Thursday, December 22, 2016

How I Spent My Solstice Vacation


Day 70: While I was deciding how I wanted to celebrate Solstice this year, I received an invitation from the Nisqually Land Trust to join a work-party on that day. What better way to spend the occasion than in service to the Earth? My "annual leave" from Park duties parallels Kevin's since I ride up with him, so I had the day free. The project was touted as an "ivy-pull." English ivy is a major problem on many of our properties, but an earlier work party had cut it from the trees at this location (note the dead vines on the big cottonwood on the left), and our task involved removal of new shoots. Sounds fairly easy, right? It might have been, but for a heavy understory of five-foot high Snowberry concealing our quarry. You could never have guessed that six of us were hard at work within a 200-foot diameter circle. In fact, it was so dense that I couldn't see my work-mates even when they were only twenty feet away. The two hidden "Waldos" in this image were working near the river where I had the clearest vantage point to document volunteer attendance for the event.

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