It has been a quiet couple of weeks on Lake Odessa. The days have been filled with trail maintenance and invasive species removal with a smidge of environmental education. We have all become incredibly proficient with bow saws and loppers. We’ve even been able to handle the chainsaws a little bit. I found out on Monday that I am no chainsaw expert. I was attempting to cut a couple of trees that had fallen across a trail and I never could seem to line up my back cut with my top cut, which resulted in the saw almost getting pinched.

The environmental education has been the highlight of the time since we stopped burning. Last week Jordan and I lead our soils program for the last time. The kids had a lot of fun, as usual, and there was some time left over at the end so we played a game of tag where the tagger was a bird and he/she was trying to catch the worms before they made it back underground, one of two trees that served as bases. Everyone had a blast! This week Jordan and I lead two new activities on field trips on Tuesday and Wednesday. The field trip site was a cave outside of nearby Burlington called Star’s Cave. Although the cave is closed to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome, there were still plenty of activities in which the kids participated. Jordan and I traded off leading the “wear me down” and “water we doing?” activities. Wear me down was an erosion activity in which the kids learned about weathering and erosion through a short talk and a couple of demonstrations then applied that knowledge on a short hike by pointing out and describing the different types of weathering they observed. The second activity was a lot more fun for both the kids and me. Although she doesn’t know it, Theresa Thome-Schneider, I think that’s your last name now, helped me out a lot with this activity. It was an activity designed to test the quality of the stream that ran through the nature center so at the beginning a gave a brief talk about pollution and what kind of indicators tell you a streams pollution level then handed the kids nets and let them play look for insects. This is where all the time spent water quality monitoring with Theresa was put to use. I found that I actually remembered quite a bit about nymphs and how to find them. Thanks Theresa! Of course the whole thing was just a pretext to allow the kids to stomp around in the water, however they found some really cool stuff and learned a lot. As an added bonus we found a may fly nymph, an indicator that the stream is pretty clean!

I have been filling the hours when I am not working by reading and watching the wire, one of my team members bought the complete series and we are all hooked. We did have a lovely Easter Weekend, however. In the morning a few of my teammates and I helped out with and Easter egg hunt which was pretty fun. Then we all headed out to Langwood for the rest of the day. Langwood is one of the conservation board’s facilities they use for holding events, hosting field trips, and for private rental. There is a large pond and quite a few hiking trails; it is a pretty place to spend an afternoon. I paddled a canoe around the pond for a couple of hours then headed, with Jordan, back up to the main building. On the way we decided to take a look down an intriguing trail that followed a stream. The trail was pretty nice, even though we actually didn’t spend much time on it, but rather jogged along the creek bank, crossing anywhere there was a downed tree and generally behaving like 10-year old boys. After crossing back to the trail side of the stream I hiked up the steep bank and began to head back toward the pond on the trail. Alas, an impediment! A log at least three feet in diameter was growing out of the hillside directly across the trail just below chest height. There was only one thing to do. I backed up a few feet to get a running start, took two steps up the hillside, and vaulted over the log. I was safely on the other side and began to make my way back when I glanced behind me and there it was, the log, taunting me. Naturally I couldn’t let the log win so I took off, this time only putting one foot on the hill and springing over my defeated enemy. Jordan and I then spent the next hour and a half inventing new ways to hurdle the log. I even managed a 180-degree spin over the log in mid air. After we were thoroughly exhausted we walked away from our conquered nemesis. I finished the day by climbing a tree to complete my rediscovery of my childhood. Later that night we sat around a campfire and made smores.

There is no way to gracefully transition to the next paragraph but I just found out that we are no longer going to Michigan for our next project. We will instead leave this project early, Saturday, and go to Okalona, Mississippi for disaster relief. I don’t know any other details yet but I will post again as soon as I find out.

It has been a while since my last post, sorry mom and dad, and I skipped a week so I have a lot of catching up to do. Last time I left off after the trip to Chicago so I’ll pick up from there.

The week following the Chicago trip was sandwiched between two tumultuous events. That Sunday, April 3, I witnessed one of the most incredible displays of nature I have ever seen. A tornado warning was issued for our area and the storm that caused it created an impressive lightning display. Some of my teammates and I lay on the ground outside for several hours until the rain came, staring awestruck at the sky. It looked as though strobe lights had been placed every few inches and were going off at random. There was not a single second in which multiple flashes did not emanate from different parts of the sky. This being Iowa we could see tremendous bolts of lightning touching the ground from miles and miles away.

Aside from the storm, it was a pretty routine week. We burned a couple of times and did some invasive species removal. I felt very conflicted while cutting the invasives. We were cutting cedar trees out of a prairie that we would burn later that week. While I know cedars don’t belong in a prairie, I am very fond of them, having been born in what is essentially a cedar glade. They were always my favorite tree growing up and I may have shed a tear or two while removing them.

The week was capped off by a storm of a different sort. As you probably remember the budget was set to expire that Friday. While ordinarily I would have had some interest in this since mom is a fed, considering my current situation it was all any of my teammates or I could think about. That afternoon we were briefed on what our procedure would be in case of a government shutdown. We would have gone back to Vinton and waited for two months or until the budget situation had been resolved. If it had not been resolved at the end of the two months we would then be sent home, needless to say none of us wanted that. I sat at the dining room table four several hours talking with my teammates about what we would do if the government did shut down. I was too restless to read or watch a movie and there is very little to do on Friday night, or any night, in Wapello, IA to take your mind off of something of this gravity. Eventually I decided to go for a run. I made a playlist of the most relaxing bluegrass songs on my ipod and ventured forth. I ran down the road in front of the conservation board offices until I got to the T where I took a left. After a few hundred feet I turned right onto the gravel road that would take me down the bluff to Port Louisa National Wildlife Refuge, a place we had burned a few days earlier. I ran until the dirt road ended, admiring our handiwork and enjoying the scenic view (Port Louisa is a great place for bird watching). I stopped only when I came to the end of the gravel road, it turns into a boat ramp that ends in Lake Louisa, and took a few deep breaths before heading back. By the time I finished I had run over six and a half miles, farther than I have ever run before. My mind finally settled, I was able to enjoy a relaxing Friday evening.

The next week, the government not having been shutdown, my team and I went eagerly back to work. This was going to be a fun week; it was our final week of burning and we saved the best units for last. Our penultimate burn was on a large are of land virtually surrounded by water. No control lines, no water packs, caution be damned! We all walked in with torches and lit the whole way back out. When the flames reached one area of tall grasses in particular, we were rewarded with huge flame heights. I was able to see them over thirty foot trees so they must have been at least forty feet high! It was an awesome experience. Our final burn was at a prairie created and maintained by the Monsanto Corporation to help improve their image. Although this did little to improve their image outside of Southeastern Iowa but I won’t get into all that now. The prairie was divided into four sections by rows of shrubs, whose idea it was to plant shrubs in the middle of a prairie I’m not sure but needless to say they won’t be receiving a genius grant anytime soon. It was difficult to keep the flames off of the shrubs, especially since the fire was burning high and hot, but with more than a little effort we managed it pretty well. The reason I had so much fun on this burn was that I was able to do a lot of interior lighting in the last of the four plots. This meant bounding through brush and briars along hip high walls of flame, fire trailing behind me the whole time. As it maybe stated in the colloquialism of the locality of my genesis: it was a hoot’n a half!

Both of these burns were early in the week and the mid-week rains closed our burn window. It also gave us an opportunity to experience some different aspects of our project. Since we could no longer burn we drove to one of the nearby parks to perform trail maintenance. We split up into pairs and were each given a pair of loppers and a section of trail to work on and sent out into the Iowa wilderness. I sincerely enjoyed this assignment since, although the work was tedious and a bit hard on the lower back, the scenery was striking and it gave me a chance to become better acquainted with my partner, the younger of the two Jordans on the team. Our conversations ranged from family (don’t worry I spoke glowingly of you), to music, to politics, and touched on everything in between. Those two days of trail maintenance were the perfect prelude to a fantastic weekend.

I don’t even remember what I did on Saturday, that’s how good Sunday was. I know we did some grocery shopping and dropped by a Salvation Army where I picked up a sweet new hat and a book of tales from Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor, but that’s all I can recall. Sunday was a day many of us had been waiting for with great anticipation for some time.

A gentleman from our fire training classes wanted to do something nice for us to welcome us to the community, and something nice he did! Sunday morning we loaded up in the van and drove about forty-five minutes to a stable on the Cedar River. Here we were assigned horses and mounted up. My horse was a good-natured equine named Misconcluder, Cluder for short, a name that is impossible to say without a southern accent especially if you already have a hint of one. The horses were so well trained they didn’t need much direction, which was good since none of us were in much position to give any direction. We, and by we I of course mean our horses, traversed steep slopes, as steep as can be found in Iowa anyway, meadows, forests, and the river bank in a picturesque journey that lasted a fleeting hour and a half. All I could think of during the trip was the theme song from The Lives of the Cowboys and how the only other person on the team who knew about A Prairie Home Companion, the elder Jordan, was five horses away and out of shouting distance. It was a magical ride filled with beautiful panoramas and frequent horse bathroom breaks and upon our return to the stable, our friend from fire training had lunch waiting for us. He grilled bratwurst, hamburgers, hotdogs, and veggie burgers with a smorgasbord of pasta salads and delicious homemade brownies for dessert. My tummy is rumbling just thinking about it, which means that it is time for dinner, until next time!

Well I just finished dinner, sloppy joes with a meat option and a vegetarian option made from black beans, and it was delicious. It revitalized me enough to write up through today (Tuesday). Yesterday some of us worked on an observation deck at Port Louisa for the Fish and Wildlife Service. It was a lot of fun. We were pretty much allowed to figure things out on our own, of course there was a supervisor and other staff on site who would answer any questions we had, but we were pretty independent and figured out some tricky angles and other such problems that I’m sure dad wouldn’t have had to think twice about (we had to think four or five times but we eventually got it). The coolest part was how much the water had risen. This was the same area I ran to and the water from the Mississippi River had completely covered the road from the deck all the way to the boat ramp, almost half a mile! When we arrived in the morning the water was lapping at the road a few feet in front of the entrance to the observation deck parking lot. When we left it had stretched fifty feet farther, enveloping the road all the way past the lot! I mentioned earlier that Port Louisa is a great place for bird watching. While working we observed a plethora of different water foul including geese, ducks and coots and the most majestic bird of all, the bald eagle. We saw it twice, once winging around a cluster of trees and again carrying a stick to add to its nest, if only it were an olive branch.

Today was a cold, miserable, and rainy day so I and three others went to the shop to build wood duck boxes. It was a nice change of pace and the boxes, we made five of them, came out looking pretty sharp. But the big news from today is that we found out our next project. It doesn’t start until May 18 but we will be going to a city of about thirteen thousand, the name of which has slipped my mind, in Michigan’s upper peninsula doing a wide variety of activities too numerous to mention at this juncture. At first I was disappointed. I, along with most of my teammates, was hoping to be placed in a big city after being in a county where there is not a single stop-light and the population (of the whole county mind you) doesn’t reach twenty-five hundred, and thirteen thousand is hardly a big city. I have been slowly coming around, however. I am not all the way on board yet but I’m getting there. There are a lot of cool things about the location. The town is right on Lake Michigan for one, it is also quite close to a large state park, another bonus. Furthermore, it is really close to Canada, which I suppose is a bonus (burn on you Canada), but maybe we will be able to take a trip across the boarder so I can say I have been. All in all it can’t be too bad since my team is so great and I’m sure that once I get over the initial disappointment I will start to get excited.

It hardly seems worth mentioning the other two fires after the excitement of the first one. However, it is my duty as a blogger to detail every aspect of my life regardless how mundane so here goes.

The second burn I worked was with the Louisa County Conservation board. It too was a great deal of fun, however, we were not given the free reign that we were with Fish and Wildlife. We did not do nearly as much lighting and the lighting we did was mostly on the perimeter of the unit, whereas on the first fire we did virtually all of the lighting. It was still exciting, though, and I got experience using a wider variety of tools than on the first burn.

My next fire was with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. It was a cold day with high humidity, this is of course relative since high humidity here is around 60% while in the South it rarely gets any lower than 60%. For this reason, no other agency was burning that day, as one DNR employee remarked “either we are smarter than them or they know something we don’t,” it turned out to be the latter. The unit burned poorly due to the moisture in the air and on the ground. People with drip torches were forced to walk virtually the entire unit (over 200 acres) lighting the spots that were missed the first time, and there were a lot of them. This, however, was not the worst part for my teammate and me (only two of us were on the burn). The worst part was that we were not allowed to participate in the burn at all. We were given traffic detail. This exciting job entailed standing on or near the road and asking any vehicle whose intent was to travel that road to go around because the smoke made it too dangerous to traverse. We were given the option of standing, standing with our hands in our pockets, standing with our hands outside our pockets, sitting, pacing (which I did vigorously until I had created an avenue wide enough to drive a semi truck through in the gravel), or laying down, the choices were limitless! I even threw rocks at a sign for fifteen minutes or so! The best part was that I did not see a single car, aside from a man in a truck who merely wanted to know if we had filed the proper paperwork to burn that day. I didn’t know the answer to that question but I directed him to the nearest DNR employee, about ten feet away, who I was sure could provide a satisfactory explanation. Needless to say, that was not the best day I have had here in Wapello.

My disquietude over the situation was completely assuaged the following weekend. Two of my teammates and I took a trip we had been planning for just about a month and it surpassed all of my expectations. It was a logistical nightmare to arrange transportation and housing for the night. At first we were determined to take the train, there was one problem. The nearest train station was about thirty miles away, five miles outside of the range we are allowed to travel without filling out paperwork. Then we looked at taking the bus but the nearest bus station was in the same city as the train station, go figure. So with the help of our team leader we begrudgingly, and with little hope, filled out an MWR form (another one of our wonderful TLAs, three letter acronyms, the meaning of which no one actually knows) about a week in advance. Finally the news came back from headquarters. Sheryl to the rescue! Our unit leader had approved the trip! We bought our bus tickets, booked a hostel, and bright and early Saturday morning we were at the bus station in Burlington, Iowa waiting for our bus to Chicago. The trip was a little over four hours and I spent the majority of reading and mentally preparing myself for the night to come.

The first thing my friends and I did upon arrival at the bus station in downtown Chicago was to promptly get lost. We walked about a quarter mile or more in the wrong direction before a very nice man passing by us overheard us talking about the street we were looking for and pointed us in the opposite direction, close call! We were under strict time constraints and could not afford to get lost again. Our plan was to take the city bus to the hostel where we were staying, meet some of our friends from another team from our unit for dinner, then go to a concert at 7:30. It was already five when we finally boarded the correct bus and the first thing we did when we got off was to immediately get lost. Again.

While I have no problem shouldering the blame for the first time, google maps deserves at least partial credit for this one. It directed us to a series of streets that apparently don’t exist. Fortuitously, we stumbled upon the street the restaurant and theater were on and since it was almost six, I made the executive decision that we would go ahead and go to dinner. We had a lovely meal with some folks from Oak 7 who we had not seen in about a month. We chatted, catching up on how their project was going, while putting away copious amounts of deep-dish pizza. By the time we were done, it was 7:00 and the three of us rushed the half block to the theater, anxious that we wouldn’t find a spot close to the stage.

As luck would have it, most of the crowd was still mingling and milling about so we were able to find a spot about ten feet away. The opening band, a group called Golden Dogs, was excellent. It is always a treat when the opener is good, however, I find that no matter how good they are, if they are not the band you came to see, you tire of them after three or four songs. The Golden Dogs played the compulsory thirty-minute set then I settled in for the customary period of suspense while their instruments were cleared away and the sound check for the headlining band was conducted. Finally, after all of that planning and all of that waiting, State Radio took the stage!

For those of you who are unaware, State Radio is my favorite band. I have seen them five times in concert and once drove five hours by myself on my 21^st birthday to see them in Cincinnati, then drove back, stopping to rest for only a couple hours (at Dave and Theresa’s in Berea) before heading on to Knoxville and taking a midterm on Monday morning. Don’t worry mom, I still got a B, well worth it! This show outstripped all the others! The audience was energetic and sung all the words to all their songs, the band fed off the crowd’s energy and delivered an incredible performance! During the encore, both bands got on stage and sang “This Land is Our Land” and “Twist and Shout!”

During the walk from the theater to the hostel the three of us were in a state of euphoria. It was a cool evening and the city was brightly lit. People were out everywhere, and it was great to be in a place with nightlife, where things are open past eight. All we could talk about was how unbelievable the show was. When we arrived at the hostel we were pleasantly surprised. It was stylishly decorated, modern, and clean, it was obviously designed to appeal to young people. The desk clerks were very friendly and helpful. They gave us a few maps that made us wish we had a whole week to spend in Chicago. At the desk we overheard a young man with a strong French accent asking about the club scene. “What are you looking for?” asked one of the clerks. “Pretty girls,’ the man replied. This sent all of us at the desk into fits of laughter. “I’m just being honest,” he said.

Before leaving Chicago we had one last adventure. Our bus was leaving at seven am so we were up at 5:30 to catch the city bus, since it was about twelve miles to the station. We made it, without getting lost, to the bus stop and began waiting. A few cab drivers tried to bully us into their taxis but we remained determined. After ten minutes and still no bus the passing taxis seemed more enticing. But NO, we were taking the bus dammit! By 6:30 we were frantically searching for our bus and finally I decided to flag down a taxi. We piled in and tore through the streets of Chicago, holding on for dear life while the driver sat calmly, speaking in Hindi to someone on his cell phone. When we arrived at the station it was 7:55 and our bus was on its second boarding call! We slipped on the bus just in the nick of time and settled in for the trip back to Wapello.

Wow, what a week! Sorry it has been so long since my last post but the previous seven days or so have been jam-packed with excitement! So much so, in fact that I am considering splitting this week into separate posts. I guess you will find out in a minute or two.

As the title of this entry suggests, we started burning this week….and it was incredible! My team burns with three different agencies; the Louisa County Conservation Board, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The reason all of these agencies burn is to restore and maintain Iowa’s native prairie ecosystems, of which only about one tenth of one percent remains (sad I know). Last week I burned once with all three agencies, some were more fun to work with than others but either way we were burning right?

My first fire was with Fish and Wildlife. I was mesmerized by their fancy equipment, two Polaris Rangers with water tanks and multiple hose attachments mounted on the back, top of the line walk-e-talk-es with special harnesses that allowed you to avoid the tiresome task of reaching into your pocket, shiny new engines with unfathomable water pumping capabilities, and the coup de gras: an atv mounted with what was essentially a flamethrower that allowed the driver to light an enormous area in mere seconds! After a quick briefing of the plan and safety procedures, we dove right in. My teammates and I were involved in every aspect of the process. We were able to man (or woman) the hose on the back of the Rangers, we dug a little bit of control line (a line in which grass is removed form the soil using various tools), and by far the best part of the day, using a drip torch to light grasses and other vegetation (aka fuel). We were basically given free reign with in the parameters of the plan outlined at the beginning of the day. It was great! All of the Fish and Wildlife employees were extremely friendly and helpful. These were the people who ran our fire training and you could tell they were much more comfortable teaching in the field than in the classroom, they did an excellent job, and perhaps most importantly, they were very patient. And now for the drama, I know you have been waiting for it.

There I was surrounded by ten foot walls of flame on all sides, all I could think was: “these nomex pants might be flame resistant but they sure aren’t chafe resistant.” Just kidding, here is what really happened: another team member, let’s call her M, and I were lighting in some pretty heavy fuel, thick grasses, following the contours of a large pond at the bottom of a hill. For those who don’t know, fire burns fastest uphill and downwind, this will be important to remember later. M was lighting right along the pond while I was following about twenty feet behind her a little farther up the hill. We were staggered because the hill was not steep enough for the fire to run up it and wind was blowing downhill toward the pond, therefore, I was behind her so my fire wouldn’t cross her path and trap her. Anyway, a few minutes into lighting M came across a brush pile in her path. Many such piles were scattered sporadically throughout the burn unit and were quite spectacular when they ignited, creating forty to fifty foot flames! When she came upon the pile in her path M asked me if she should go around it, I answered yes and she continued lighting. I expected her to make a brief diversion from her route, then return to it once she cleared the brush, instead she made an almost complete circle around the pile so that once she continued walking in her initial direction she was walking parallel to flames that were now reaching ten feet in height! M continued to mosey along at a comfortable pace while flames built behind her. Her leisurely gait was, fortunately, just fast enough to outpace the fire but then…the wind suddenly shifted and was now blowing directly toward her! M, oblivious to the fire that was climbing higher into the sky with each step and stretching further toward her with each breath, continued her waterside stroll while the burn boss and I frantically tried to get her to “please walk faster, a snail is passing you!” The burn boss radioed her, trying to explain to her the situation and that she needed to accelerate but to no avail, M merely stopped dead and walkied back “I’m not really sure what your telling me to do, can you explain please?” Keep in mind that this is a highly intelligent individual with a degree from the University of Maryland who apparently can’t tell when a fire is racing after her like a cheetah running down a gazelle. I was on the verge of dropping my drip torch and running after her, since at this point even the fire I was lighting was hot on her heels (get it?), when she finally turned and began walking again. After a harrowing twenty more feet M emerged, hair a bit singed, onto green grass, safe at last! It wasn’t until a little later that I found out that when I was yelling for her to speed up, she just thought I was mad that she got to be in front (ridiculous), AND that at one point she had stopped dead to think about helping a family of field mice before realizing that they had feet and legs and were perfectly capable of escaping themselves.

By the time M was done lighting, and I was done trying to make sure she didn’t die in her own fire, it was time to head back. We packed up our tools, torches, Rangers, and other equipment and headed back to our housing, which, I have failed to mention, is attached to a jail.

Pictures coming soon!

Our first full week away from Vinton and here I was thinking it would be a change form all that training. Wrong! This week was fire training for the two fire teams from our campus. It was remarkably similar to the training we experienced over the previous months. It consisted of a lot of sitting in front of power points while the “teacher” read from the slides. It culminated in a test, on which only about 2/3 of the material had been covered. The rest was left up to our best guesses. Being intelligent individuals, we all passed the test but it was still a little frustrating.

Mercifully the training only lasted three days and on Thursday we had a field day and finally got some hands on experience. We learned all about water pumps, hoses, fire fighting tactics, various hand tools, and a variety of other skills. The highlight of the field day was using the drip torches, who knew you could pour fire? As one member of another team aptly pointed out when I described to her what we would be doing that day, I was like a twelve-year old boy: “tools and fire trucks!” The day culminated in a sort of relay race between my team, Oak 6, and the other fire team, Oak 2. My team had a comfortable 30 second lead heading into the final stage of the race but were forced to watch that lead dwindle and disappear while we tried in vain to fill one of the tankers with water (PRIME THE PUMP FIRST!). Needless to say we lost the race, however, the day ended on a high note since the other team still had to cook and do the dishes… suckers.

We were all hoping to participate in our first burn on Friday. We were not too hopeful since the forecast called for precipitation, but we all had to suppress our excitement when we sat down at 8 am for our morning meeting. We waited in anticipation when one of the naturalists who works at the conservation board walked in. “We are just waiting on the weather report” she said with a coy smile as she sank into the chair behind the card table at the front of the room. We began our meeting, hardly able to contain our eagerness, until someone looked outside…. SNOW! The room let out a collective sigh, our hopes dashed. The day was not wasted, however, despite the weather. While Oak 2 made their way back to Vinton, Oak 6 split up into several groups to work on different projects. Several team members and I went back to our field day site to dig hand line, which will be used for an upcoming burn. It was arduous work, especially since I started the day using a Maddox. It was certainly not the best tool, although it was probably the heaviest, for the job. After I switched to a McLeod, half hoe half rake, the work was much easier and the day went much quicker. Needless to say I was in bed pretty early Friday night with a new appreciation for the lower back strength of wild land firefighters.

 Yesterday, most of the team went to Muscatine, IA, the nearest “city,” to explore. We spent the majority of our time downtown, which is right on the Mississippi River. There is a lovely waterfront park and an elegant downtown full of old store fronts and surprising variety of restaurants, including 2 Mexican restaurants, a Thai Bistro, a couple of Italian places, and a coffee shop with excellent gelato! It was an incredibly relaxing day, capped off by a viewing of Total Recall, a Schwarzenegger film (I use the term loosely) that is so bad that it is AWESOME!

I’m really looking forward to Monday, we are scheduled to burn!

Below are some photos of our field day at Chinkapin Bluffs.

Hi all! My team, Oak 6 which I will give you some background on here in a little bit, arrived here in Wapello (that’s pronounced Wop-uh-low), IA on Thursday. We had a tour of the town, its really small but the area is really pretty. Aside from cornfields, of which there are plenty, the dominant ecosystems are prairie and wetlands. We are also right on the Mississippi so there are plenty of places to paddle! Thanks to the Louisa County Conservation Board, which is coordinating our project, we are able to use canoes and campgrounds on our off hours for free!

Now for a bit about my team. We are one of two fire teams based out of the Vinton campus. There are ten of us including our team leader. One interesting thing about the team is that we are from ten different states: Tennessee, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine, Virginia, West Virginia, and Georgia! We all get along really well and we work very well together. We are all hard workers; on our mini project we finished 2/3 of the work during the first day! We suffered through four weeks of training together, which was brutal. Our days started with physical training at 5:30 five days a week, then had eight hours of training, which mostly consisted of sitting in classrooms listening to powerpoint presentations, five to six days a week. So you can imagine that we are all very excited to be here in Wapello doing something for a change!

Our project is about as good as I could have asked for. We will be conducting a lot of prescribed burns! Additionally we will perform trail maintenance and exotic species removal as well as doing some work in environmental education. We will educate kindergarten through sixth graders about various aspects of area ecosystems. We will also be helping out with the conservation board’s newsletter. We have a week of fire training left and then we can get started! I can’t wait!