It all started with an onion.

It began sprouting on the kitchen counter, and Matt decided to plant it in the backyard.  Then he started thinking about potatoes, green chiles, bell peppers, beans, tomatoes...  And that is how the idea of the garden was born. 

This all happened about a month ago, and I've been hesitant to post about it up until now, because ... well, you know how these things go.  Plans change, people have differences of opinion, etc. etc.  But last week, we decided to go for it and really set our plan into motion. 

Let's backtrack a little bit, to a time when our little garden was merely a figment of our imaginations.  We started with a drawing.  In Paint.  I thought it was cute, but Matt later decided it was stupid and deleted it, so I won't be showing you that one.  Sorry.  But don't worry.  I have other pictures.

The first actual thing we did to start our garden was install the fencing, to keep the dog out.  It's a pretty simple design.  A 50 foot roll of fencing attached to steel posts by plastic zip ties.  The gate has a strip of wood at the end and is held closed by bungee cords.

Here's what we pulled up (with shovel for scale)

Now the fence was up and the weeds were gone, but we still hadn't committed to much yet.  The soil here is not spectacular for growing a vegetable garden on its own.  If I were a better soil scientist, I could explain why, but I'm not.  All I knew was we had to make it better somehow, so we began to look at our options. 

We are currently at a point where telling more of the story would involve me having to upload more pictures from my camera, which I don't really feel like doing right now, so you'll have to wait until later for part 2.

Hello anyone out there who still reads this.   It's been a while.  February was a ridiculously busy month.  I didn't have one weekend off.  The first two weekends, I had to drive to Silver City.  Yes, I had to drive there and come back... twice.  But I didn't mind, because I was doing something I really wanted to do, which was...  firefighter training!

Last summer, while I was off breaking the truck, the rest of my crew was in Arizona doing remediation work on the Wallow Fire.  I was the only one out of my entire staff (including the students) without fire training and therefore couldn't go along.  Needless to say, I felt left out.  At the end of the fiscal year, our travel budget was cut (again) and I thought there wouldn't be any extra money for trainings, so I tried not to be too disappointed about another summer of working alone while everyone else went off without me again.

But when I got back from the holiday break, something incredible happened.  My boss came by and said, "We have some extra travel money, and W [his boss] wants you take fire training this year, so... find a class."  YAY!

It was actually really hard to find a class.  I kept getting different information and getting referred to different people.  But I finally found one.  In Silver City.  Over two weekends.  Silver City is about 4 and 1/2 hours away, if you take the shortcut.  More if you try to go through Hatch and Deming.  And even longer if you have to do what I did last year, and go all the way down to Las Cruces.  Blah.  So it was a long drive and  totally killed my weekends but, like I said, I really wanted to do it, so I sucked it up and went.

The weekend of Feb 4 and 5 was the first weekend of the training, and I learned A LOT.  There is so much information.  We learned all about wildland fire behavior in one day.  And then took a test.  So in one day, I had already completed 1/4 of the 4-part course.  The class was actually pretty big, with about 30-32 people, most of them volunteer firefighters from different departments around Southwest New Mexico.  It's weird to see all these middle aged and older people who want to fight fires for no money, when all I really want to do is go around and look at stuff that's already been burned (because I'm a wussie) and get paid for it.

Required reading for firefighters.

Wildland fire behavior reminded me a lot of physical geography, because it deals with how weather affects fire.  Wind, thunderstorms, relative humidity, air temperature, etc.  I also learned a lot about how the actual fire behaves.  It's pretty cool, actually.

And now, because my geology professor once said that drawing pictures helps you learn and remember things, I give you the parts of a fire:

In case you cannot tell from my amazing drawing skills, this is a fire in aerial view

Origin - Every fire has an origin, but it's not always at the lowest point on the fire like I've drawn.  There can be other factors, like the tree that initially ignited could have fallen and rolled down the hill, thus bringing the fire down with it.

Head - this is the biggest, scariest part of the fire.  It's the place where the fire is spreading the fastest.

Flank - These are basically the sides of the fire that aren't the head.  They are the coolest part of the fire (temp-wise), so that's where the firefighters are usually sent first to start containing or controlling the fire.  They say go up the right or left flank instead of using directions like North, South, East and West, because it's too hard to tell that kind of thing when there's a fire burning all around you. 

Heel - This is the "bottom" of the fire.  It has the slowest rate of spread and is opposite the head.

Finger - Extension that is still connected to the main fire

Pocket - Unburned portion between the finger and the main fire.  You DON'T want to be there.  If the fire jumps across and closes the pocket, you are screwed.

Island - A part inside the fire that isn't burning.  It may be a rock outcrop or a lake or a change in fuel type.  Just something different that decided not to burn for some reason.

Spot Fire - These happen when a piece of fire (yes I said piece, whatever) is lofted out into the atmosphere and lands on a fuel bed.  It's not connected to the main fire.

The entire outer boundary of the fire is called the perimeter and the already burnt middle part is called the black, so I made it black in the picture.  Doesn't it totally look like a burnt forest?  Yeah, I thought so.

As usual, I'm ridiculously behind on posting.  So I'm catching up.  Last month, we went sledding.  It was an interesting adventure.  Let's have a look into the past, shall we?

We decided to use inner tubes to sled with.  So we went to the store and looked for some.  But all they had were ones for water.  But we thought, 'what the heck!' and got them anyway.  This will be important later in the story.

After we finished blowing up the inner tubes and getting all our snow gear, we (finally) headed off to the mountains.  It had snowed a crap-ton up there and it was cold, really really cold.  Like 15 degrees (F not C -- which are both bogus units of measure by the way, but that is neither here nor there). 

We found a good parking spot and hiked a little way in to find a good little section of an awesome hill for sledding.  Matt went down first, and he went down FAST.  I started to get a little bit nervous.  Especially since some jerkface was sitting at the bottom of the hill with his dogs, and would not move.  But I decided to face my fear, and started down the hill.

That's one of us at the top of the hill (probably Matt)

Everything was going decently well... that is, until I got to the bottom and my inner tube scraped over a rock we hadn't noticed before.  And immediately deflated.  True story.  This is the problem with floaty inner tubes.  Not exactly the best ever for sledding down rocky mountain slopes.

At least I got a good workout walking back up the hill

We had to take turns after that.  The idiot was still there with his dogs.  So when I went down I screamed the whole way to get the dumbass to move, but he never did. That F-er.  My third attempt was the best one, and amazingly enough, that's the one when we got video.


After that, I was like "oh yeah, I am totally awesome at this!"  and went down again.  Only to freak out right at the end and plant my feet, resulting in me flipping over, flying in the air, and face planting right in the snow.  It hurt.  And it was cold.

And since 2011 was the year of technical difficulties, I should mention that my camera didn't like the cold either.  Ever since, the digital screen has decided to stop working.  I can still take pictures through the little view finder window thingy, but it may be time to consider a newer model.  I mean, my phone camera takes better pictures than my actual camera.  But it can still take some pretty good ones.

A while back, I went to Socorro to see some migratory birds.  Migratory birds love Socorro.  There is so much to do, like eat at the crappy Mexican restaurant and shop at WalMart.  Who wouldn't want to go there?

Okay, Okay, I guess they don't really like to go to Socorro, but they do like to go to Bosque del Apache, which is near Socorro.  It's one of their favorite vacation spots.  They go there every year, and have been going for a very very long time.

It's quite the journey.  In case you were wondering, this is the route they take, according to the International Crane Foundation.

So, what better for a bunch of silly humans to do than go bother them by taking about a million pictures while they're just trying to relax and enjoy their time in sunny New Mexico?

Seriously, they are just trying to eat lunch.

Sometimes, they like to take a little walk down the road.



Or meet up with their friends at the pool.

Poor duck.  He feels left out.

And end the day with a sunset flight.



Then settle in to enjoy the view.

I spent my last couple field weeks alone at Negrito.  There were a few people there, besides me.  But mostly I was just by myself.  It was not my favorite, but I lived through it.  I missed my field buddies.  (Yes, I will include both of them) Whether it was out digging holes or back at camp, we always had a good time together.  That's something I've rarely experienced in my 3 and 1/2 years here.  The nice thing is that J still works in our office while he goes to school, so I see him a couple days a week.  It's nice having at least one person who I can talk to at work.  The office is more highly populated than the forest, but it can still be lonely at times.  I like being back.  I like being able to work 8 hour days and then go home and relax.  But I miss the quiet stillness in the air, and the stars at night.  I wish you could see them.  So many, so bright, so unlike anything in the city.  It's like living in two different worlds.

I'm pretty sure this is where I last left off in my field adventure tales.  I had finished up the rowdy party week with the firefighters and then spent the next week camping in a random spot (closer to my mapping area) with my boss. 

Okay, this might have not actually happened during this particular week, but I remember it happened on a Monday, and I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned it yet.  I saw a strange animal in the woods.  It sort of looked like a badger, or maybe a wolverine.  It had light brown fur with a narrow dark stripe on its forehead.  Four short-ish legs and a kind of round body.  I tried to take a picture of it but I was afraid it would attack me with its ferocious sharp teeth (which it may or may not have had) and didn't get too close.  This is all I could get.

There it is, right there, inside of the red circle

The more I think about this, the more I'm pretty sure this didn't happen during that week, but whatever.  On Tuesday, I worked by myself.  My boss decided we would get stuff done faster if we split up and worked in separate areas.  Ok, sure, that's fine.  So I went off to my little area for the day. 

On my drive over to where I wanted to work, I had to go up and down three hills that I called the "evil, hell hills."  The worst part about them was the way that they were positioned made it hard to tell where the road went after the hill.  On one of them, I had to turn around a sharp corner, go down into a ditch and then back up a steep slope.  This particular day, I happened to arrive at just the right time for the sun to be positioned right above the hill in such a way that I could not see a darn thing.  I had no idea where the road went, and if I went too far off the path, I would either end up in a  deep rut or off the side on a steep, tree filled slope.  I ended up having to stop and get out twice just to see where I was going.  It was super stressful.  I spent the rest of the drive shaking because I was so upset about it.

I had to stop about 1.5 km away from where I wanted to go, and walk in the rest of the way.  I have a hard time navigating.  Have I mentioned that before?  Probably.  So, most of the time, I use the GPS to help me.  But the GPS was being bad that day.  It led me all over the place and I never seemed to get closer.  I was getting so angry that I started yelling at everything.  I yelled at my backpack for not zipping when I put my sweater in.  I might have yelled the f-word into the sky when I found out I forgot to take a waypoint for the truck, even though J reminded me I should always take a truck waypoint.  "Always, always, always, " he said.  Nevertheless, I was very grumpy.  Arrrrrggghh.

I finally found two spots I wanted to dig holes, and then called it a day.  I figured out my way back by following a drainage to the road and then walking up the road back to the truck.  It wasn't really that hard but I like knowing where I'm going a little bit more than I did that day.  Perhaps I need to improve my navigational skills. 

The next day, my boss and I worked together.  I was still grumpy plus I had cramps so I was definitely not in a mood for a lot of hiking and digging, but what can you do?  I had to dig with the heavy Montana sharpshooter instead of my wimpy girly wooden sharpshooter that was shortened specifically for me (or so I heard).  It was no fun. 

The camp site itself was pretty decent, as campsites go.  It was really cold that week, so nighttime was not super awesome, but it could have been worse, I suppose.  That was the week my tent zipper started ripping open and my headlamp started not working.  But it was the week before my sleeping bag zipper started being a jerkface.  So, not everything was bad.  Yay! 

After the truck was fixed (I use the term "fixed" here loosely, but we will get to that later) I returned to Negrito for another two weeks of working by myself.  Fortunately, this time, I didn't have to camp by myself.  Quite the contrary.  In the past, there were either a handful of Negrito firefighters or a group of traveling firefighters from another place.  This time, since it was the final week of the fire season, the entire Gila Hotshot crew was there for their last days before they went home.  So they spent their nights that week partying it up.  And I joined in on the festivities.

On Wednesday night, their last night, they had a huge barbecue grill set up to cook burgers.  I had brought my own food, but they let me cook it on their grill, which was cool.  They also had a ton of other food to go along with it, which they said I could have as well.  It was sort of a weird combo of stuff.  Like they had mashed potatoes and pinto beans, along with the burgers.  But it was pretty good.  They also had two kegs full of Blue Moon.

A little while later, the ranger from Reserve (and my previous disaster story, along with the guy whose house we camped at) showed up.  He asked where my boss was and seemed surprised that I was there by myself.  I've gotten that reaction several times since I started working alone.

After everyone got their food, they all went inside to watch a slide show that one of the firefighters made.  Their crew leader told them that it was going to be at least 25 minutes, so they'd each better get two beers to get them through it.  I thought that was funny.

This is where all the drunks, I mean, firefighters, watched their crazy video

I wasn't going to watch the video because I'm not a firefighter, but I think they felt bad for me, being out there all by myself, so they invited me to come in and watch it with them.  It was actually a pretty good video.  Mostly a picture slide show showing all the different fires that went on this year.  And there were a lot.  It was interesting seeing pictures of all the fires that I'd been hearing about all summer.  There was also some video of the airplanes dropping water and the pink flame retardant stuff, which was cool.

After the movie, I went to take a shower and when I came back everyone was completely trashed.  They were all extra friendly and called me the "soil girl."  Most of the firefighters were guys, but there were still two girls left on base (there had been a couple more before that) so I talked to each of them for a little while.  One of them lives in Reserve and had been working at The Rode Inn Motel when it burned down.  I had already met the other girl a while back when I was still working with J.  She admitted to me that she had been hitting on him and she felt embarrassed about it the next day.  I told her not to worry; he was probably flattered.

As the night progressed, many games of beer pong were played, people got rowdy, and one guy set his pants on fire.  As for me, one of the older guys kept trying to get me to take him back to my tent.  He asked me questions about what it looked like and said that he hadn't seen one like that before and he'd better go see it.  So eventually I just had to sneak away into the darkness and hope that he wouldn't notice where I went.

That's all I really have to say about that week's events.  Tonight I'm feeling sad because I found out a friend of mine from grad school died in a car accident last week.  I knew his girlfriend too, briefly, when she lived here in Albuquerque.  I can only imagine how she is feeling right now.

It was late when I got back on Friday and no one was in the office.  I wrote an email to my boss updating him about the week and told him about the truck.  Then I went home.  On Monday, I talked to him about it some more and he told me to take it to the shop.  One of my favorite jobs at work is taking the vehicles to the repair shop.  For one thing, it gets me out of the office for a while, and I also really like chatting with the owner/manager, who is a friendly old Czechoslovakian man.  Sometimes I'm not sure what he's saying because of the accent but I enjoy talking to him nonetheless.  Anyway, he told me that the fuel injector was leaking (For about 2 weeks, I thought he had said ejector until I told J about it, and he was like, no... you're wrong).  Sooo...  the truck was broken and I wouldn't be able to go to the field.  Well, not alone anyway.

It was decided that my boss and I would go to the field together and work on his mapping.  The campsite he chose was in my old quad from last year, so it felt a little like deja vu.  I'd been back on those trails with my old nemesis... ahem, I mean, co-worker, many times. 

And I could see the hill where my boss and I dug out my field review site that we never went back to.  I wonder if it's still there.  I hope no little woodland animals fell in it and died.  That would be sad.

It also has cool looking fog

It ended up being rainy and really muddy that week, so the first day my boss spent a really long time walking down the road to see if it was drivable while I stood around and enjoyed the sunshine.  Nice.  When he came back, he told me it was too muddy and that we would be going to my quad instead.  Also very nice.

The drive was a lot longer than if we'd been staying at Negrito (which we could have because the firefighters were back) but whatever.  We listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh.  Yeah....

My boss spent a bunch of time looking around for a "perfect" spot to dig a site.  I still don't like doing site descriptions because they take forever and there's a bunch of stupid crap to do with them, like counting sticks.  Yes, we count every single frickin stick.  I like coring trees, though.  It's sort of relaxing.  Unless the corer gets stuck in the tree, then it's a pain.

We ended up spending the next two days digging and describing two sites and then went home a day early because of the rain and mud.  It was late when we got home on that Wednesday night, but I couldn't really complain.  I was a home a whole day early! 

Matt was over at a friend's house so I went over to meet him, hung out for a while, went home, and slept in my own bed.  Lovely!

As of today, I have spent a total of three weeks working alone in the field.  The first week... well, it sucked.  I hated working alone with a vengeance after that.  Since then, I still don't love it, but it did get a little better.  And I'll tell you why.  But let's start from the beginning, shall we?

Here is a picture I took of a fuzzy caterpillar that week.  It doesn't have much to do with anything but I will keep it here for symbolic purposes.

My first week by myself started on a Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.  First of all, I hate starting field weeks on Tuesday because that means I have to stay until Friday, which is a huge bummer.  My boss decided to take leave and stay in the office that week (lazy!) so he wouldn't be even close to where I was, which he normally would be if he were working on his own mapping.  Therefore, I would be alone, and naturally, thought I would probably get attacked by a bear and die.

When I got to Negrito, the gate was locked and no one was there.  I had been warned this might happen, and remembered to bring my forest key with me to unlock the gate.  However, my forest key was not actually my forest key, as I would later find out.  But I didn't know that at the time, so I was like, WTF?  And ended up having to camp on some stupid hill outside of the base.  I put my tent up in the trees so it would be harder for random hunters to see me from the road but I had to park far away, where it was flat and not rocky so every time I was in my tent and needed something from the truck (or vice-versa) it was a trek to get there.  That was annoying thing number 1.

I couldn't drive into Negrito but I could walk into it, so the first thing I tried was getting into the kitchen/mess hall.  But it was locked and my "forest key" didn't work on that either.  Sadly.  But no matter, I had my camp stove and could cook dinner on that.  Wellll....no.  For some reason, I could not get that thing to work.  I filled it up with gas and pumped it a bunch of times but it was no use.  The pump handle thing kept locking and therefore gas was not releasing from the container into the stove and it would not light.  I had chips and salsa for dinner that night.  That was annoying thing number 2.

Later that evening, while I was in my tent, I came up with a brilliant idea.  Tomorrow, I would build a fire using the Negrito fire pit and cook my dinner on there.  Yes!  I was a genius!  The next night, after work, I gathered all my cooking materials and hiked up to the base to begin making my fire.  At this point, it was still raining pretty regularly during the day so all my potential fuel was wet.  It took a while, but I was persistent, and eventually burned enough pine needles to get the firewood dried out enough to create fire.

Ta-da!  Small, but fire nonetheless

The second dilemma was finding a method with which to cook my dinner over the fire.  Lucky for me, the Hotshots left a grill sitting outside on the ground.  I propped it up with two rocks on either side of the fire and was able to cook my sausages.  Hooray!


The nights were strange that week.  It was weird being alone and I had lots of odd dreams.  One night I dreamed that there was a coyote outside my tent and I was trying to get up and move so I could defend myself, but I couldn't.  Then I dreamed that a snake was crawling underneath my tent, and I could feel it moving.  Another night I dreamed about contra dancing.

Since I'm done with Pitchfork Canyon, I'm now working on the quad next door, and it's a farther drive.  It takes about an hour just to get from one end to the other.  By Wednesday or Thursday, I realized that the gas in the truck was getting really low and I started to get nervous.  I really really did not want to run out of gas out there.  I'd already had enough vehicle issues this summer and didn't want to have to call for help again.  That was annoying thing number 3.

Finally, Friday came and I could go home.  I was sooo happy.  Usually, we're supposed to do a little work on our last morning and then go home.  So I was a good little employee and dug one hole in a drainage full of Apache Plumes.  Then I began the drive back to Albuquerque.  I knew it would be a while before I made it to a town and a gas station so I didn't turn on the air conditioning, didn't listen to the radio and prayed that my gas wouldn't run out before I got there.  It got really low, the truck dinged at me, but I made it.  I was relieved.  But as soon as I got on the paved road, the truck started making a weird noise.  It sounded like creaking plastic coming from somewhere underneath the gas and brake pedals.  Weird, right?  I had no idea what it was and couldn't really do much about it at the time except keep going and hope nothing bad happened.  Lucky for me, the noise seemed to stop for a while until I was almost back to the office and then I knew I would be okay.  For that day, anyway.

But I didn't care.  I would figure it out later.  I was home.

I am happy to say I am finished mapping Pitchfork Canyon!  After working with J, I spent two weeks working with Egghead and one working with my boss to finally finish it up and I am done done done done DONE!  So... now I get to start on a new quad.  Woo-hoo.  Hopefully it won't take me another nine weeks to finish.

Time is starting to run together so I'll try to recount what happened the best that I can, but it will most likely end up being just some random stories and pictures.  The two weeks I worked with Egghead went okay.  The first day of the first week he was getting on my nerves like none other.  I woke up in a horrible mood and then he took forever to get ready and was burping and farting super loud all morning.  I could hear it all the way across the camp site.  Gross.  Oh, and one day he didn't shut the bathroom door all the way and I accidentally walked in on him with his shirt off.  I'm just glad he didn't have anything else off, or I may have been traumatized for life.

But I got some good pictures of Elk Mountain.  Better than the ones from from before, because I had a better view.  I honestly can't remember if these were from the first week or the second, but no matter.  It's all the same.

I also took some pictures from the top.  I have no idea what the mountain in the distance is, though.  Something in Collins Park quad, maybe.


And there were some sweet cliffs up there as well.


After that we got hailed on for about an hour and it was a huge bummer.  My butt was cold and our soil pit filled up with water, so I decided to be done for the day.


Since it had rained, the roads were all suuuper muddy, and sometimes trucks do not like muddy roads.  So I learned how to use the winch that day.  I will never call it a stupid winch again.  It's saved me two times already this field season.  Yay winch!

I also got to see Egghead's new apartment, because he doesn't have a car and he can't take all his gear on his bike, so on the way back to the office, we would take a little detour to his place.  The first week, there were about 8 cop cars at a house across the street, and a whole bunch of police all around.  All the neighbors were outside watching so I did too.  Five officers then went into the house with their guns pointed.  The one in the front had a really big gun, that Egghead told me the name of, but I forget now.  And the other ones just had small handgun type things.  I couldn't really see what was going on after that, but I heard someone say that one person was arrested and one ran away.  Then all the cops left and we did, too.

The next week, there was no more police activity, thankfully.  I decided to be nosy and look inside Egghead's apartment.  The whole place is linoleum tile.  Like a classroom or a hospital.  Earlier, he had asked me if I had lain my own carpet in my apartment.  I said no, that I had never heard of an apartment where you had to put in your own carpet.  He called me a spoiled bitch, and I told him he lived in the ghetto.  Because... ummm.... he does.

This past week with my boss was ok, but honestly, I think I'd rather work by myself.  Working with him makes me nervous because I'm constantly thinking I'm going to say or do the wrong thing.  He kept disagreeing with every call that I made, and double checking all my work.  It was annoying, because I don't think he does that with the other employees.   I don't know, though.  I haven't seen any of them in forever.

So, remember a couple posts back when I said I took a trip to this mountain?

No?  That's okay.  I've been somewhat absent from blogland lately.  Not so much by choice as it was being forced to work by my most lovely and wonderful job that helps pay my rent and such.  But I have a long weekend now (yay!) and Matt's off at his friend's house or something so I may blog to my heart's content.

Anyway, if you haven't guessed by now, I went camping on Mount Taylor for the second time.  It's been over a year since we've been there, so we figured it was time (even though I go camping pretty much every week, but fun camping is generally better than work camping).  It's been a while so I don't remember all the details, except that we got there at night and it was really dark and cold so I was grumpy.  But the next morning (or maybe afternoon?) we took a walk to the edge of the mountain and saw this.


Pretty spiffariffic, yes?  I thought so.  At this point, I was busy drinking some beer.  I got this new ginger grapefruit kind and it is amaaaaazing.  We like to say that whenever beer spills, it's Jim Morrison coming to take a sip.  Well, Jimmy (as Egghead would call him), must have been thirsty that day.  He spilled my beer and then he threw my toilet paper roll over a cliff.  It was definitely not me being clumsy.  I am never clumsy.


It was actually a good thing that the T.P. fell down there, because otherwise we would not have found a really cool lava bomb rock.  It was all round and smooth and lava bomb-ish.  I didn't take a picture of it because I have the real thing.... somewhere.

Then I took a bunch of really bad pictures.  I couldn't tell that they were bad at the time because the sun was being weird in my camera and I couldn't see what they looked like.  But now, looking at them, they're bad.  I'll try to find a couple decent ones for you.




There ya go.  Those aren't so bad.  After the view, we went back to camp and made a fire.  Okay, I didn't make the fire, but I took a video of it, because ... why not?

And that is how I will end this post.

I can't believe it's already been three weeks since this happened.  Maybe time is going by faster than I thought it would.  Honestly, I thought that after I stopped working with my most awesome field buddy, that the rest of the season would drag and drag.  It seems like a long time, though, since last November, when I ended the 2010 season and couldn't even stand the thought of going back out again.  I thought it was going to be terrible.  And well, the first week was pretty darn crappy, but then J started coming out with me and I thought, "Wow, this totally doesn't suck."  But alas, he has to go back to school and get married and all that crap, so no more good field season for me, I guess.  But it was good while it lasted.  The past two weeks I worked with Egghead, and it was not so bad.  I had someone to dig holes for me and someone to talk incessantly to when I was feeling bored.  Next week, I'll be working alone.  But camping with my boss.  So we'll see how that goes...

But anyway, catching up, here's what went on in the field those few weeks ago.

Like I said before, we didn't camp at Negrito.  Instead, we went off on a random road somewhere and found a spot to set up camp.  J put up the tarp and set up our little area underneath, with the table and stove and everything.  It was a pretty nice setup. 


One reason we got this spot was because of this cool flat(ish) rock, which J liked to sit on until he said it hurt his back.  Should've gotten the camp chair.  Anyway, it was still cool looking.  And we were finally allowed to have fire, so we did.

The mountain in the background is Elk Mountain and we spent a fair amount of time traversing around on there throughout the week.


Here's a view from up there, kinda sorta near the top.


And since we were up there trundling, I got a picture of another different view the next day.


That was our last full day in the field and we got 5 holes described that day.  One of them, I even dug myself.  I don't really expect to get that many next week.  I made a goal of six for the whole week, since I'll have to do everything myself, and things will go a lot slower.  But if I can get those done, that will be the end of that quad, and I'll only have one more to go before I'm done with field work!  Hooray!

As usual, I'm way behind on my posting.  So we're going to go back in time, to two weekends ago, when Matt and I went to the Sandia Crest.  I had never been there before, can you believe it?  I've been up on the tram twice but I never took the Crest trail.  So that is what we did.  This time, we drove up.  This involves going around through Tijeras (which means scissors, if you're curious : )  and up the East side of the mountain.  It's a really pretty drive going up, and when you get to the top, the view is incredible.

Later, we went to the East side of the mountain and took in the forest views, including one of my favorite trees, corkbark fir, which actually does have squishy corky bark.




We spent the evening looking at the sunset, and getting a preview of where we would be spending the next weekend.






Can you guess where we went?  I'll give you a hint.  It's that mountain waaay off in the distance.  I'll tell you more about that later.