Cleaning Up!

Here in Joseph, volunteers have been working hard all week to renovate the city park with some fancy new play structures. My housemate suggested that I volunteer too, since it would be a good opportunity to meet some other people in town. I was happy to oblige, and showed up this afternoon ready to work up a sweat. Since it was the last day of the build, after taking down a few tents, I got the inglorious and delightful task of shop vacuuming plastic shavings out of the grass. I'm certain I made a good impression with the members of my new community, because several came over to either apologize for the absurdity of the situation or laugh about it with me. The lady who vacuums grass, yup that's me!

It actually felt pretty rewarding. I filled several large trash cans with tiny plastic shavings that came from all the playground equipment having been cut out of dimensional plastic. Since the park is directly adjacent and upslope of the Wallowa River, I feel like I've done a good thing for the aquatic community of this town too.

The playground build at Joseph City Park. Minimal plastic shavings remain under that Safeway tent!

Slickrock Falls- accurately named, whether colloquial or not.

This evening I went over to Hurricane Creek to check out the trail conditions, and was delighted to find only a few patches of snow between the trailhead and what I've heard called "Slickrock Falls" a few miles up valley. Spring has barely arrived in that north-draining catchment, with buttercups as the sole bloomers that I noticed. Even the buds on aspen had not burst yet. I wonder if there are glacier lilies in this area like there was in McCall, because that was one of the first things I remember coming up last spring. Animal sightings were sparse too, though I did see a couple hen grouse on the way down Hurricane Creek Road, and Jasper terrorized a jackrabbit along the trail. I'm looking forward to exploring further along down the trail soon.

Spring in Joseph

Spring is here, and as usual, it brings with it a change in geography for me. Instead of migrating to the Arctic, or feeling like I finally left it when spring came in McCall, today I moved to Joseph, Oregon. Jasper's here as my first mate, currently enjoying his rank by snoring on my knee.

The view of the Wallowas from my new home in Joseph, OR this morning. Photo credit: SV.

While in Joseph, I'll work part-time at Backyard Gardens, a small vegetable and flower farm, and continue my dissertation research and writing. I'll also be acquainting myself with the surrounding region, which includes such diverse places as the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Hell's Canyon, and the Zumwalt Prairie.

This year I have an unusual context- it's been the wettest spring on record across much of the Pacific US, and the impacts were clear on the drive here. The Wallowas were thickly frosted with snow, and while there wasn't as much flooding as when I came here to interview a month ago, the rivers and streams I crossed were still swollen with meltwater. Still, life pushes stubbornly against its environment, and the fields and forests are coming alive with the delicate green of new leaves. I'm excited to closely observe what the summer brings and invest myself along side it.

Precipitation this winter has been unusually high, compared to the 1985-2010 average, and dark green areas such as Pocatello, ID and Joseph, OR have seen record totals.