Circle of Life

DISCLAIMER: Some pictures in this post might offend or gross out some people.  Also, try very hard not to judge me/us for a job well done!  Consider yourself warned.

Last week Ryan, a wonderful gentleman on our kitchen staff, happened to strike a gray squirrel with his truck on the way to work.  This can happen to anyone, I am sure it has happened to you.  We are all filled with the sense of guilt for ending the life of said small mammal.  As luck should have it, Ryan had the foresight to see that our furry little friend would not just lie there on Big Hill Road to get run over again and again by over-sized  pick ups.  He turned back, gathered up the creature and brought it to Sierra Outdoor School with him.

No, we did not feed it to the children.  Though, squirrel hunting actually has a season out here and is quite popular.  The Western Gray Squirrel is slightly larger than its relative, the Eastern.  Upon hearing of Ryan’s unfortunate morning, Janelle, one of the coordinators here, decided that the poor little creature did not die in vain.  It would be a great snack for the birds!  And this was just the job for… the interns!

Now you can’t just go and throw an entire grey squirrel to a bird.  There is a process.  I will tell you about the process.  A process that I know will horrify my sister and even further her confusion as to what the heck her little sister is doing with her life.

Step 1: Take cute little squirrelly to bosses house and place on the “Killing Stump” (Reed has chickens and once and awhile one will meet their demise on said stump.

He's just sleeping!

Step 2: Choose appropriate intern to begin the extraction of squirrel innards.  Sinead, having a somewhat medical background and experience with multiple dissections jumped at the chance.  The insides, mostly stomach and intestines are not healthy for the raptors to ingest.  Intern chooses an assistant (my boss, Reed) and proceed with squirrel innard removal.

We do everything as a team!

Step 3: Because we are Naturalists, we are naturallycurious abouteverything.  So we had to check out what the squirrel had been eating.  So we took out the stomach and opened it up… big surprise, ACORNS!  Still pretty cool to see.  His belly was full, so we know he died happy!

Step 4: Just like the Native Americans, we will waste as little of a kill as we can… Scott has grand plans for the tail of the squirrel.  As for the rest, the body was frozen to be fed to our Golden Eagle at a later date.  Both arms and a leg were cut off to be fed as a “treat” to the Red Tail Hawk, Turkey Vulture, and the Golden Eagle that afternoon.

Reed said he could do what he wanted with it but it could NOT go on the hat that wears around the students.

You may have noticed I did not get my hands dirty on this one but that is because we all have our turns.  I am the only intern as of yet to disembowel a rat for the weekend feeding of the Golden Eagle.  Also, it was a regular duty to cut open a yellow duckling and squeeze the yolk out of it because it was too fatty for the birds.  After going to a Raptor conference, Janelle has now said we don’t have to de-yolk the ducklings.  But that wasn’t before several dozen were de-yolked by these paws!

All in a days work at Sierra Outdoor School.  I love my job 🙂

Virtual Trail Run

Here is a gallery of photos taken along my trail run around campus.  I am sharing it because my trail runs have become my favorite time of the day when I can sort things out, lesson plan, and clear my mind all at once.  Not to mention the trails aren’t half bad around here either.  Though I am still sticking to an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset due to my fear of mountain lions!  There have been tracks, scat, leftovers, and even sightings since I have been here so being me, I am a little nervous out there.  It is about a 5 mile run and I am often distracted by some aspect of nature, whether it is a butterfly on a wildflower, fish jumping up the waterfall on the ditch or a decapitated grey squirrel being dropped on me by a hawk.  Enjoy a virtual experience of my run!

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Hellooooo out there!

Wow, I’m sorry… it has been over a month since my last post.  Time certainly can get away from you.  I will do my best to give a fast and furious account of the last almost month and a half of my life out here in the West.

As I say that, the first thing that happened after the previous entry was that I made a trip home to New Hampshire!  I was able two really great friends, Scott and Melissa, tie the knot at Fuller Gardens in North Hampton, NH.  The ceremony was beautiful and the reception was tons of fun and it was great to see two of my friends so happily in love!  After that, I made my way up to Madison, NH to pay a visit to Stone.  Oh how I had missed that place and those people!  It was almost like a reunion because even some past employees who weren’t working there showed up for a hike up Baldface on Sunday.  It was my little taste of Fall in New England.  I had a very difficult time leaving come Monday, but for the remainder of the year, my life is in California!

And it has become just that here on Big Hill… my life!  I think that is why the blog posts stopped… do people really care about the monotony of my day to day life?  I have been teaching and loving the job more and more every day.  I am learning so much which was the whole point of this internship… to learn enough to build my confidence as an instructor.  I am now checked off to solo teach high ropes, wilderness skills, tour of the town of Columbia, our schoolhouse program (acting like a teacher from the 1800’s), and our Silent Mile class, which is all about the energy cycle and basic ecology concepts.  Silent Mile is definitely my favorite to teach thus far because I am actually teaching science but it also has a good mix of experiential/sensory activities as well.  The children have to walk solo and silently for one mile (hence the name of the class) and then journal about it at the end.  I am trying to get my timing down to be able to include a reading of the Lorax at the end, but a 3 and a half hr class flies by.  I am almost checked off on a class called People of the Sierra, where I teach about the MiWok Indians and the Gold Rush.

The rest of my weekends haven’t been too exciting… hanging out on the hill, trail running, practicing the mandolin, and general relaxation after crazy weeks!  Though the one highlight would be going to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  I saw a ton of acts but the highlights for me were Hot Buttered Rum and Devil Makes Three.  Great atmosphere and it was free!

This past weekend Mom and Dad made their way out to the West coast!  I met up with them on Friday night at a motel just outside of Yosemite.  We spent the weekend exploring the sights in Yosemite.  I brought them up to the top of Lembert Dome and since it was atover 9,000 ft above sea level, there was some huffing and puffing.  They were troopers and we made it to the top with a nice view of Tuolumne Valley.  We also saw one of the coolest of Mother Nature’s tricks… for two weeks in October Bridal Veil Falls turns into a rainbow of colors just before sunset with the sun’s rays refracting off the water.  It was BEAUTIFUL and t was the most awe inspiring visions I have seen here in California.  We rounded out the trip with a quick visit to SOS and dinner in Sonora.

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So that is the gist of the last month and a half of my life!  I will try to stay more on top of my posts but it seems a little self centered to drone on about my days.  If anyone has any suggestions for my blog or ideas to write about, let me know!  I know a lot of you are super curious and some of you are also award winning bloggers, so any input will make blogging more interesting and fun for everyone involved!

The most eventful thing that has happened to me in the past week was that I was stung by a scorpion.  I have never been stung by a bee, but I can now say I have been stung in some manner.  Trivially, it happened in my bedroom on the carpet.  The little bugger (aka Wood Scorpion) was the same color as my carpet and super tiny and it hurt like the dickens.  He got me between my two little toes.  I freaked out a bit but my room mates calmed me down and we determined I’d probably live the night.  The next morning when I told my coordinator and one of the naturalists, all they cared about was the fact that  I didn’t die so that meant they could go out and try to get stung because they hadn’t known anyone who had been.  Boys and bugs!

This past weekend, after a trip to the farmer’s market and acquiring my Tuolumne County library card, I ventured off on a solo expedition up Rte 4 into the Stanislaus National Forest.  I stopped at the Snowshoe Brewery on the way

Quality evening at the campsite

up the pass and got two growlers, a Snowweizen and an Apricot Wheat beer.  The Apricot Wheat was one of the better beers I have had in a long, long time… fresh and light and still brings back feelings of summer!  I made my way up to the free campground of

Pacific Valley, claimed a site (even though there was no one there) and ventured off for a couple mile ramble with my growler on a trail directly next to the campsite.  It was a pretty mellow, relaxing

afternoon evening consisting of beer drinking, journaling, playing the mandolin, and reading.  I went to bed after stargazing and woke earrrrly in the morning to little ice crystals all over my windshield!  It was cold!  I was also at about 9000 feet so it was to be expected.  I threw my still frozen tent into my car and headed out for a morning hike.  I hiked intoHeiser Lake and Bull Run Lake to eat my breakfast, study my field guide, and enjoy the nature.  It was a very relaxing morning and was just what I needed to recenter myself.  I am really learning to appreciate the solitary moments in nature when everything else seems so trivial and the only things that matter are the birds calling in the trees or my reflection in the lake.

Heiser Lake

Believe it or not, I do work for a living!

My posts make it seem like it is all work and no play out here in Sonora, CA but let me tell you, there is plenty of work going on… it is just that it doesn’t always feel like it!  The amazing phenomenon of being totally and completely in love with your job.  It is very satisfying to feel 100% certain that I made the right career choice.  And with this job, it is actually a lifestyle choice!

So I am technically in an internship here at Sierra Outdoor School.  This position offers me so many chances to learn and grow as an educator, but that doesn’t mean I’m not out teaching students on the trails right now!  The other interns, myself and our coordinator are in charge of all evening activities, which include:

• Mountain Madness: Relay races resulting in relatively organized chaos and awesome dance parties
• Night Hikes: Same ole, same ole – no matter what EE school you go to!
• Owl Pellets: Dissecting an owl pellet and examining its continents, as well as talking about how awesome owl adaptations are.
• Star Watch: Telescopes, stories, constellations (My greatest challenege….)
• Arrowheads: Teaching about local native americans, local resources and making your own arrowhead!
• Campfire: Dress up, sing, act, make a general fool of yourself – always a great time.
• Hillbilly Hop: Straight up dancing – Macarena to lin dancing, many adapted to environmental themes.

We have been up and going on these since students arrived three weeks ago and are already relatively proficient.  My favorite is definitely Mountain Madness due to the freedom to go a little crazy and Night Hike because they are just that cool.  Star Watch is an uphill battle because I have a very difficult time locating anything in the night sky.  Lack of spatial reasoning??  No idea!

One of the major perks of working at SOS is the 8 hour work day.  This can be relatively difficult to come by in the environmental ed field and I am relishing in it.  There are definite drawbacks, such as less time with a particular group of children and not getting to build the same bonds you might by spending 3 or 4 twelve hour days with a group. I definitely miss those connections, but I am just trying to make the most of the time I do get with each group.  We have a wiiiide variety of classes we teach during the day, from high ropes to raptor conservation to silent mile (basic ecology).  So far this year, we have been doing a lot of team and leadership type classes because that is what the schools have chosen (we have a menu based program that we offer).  The science is slow to come.

As interns, we are getting thoroughly taught the day programs by the full time naturalists.  To be able to teach one of the day classes, you must go through a check off process.  You observe a class, team teach it with the naturalist and then teach it alone while being observed by the naturalist.  This can take a week or more depending on how often a class is taught.  The first class I observed was Wilderness Skills, which I have minimal background in.  It involves basic hiking preparedness, compass/orienteering, and shelter building.  I observed it two weeks ago and was then signed up to team teach it last week but ended up solo teaching it and the naturalist said I was good to go and could skip the last step… first class checked off!  I taught it by myself yesterday morning and it was great… I missed solo teaching.  Funny how less than a year ago I was relieved by team teaching.  Shows how much I have learned the past year 🙂  I have also been checked off on teaching High Ropes…. another VERRRRY different class than I have ever taught.  I am enjoying it  much  more than I expected… seeing a kid who is in the corner crying because they are so scared climb up the pole, across the Burma Bridge and down the zip line and come running back with a huge smile plastered across their face is a pretty intensely awesome experience.

So that is a  verrrry basic outline of all the work “stuff” I have been up to out here.  It has been an awesome first month and I am super stoked to keep learning and expanding and having more fun!

Ok, this should work better than the non-working other link!

https://picasaweb.google.com/118149430998058957852/ALifeOnTheHill02?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Heading East in the West

I promise in my next post that I will talk more about how teaching and the whole job thing is going (you know, the reason I headed West) but for this post I most definitely need to focus on the long weekend I took with my fellow interns.  We had been told that we NEEDED to visit the “East Side” before the snows hit and we wouldn’t be able to make it through the passes.  So Labor Day weekend seemed like the best time to make the journey back East over the Sierras.

Best Campsite of my Life

We started by ending early on Friday afternoon (props to our awesome  coordinator who realized this and let us out of many Friday duties) and pointed the compass back East over the Sierra Nevadas.  We had been hearing how amazing the dramatics was from the deserts to the mountains and wanted to witness them for ourselves.  Our first destination was Buckeye  Hot Spring and we found an awesome dispersed campsite which was a short but steep walk to the aptly named Buckeye Hotspring.  We got there just in time for a sunset and to watch the moon rise and stars come out.  Being the neature nerds that we are, we spent several hourslounged in a hotspring, star gazing and constellation spotting until our rhodopsin was ruined by other tourists who had found our personal, hidden hotspring.

We woke up the next morning and made our even more the East, through many mountains and hills that once were bustling with mining activity.  This brings us to our first of the “paid” parts of our weekend.  Our coordinator, whose name is Reed (and I will from here on out be referring to by name because he is such a huge influence in my life right now so learn the name), told us that if we did certain educational activities on our weekend, that he would count them as professional development.  So our two hours for Saturday were visiting the ghost town of Bodie, CA.  A mining town that was once bustling (one of the biggest in the West) it was mostly burned to the ground by a repugnant three year old child who was served green jello instead of cake and ice cream on his birthday.  Parents, take note.  The town wanted to hang the child, but the parents of the child fled with the entire family before this could happen.  This was my first visit to a ghost town, but I am super excited to learn more about California history and teach some to the students who visit SOS.  All teachers were students once.

We pressed on pass Bodie towards our next destination, Mono Lake.  This lake is 2.5-3 times saltier than the ocean and is found in the rainshadow of the Sierra Nevadas.  Fellow intern, Kendall, and I worked our magic as 20 something females at the visitor center and found a lesser known dispersed campsite and decided to check it out.  Within 30 seconds of seeing our campsite, all other bets were off for the weekend and we had found homebase.  It was an amazing site out in the middle of sage brush land with the giant mountainous cliffs of Yosemite to the West and the shores of Mono Lake to the East.  I have never stayed at a more beautiful site in my life and the other more seasoned campers agreed.

After making camp and deciding, yes, this is the most amazing place we could be right now, we headed to South Toufa.  Being from New Englad, I was expecting to pay for one person and get two people inside the park but that was not the case.  (Side note, I made this New England joke and no one laughed… they are already over me saying “wicked” every other sentence).  The Tufa are amazing formations created by calcium ridden springs bubble up into a carbonate rich lake… these guys form together to form calcium carbonate which is the base for the tufa spire formations.  I have never seen rock formations such as these.  My mind… officially blown.  And they were all on the edge of this impossibly salty lake, which was home an amazing amount of birdlife.  The birds primarily fed on the alkalai flies and brine shrimp that appear in abundance.  We swam in the salty waters, testing the laws of floating in the saltiness.  Yes, I could float without moving any limbs.  Pretty neat.

The next day we headed out without having to worry about packing up camp, since we had clearly found the ultimate campsite, towards Mammoth Lakes for a hike up to Duck Pass.  The hike would take us into

Arrowhead Lake, first of many!

the John Muir Wilderness (leave your bikes at home, children) and passed 3 different mountain lakes.  We were all super excited to stretch out legs (ecspecially in the JM Wilderness!) and headed out with expectations that were ridiculously exceeded.  I was ready to camp at the first lake, Arrowhead Lake, because I was sure it could not be matched in beauty.  The crystal green waters that descended into the depths not more than a few feet from shore… jagged, rocky cliffs climbing above into the cerulean skies.  My fellow hikers coaxed me past the first lake (which was only 1.4 miles in!).  We turned a short hike into a loooong nature hike that benefitted everyone… we learned more wildflowers than I can count on both hands and feet.  We passed several more mountain lakes (which I think will be the most beautiful and inspiring geological feature I bring home from California) and I actually decided to opt out before the last lake to take some time to reflect and journal and do a general re-centering.  This was one of my favorite afternoons since I have been in California.

This night,  I visited THE BEST Mobil gas station ever invented.  It had amazingggg food and mango margaritas… and live music too if only we all actually knew what day it was.  Still, amazing night at the mobil and will definitely return.

Day three, the last day of our trip.  We needed to get back to campus wit reasonable time to lesson plan and feel human after the long weekend.  Luckily, two of our coworkers had National Park passes and we were able to take the quick route home… through Yosemite!

I have never been through or seen the park, so this was awesome even though my eyes were mostly on the road as the driver.  We stopped to get our two hours of work in by going on a Ranger’s Walk about bugs.  I learned a bit more about wood-boring beetles than I knew before as well as some more wildflower ID.  Wildflowers are evvvverrrryyyywhere!  Thus concluded an amazing long weekend spent in some amazing country with some amazing people learning things that amaze me.  Life is pretty good, yea?

Please forgive picture placement in this post… still not 100% sold on WordPress but it  gets the point across.  Also, as I have limited access to facebook and I know some people don’t have the ole FB, I have started a Picasa album for everyone to see with most of my pictures.  Let me know, I like to hear from you all… Cali is a long ways away!  I may update pictures more than blog posts so be tuned to that.  The address is: https://picasaweb.google.com/118149430998058957852/ALifeOnTheHill02

If this doesn’t work, let me know please!  Still figuring out this new blog site.

Some logistics

So, I know I have been withholding my address so without further ado feel free to send me anything and everything to:

Ashley Swasey
15700 Old Oak Ranch Road
Apt D
Sonora, CA 95370

The direct phone to our house is (209)533-4584. If you want to call this number instead of my cell to save me some minutes, greatly appreciated!

Also, check out the website http://sos.cusd.com/naturalistinterns.htm to see everything about the interns and take a look at the site to learn more about what I’m doing.

I will update more when I have a chance, but I am having an amazing week and am loving my job so much. Hope everything is well everywhere else!

You Can Call Me Chickadee

As a group, the interns (or “Night Staff” as they like to refer to us so we don’t feel like lesser employees) have now come up with our nature names.  I’m Chickadee, nice to meet ya.  We also have a Willow, Puma, Pika, Stellar’s Jay, and Granite.  I guess now I am a real Naturalist, right?

I spent the weekend getting to know campus even better and preparing for the lessons I am going to be observing this week.  This was a perfect time to take some pictures to share with all of you about where I am living and working.

Welcome 🙂

Our school is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range.  We are living at 4,100 feet on the outskirts of the Stanislaus National Forest.

Main part of campus... you can see the Upper Ed building, Dining Hall, and some dorms

The campus is pretty big… we have two education buildings, a dining hall, six dorms, a gym, weight room, star lab, high ropes course, and miles of trails to learn (and run) on!

This is where I live! Welcome to the Bear's Den!

Yes, this is a double wide trailer… but……

Living area in the Bear's Den

It’s great inside!  There are 8 bedrooms (6 are inhabited by us) and three bathrooms.

The Raptor area where the birds are kept and lessons are presented

The Ditch Trail where I run... this isn't the prettiest spot but it gives you an idea

"The Big Tree" - a really cool Live Oak tree to chill out in

So this is where I am living and working for the next ten months!  I love it so far… it is so different than anywhere I have ever lived before and definitely beautiful in its own way.

Conquering some fears

This week training has been entirely focused on getting us all certified to run the high ropes course that we offer here at SOS.  Now, this was something that I knew would be a new skill for me to learn and I assumed it would be challenging at times but I definitely did not think through the entirety of the process.  Some fears that I never knew I had surfaced the last 3 three days!  I had an immense difficulty the first day mastering the knots required for our belay systems and the rest course (double figure 8 on a bight, double fishermen, boleyn and more) and was near tears with frustration.

Lead edge climb

By the second day though, after some seriously awesome support from some seriously awesome coworkers, I had the knots down and was belaying with the best of them.  It is definitely a work in progress and a skill that doesn’t come naturally, but it is still a learning process.  I also jumped off some heights, walked across the Burma Bridge, climbed a rock wall, and pushed myself further than I thought I could.  All in all, a great week personally and professionally!

Me attempting the Caterpillar Walk

I went into town on Tuesday in search of a yoga studio.  I found the Yoga Loft Sonora which seems like it is going to be a great retreat for me to practice and center myself.  The instructor was super friendly and made me feel so welcome.  It was an intermediate Vinyasa Flow class, which the style I prefer and it was good to practice again.  I will definitely be going back!