First day of work and mountain adventures!

Today was my first day of work!! After stumbling out of bed at 6:25am, I made it to work at 7:30, the ridiculously early time we were told to arrive. After meeting my supervisor and hanging out for about an hour, I found out we were going on a little road trip into the mountains and had to go home and change into appropriate mountain clothing (who knew that running shoes were required?!!). Luckily, the other VISTA working with me also had to run home, so I didn't feel so dumb.

Then the fun began. There were four of us in the van - myself, the girl I will be working with and our two supervisors. We headed first to a forest restoration project on a private plot of land. I learned a ton about forest needs, how human fire suppression has changed the forest landscape and how the forest looked/functioned prior to human manipulation. The purpose of this particular project is to create a more sustainable forest ecosystem that is less likely to be destroyed (and destroy nearby homes with it) during a forest fire.

We then visited three sites throughout Jefferson County (where I am working) and the neighboring Douglas County where there have been catastrophic forest fires. Although much of the ground cover is re-grown in these areas, it is amazing how little new growth can be seen even seven, nine and twelve years, respectively, after the fires.

The reason that there have been so many catastrophic fires in recent years is multi-fold. Basically, when people work to suppress forest fires, they allow lots of new trees to grow. The forests then become more dense. Then, if and when a fire naturally occurs, it is more easily able to jump from tree to tree and, because many of the trees are young/small, to kill the trees in its path.

In addition to killing vegetation, forest fires tend to cause serious floods. When rain falls on an area that was destroyed by fire, there are no plants or soil to absorb the rain. The water then flows into nearby streams and rivers, causing them to overflow their banks and flood nearby lands. In addition to the obvious damage floods cause, these floods carry huge amounts of sediment, dead trees and rocks along with them. We were able to see several examples of this sediment movement and it was unbelievable that so much debris could be carried and deposited by generally small streams.

There was only one real negative today and, luckily, it had nothing to do with resource management. It seems that, because I am AmeriCorps and therefore an "indentured servant" (according to my supervisors), my supervisors are nervous/reluctant to actually manage me. They wouldn't give me a specific answer about how many hours a week I'm supposed to work or when they want me in the office. Also, DR (the other AmeriCorps VISTA member I'm working with) and I are supposed to work on two main projects, an urban agriculture project and a forest restoration project, but they seem unwilling to make any decision about how they want us to split the work and, to a lesser extent, even the direction they want us to head. I'm hoping they were just trying to be nice on the first day and they will actually willing to manage me a little throughout the year.

Sorry this post is very information heavy - I have a lot of information running through my head and I wanted to share it all!

Oh, and on a side note, I spent four days last week at an AmeriCorps Pre-Service Orientation in Albuquerque, New Mexico and there will be a post or 2 about that experience over the next few days. Stay tuned!

Day 1: Western Hardrock Watershed Team

Today was my first training session with the Western Hardrock Watershed Team.

The WHWT is a coalition of community watershed groups that work to improve watershed health in the Hardrock mining region. Hardrock mines extract hard minerals, including gold, silver, zinc, copper, nickel and lead, and have are located throughout Colorado and her neighboring states. Because of the environmental degradation caused by mining throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, water regulation in this region is challenging and must work to balance historic and cultural values with watershed and community health.

So what does this have to do with me? The Western Hardrock Watershed Team helps place AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers with these local watershed organizations. They support the organizations as they work to obtain their VISTA volunteers, help them create appropriate goals, etc. and also support me as I have questions and concerns throughout the year.

Here are my 2 favorite experiences from the day:
1) After missing the entrance of the building where we were meeting, I had to turn around in a Hooters parking lot. And, as it turns out, the fastest way from my house to work every day will be to turn around in said Hooters parking lot. Awesome.

2) The girl from WHWT who was leading our session told me that in her two years of working with VISTA and the WHWT she had never heard of anyone else who was able to do a long move by themselves. Most other people, she told me, drove out with their stuff packed in a car and lived in housing offered by their organization. I, on the other hand, flew out, picked up my car here, shipped my stuff and found housing without the help of my organization. It's interesting to learn that not many people move out alone and, while I thought that I just didn't know anyone who had a similar experience, perhaps my move was not as typical as I thought.

I always said I would never do AmeriCorps. Although I like the idea of giving back to my country through a year of national service and value social justice and direct service in my work, I was never interested in a year of forced poverty and the paradox of paid volunteerism. My time is better spent, I thought, working towards resource equity with a socially-just organization and volunteering on the side.

So how did I get here? The truth of it - as unromantic and unidealized as it might be - is I'm here because I got a fantastic job. I will spend the next year (at least) with the Upper South Platte Watershed Association and the Jefferson County Conservation District as a Watershed Development Coordinator. My focus will be developing urban agriculture and forestry programs to better the lives and health of the communities in the watershed and the watershed itself. It seems like a fabulous opportunity to be a community organizer, grants writer, lobbyist, researcher, resource manager, farmer, event planner, program coordinator and water-lover, all wrapped up into one.

Because I did not choose AmeriCorps but rather a position that happens to be funded by AmeriCorps, I am entering this year somewhat skeptical about the AmeriCorps part of the experience. Why is my stipend so small? Why do I have to be considered a volunteer? Why am I not allowed to have a second job? …Why do I have to fill out so much paperwork?

This blog is intended to explore the dirty details of being an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. It will be a combination journal/soap box and hopefully can provide some insight to future VISTA volunteers and life updates for my friends and family.

I’m hoping this year will be great and that the job and positive aspects of AmeriCorps VISTA will outweigh some of the frustrations I am feeling now. I’ll keep you posted…