Claw Hands, Canyons, and Bears...OH MY!

Hello friends,

I’m once again writing to you from my obviously cozy cot in the aquatics center in Casa Grande, Arizona. We’re almost 6 full weeks into our project (that means 2 to go), my claw hands are as vicious as ever, and my blisters now go unnoticed. We’ve built about 1 ½ miles of trail here and we just keep on moving.

Our preferences for our next round projects were due today. It’s what we call shuffle round, meaning that we are all mixed up onto different teams with (probably) a new team leader, to give us a break from our team before we come back together for 10 weeks to finish out the term. Since we can only choose from projects that the team leaders in our unit have, we only had 7 choices. Casa Grande was an option again and, though I really love it here, I don’t think my hands could do another 2 months of trail building. My first choice is a split project, half near Tuscon working on a farm/community resource center, and half up near Flagstaff working on national monuments. My second choice is working with the Grand Canyon Trust, some of which is backpacking around. Then Arizona State Parks (3 state parks in 2 months), a Nature Conservancy in Texas, a local project, Joplin Missouri, and back here. I’m hoping for my first choice of course, but any of my top 3 would be really exciting (and pretty warm, being in Arizona).

In other news, we’ve been working pretty hard off the mountain too, with lots of weeks that seem like 6-day work-weeks. We worked a day-long event alongside the local rotary club at the health center…I colored. We also spent last Saturday cleaning up the mountain parks where we work for our “Day of Service”.

This weekend we’ve got more fun coming up. We’re waking up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to head up to Phoenix for the day. We’re starting with volunteering at a 5K at the zoo (so exciting!) and I’m running the race as well. Then we get some down time (and free entrance to the zoo) before heading to Tempe Town Lake to help set up for their pet walk the next day. We were supposed to be working there until 6, but we’re leaving a bit early because the head of Parks and Rec in Casa Grande got us FREE HOCKEY TICKETS to see the Coyotes from the luxury of the mayor’s box…so sweet. We’re really excited about this, obviously. THEN, a group of us are spending the night in Phoenix, getting a car, and heading up to the Grand Canyon to meet my parents and stay the night, before returning to Casa Grande on Monday (we have the day off...thanks presidents).

Next Thursday, Erick is flying in and we’re spending an extended weekend together (and he’s going to build trails with us at the community build on Saturday). I’m SO excited to see him and to get some time off.

I think that’s all the excitement for now. I’ll post back when I find out what my project is next week (and when we’re SO close to returning to Denver for transition week). I promise to try and get some photos in here soon too, the internet is just too slow at the house to upload them.

-Christine

The Big House

Hello friends,

I’m sorry it’s taken me FOREVER to write this first post from Casa Grande. I won’t get into excuses about not having the internet or my fingers being so sore to type or any number of true things I could use as reason for not updating.

Here I am, 2 ½ weeks into the trail building in Casa Grande. The blisters on my feet have turned to calluses, the strip of skin below my fingers is starting to become rough, my skin is tan and always dirty, all of my clothing smells like dust. But, I no longer wake up with sore fingers (for the most part), and eating fairly well, writing lots of letters (hurray for successful resolutions!), and building LOTS of trail.

In fact, Fire 2 completed its first full trail today and we have moved on to re-routing another nearby trail. We walked the whole trail after work today and I was so excited to see how far we have come so far and how well we have done. It really is a nice trail and a lot of people (those we know and those we don’t know) have stopped to thank us for our work.

Speaking of that, the community here is absolutely amazing. Everyone we meet is looking for a way to help us out and make our time here more fun. We are constantly given free treats and a lot of recommendations for things to do while we’re here. So far in the plans for me are a few trips to Phoenix (one this weekend and another to run a 5K through the zoo with some teammates), a Grand Canyon trip to see my parents, and a visit from Erick!

I’m going to try and be better about updating (as usual) because I don’t want to overwhelm each post with info but also don’t want to leave too much out. BUT this is all for now, thanks for checking in.

-Christine

Back to the Grind

Hello Friends,

Like many of my favorite TV shows, I have returned from a holiday hiatus. I'm back in Denver, having returned from a lovely (yet as always, too short) break home with my family and friends. I enjoyed every bit of relaxing, eating, drinking, and catching up with everyone AND of course spending as much time as I could with Erick. In true high-altitude fashion, Denver welcomed me back with dry skin and a nose bleed, but I was happy to meet up with my friends downtown last night to watch the Rose Bowl game and enjoy some snacks.

This week is a transition week for NCCC, which means we're debriefing our last projects and briefing our upcoming ones, with a few meetings scattered here and there. Today I had Assistant Team Leader (ATL) training and later this week I have training for my other new job, Peer Helper. Other than that, I'm getting really excited to head down to Casa Grande, AZ to warm up and build some trails (while also exploring a state I've always wanted to visit).

'm hoping that I will be able to do a lot of good work this project, spend lots of time outdoors, get lots of ISP hours done, and really bond with my team.

Speaking of hopes, I'm also working on some New Year's Resolutions. I've never really had resolutions before, but I think starting small will be a good start. I feel like it might be easier to get a handle on resolutions without the troubles of homework and swimming (not that I don't miss college). I'm hoping to get into/stay in good shape (maybe find a road race to run in AZ), take more vitamins, get a handle on plans for the year/grad school/next year, work on my Team Leader application, and overall enjoy these new adventures I'm experiencing.

As a side note, during our Unit Meeting today we watched a really cool PBS documentary piece on the CCC, the program started by FDR in the 30s that NCCC is modeled after/comes from. It was especially interesting because the conditions under which the CCC was started (lack of jobs, young people finishing school and needing something to do, lots of economic growth to be done/supported) are also present today in different ways, and we can relate to the founding members of this group of public service adventurers. I suggest you check out the Wikipedia page if you'd like to learn more!

That's all from me for now. My next post will probably be from sunny, warm Casa Grande, Arizona!

-Christine

A Quick Update from the Mountains

Hey all,

So my brain is in no way prepared to write a real post, but I feel I have been neglecting you for far too long, so I'm going to improvise with a bulleted list of things that have happened/important facts to know.

1. We leave in a week from today to return to Denver, and I head home a week from Saturday. I'm quite excited for a much needed break from work and time for my family and to see Erick.

2. We're all SO ready to go to Arizona because we got a huge dumping of snow last week and were snowed in with cabin fever for nearly a week.

3. When we did decide to venture out into town (to an ISP near Boulder sorting clothing for a really cool organization called A Precious Child) we ended up getting stuck on the way up the mountain to come home, walked in the freezing (I'm talking negatives here) temperatures 1-2 miles to town, got stranded at the only establishment in Jamestown (the Merc...good food though) for a bit, and finally made it back home (but we left the truck on the mountain)

4. Today I hauled full trees in knee deep snow to help out the contracted forestry guys fall 1000 trees in 5 days...so extreme

5. We're all looking forward to a full weekend (aside from 3 hours of ISP Sunday morning) to relax and do whatever we want in Boulder. For me, shopping! The REI garage sale is on Saturday and I'm going to scope out some new snow boots as well as winter gloves because some kid stole mine this week.

6. I'm really excited to get home for the holidays (did I say that already?)

That's it from me. Catch up soon!

-Christine

We've got so much so much so much so much so much...

TO BE THANKFUL FOR!!!

I couldn't help but think about Camp DREAM over Thanksgiving, since that song was such a big part of our daily routine. Still, I've got a whole new list of things to be thankful for this year, including a cool new group of people to spend Thanksgiving with.

Our friends from "Fire 7" in Denver came up from Wednesday-Saturday to celebrate turkey day with us and it was really nice to have some new faces (though it did feel weird when they left since we never actually went anywhere). Still, we had a good time. I manned the kitchen with some others on Thanksgiving (after a good hike for PT) and (with the help of Connie, the angel that she is) we had a huge dinner of 2 turkeys, cranberry sauce, 2 stuffings, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, bread, carrots, corn, broccoli, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, apple pie, and probably some more stuff. Needless to say, we were stuffed AND had leftovers for 3 days.

Another awesome thing to be thankful for (which we found out about just yesterday) is that after the holidays we will be going on our next spike to Casa Grande, Arizona! We're excited for a warm project (and though I love Cal-Wood and will definitely miss it, I'm excited to be in a real city where there are things nearby). I'll leave you with a description of our project and will try to be back soon with some updates from Cal-Wood.

-Christine

"The City of Casa Grande, Arizona is the largest city in Pinal County with over 48,000 residents within its 104 square mile boundary. Seventeen percent (17%) of Casa Grande families live under the poverty level compared to only 9.6% of families nationwide and over 60% of students at Casa Grande schools are eligible for the free or reduced lunch program. These economic times increase the need for low to no cost recreation alternatives.

The need for recreation trails drove the formation of the Casa Grande Mountain Trails Steering Committee, a volunteer group charged with planning volunteer trail build events. Volunteer events are held once a month from October through April. After just one year of community trail builds, we are averaging 100 volunteers and 2,000 feet of trail per event. Total for the 2010 – 2011 season resulted in 624 volunteers dedicating 2,528 hours constructing 11,620 feet or another 2.2 miles of new trail! With the help of AmeriCorps NCCC teams, volunteer efforts soared and with pick axes, shovels, battling cholla cactus, moving large rocks, etc., the City of Casa Grande will be officially opening a large portion of our first trail system on the 1,100 acre Casa Grande Mountain Park for the anticipating public on November 19, 2011. We plan to continue expanding the Casa Grande Mountain Park Trail System as it not only provides recreation opportunities for youth and adults, providing physical, educational and emotional benefits of trails and nature, but also serves as a draw for visitors, providing a much needed economic stimulus."

Cutting trees at Cal-Wood

Ok, so we're not really cutting trees. BUT we are getting things done for America, for sure (that's our motto in AmeriCorps by the way...obviously boss).

So I've been here at Cal-Wood for almost a week now and I'm really enjoying my time here. I really feel like my team is starting to become a family and bond together (it's hard not to out here in the middle of nowhere anyway).

Cal-Wood is a 1,200 acre property used for teaching outdoor education to kids from schools where they can't get that kind of hands on learning. We're not working directly with the kids most of the time, but we will get a chance to shadow the instructors at some point.

The kind of stuff we've been doing makes the property safer and more beautiful for everyone who visits. So far, we've split lots of wood (which gets sold and the money helps pay for kids to come to Cal-Wood), put wood chips down on a road (to help protect from fires and make it easier to drive on), put up snow fences to stop the drifts from covering the road, hauled slash to the road (it was cut to help thin out the forest, preventing fires and helping healthy trees grow, and it will be chipped and used for the roads or split and sold as firewood), and fixed a deck and a compost bin...and it's only been a week!

I think both the sponsor and our team is so surprised by how much work we can do in so little time, and I'm excited to be able to cross things off our list of work goals as the next 4 weeks go by. Our sponsor is awesome and so are the staff. Most of the instructors are really cool young people that we can hang out with. Not to mention we have the most amazing chefs who cook our breakfasts and dinners during the week. AND we have a cat! His name is Hercules and he is super snuggly and nice to have around.

That's it from me so far. I'm hoping to get some pics of our new digs (included our canvas tent with wood-burning stove) in my next post, maybe even before Thanksgiving. Speaking of, we're having another team in our unit come up from Denver to stay and have Thanksgiving with us and we are so pumped to have them here and show them around and cook and eat and play/watch football.

So until next time!

-Christine

What IS AmeriCorps and what am I doing here?

Hey everyone,

I thought it would be useful to write a post about what AmeriCorps NCCC is since I'll be talking a whole lot about what I'm doing with it and in case anyone out there is considering the program. So, in short, I'll feed you our "elevator phrase":

"AmeriCorps NCCC members are 18-24 years old and spend 10 months getting things done for America while developing their own leadership skills. We serve on teams to help communities prepare and respond to disasters, build homes, and help the environment. To learn more or to apply go to www.americorps.gov "

That's the short of it. In more detail, we are one of 5 branches of the Corporation for National Community Service, which also includes AmeriCorps Vista, AmeriCorps State and National (that's who I worked for this summer with DREAM), Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve (which is inactive this year because of lack of funding). NCCC is different from these other programs because instead of working with another organization, all members work together on campuses (Mississippi, California, Maryland, Iowa, and Colorado) and spikes (service trips) to serve communities across America.

The Denver campus, where I am, is assigned to the states in the southwestern USA (Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and Missouri). This means that, aside from disaster deployment, I will always be in one of these states doing my service.

This spike (which is only 1 month instead of the usual 2) I will be nearby in Jamestown, Colorado (population 200, literally). It's about 30 minutes outside of Boulder, up in the mountains. My team and I are working at the Calwood educational center, an environmental education center. We'll be doing a lot of tree branch cutting and wood chipping, as well as hopefully getting the chance to work with the kids in the program. We have access to a nice lodge with everything we need, but we'll be sleeping outside in big heated tents. I have to say, I'm excited that this project is short, because it's going to be cold up there for sure.

I was actually just at Calwood last weekend when I did a chainsaw training (crazy right?) In fact, I now know how to work a chainsaw, sawsall, circular saw, and power drill...a true renaissance woman.

Right now I'm curled up downtown in the most amazing bookstore, Tattered Cover. It's a huge place full of books and lots of seating to cuddle up with. I'll probably end up buying a few things of course.

I think that's it for now. We get inducted on Thursday and my team leaves next Monday for our trip. We will have Wifi so I plan on being able to update a lot. Until next time!

-Christine