It’s feeling a bit lonely here in Prineville this month.
Most of the other regular seasonal hires have completed their Federal 1049 positions and have left for the season. The furlough has extended my season a bit and since I started a little later anyway, I was already in the decadent end of the collection season. While I mostly worked alone all summer, on occasion I would ask another resource tech to help out or I hitched a ride to look at an area in which they were working . It was a joy to meet folks working in different specialties. I also had an education working with the Americorps sponsored Heart of Oregon Crew, the BLM Range Techs and the Wildlife Techs.
If I have to pull one single success out of my summer with SOS it would be the interaction I have had with the Heart of Oregon Corps members. These youth (18-24 years old) are in a program to get job experience and work and life skills. While seed collecting may not be in their future job profile, I have had the opportunity to explain to them that someday someone will call me and ask what kind of worker they were and it will matter what I have to say. I have interesting conversations while collecting. From “Tyler”, the youth getting kicked out of his father’s house at 17 and learning to live and work on his own without parental support, to” Daniel”, the young man teaching me about the finer points of “noise” and “punk” music , to Keola, the fellow who worked hard as a roofer all over the country and now is settling down to establish his educational future. I learned something from each of them.
As for the general public, I also met Frederick who was out walking his dog and came over to ask what I was doing. He related his early experiences planting seed and trees for the Forest service in the 1960’s. Trent was the newly graduated range student who was living in a Tepee and working part time on a ranch that stopped by when his curiosity got the better of him and he helped me collect while chatting. We talked about Eckhart Tolle’s book ” New Beginnings” He shared his interesting history of surfing and snowboarding and its relevance in his new life as a ranch hand. He was off to Joseph, Oregon to spend the winter as a mountain guide (in his Tepee). There was also the wood cutter “Steve” who pulled over to have me check his wood cutting permit which ended in a fabulous discussion about fire and invasive weeds changing landscapes.
I still have more of my summer/fall to go. I am hoping for a big adventure to relate!
My Seed Success are
Getting my collections to the Bend Seed Extractory.
Completing 57 collections to date
My Seed Failures are
Having a troop of BLM employees sniff out my storage cubicle worried we had a cleaning solvent spill until they realized my freshly collected Artemisia cana and Artemisia arbuscula were so very aromatic. I am off to the Bend Seed Extractory today!
Finding out non-food items cannot be placed in the food fridge and asking for space in the seed warehouse to spread out my wet Sambucus cerulea berries.
