Volunteering: Crew volunteer project, Moonrise Farms

CHICKENS!

Fabulous beard

Matt and Brian prepare boards for me to put up inside on the roof

Straw/mud house we helped to build

Mixing some mud

High-powered nail gun to put up the roofing. All recycled wood!

Brian works with one of Roy's kids, Brie, to pack the thick straw/mud mixture in to gaps before we put on the first layer of slick mud.

One of Roy's kids using a special drill bit to blend the slick mud for the first layer

Me working on the roof while Matt saws part of the excess straw around the front door.

     Yesterday I went with my crew to Moonrise Farms near Petrified Forest for our crew volunteer project. Cliff lived and worked there for a year, and is very close with the owners. He spoke with them and planned our volunteer day there. It was AWESOME! We had no idea what we would be doing, we expected to be shoveling manure or working to plant rows of the many vegetables they grow. We arrived at the farm, and discovered we would be helping to build a straw and mud house! At the farm, they typically have four or so people who stay with them during the plant/harvest months, and these people typically live in their tents on the property. However, this year, the owners decided to build a place to house the workers, all with recycled materials. Actually, the place is so awesome, I am going to keep it in mind as a possible place to live/work for a few months down the road. It is a wholesome atmosphere--kind people, happy animals, vegetables everywhere, and plenty of soil. I love it. I feel a new strong pull toward farm life. It made me further question where I want to live in the future. I know I do not want to be in a big city, but would I be happy in a rural area outside of a big city? Maybe. 

     Anyway, the work yesterday was awesome. I finished putting up the ceiling panels with a high-powered nail gun and got to use a deck saw to split and trim wood to the right sizes. I cut the panels in multiples of 16 inches--16, 32 and 48 inches. The final product looks awesome. After finishing the ceiling, I became very, very dirty. Actually, when I got back home last night, Missy looked at me like I was a new disease--a mix of fascination and revulsion. Ha. My clothes were covered with dry, reddish mud, and I had chunks of it throughout my hair and in patches on my face and arms. It was awesome! We used slick mud to coat the straw inside. We got to work with the 3 itinerant workers staying there, as well as the two owners and Roy's 5 kids, the oldest was probably 15 and the youngest probably 5. Roy himself is not very old, I would guess 35. He is one of those men who looks intimidating, but is actually a huge teddy bear with a great beard and wonderfully clear, blue eyes. He reminds me of some of the people from around Bloomington who live in the rural areas. He is one of those people who clearly does everything to the fullest, whether it be eating, working hard, drinking beer, having children, or laughing. I felt an incredible sense of joy around him, as well as around his children.

     Cliff finishes his term of AmeriCorps service after this spike, and will be moving back onto the farm for the next couple of months. Though I've already completed far beyond my required 24 hours of volunteer service, Matt and I have already made plans to head back to Moonrise to work and hang out there. Roy told me that the best time to visit is during pepper season--they make wide array of pickled peppers and salsas. He said that during the couple of weeks when they make these condiments, they sit around huge vats of peppers and drink beer all day. I think I will definitely be going back there to do that. Yesterday  Cliff and I almost ate an entire jar of their serrano hot sauce between the two of us on two burritos. Ha. Totally awesome volunteer day, I learned a ton. I cannot believe how lucky I have been since my move to Arizona! 

Volunteering: AZ Dragon Boat Race, Phoenix

Mitch wearing my shoveralls.. We didn't let him leave the house.

Jon and his face blanket.

Jon with the meats!

Ryan and Ellie

Andrew taught us how to dance--we learned the "stanky leg," "duggie," and .. something else, I don't remember right now. But here he is breaking it down with Jess.

Jess tries to beat Katie in arm wrestling, but no girl has been able to beat her yet.

Scoots and Jose--Jose attempting an intimidating stare. Jose happens to be one of the gentlest people I've ever met, so the intimidating stare was pretty ineffectual.

Erm.. Daniel found this in Jon's bathroom I think?

Hi CREC friends!

Two dragon boats--they seat twenty paddlers, one drummer, and one person steering.

Dan is excited

One of the competing teams. The seriously competitive teams were intimidating--UCLA won pretty much every heat and the paddlers were incredibly buff. 

Happy Daniel

Turns out Ellie and I both have green Chacos

This dude was a paddler for a male team, and the drummer for a female team. He only wore the skirt while leading the female team.

Sitting down during a break, thanks to a long heat.

Shari, the Marshall.

Ryan and Ellie say, "THAT WAY TO THE LIQUIDS!"

Andrew and his strong arms make sure everybody is in the boat. He and I worked out in between loading/unloading competitors. Today I can't really walk up and down stairs thanks to a squat-off. Heh.

Ryan, Jamie, and Alexis.

    This past break, I got in 31.5 volunteer hours. 24 of these hours were spent at the AZ Dragon Boat Race in Phoenix. It was beautiful--sunny skies and fit people everywhere. There were 18 CREC volunteers, and we made up the majority of the total volunteers. Most of us worked the docks, where we helped people in and out of boats, and tried to empty out water from the bases of the boats between races. There were a variety of teams. The most competitive teams were university teams, primarily from California. The ones that stand out the most to me were the USC and UCLA teams. The young men and women on these teams were incredibly powerful and buff. I think a number of us found ourselves staring at firm half-naked bodies and forgetting that we were supposed to be doing some sort of volunteering activity. The university teams were also primarily comprised of Asian-American students. On the mixed UCLA team, 18 of the 20 paddlers were of Asian descent.

     Aside from the university teams, there was a corporate division and a survivor division. The corporate division had teams from banks like Wells Fargo, among other very business-y places. The survivor division was for cancer survivors, primarily female breast cancer survivors. 

     All 18 of the CRECers who went down to volunteer stayed at Jon's place. He is a CREC crew supervisor, and lives with his girlfriend Hannah in Phoenix. He owns a beautiful townhome that his grandfather passed down to him. Jon and Hannah were incredibly hospitable. Housing 18 people is not an easy task. They bought over five cases of beer and made a ton of food for us, and refused any money. Hannah is a grad student studying urban planning, and after this term Jon is going to start law school. Anyway, each day we had to be up by 5:30am to get to the lake by 6:00am. We volunteered each day from 6-6, which was quite difficult because each night was spent in a packed house with a ton of beer and each day was spent in nonstop sun next to a lake. Ha. Overall, it was an awesome weekend, though tiring! 

Red Rocks--Sedona Spike

I turned into a boulder!

Woodsboss Chris looking at the view. He is giving me his bed soon!

I can be a gargoyle!

Oh crap, Dylan is under a rock!

Amanda and Dylan pretend to pull up a boulder--really, we used the grip hoist to bring it up the side of the trail. Amanda joined our crew this week from another. She said she wished she could always be on our crew, and asked to stay with me in my tent the last few nights.

Matt and I splitting a huge rock to use as two steps. Here, I am holding the slab splitter in place while he hits it with the double jack. The double jack weighs about 15 pounds, and we traded hits every ten or so because it is such an exhausting tool to use. The double jack is possibly my favorite tool.

Dylan, me, Matt--planning maneuvers to aid the grip hoist with rock bars. This is half of the rock Matt and I split. We were able to use the rock for two separate steps. It took us nearly 10 hours to split it, dig the two holes, and grip hoist the rocks in place. We then spent most of the next 10-hour day adjusting the rocks in the holes, filling the holes with crush and dirt, and naturalizing around the steps. 

Matt, using a rock bar as a wedge. This is the huge rock he and I spent over a half hour splitting with a double jack, and it was only sandstone. Imagine a more dense rock--another that we split took over three hours. Super satisfying! I was lucky enough to have the final breaking hit for both.

    My crew, the "Platypai TruckAZ," spent our last spike in Sedona fixing a few areas of the Munds Wagon Trail, which is a trail for hikers, bikers, and equestrians. Our eight-day spike was spent primarily within 30ft of trail doing some incredible rock work. It was awesome--not only did I wield the double jack for many days (YES!), but I learned how to use the grip hoist. I have yet to learn how to set up a highline with the grip hoist, but Brian said he will teach me soon regardless of whether or not we have a rock project that requires a highline setup. 

    One of the days, we had to quit work halfway through the day and work in the shop at the ranger station because of a crazy rainstorm. Because Arizona is almost always sunny, people here call anything other than sun "weather." Matt and I have had a hard time grasping this concept, because for us even sun is a form of weather! Any time there are even a couple of slightly dark clouds, Dylan says, "We're going to get weather today." I think it's funny. He always predicts the "storm of the century." Typically, the "storm of the century" amounts to a few rain drops, but this week we really did have a crazy storm. Rock work in itself is quite dangerous, and with the rain the sandstone became quite slippery and the area of trail we were working on became a mudslide. Luckily, our project partner came by and asked us if we were crazy and sent us to the shop. Ha. 

    Although the rain made work a bit stressful, I was lucky enough to experience one of the most beautiful events in nature I have ever seen. All week, we were working near a wash, which was dry and where we harvested most of our rocks/boulders for the job. On the day of rain, I was working up the hill, and heard a sound like running water, which confused me. I looked down to the wash, and saw water began to shoot down the wash! I ran down to the wash, and literally saw the wash turn from a dry bed to a flowing creek. It was incredible. Only Shari, Matt and I were there, and we watched the water front cover the dry rocks and slowly swell. I was standing next to Shari when I first heard the water, and apparently I screamed, "the water, it's happening!" and ran down to the wash, leaving Shari totally confused. I can't fully express what a beautiful moment it was. To spend nearly a full week walking back and forth over a huge, dry wash, and to then see the front of water shoot down the wash was absolutely wonderful. Apparently it is a pretty rare thing to experience. The desert is SO COOL! It was a beautiful moment, it almost brought me to tears, though I can't exactly explain the feeling it gave me. Total awe.

     Tomorrow we head out on our first backcountry spike. We will be heading to the Coronados again. The area we are driving to is about 9 hours away from Flag, so we are going to camp more or less on the side of the road tomorrow night, then wake up Thursday morning and hike 5 miles with all of our gear to our campsite, with over a 3000ft elevation gain. It is a wilderness area that does not allow chainsaws, so we will be using crosscuts to clear out trees. Definitely going to be a tough spike, but I am very, very excited.