Arizona ACE, Week 5

Well, we made it through the budget cuts!  I think.  They passed a budget for the rest of the year, and we didn’t get sent home yet, so that’s good news.  Right? The $38.5 billion that was cut hit other programs, so Americorps is safe for the rest of the year.  The EPA took a big hit, which will show all those snobby trees and plants. Your free ride stops here, environment.

Anyway, with our jobs secure, we returned to work. This time we were doing fencing at Lake Mead (which is the lake that the Hoover Dam holds back).  It was a vastly different experience than our time in Hack Canyon.  We stayed at a campground (with showers! And water!) and our group was much bigger (37 people instead of 14).  The first few days, we did mostly hauling; carrying t-posts, cement, and wire to the fence. 2 miles through the desert.

The goal was to build a big barbed wire fence to keep out cattle, but I have no idea what kind of cow would ever want to live here.  Most of the green out there was cacti and the temperature was in the 80’s and 90’s the whole week.  Also, there were plenty of these guys around:

The back half of the week, four of us were put in charge of running the pionjar (pronounced: poon-jar).  The pionjar is a gas-powered jack-hammer and we needed it to drill holes for the t-posts into rocky sections.  The first two days, the pionjars we brought out to the rocks didn’t work, so we did a lot more repairs and struggling against the pull-cord than we did actual drilling.  By the end of the week, our 37 man crew had pounded posts along 2.5 miles of fence and strung wire a mile and a half.  We, meanwhile, had drilled 22 holes. Or about 150 yards.  Accomplishments!

One more hitch with ACE (likely an encore at Lake Mead) and then our time in Arizona is over.  That means that our Americorps year is almost ¾ finished. I’m starting to hear the fat lady.  She’s warming up for her aria.