I hope everyone reading this blog is doing well! I keep getting questions from people asking about what I’ve been up to and when I’m going to update this again. Well – here I am! Get ready, this is a long post…
I’ve been learning a lot and doing a lot at my job and have had a very interesting few weeks – one of which was spent back in Kentucky for Johnna’s sister’s wedding! The other parts were spent exploring more of the pacific northwest and learning about timber in the region. I did some travel to Verlot, WA (pronounced how it’s spelled) to do some work for one of the foresters there, and WOW did that trip teach me a lot.
So let’s get started:
Before the Wedding
My second week of work was unfortunately my last with my manager Tim before he went off to Missoula on detail for the summer. In the forest service you can go on something called a detail which is when a forest in another part of the country has a temporary opening for a job that you take for a short amount of time without losing your old job at your main forest. It’s a good opportunity because it gets you experience working in other forests, looks good on your resume, helps you meet other foresters, and lets you earn a lot of money with travel payments from the government. Per diem in travel is something like $50-75/day, plus a housing stipend, etc.
So while Tim was getting ready for his big Missoula trip, I ended up doing more cruising which you can read about in my previous blog post. Something I did that was rather interesting was taking an axe with me one day and seeing if frost cracks in certain fir trees caused wood quality issues. The answer was no as you can see from these photos:
I also got some time to “familiarize myself with the forest” which I spent looking for snow at a place called Stampede Pass and then at another place called Cedar Notch. Luckily the Pass was indeed passable as the snow that had been there for most of May had melted away at around 3000 feet up. Tim needed to know this because there is a timber sale going on in the area and those are important ways of getting to the sale. I like that here they call what we would call a “gap” a “pass.” I was explaining that to one of my co-workers from the area and she thought it was cool we call them gaps!
Getting to Cedar Notch was interesting because I ended up taking a wrong turn and drove myself all the way down to the Green River and past a water company gate, after which I turned around and headed back to where I was supposed to go. The little detour was nice though and I got to see some cool views of the mountains!
On my last day of work before going back to Kentucky we had a district orientation meeting where we got to meet all of the people in the North Bend district! It was great to be able to meet everyone in person and to get some free lunch. What was crazy about that meeting is that during introductions Tim had to go first because he was supposed to be leaving for Missoula in the morning! So he said hi to everyone and then left for the rest of the summer.
Wedding
Johnna’s sister’s wedding was absolutely beautiful! She had it at Shaker Village near Harrodsburg and it went off without a hitch – well I suppose there was one hitch. I got there just in time for the rehearsal dinner, and it was nice to be able to see a lot of Johnna’s family and extended family, many of whom I haven’t seen for a while!
I helped a lot with setup – more so on the day of the wedding after I was able to get some rest. A lot of the day was spent waiting for the bridal party to get ready and once they were done the wedding happened! I will say it was strange surreal Katie and Gabe up there on the altar, but I was super happy for them and I hope they have a long and happy marriage ❤
The reception was a lot of fun too, with good food and an even better dessert courtesy of Costco! I saw some of Johnna’s friends from college and got to dance a little bit to some music.
Something I thought was cool that Katie and Gabe did at their wedding was that they had a signature station where you could sign bottles of wine and leave a message on a tape recorder for them. I made sure to leave a message wishing them the best!
Post-Wedding
I ended up staying a week in Kentucky because it was my dad’s birthday the week after the wedding and it was cheaper to fly out a week later than to go just for the weekend. I saw plenty of friends while I was back, went swimming with Johnna, and did so much more. If you’re one of my friends in Lexington who I didn’t see while I was back, I’m really sorry and I wish I could have had a little more time to see everyone!
Some of my highlights were getting to celebrate Johnna’s birthday with her at Pearl’s Pizza, going on a bird walk at Raven Run, and helping my friend Jenry move into our apartment after my old roommate moved out!
Johnna and I went home to my parents’ house that weekend to celebrate my dad’s birthday and to help them with some yard work. Johnna got to see what life was like as an arborist as we trimmed some trees and did a lot of pruning!
The flight back to WA was easy and it’s crazy to think that it only took me 6 hours to cover the same amount of distance that it took me 7 days to cover by car.
I was originally supposed to go through Atlanta and then Seattle, but storms delayed my Atlanta flight so I got rebooked to go through Salt Lake City, which got me there around 20 minutes later than I would have been on the original trip. I didn’t have any issues and had a great uber ride home with Muhammad, who drove me all the way from SeaTac to North Bend, which was about a 40-minute drive! Thanks, Muhammad!
My working week this week was a bit different than usual. Instead of working 4 10-hour days, I worked a 12-hour day, a 10-hour day, and an 8-hour day followed by a day off. This was because I was going to be traveling to Verlot, WA for 6 days (June 16th-21st) to do some work helping out one of the foresters in that district.
Some of my highlights this week included finally having my room furnished the way I want it and getting to hike Mailbox Peak.
Up until the end of this week, I had been using one of my camping quilts as a comforter on my bed. It worked fine but I was getting tired of it sliding off me during the night, and it wasn’t great for having as a sheet. I finally caved and went to Target, where I got a floor lamp too, which was nice.
Mailbox Peak
I had heard rumors of how cool and challenging of a hike going up to mailbox peak was, and I decided to use my day off before going to Verlot to see just how bad it really could be. The hike is extremely steep and extremely long. I thought it was going to take me 4 hours to complete but it actually took 5.5 to get to the top and back. It was absolutely gorgeous at the top though! I got a wonderful view of Mt Rainier and of North Bend. The people at the top were very nice and encouraging as I stumbled my way up 3 false peaks to get to there. I was very close to giving up on this hike as I started to get to the end but I’m glad I didn’t.
One thing you may be wondering is why there is a mailbox on a mountain that high up! At first I took that at face value and just accepted it, but as I was climbing I began to wonder and it turns out the answer is both stranger than you think and not super surprising. There used to be a summer camp at the base of the mountain and one of the men who owned the camp challenged the campers to hike to the top of the mountain every year to prove themselves. As proof of their feat he placed a mailbox on the summit with a register for them to sign and get a prize at the end of the season. Over the years the mailbox has been replaced, moved, damaged, and even stolen! And apparently firefighters at the nearby training academy bring up a fire hydrant with them to celebrate the end of their courses.
I saw a lot of gorgeous wildflowers on my hike as well. The most prominent one at the bottom was foxglove, which is a native flower to the area. It looks super cool!
Verlot
After having exhausted myself doing mailbox peak, I went the next day with one of my co-workers to Verlot, WA to help one of the timber sale administrators with his work and to learn about what forestry is like while a site is being logged.
I learned so much about the forests in the pacific northwest this weekend and a lot about the context for why we are doing the things we are doing as the forest service.
The biggest, most important thing I learned about the forest service here is that our job for the past few years has basically been to clean up the mistakes of the past to try to make a more resilient forest for the future. What that means is that in the past, the foresters used to clearcut an area and replant it on 50-year cycles. Since the forest service doesn’t clearcut anymore, those 50-year cycles have been disrupted and the plantings that were done in the 70s and 80s are becoming too mature for healthy habitat. Essentially, the forests that were planted are way too dense to support anything, including the trees growing there themselves. Often times I saw stands of trees that were too busy competing to get light from the top to worry about getting bigger in diameter, and that competition was taking light away from the forest floor – preventing the next cohort of trees from growing and maturing. The plan for the forest service now is to thin as many of these densely planted stands as they can, clearing up space for light to come through and to promote more varieties of ages throughout stands.
My job this weekend was to help one of the foresters on the ground who makes sure that that happens as it is being logged. We were painting a lot of trees that needed to be removed to make room for skyline logging, which is a type of logging specific to the pacific northwest. I won’t get too in-detail as to how that works, but the essence of it is that for terrain that is too steep to log with machines on the ground, a logging machine is rigged up with a cable running up and down a slope to give it more stability. In order for that machine to be able to go up and down the slope, it needs a path to go and the trees that are in the way need to get removed as a result. Most of the weekend was painting trees to be removed for this purpose. For more info, watch this video!
I also got to see and meet a logging crew and they’re pretty crazy! Some of the machines they use are very complex and expensive and we got to see a harvester in action, which fells, limbs, and debarks a tree in seconds. I had seen videos of harvesters in action in the USSR, but I hadn’t seen one in person until Tuesday. They’re very neat!
While in Verlot, they had us staying in a 3-bedroom bunkhouse which we had all to ourselves. It was pretty moldy, which gave me some coughing issues throughout the week, but it was otherwise very nice and it was good to not have to commute back and forth from North Bend, which takes about 2.5 hours each way. I got to watch a lot of interesting movies this week since there was no service and not much to do after work. My highlights were seeing Hitch, a National Geographic documentary about Volcanoes, Water World, and O Brother Where Art Thou. There were tons of crazy movies on the shelves, but we did not have time to watch all of them.
At the end of the week, I got my headshots taken for the UK Forestry Department! They wanted some pics of me working out in the field as part of my summer job so my coworker took these of me after we got done one day.
After 6 long days, though, I’m finally back in North Bend and am ready for a nice break. Johnna is coming to WA pretty soon to visit and we’ve got all sorts of crazy things planned for then. So stay tuned for more!
Mushrooms and Arches 
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