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.”
On my week doing Wild Lands Restoration through Road Scholars at the Teton Science Schools in Jackson, Wyoming, wolves and wildness have been heavily on my mind. In Wyoming, the subject of wolves, as well as bears and other wildlife, is complicated and passionate.
I found a book in the library at the school that elucidates the whole issue of the troubled connection of humans to the animals that share human territory. “Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, A Woman, and the Wild” by Renee Askins puts the issue into a wider, deeper perspective. The author still lives in a small town called Wilson near Jackson and she eloquently describes why she fights on the side of the wolves. Wolves were once totally eradicated in very vicious ways.
“What hunger did torture satisfy that a bullet would not? What fear was soothed or vengeance realized by the suffering of these animals that a painless death could not have accomplished? What is it in ourselves that we had to kill in the wolf? The answer is, of course, wildness. And even though we killed the wolf, every last one of them in the West, we never extinguished the wild — we only became more deeply alienated from it. In the panic of our alienation, we attempted to control what we feared; when we couldn’t control it we tried to extinguish it. But the wild is not controllable, or even extinguishable, so inextricably is it bound to the force of life itself. It flickers on – without us, within us, and between us – its nature buried in the mystery of our origins.”
After great effort by conservationists, the decision was made to re-introduce wolves in certain areas like Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. But it’s a troubled, carefully watched, and perhaps temporary situation.
When humans and animals come into conflict, it is the animal that loses. Very recently in Yellowstone, two bears were intentionally killed by authorities; a grizzly who killed a hiker, and a female black bear who kept coming too close to humans in its search for food. The grizzly bear had awakened after being tranquilized and a collar put on it so it could be tracked. Would he have killed the hiker if a collar had not been put on him in the name of conservation research? Would the black bear have been killed if her territory hadn’t been invaded by campers and easy food?
Those of us who live far from the wild and wild animals form opinions about both in alienation from these animals and the wild. This week I have come closer to both and I feel a profound impact from the contact.
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.
I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. I had to get to the airport at the crack of dawn. Since the airport I was traveling from is closed during the night, I was surrounded by all the other passengers starting off their day’s journeys.
This was the first time I ever had to pay a fee to check a bag — and I didn’t appreciate it. I had carefully measured and weighed that bag to make sure it was neither “oversized” nor “overweight.” One family of 3 hadn’t done that and they were trying without success to re-distribute their belongings. At least my uncomfortably hefty one bag went through.
I tried a new airline that definitely felt like Sardine Airlines. I swear that I saw a crowded can of sardines as I surveyed the passengers squashed 6 to a row with less than a seat’s width as the aisle. Since this was a plane to their hub in Denver, it was fully stuffed.
But at least I had a seat. The flight attendants looked far more awake than I. But I was disappointed at their appearances. Airlines used to pride themselves on their slim, pretty stewardesses. Their uniforms were fashionable, and their hair stylish. And that’s still true of the airlines out of Asia. While not exactly slovenly, the ones on this airline looked unkempt, unfashionable, old,and yes, even chunky.
When the plane started moving, there was an unusual sound and the air being pumped through my nostrils had a strange smell. I warily scanned the other passengers and my seatmates for sniffles and coughs. As always, there were whiny children and one crying baby most of the way. I rather envy crying children on a plane because they are able to express their discomfort at being so uncomfortably imprisoned on a plane.
Sardine Airlines seems to be surviving financially because it overbooks, dresses their staff in cheap uniforms, and charges for just about everything. Want to check a bag? Want a snack? Want anything to drink other than the run of the mill? Want more legroom? Yep, you can have it, but at a price.
Usually I’m just grateful if a plane gets me where I want to go safely and reasonably on time. My standards have dropped very low. But not as low as their own staff’s lack of confidence. When I asked the lady at the desk when my already delayed connecting flight was scheduled for boarding, she replied with a sigh, “We never can be sure when the plane will come in.”
My connecting flight also had 6 seats across, but was thankfully less crowded. What a feeling of spaciousness when no one occupies the middle seat! Having started the day after only a few hours sleep, I solidly fell asleep.
It was a swift hour to my destination of Jackson, Wyoming, when the captain’s voice awakened me. I gasped at the sight glimpsed around the head of the person seated at the window. We were passing very close to those truly grand snow-topped Grand Tetons. When I was younger, I always took a window seat in a plane. But now I’ve switched to the aisle seat. That has certain benefits, but it was a mistake on the flight into Jackson that actually lands right in the National Park.
So, on this uncomfortable flying day, I have two strong memories. One is “almost” seeing those Grand Tetons while the plane was flying at the altitude of the mountains. The other was watching total joy as can only exist in a crawling baby who was delighted that the moving sidewalk in the airport kept moving even when he stopped crawling.
This week doing wild land restoration promises to be interesting and unusual — and a challenge. Since I should be sleeping instead of writing at this hour, I know tomorrow will be a sleepy one again for this dogged night owl.
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.