Washington 71
Tuesday for me was waking up and heading to the government building at which I park my car in it’s designated parking spot and load my 45 liter Arc’teryx backpack stuffed w camp fear and other belongings into the Ford F-150 government issued work truck. We have 2 trucks let’s go with 1 red truck and 1 blue trucks and I ride in the blue truck.
We drove about 2 1/2 hours to a town called Loomis in north central Washington then afterwards it’s about another 1 hour drive into the backcountry wilderness Our worksite was approximately 10-11 miles from the Canadian border. The project director for the DNR (department of natural resources) was explaining that at the peak around 8000ft up you’d be able to get a 360 view of southern Washington and Canada I thought that was pretty cool. When we arrive we noticed the red truck was not all the way up the road directly following us and this wasn’t any paved road let me tell you we had to stop every 250 ft to chainsaw trees blocking our path. We waited about 5 minutes and our boss walked down the road to see what was happening. It so happens that the red truck was stuck in a creek bed it wasn’t very visible and this truck is old. We spent almost 2 hours contemplating all our options either find a tow truck willing to drive up here and maybe get this truck hauled out but even then taking a huge risk of getting stuck OR driving the truck off the side of the mountain and letting it fall (it happens more than you would think). Eventually we came to the conclusion of grabbing a few rock bars (huge steel rods to remove huge rocks from the ground) and started removing huge boulders that would take 6 of us to push a few inches out of the creek bed. We felt we had an opening for the truck so my boss hopped in put into drive and slowly maneuvered out of the creek bed using it’s 2 front wheels we found success. The only problem was by the time this was all done it was time to head back to our campsite and call it a day. The campsite is quiet no one around it’s given to us to use by the DNR. We pitch our tents set our homes until Thursday and get ready for dinner. Everyone cooks something different, I have MREs (meals ready to eat) it’s easy and filling the others have combinations of soup, chili, rice, and salad everything easy and cheap to cook. After dinner we hangout and shoot the shit until everyone just disassembles one by one into the confines of their tents. I lay in my tent wrapped up in my down sleeping bay and start doing this or reading currently I have a national geographic magazine from 1994 and Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. I try and fall asleep around 9 but it never happens.
It’s Wednesday and it’s our only full day of work for the week which is relieving. Our project for this was to hike about to 6000-7000 ft in elevation and pound T posts into the floor attached will be barb wire to restrict any cattle from grazing into this land and destroying it. The views from the work site are phenomenal I get a close up view of several mountain ranges and the legendary cascade mountain range. The air is slightly thinner up here so hiking with 15-20 pounds of gear was a solid workout. It’s peaceful and quiet up here with only me and my coworkers around for miles. The work we do is important to the ecosystem around im sure but I’m against it when it considers pounding these man made structures into this land which man has no business exploiting for economical gains I’m all for capitalism but at the expense of nature and the land that was here before us I cannot support. The work day ends with us sweaty covered in bugs and dirt everyone exhausted and drained wait especially hungry. I get to the campsite change into something comfortable and boil my water for my MRE. I sat down at the table with 3 of the others we all devoured our food and we cracked jokes and had conversations you’d only hear men talk about in the middle of the forest. I hop into my tent early tonight eager for tomorrow knowing it’s the last work day and we will be heading back to Spokane early in the morning due to the long drive.
This was written on Tuesday and Wednesday.