did nothing as the snow slowly soaked their way into the boots and the cold froze the water soaked into my boots so i couldn't get my toes warm...I alternated between pins and needles and frozen fire until after 4 hrs beyond the hit time to get back I stopped feeling my toes and knew this to be bad...so I told a Sgt. his response to the medically trained personel? Suck it up and deal. I was not the only one and after the fact when we got in I had to pull field rank as the medic and immediately told the closest officer that the crew who helped unload and break down the truck needed to sit in a very warm room and warm their toes to avoid possible severe frostbite in their lower extremities. His response was more reasonable and before I could take care of my own feet, I had to ensure these joe's got their feet taken care of. By the time I got back into my room my feet were blue and just about to go to irreversible frostbite. I had to warm my feet by holding my hands to my toes for a 1/2 hr a piece to warm each foots toes. Needless to say it was not fun:(
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