A month shy of my 67th birthday, I intentionally wanted to add some firsts to my life. The service trip with Road Scholars to Teton Science Schools in Wyoming provided that opportunity.
The first day we learned of the dangers of noxious weeds and how they force out native species. Our task was to weed out an area around a pond where trumpeter swans were kept. Sometimes the noxious weeds were quite beautiful, as well as tenacious. Shovels, short tools, and gloves helped our group of 12 fill trash bags that piled up from our labor. Although I’m used to exercising, I’m not used to manual labor that actually accomplishes something.
Our second day’s task was to check bird houses that had been set up around a certain area, but had not been checked. First, we had to locate the boxes, peek in and see if there were eggs in them, and record many details about the boxes to put into a data base. If the box was unoccupied, we cleaned the old nests out of them. This was one of many programs in an effort to collect data about the bird population with the long term goal of conserving the wildlife.
It was the first time I saw tiny eggs in nests, and in one case, two-day-old mice, but I felt sorry that we had to scare the mother birds (and mother mouse) to get the information.
I observed trained people capturing wild songbirds in mist nets and then collecting data about them before releasing them. Our part, other than observation, was to hold each fragile bird on its back in our open hands before it realized it was free to fly away. It was a brief connection to a wild songbird and I felt good to participate in its release back into the wild.
Another first for me was digging a hole for a post. One of our team of 12, a gentleman of indeterminate age who had spent years in the Forest Service and now spent his time going to service projects, showed me how to maneuver the tool used to make a post hole. He explained how to best angle the tool to dig down efficiently and then pull up the dirt. Our posts for bird perches along a bike trail stood firm and tall when we finished.
Of all our tasks, I suppose the one I least expected I’d ever do is take down barbed wire fences that result in many deaths of animals who get mangled on them. The walk uphill to the fences was steep, but led to a beautiful panorama. Leather gloves protected our hands as we cut the barbed wire from the posts and rolled it up to be discarded.
I never got fast at rolling it up, but learned nevertheless how to roll the barbed wire from side to side so the barbs would catch onto one another. These circles of death piled up quickly. I had read a very vivid description of a swan that was caught on a barbed wire fence, so this contribution to making wild lands safer for wildlife gave me a distinct sense of accomplishment.
While our group was staying at the Teton Science School, there was also a group of 100 Indian children from area tribes. This was the first time I saw Indian children being taught by white people about nature and their connection to it. How sadly ironic!
Although not an Indian, one of our leaders came closest to my idea of what being with an Indian would be like. His knowledge was extensive. And he was inextricably intertwined with nature and wildlife emotionally and spiritually.
I have volunteered as a docent for the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, California, for 9 years to help make a little difference to wild sick and injured seals and sea lions. While volunteering, I have also gained in my personal knowledge and connection to wild creatures. My participation in the Road Scholar service project has extended my progress even further from mostly an appreciator of the wild to a participant.
Beautifully worded on one wall of the Laurance Rockefeller Preserve Visitor’s Center is the essence.
“Mindful of different ways of being,
Our awareness as a species shifts –
We recognize the soul of the land as our own.”
I go away from home because it shakes up everything — my daily schedule, what I eat, what I do, who I talk to, and what I think about.
At home, I indulge my biological rhythm’s preference for sleeping. On my week at a Road Scholar wild lands restoration trip, I struggle to find sleep on a schedule set by others.
At home, I exercise daily doing mundane aerobics, yoga, weight lifting, and cardio on a machine that goes nowhere. Here, for my week at the Tetons Science School in Wyoming, I pull invasive weeds from around a captive swan pond, and hike around the pond recording bird houses and their occupants. Soon I will help researchers capture wild birds in mist nets and band them. I will also build bird perches along bike trails, and even untangle and remove old barbed wire fences so the wild animals can move freely.
Included in the activities are searching for wild great-horned owls, American pronghorn, bison, beaver, wolves, bears, and elk. Hikes in magnificent Grand Teton National Park and canoeing also fit into this week.
While every day and every activity is a learning experience, the evenings have lectures on the geology of Yellowstone, and bears and wolves. My learning curve is steep.
While my body heaves and sighs with the exertion of physical activities, my mind also works hard to grasp and keep up with the scope of what I’m experiencing.
The dedicated staff of the Teton Science Schools, a non-profit conservation and education facility in Jackson, Wyoming, bring a variety of interests and expertise in conservation. Their knowledge, lifestyles, personalities, and ages are part of what draws me here.
For example, B. can name just about any bird and mimic their dialects. He knows wild flowers, plants, and trees like the long time friends they are. He can calculate distances, compass directions, elevation, which sprays will kill certain weeds without killing nearby trees, and can hear the cries of two-day old wild baby mice whose nest has been disturbed. He searched on the ground until he found the four baby mice and tenderly replaced them where mom could find them. Yet, he is also an avid hunter who eats what he kills.
While my eyes see, his eyes observe so much more. While I have a vague sense of loving nature, B. truly loves, knows, and understands nature very personally. My love of nature is deep, but passive. I admire B.’s active relationship with the natural world.
It isn’t easy leaving Pleasantville. Where I live in southern California isn’t actually called Pleasantville, but may as well be. It’s such an easy place to live in the summer. The climate is not too hot or too cold. The evenings always cool down so one never has to stick to the sheets as I remember from my childhood in humid Massachusetts. There are no mosquitoes and black flies, and no rain.
But I am now packing to go on my way to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. With other seniors on a Road Scholar (formerly known as Elderhostel) trip, we will do a service project of wild lands restoration. Most of the above — cold, rain, many mosquitoes and black flies — are not only possible, but probable. I’m taking insect repellent and sunscreen, but I don’t know whether the insect repellent goes over the sunscreen, or vice versa.
How do you pack? For days prior to a trip, I use my second bedroom as a place to throw things on the bed that I think I need to take. Lists start appearing around the house as thoughts of what I should take or do pop into my head. It all starts out rather messy and then begins to take shape.
Although I’ve amazed myself by my packing prowess since I usually use just about everything I take, I have long admired those intrepid travelers who slip a simple carry-on over their shoulder and travel indefinitely. I’ve never been able to do that. As a Chinese friend commented looking upon the luggage I’d brought to China, “Chinese people adjust to the environment. Americans adjust the environment to suit them.”
Even though I’m more comfortable taking two smaller bags because I can handle the size more easily, this is the first time I’m taking an airlines that requires a baggage fee for every piece of luggage other than a carry-on. So, I bought a larger suitcase to combine in one what I usually put in two.
There are other requirements the airlines have decreed — the largest size for a suitcase before it is considered “oversized,” and a 50 pound limit on one bag before it’s considered “overweight” — both very pricey penalties. I’m not comfortable with one huge suitcase. It rolls, but is too heavy for me to pick up easily. And, since it can hold so much, there’s a danger of exceeding the 50 pound limit. For these among many other reasons, flying has become an ordeal to be endured.
No matter how many times I’ve traveled, each trip is a new packing challenge. But there’s another challenge whenever I leave Pleasantville. Depending upon how you look at it, I’m either an extreme night owl or half a vampire. After many years of insomnia and trial and error, I found that the sleeping time most compatible with my body rhythm is 4 a.m. ’til noon. At home in Pleasantville, my neighbors are all aware of this and respect it. I’ve scheduled my days to begin at noon. That doesn’t work anyplace else in the world, especially when I’m part of a group activity. Away from home, I just have to be out of synch with my body.
Although there’s no place like home, sometimes itchy feet win out. And leaving makes the coming home more sweet.
It’s fun to occasionally read my horoscope in the newspaper. I’m a Leo, and the last one that caught my eye said, “What’s left to do after you reach the top of the mountain? Pick another mountain. It would be a shame to deprive the world of your stellar gift.”
So, it started me thinking about some of the mountains in my life. There was a hill in New Hampshire that seemed like a mountain to me when I climbed it during my young 20s. As I lay there at the top gasping for breath, old folks and little kids walked around me. That mountain gave me a very definite message that I needed to get into shape. In 1969, magnificent Mt. McKinley in Alaska awed me with its beauty as the clouds covering it silently parted in slow motion, re-covered the mountain, and parted again while I watched open-jawed for hours from my campsite.
There was the monumental emotional mountain I climbed in middle age when I wrenched myself from my traditional life and “took the path less traveled by,” spending the next 17 years as a nomad traveling the world. Truly, that has made all the difference.
In China, my friends and I took a cable car high up into Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain) where the clouds floated beneath us. However, with my younger friends both pulling and pushing me, I managed to climb thousands of stairs even higher into the mountains. Later, there was a smaller mountain in China where two very small, wiry, sure-footed men carried me in a sedan chair swaying over the mountain path.
Then, there was the mountain called Mt. Cook in New Zealand that spoke to me. I climbed up a nearby mountain the only way I could — in a small plane, which landed with skis on a mountain ice field. I spent a glorious 10 minutes at the snowy top of the world before we flew closer to Mt. Cook. Flying around the 12,000 foot mountain was so spiritual and awe-inspiring that I was literally speechless for the rest of the day. There was a part of me the mountain touched that has remained forever changed.
A recent news story told of a 13 year old boy that climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest. Only a mountain in Antarctica remains for him to climb. If he has accomplished all of this so early in life, I wonder what he will aspire to during the long years ahead of him.
In my old age, what mountain can I pick to climb? Curiously, I have recently signed up for an Exploritas trip to Grand Teton National Park on a service project to do restoration of the wild lands. Doing physical work I’m not used to all day out in nature may indeed be, to me, a mountain to climb. And yes, the material they sent me said to beware of bears.
And what of my “stellar gift”? Must be the blogs I’ll write from the mountains.