Every morning, Joey and Alyssa are up first, making breakfasts of pancakes and eggs and hash browns. I'm next, dragging myself blearily out of bed ten minutes after my alarm goes off... for the second time. Then Lindsey will crawl out of The Cave, pour herself a cup of coffee, and stumble back down the stairs. No one else will emerge until it's almost time to leave for work, and when they do it's a scramble to get everyone in the van, set the security system, and go.
At work today we were pulling up patches of English Ivy. Jake, the horticulturalist, had seen it climbing up some trees in a more forested area of the park. It's an invasive species, so if it had been left alone it would cover all of the trees in the area and eventually kill the forest. For most of the morning we also had a volunteer working with us- an older woman named Gerta. She was raised in England during WW2, but ended up in Eatonville, WA about 30 years ago. She comes and volunteers with NW Trek once a week, and works with Jake.
Jake knows something about almost everything- from almond production to edible plants- and sometimes we all get a little carried away with talking to him. Gerta doesn't like that. As soon as we get to talking and the work slows down, she thinks we're done. So as we were finishing the first patch of ivy and talking passionately about the state of education in the US, she decided to walk back through the forest to the van. She headed off along one of the elk paths and didn't look back. A little while later the rest of us picked up our bags full of vines and made our way back to the car. Gerta wasn't there. We all went straight into action mode, dropping our trash bags and tools and calling out for her as we searched. She eventually called back and we found her before she wandered off the edge of NW Trek property.
We cleaned out more ivy after Gerta left for the day. Here's a picture of the group with our six bags full of ivy! Shaunacy is holding an old, dying teddy bear that we found in the bushes. Poor thing.
The best part of working at Trek is being around the animals. NW trek is a wildlife park, so there are exhibits of bald eagles, snowy owls, cougars, lynx, black and brown bears, foxes, coyotes, wolverines, fishers, porcupines, badgers... and their famous free range area. It's a huge fenced-in area where elk, deer, moose, mountain goats, bison, and bighorn sheep wander at will. So far we've only worked out there once, to remove an invasive species. We were working in a back corner by the fence so none of them wandered up to us, but Jake says they usually like to come investigate.
We've also done a lot of blackberry removal around the parking lot. There are three types of blackberry in the area- Himalayan, Evergreen, and Trailing. Though Evergreen sounds like it should be the native variety, it isn't- Himalayan and Evergreen blackberry are both invasive species, and Trailing blackberry is the native. We were removing as much of the invasive blackberry as possible, and leaving Trailing blackberry behind. The picture below is Jake with the majority of the blackberry that we pulled in the claw of that... thing. It doesn't look like much, but it is. I have the scratches on my arms to prove it.
A beautiful example of some nasty blackberry roots:
Of all of the work that we've done so far, my favorite wasn't the ivy or blackberry removal, or shoveling substrate into a raccoon exhibit, or even working in free roam area. It was NW Trek's Kids n' Critters event! Kids n' Critters is an annual event for Trek where four kids can come free with each paying adult. Several of us ran craft stations for two of the three days. One of those stations was paper-making! I worked at it the most. Here's a picture of the area that I worked at:
My job was to make the water/plant fiber water by blending sawdust, lichen, cattail fluff and fern leaves with water and a few squares of toilet paper, then help each kid as they dunked a screen into the water and pulled it out flat with all the fibers on top. They squeeze out some of the water with a sponge, and then the paper gets ironed dry and put into a little bag for the kid to take home! Here's Shaunacy at working her end of the table.
I also worked at a station where kids could make "Tree Crowns"- basically paper headbands with paper leaves and trees stapled to them. There was this little blonde girl that I helped- she wasn't strong enough to staple the leaves on by herself, so I had to pinch the stapler with a couple of fingers (while she squeezed with both hands) so that her leaves would actually get stapled on. When she put the finished product on, she lit up with such a huge smile! It made the weeks and weeks of working in the rain and cold totally worth it.
We recently found out where we're going next round, but I don't think I'm going to announce it quite yet...I know, what a terrible cliffhanger! I'm going to do some more research so I can overwhelm you all with information. Besides, I'm having a good time at NW Trek. I'm not quite ready to be thinking about third round.
I'll leave you with a beautiful picture of Mt Rainier. Love you and miss you all!
