Girls' Night Out

Today I returned from a typical event in a very untraditional setting: girls’ night out in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Normally, this is a social happening that occurs on Friday or Saturday nights and involves female friends getting together to dress up, socialize, and generally have a terrific time discussing news and memories. Yesterday’s girls’ night out included all of these necessary requirements: we dressed up in our backpacking garb and even scored extra style points by donning super-fashionable down jackets, patterned fleece pants, and even color-coordinated backpacks. We chatted the whole seven miles, laughing about funny times that have occurred during Semester in the Wild.

When we arrived at our destination, we even met up with some new friends who happened to be two female U.S. Forest Service wilderness rangers. Perched on a rocky beach at the confluence of the Middle Fork and Big Creek, darkness gathered around us like a cloak as they told our three-girl group all about their adventures in blizzards and rain, encounters with quirky visitors, and spotting enormous mountain lion tracks. We told them about our hike to Taylor Ranch from Big Creek, which was cut short due to a forest fire, and all of us took pleasure in a little mouse that was skittering around us on the rocks, occasionally summoning the guts to climb onto our dusty hiking boots. Returning to our own tent, we reminisced on how neat it was to see two women working in the wilderness. These women were so friendly and approachable, and we felt as though they had offered us a looking glass into which we could gaze and visualize our own futures.

            Over the summer, I worked as a wilderness ranger intern in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. My internship consisted of going on “hitches”, or periods of service, in which I worked with other crewmembers to clear and maintain trails for hikers and stock users. I had the privilege of working with two other females for my first hitch, and they helped me learn how to use a cross-cut saw, chop trees with my “inner dragon”, identify and consume edible plants, and, most importantly, how to persevere, even when my weary feet felt as if they had been chopped off and were no longer connected to my body. One night, after a particularly long day of chopping fallen trees and hiking for nine hours, we arrived at Fish Lake cabin, a picturesque little spot in the middle of lovely, quiet, absolute nowhere, which seems to be increasingly rare in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. We watched fog roll across the airstrip, covering the herd of elk grazing a distance away, and celebrated the summer solstice peacefully, telling stories as we sat around the light of a Coleman lantern. Although I was exhausted, I was extremely happy in the simplest of ways: getting to know two wonderfully genuine people and having the chance to explore this landscape. Throughout the summer, I had the opportunity to work with a number of other female crewmembers, with whom I felled trees, cooked meals, exchanged advice, and discussed future education plans.

            I used to think of the term “feminist” in a somewhat negative light, envisioning women who got upset when a man held the door for them, instead of considering it a decent, courteous act. However, now that I’ve been in and out of the wilderness for four months, I find myself believing in the power groups of women have to accomplish truly amazing feats.  I didn’t believe that I would be strong enough to saw through a cedar tree that was 42 inches in diameter, or ascend and descend 6,000 vertical feet in 11.5 hours. I didn’t believe that I could become someone who thinks of hiking seven miles as “only” seven miles, and I certainly didn’t think that I could casually haul a 50-pound pack up and over rocky peaks. I always seem to return from female-only trips into the wilderness feeling inspired by the women around me who are spunky, fun loving and completely hardcore. Through my summer and fall in the wilderness, I have become not only physically stronger, but also mentally stronger. I know what it’s like to reach my physical limitations, and I know how disheartening long hikes can be. I’ve experienced the challenges of working and living in rugged, unforgiving wilderness settings, but I have been fortunate enough to share these challenges with many lively women, who taught me about the true power of living in the moment, friendship, laughter, and putting one foot in front the other.

Mara and I fell our first tree. Timber!

Sarah, Sadie, and I head off to summit Dave Lewis peak and an 11.5 hour hike

Kristina and I backpacked in the Bitterroot National Forest during our days off from backpacking!

Susie and I finish a 30-mile hike along Big Creek as part of the Semester in the Wild program.

Time and Sage

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

            I keep waking up in the realm of 4:00 a.m., which encourages me to think about time. My perception of time has changed so much since arriving at Taylor Ranch, coming from a lifestyle in which efficiency and speed are among the most highly valued characteristics to be found in one person. The first days that I was at Taylor, I found myself fidgeting during long conversations—after all, I need to get stuff done, done, done! Now the days barely feel long enough for classes, schoolwork, chores and cooking, walking in nature, and writing letters. I am curious that my mind was able to meld so quickly into this busy-but-in-a-different-way lifestyle. Time is different in nature and in a lifestyle lived in the wilderness. People are more eager and willing to have meaningful conversations that last as long as necessary, and sometimes even longer than that. Time scales in geology are huge, and it takes thousands of years for certain processes to take place. It’s also interesting to consider the temporal scale and its relation to seasons—how does an animal prepare for hibernation in the face of changing onsets of seasons due to climate change? Animals in the Frank Church-River of No Return have much less contact with humans than the animals residing in suburbia, so I wonder if they feel less or more pressure to gather food and to guard their territory. I wonder if animals sense time, and to what degree they are being affected by climate change in terms of plants growing and dying at different times, different migration patterns, etc.

Big sagebrush

The first snow on the ridges outside our window! September 26, 2013

            I like to spend time an in area east of Taylor Ranch that I have christened the new Sagebrush Flat. This place seems much more deserving of that name than the actual Sagebrush Flat, because several hundred sagebrush bushes cluster together here. The river also widens and calms, flowing slowly by this flat plain surrounded by burned trees, rocky slopes, and grasses. The smell is soothing—simultaneously richly fragrant but also understated. The wind blows continually on this gloomy day, and on particularly strong bursts, it takes the vile of sage out from under my nose and replaces it with cool air laden with the prospect of snow. Once the wind settles again into a steady breeze, I rip off a section of the foliage, crush it with my fingertips, and rub the scent all over my hands. As I wander closer to the river, I spy a Douglas fir tree, and I pick a needle, and inhale its bracing and invigorating scent, such a pleasant deviation from desert aromas to a reminder of the woods. The wind forces fierce raindrops onto me, the strength of the sage fades, and the fragrance of the cool earth wafts up to me.

First Photos from Taylor Ranch

Big Creek

Welcome to Taylor Ranch!

DeVlieg Cabin

The welcome sign on the airstrip

A beautiful morning sunrise from the porch

The Journey to Taylor Ranch

The Semester in the Wild crew has officially arrived at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station (also known as Taylor Ranch), which is located in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. I'm very happy to be here because it was quite a long and confusing journey!
The original plan was to hike into Taylor Ranch from the Big Creek trailhead. This is about 35 miles, and we planned to spend several days camping along the trail while working on our River Ecology curriculum. We spent three nights at the trailhead working on data collection on upper Big Creek, and we also studied salmon ecology. The Forest Service told us about a fire that was about 20 miles down the trail, and asked us to hike in 15 miles so that we could meet two wilderness rangers who would then escort us through the portion of the trail that was closest to the fire. The 15-mile hike followed Big Creek the whole way, and the group did well working together to plan breaks and set a pace that everyone could follow. When we met the wilderness rangers, they told us that they had just heard on the radio from University of Idaho that it was too dangerous to try to be escorted through the burn area, and that we should turn around. This was a bit discouraging, but the. If there is anything I learned this summer, it is the importance of flexibility, especially when working or traveling in the wilderness.
We spent two days hiking back to the trailhead so that we could cover more River Ecology material. Since the Big Creek trip also includes an airstrip (the wilderness area is so vast that many people use their own planes to access various areas), we thought that the mail plane that goes to Taylor every Wednesday might fly us to Cabin Creek, which is six miles from Taylor. Then we would spend a couple of days doing more data collection and hiking to Taylor. However, we actually ended up getting picked up in two huge Suburbans and we headed back to the McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS), where we had started our program. After two days of doing some River Ecology work, we ended up driving to Cascade, Idaho to fly out to Taylor. I immediately saw the airplane that would take us there, and I got extremely nervous. Standing next to the plane, I was taller than the wing! It held four people including the pilot, and it was not too terribly turbulent, although I did take some motion sickness medicine. Once I got over the fact that we were in such a tiny plane, I started looking out the window and enjoying the views. We could see so much of the wilderness areas, and we were actually able to see a fire burning on the mountain top. In order to land at Taylor Ranch, the pilot flew past it, turned completely around, flew back, turn around again, and landed on a grass airstrip that is adjacent to Big Creek.
We've been at Taylor for four days now, and it's been a flurry of settling in (some of our stuff is still arriving on the mail plane), doing river ecology work, and trying to finish up assignments for other classes. The setting is absolutely spectacular, and I will have to describe it more in another post.
I can feel the cool air moving through the valley that Taylor Ranch is nestled on, and the onset of autumn is approaching. Pete and Meg, the caretakers at Taylor Ranch, said that as it gets cooler, we won't have to worry about rattlesnakes quite as much.
The internet is too spotty for adding photos to the blog, but I will do my best to describe it with words!