I loved you, Guinevere

         My hands are sore and covered in blisters, my feet are sore, I have crazy bruises all over my legs, and I'm fairly certain that if anyone saw my arms they would think I was mauled by something very angry. That being said, my trek was awesome! It was a grueling and intense 6 days of building trails, digging holes for posts and for poops, hiking, and building sweet rock walls with the entire conservation department, not just work crew. 

         The first four days consisted of waking up at 4:15 am to our foreman singing at the top of his lungs or meowing like a cat. It's freezing cold at 4:15 am. We all stayed in tents in a meadow. A morning is as follows: Get dressed super fast, walk half a mile down to a camp with a kitchen where we eat pastries and bagels and drink coffee. Run up to the stockade where our tool cache is, which is a big log fort tree house basically. Then we hike up the trail and pick our spots and start working on whatever task for the day we have. Lunch consists of squeeze cheese or honey peanut butter and crackers and lots of energy bars. Dinner is cooked for us down at the camp we have breakfast at. We eat those poor guys out of house and home. I've been eating upwards of 5 to 6 thousand calories a day, and drink about 5 or 6 liters of water a day. 

I wish I helped build this.

The entire conservation crew is awesome. we built a mile of trail and 5 rock walls in four days. I ended up in a crew with the 5 guys that I get along really well with, so I have a feeling that it will be a good summer. I just hope I can keep up. I'm the only girl on work crew because the one other girl quit, which means when people introduce me they go "This is Amanda, she's the only girl on

work crew and she's a bad-ass!" This is terrifying because I haven't actually gone out on a job yet, so I have a lot to live up to. I did well in training which earned me this little notoriety, but I have a feeling that it was just a small taste of what is to come. Being the only girl on work crew also means that I spend 9 days at a time out with a bunch of bros, so when I come back to base camp I immediately seek out my female cons friends and do lady things. (most of them are 'ists', which stands for 'conservationists'. they teach kids about different things out in the back country.) WC is notoriously stinky and crazy and fun and crass so during parents week we aren't allowed on base camp, or so I've been told. 

The Great Wall of Philmont

I was testing out what it would be like to be a poop before the toilet went on top of the hole we dug for camp poos

The toilets that go on top of these holes are called "pilot to bombers" because its a two seater and they face away from each other. Not pictured is my crew trying to put the toilet on me before I could get out of the hole. I escaped in the nick of time.

The trail we were building was a new path to the point that we took our staff picture at last week, which is the little peak? protrusion? below called the Tooth of Time. Aptly named because it looks like a tooth! The original trail up it is a very intense steep climb through a boulder-filled canyon which is awesome but not ideal for some younger crews or folks new to hiking.

The Tooth of Time

I can't get enough of the views here. A storm was a-brewin!

The good thing about waking up so early is seeing the sunrise over the mesa.

We came back down to base camp from training/trail building a few days ago and have have a wonderful and much appreciated 3 days off. Yesterday a group of us visited Taos, which is a cool little hippie town. It makes me feel like I've got a little piece of Austin near me. We visited this awesome hot spring in a canyon and just soaked for several hours because we're all sore from training. Afterwards pizza ensued.

Nature's hot tub

Mad props to the kid that drew this and gave it to the pizza joint we ate at.

A co-worker of mine said something kind of profound while we were driving back from Taos. It made quote of the day, which I am still attempting to keep a log of.

"Look at our world, guys. It's beautiful."