Sedona Red Rocks and Mikey

Hey all,

We finally finished our work area down near Sycamore Canyon which was a bit of a hole. Well, I admit it wasn't even half that bad, but it was south-facing slopes that were prime rattle snake locations (although we only saw one) and difficult plots which made getting up and making money difficult. Alas we finished it and we are back up north of Flagstaff in the hilly, shady and pine-dominated forests once again. Last week we went down to Sedona which is an hour south of Flagstaff and was well worth the trip. We left the tent trailer and brought our tent down for the night. This was our second trip down there and so we had a little bit better idea of what we wanted to do. We camped along Oak Creek in Oak Creek Canyon and then went into town where we met several people who told us about full moon ceremonies and different events we should come down to. I suppose I should have prefaced that but I mentioning that Sedona is home to several vortexes and thus has attracted many spiritual people, from heelers to outdoor enthusiasts.
We are open to all such ideas and continued to meet people who had their own opinions of where we should go and what different parties/ceremonies we should come down to.The Red rocks are truly beautiful and it is nothing like I have ever seen before. It was quite packed with tourists and popular... we didn't go to the most popular place of all but will go next time (its called Slide Rock State Park and it a series of flat rocks that sorta gradually decline like a big natural slide with water running over hot rocks. People flock to lay in cold water warmed by the hot sun.


Anyways, as we mosied around downtown Sedona I kept sayin that I wanted a beer and a hot dog at the same time and we wanted to see if there were any local breweries in town. We ended up at Oak Creek Brewery which was awesome and had some great brews fresh from the tap. We also came on the perfect night because it was an "all drums circle" and we had our djembes. So we hung out and played drums for hours with about 20 other folks (the place was intensely loud and reverberating but sounded wicked) and I continued to alternate from drumming to dancing. I realized how badly I needed to dance and socialize after being in the forest with not much outside contact for awhile.

The next day we went to Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock which are both vortexes. Although I can't say I was in the right mindset to open myself up to anything spiritual, we enjoyed the views and the hike nonetheless. I did feel though that Sedona in general was very spiritual and it felt like I everything I thought I wanted I received. We're gonna go down for the full moon ceremony with a lady who lives in an earthship (which we want to build for ourselves one day) and hopefully we can do some drumming.

Then it was back to Sycamore where we moved camp to a nice lake that we could wash up in after work. We had sorta a wildlife week actually. One day as we were walking into our plots we came across about a herd of 35-40 elk complete with newborns at all, it was quite an awesome stampede that we created but just walking around the corner. Later that day Lou had a close encounter with a rattler, which spooked me quite a bit, and then on the way home we saw a red fox. To top it off that night we were visited by 3 wild horses and about 20 cattle, as well as a pack of coyotes who never stop yipping and keeping me up.

But the greatest news of all happened today and will be finalized in a short two hours. We got a call from Paw Placements and they have a dog for us to foster! So we rushed over to the humane society and visited with our new buddy who is a male golden retriever mix named Mikey; about 1.5 yrs old who hasn't been trained much but is very responsive. Out of all the dogs we play with on our visits he was one of the only who actually wanted to play fetch with Lou and would give back the toy! Oh man, we are very excited about it and I really don't know what to expect at all. We're going to go pick him up from his vet visit and the lady Carol will give us a dog bed, crate, food and everything else we need. It is going to be a big adjustment but I think it will be very great for us. Hopefully we will have him for another month or so until we move onto our next work location. I'll put up pics of our new buddy as soon as we come back into town. He is golden all over, but not as shaggy as most golden retrievers with a white blaze on his head and a medium sized body.

That is all for now!

Love Ally

Canyons, Caves and Canines

Hey all,

I hope everyone is well up there. Oh yah, it would be nice if people left a comment from time to time... its becoming lonely writing to outer space with no feedback (thanks).

We found out there was a cave nearby our last work location and we thought one day when we finished up early that we'd check it out. Both of us weren't really sure what we were getting into... i.e. was it a wimpy cave or the real thing. Anyways, turns our it is the real thing. Called the Lava River Cave it is 3/4 of a mile long and quite large inside the cave. The first fifteen feet have ice and it is freezing inside the cave. We went pretty far along the cave and it was really cool and we wanna bring our drums there next time for the full experience.





Last week Lou and I were evacuated from our location (which we luckily were leaving anyways) because of a rampant forest fire just a few miles from where we were at. We got out okay and then decided to take a few days and go up to the Grand Canyon for a visit. It is only about an hours drive from here and we brought our tent trailer and camped on forest service land just outside of the park (feeling like lucky bastards for camping for free while every other tourist seemed to be doling out way too much for hotels). Our first day we went to the IMAX center and got our tickets then went on a good several hour hike in the canyon along the Kaibab Trail. We went probably around 6 miles or so, not sure, but dropped about 1000 feet. It was a very hot day and the air is very dry in the canyon. Anyways, check out some of the cool shots we took along the hike.

(you can spot me on the left hand side of the trail down there... i'm wearing a blue shirt. )
(hot and tired but happy)

After our hike we went back to the tent trailer for dinner and then decided to head to Desert View point which is about a 45 min drive. We went there for sunset and it was absolutely amazing and worth it. After lingering with the tourists for awhile as the sun creeped away, we decided to go to one of the deserted viewpoints (tourists don't venture far from the main lookouts) and we brought our new hand drums. We hung out at the rim playing our djembes for awhile and it was pure magic.




The next day we took the free shuttles around and went from location to location taking pics and took in another beautiful sunset. We quite enjoyed our adventure there and are thinking we might try and camp at the bottom later on in the year. It is quite a hike down and back (though our co-workers did it in one day which is highly recommended not to).



We went back to our new work location which is Sycamore Canyon, the second largest Canyon in Arizona. It is a beautiful area but it is harder work for various reasons (more trees, more species of trees, graveyards of downed trees from forest fires) and therefore harder to make really good coin. We have a week and half down here before a new location though which will be nice. We took a day off a few days ago and went down to Sedona which is absolutely stunningly beautiful. It is red rocks, canyon, arches, and a really nice river surrounded by oaks and sycamore trees. We are probably going to go camping there in a few days. We went swimming in the river and i was the happiest little water baby that there ever was. The heat has been really dragging my energy levels down and water provides such rejuvenation.

The other update in our life is something we don't know if it will work out but we are trying to foster a dog. We both really want to adopt a dog and I fell in love with a blue heeler 1 yr old male in sedona last week. We visit the humane society on every day off we have it seems and it is harder and harder to say no. We both know our reality though and that there is no way a dog would survive in Malaysia, so we found a non-profit called Paw Placements which places dogs with foster homes for as long as the people decide to and provides all the food, crates, toys and vet costs. It saves the dogs from having to live in the humane society until they find "forever" homes and also helps out the human society when they are over crowded. We have a perfect job right now for a dog and having a dog come to work with me would really ease my mind of working alone all day. Although we have radios, spending all day alone out there can be unsettling when there are bears, rattlesnakes and almost 1.5-2 hrs away from the hospital. It would also be nice to provide a high energy dog such as a border collie, blue heeler or lab x with the opportunity to walk/ run around all day outside. Anyways, not to jinx it but I"ll keep you posted. We talked to the paw placements people today at petsmart and sent in our application. They said they will contact us soon and see if they can find a good match.

Anyways,

Love you all and looking forward already to being back in BC by November.

Ohhhh herrrroo,
(Me saying : "oh herrro".
P.s. I've worn that same outfit everyday that I have worked down here... let's just say you wouldn't want to smell that shirt at this point. The summer isn't over yet though, and much stench has yet to be added)


Life is going really great down here. I do miss everyone a lot and I felt a little bit like I had the rug snagged from under my feet because I barely got to see anyone, but I know that I'll be back before I know it. It is really hot and really dry, though to people who live here it is probably neither of those things. For us west coasters though who often don't venture far from the ocean, Arizona is as dry as it gets. I think living down a dirt road in the middle of the South Kaibab National Forest likely might have something to do with it, oh and spending most of my time outside. Nonetheless, a really dry throat and nose and skin can't deter me from thoroughly enjoying this work. Bloody booger nuggets on the other hand are becoming a bit of a hassle haha.

Work is good and some days are better than others aka. some days I have a lot of steep hiking while others it is as flat as a pancake. Some days a plot could have 5 live trees and 5 dead trees, and the next plot could have 30 trees and 40 dead. It all really depends.
(Me measuring a tree height using a clinometer)
(Ally coring a tree to count the rings and determine the age)
(counting the tree rings to determine the age)

For a budding forester this work really is the bees knees. I now have a complete set of all my own forestry equipment (except a ridiculously expensive laser) to use all this nifty forestry equipment, measure tree heights, dbh (diameter at breast height), check for tree damages, navigate with compass and GPS, core trees, set up fixed radius plots... and I have no boss! I also get to work alone which really has its advantages because I rely solely on myself to make money and do not rely on anyone else (and do not suffer from other ppl's mess ups). I think it is going to be hard going back to a job where I have someone to report to. I feel pretty lucky to be running my own show and I'm not even done my degree yet. Most of the guys working this job are older (later 20's or early 30's and have been doing forestry work for years).
(artistic photo of the day: Ally in the compass mirror)
But it is really rewarding and enjoyable to spend all day alone hiking outside measuring trees... I quite enjoy that I can walk to work and that my office is in the middle of pure ponderosa pine forest.

We're really enjoying living in the tent trailer and most nights we play drum, make a nice dinner, drink tea, read and go to bed early. It is quite lovely. We have also developed a healthy obsession with the game Yahtzee which is soon to morph into an obsession with Scrabble. Board games are all the rage in tent trailers. We will be moving down to a canyon area pretty soon and we're hoping to travel up to the Grand Canyon but neither of us really want to take time off just yet. It seems like every day off we have an endless list of things in town we need to take care of so once that list is more manageable I think we'll take off up north.
(Lou relaxing in the shade under the awning of our tent trailer)
(a typical burned area in South Kaibab).

That is all for now. We are off to the post office (a favorite location in Flagstaff to visit) and then possibly to the pound. We keep visiting the pound (even though we both know we can't get a dog and we take out the poor lil guys for a walk around the side yard. It seems to fulfill our desires for a dog for about a week).

Love you guys and hope everything is well.
Missing the ocean a lot down here so everyone better be lapping around in the shallows for me.

Peace and love

ally

Gwaii Haanas and Final Ceremonies

Hey guys,
I haven't blogged in awhile because my life has definitely been all over the place and thus I have some catching up to do. As I saw most of you and filled you in on Gwaii Haanas I'll just hit the highlights and post some pics. Lou showed up on Haida Gwaii the night before we left for Gwaii Haanas. Some people who were supposed to go on the trip got sick last minute and he was able to come along. I don't think he quite knew what he was getting into... we had literally been looking forward to this once in a lifetime trip for the entire semester and he showed up and was going. Anyways, it was amazing and as soon as we got to the Moresby Camp boat launch we all were too excited to put on our 8+ layers of clothing (we were on open hull zodiacs that were really freezing in the wind). The highlights of the trip :

visiting four of the five watchmen sites: The watchmen sites are old village sites where the CHN (Council of the Haida Nation) have built modern longhouse style homes and two or three Haida will stay there the entire summer.
Any visitors to the islands will be shown around by the Haida watchmen so that their history is interpreted by the Haida and to ensure that no one damages the standing totem poles.
The most exciting watchmen site was Hotsprings Island a small island with naturally occurring hotsprings. We brought out the scotch and the whole class had a shot then we jumped in the ocean and back into the hotsprings... such an amazing moment on a beautiful sunny day.
(Above: the whole class including teachers and our tour guides)

We stayed on a remote float camp just outside of Gwaii Haanas where we saw pods of humpback whales everyday that we left the float camp and came back in. On the trip we saw pacific white-sided dolphins, humpbacks, sea lions and many eagles.
(Yes that is whale tongue)
(we pulled up the prawn traps)
The best part of the trip was exploring the rare flora and fauna with Andy MacKinnon and Sari Saunders who were able to explain every moss, tree, fern, etc to the micro detail.




On the trip we also went to Sedgewick Bay which is the location where the massive logging protests occurred in the late 1980's. The protests at Sedgewick Bay lasted several months and we were able to see the old houses that they built as temporary shelter during the protests which were left exactly as they were. Our trip guide Heron who was born and raised in Gwaii Haanas had never been to that site before and not many people have been there before. It was interesting because we had started off our course with a talk from Diane Brown an elder from Skidegate who explained the protest and significance behind it. She talked about the elders being flown there by helicopter and some of them were in their 80's and 90's and they had to climb the hill (that we climbed) to get to the logging road every morning. She also explained about the police coming and arresting the elders.
it was one of the most amazing three days of my life and it seemed like every minute just got better and better as we went. I will never forget it and i can't wait to go back. When we got back from Gwaii Haanas we had a week to prepare presentations which we were going to give that were open to the public. I did some research and with the help of Lou performed some decent field work to come up with an interesting ecological fix for a problem that is big on Haida Gwaii. HG has so many deer it is ridiculous, i.e. on an hour drive you can see 35+ deer along the road alone and it has drastically changed the understory. Many plants and trees (especially western red cedar saplings) are so heavily browsed by the deer that they cannot grow and in some cases are becoming extremely rare. Specifically, I was concerned with the amount of culturally significant plants for the Haida that are becoming rare-very rare due to heavy deer browsing. My study looked at the suitability of old-growth stumps to act as refugia for culturally significant plants and my research supported this quite distinctly. I found that there were significantly more culturally significant and vascular plants in general living on stumps that were inaccessible to deer in comparison to plots on the ground beside it. I summarized my results and gave some management considerations and implications for the future that would utilize these naturally occurring old-growth stumps as refugia and barriers from deer browsing. Mom and Dad came up and saw me give the presentation which was really nice of them; I really enjoyed having them see me doing something related to Forestry because it is a part of my life they don't get to see a lot of. After all of our presentations we had a final ceremonies with a traditional Haida feast and dancing- it was unreal. I gave a speech thanking our program directors and we presented them with Haida silver carved bracelets from a local artist designed with a frog and beaver for them. During the dancing component they got all the women up to do a women's Haida dance and then the men got to do their dance aftewards (I don't think I've ever seen my dad dance so it was pretty special). It was the most amazing graduation ceremony ever and will definitely be way better than the one i'll get from UBC. I'm so glad I did this semester, it was the best educational experience I've had in a really long time and I feel that I have grown so much as a person. Here are some of the pics from the night.(me giving my speech)



Lou and I started work in Payson Arizona and we lived in a tent for two weeks or so. We just got started and the contract finished so we went to Missouri to visit Lou's parent's farm in Marble Hill. It was a long trip and we got delayed by snow and a cranky Ally. We arrived at the farm and had a couple days to relax and take care of business. Lou's parents were wonderful and they helped arrange a lot of things that have made life a lot easier for us for the next six months. They helped us get an amazing tent trailer that is decked out with a shower, porta pottie, fridge and stove! It has made camping so much more enjoyable and I can cook actual dinner now as opposed to eating hot dogs a lot. It was a huge help on their part and we really appreciate it. Lou's mom also let us trade his car for her jeep so anyways, we toted it all back across the country and are now in Flagstaff, Arizona. I really like Flagstaff a lot more than Payson, it is a college town with a unique historic downtown area. We met up with at the Forest Service Ranger station yesterday where we were debriefed by a forester about the specs for this upcoming project. Last night we came into Flagstaff and scored big at the thrift store (i got brand new Merrell hiking boots that are about 150 bucks for 12! yay!) and then we went to bikrams yoga to sweat it out. We're feeling really good about our new situation. Today was another down day as new contractors roll into town so we came into the library to take care of business.

Anyways, I'll try and put up pics of the area and work pics as soon as we start taking them (we keep forgetting to). I'll also put up pics of our new home aka the tent trailer!

peace and love

ally

Skedans and Bonanza Beach

Hey all,

I guess I kinda failed at not updating you guys, but to my defense it was reading break and then I've been busy with class. The semester is almost over... I can't believe it. I definitely don't want to leave, but I know this place will call me back in a more permanent way one day. Regardless, we've been up to lots of new shenanigans.
Reading break I went to the west coast of the islands for some camping at Rennell Sound on Bonanza Beach. I did some boogie boarding and then tried surf kayaking with my buddy Kai and it was a good way to cure a hangover. After tipping a good three times, I got the hang of it and was riding some waves in... super fun! Here are some pics from there.








I also made it out to Skedans and Cumshewa which were two old village sites down on Moresby Island. It was an extremely spiritual day and I found it quite difficult to breathe while walking by old standing poles. My friend Steve's camera stopped working even when we were taking pictures of the poles, and it worked again once we left the sites. I felt like there was a lot of complex energy at Skedans especially. There was also a very old red alder (Alnus rubra) tree that is according to Kris is the second biggest in the world, estimated at around 650 years old. This tree is definitely a knobbly, old wizard of a tree and I could imagine little kids hanging out there when they got in trouble. Anyways here are some pics of that.









Right now we are in the middle of Rainforest Ecology with Andy MacKinnon and Ken Lertzman who both have done so much for ecology research in BC and played an integral and direct role in the BEC classification system. Being out in the field with them is amazing and I am learning a lot. In this last week we have done many different field techniques: increment boring (boring a tree and counting the rings to see how old it is), coarse woody debris surveys, soil pit analysis, vegetation surveys, layed out transects and plots, used a hipsometer to determine tree height, DBH to determine tree diameter, a fish eye camera lens to capture and analyze the canopy closure in old growth vs. second growth stands. It has been amazing! This coming weekend we are going to Gwaii Haanas for three days and two nights with Andy MacKinnon and special guest Barb Wilson a Haida expert on traditional ecological knowledge. It will be outstanding.

4 more sleeps until Lou comes to Haida Gwaii... I cannot wait to share this special place with him.

Peace and love.