Day 1-4 (BioDreyland)
I apologize for the tardiness of this because it was last week and I have four other days to cover tomorrow but here is the story of BioDreyland Session 1.
To accurately describe I must lead in with the fact that I had planned to hang with a group of friends the night before, unaware that we were to leave Sunday morning and it was Saturday night. I realized that I had misread the email en route to my friends and had to turn around and go to the store to get the gear that I did not already own and pack everything. Nevertheless, the next morning hit and and I was prepared to go out into the wilderness with a horde of 9th graders.
Day 1: We got onto the buses and Collin and I proceeded to doze off intermittently, and when we weren't dosing we halfheartedly sang along to the golden albums of Taylor Swift, AKA the only true country ones. When we arrived we all unpacked and got our stuff into the cabins after a brief orientation and finding out who was in each cabin. I personally had a great cabin of guys who were both fun and ground out the packet as well as they could. I had Adisa, Steven Busch, Caleb Randall, Caleb Meritt, and Charles Martin. The first day was pretty routine despite the brisk forty degree water during the stream study which caused everyone's feet to go numb after about thirty seconds after submerging them. All was sunny that day and none of us smelled strongly of bug spray.
Day 2: The next morning the day was overcast and group C, the one Alex, Collin and I were assigned to accompany and assist facilitate, was placed in stream that morning. As we were in the water, Collin and I had special job given to us, wade/swim (with life jackets of course) into the colder faster water and use clippers and a hand saw to cut a log and some limbs hanging in and under the water to see if we could clear half of the "creek" for the float trip. Collin and I did this with much trepidation, as it required him bracing against the part of the log that we weren't cutting and supporting me against the water as I cut the log. The water was almost up to my chest at this point and fast so you can understand why we had such difficulty. Once we cut the major log, Collin would proceed to lift the underwater limbs that were long, and I braced the clippers against my life jacket and cut the limbs which were about the size of my forearm in diameter. We got out of the water then and assisted the rest of the studies after a good 15 minute break to warm our numbed bodies, and went on to forest where we studied the trees of the different zones of Dreyland. In the afternoon Collin and I once again got the special commission to attempt to cross the low-water bridge, and determine whether or not it was safe enough to do so with or without our assistance supporting them. I was the one that went into the water with a rope lasso that I held onto while Collin anchored me. It was pretty fast and slippery but the water was lower there than at the gravel bar where we did the cutting of the branch, so we ended up going through with the study but with me and Collin’s support. After that we had the enjoyable time of looking for bugs in the forest which was pretty interesting because there were some interesting red centipedes and black salamanders with yellow spots that we actually saw through moving downed logs. That night we did cookout and ate our steamboats over the fire.
To accurately describe I must lead in with the fact that I had planned to hang with a group of friends the night before, unaware that we were to leave Sunday morning and it was Saturday night. I realized that I had misread the email en route to my friends and had to turn around and go to the store to get the gear that I did not already own and pack everything. Nevertheless, the next morning hit and and I was prepared to go out into the wilderness with a horde of 9th graders.
Day 1: We got onto the buses and Collin and I proceeded to doze off intermittently, and when we weren't dosing we halfheartedly sang along to the golden albums of Taylor Swift, AKA the only true country ones. When we arrived we all unpacked and got our stuff into the cabins after a brief orientation and finding out who was in each cabin. I personally had a great cabin of guys who were both fun and ground out the packet as well as they could. I had Adisa, Steven Busch, Caleb Randall, Caleb Meritt, and Charles Martin. The first day was pretty routine despite the brisk forty degree water during the stream study which caused everyone's feet to go numb after about thirty seconds after submerging them. All was sunny that day and none of us smelled strongly of bug spray.
Day 2: The next morning the day was overcast and group C, the one Alex, Collin and I were assigned to accompany and assist facilitate, was placed in stream that morning. As we were in the water, Collin and I had special job given to us, wade/swim (with life jackets of course) into the colder faster water and use clippers and a hand saw to cut a log and some limbs hanging in and under the water to see if we could clear half of the "creek" for the float trip. Collin and I did this with much trepidation, as it required him bracing against the part of the log that we weren't cutting and supporting me against the water as I cut the log. The water was almost up to my chest at this point and fast so you can understand why we had such difficulty. Once we cut the major log, Collin would proceed to lift the underwater limbs that were long, and I braced the clippers against my life jacket and cut the limbs which were about the size of my forearm in diameter. We got out of the water then and assisted the rest of the studies after a good 15 minute break to warm our numbed bodies, and went on to forest where we studied the trees of the different zones of Dreyland. In the afternoon Collin and I once again got the special commission to attempt to cross the low-water bridge, and determine whether or not it was safe enough to do so with or without our assistance supporting them. I was the one that went into the water with a rope lasso that I held onto while Collin anchored me. It was pretty fast and slippery but the water was lower there than at the gravel bar where we did the cutting of the branch, so we ended up going through with the study but with me and Collin’s support. After that we had the enjoyable time of looking for bugs in the forest which was pretty interesting because there were some interesting red centipedes and black salamanders with yellow spots that we actually saw through moving downed logs. That night we did cookout and ate our steamboats over the fire.
Day 3: That morning we went to stream and just did routine tests, nothing that required outlandish water work. Because of that it seemed pretty uneventful but that's not necessarily a bad thing because it wasn't stressful. We finished up the forest tests later by drawing the forest flora and going from zone to zone. In the afternoon we did forest first and a group of us seniors floated the creek to see whether or not it was going to be doable with the 9th graders. There were one or two trouble spots but nothing we thought we couldn't handle if we took the right precautions such as placing a senior in a place in case people went wide. Later right after lunch we did the seining in the stream (I think that is how you spell it), and while it was a little difficult because of how fast the water was, we ended up getting good results and having a good time in the sun. Forest was just doing raw data in the end and didn't end up needing us so we played cards with another team that was done for the afternoon. After all of that we went on the float. It was very relaxing at the beginning but once we got the first trouble point I saw that something was about to wrong. One of the freshman girls was going too far to the side and into the faster water, on a path to collide with the log that we had left uncut as it was too dangerous for us to go further, I quickly thought about how it would go down, the log was high enough to miss her tube and hit her in the head, and if she ducked down she would whack into the underwater portion and either get stuck or sucked under, neither of which is safe. So I got out of my tube and swam over, placed my back up against the log above water and stood on the underwater branches since I couldn't touch the bottom. I had her ditch the tube before she got over to me and caught her, the water on impact sucked her head briefly under but I pulled her out and swam with her over to the rest of the group where we got back into our tubes and continued the trip. The rest of the evening passed by nicely until massive storm hit, hailing the size of golf balls, and ridiculous amounts of lightning while us seniors took our evening off in a new pavilion as the kids were all doing their packets. We ended up waiting the storm out there until eleven, it started at seven, and after we promptly fell asleep.
Day 4: The day went by pretty quickly, Collin, Margaux, and I all pitched in with a pick and two shovels to help make slopes out of the new rain divits on the road so that the cars could drive. We had a brief breakfast where we learned the Blues had made it to the conference finals and we all cheered. Then, as a cabin, we all packed up our stuff and put it on the cars to meet the buses which I helped load, skipping the two mile hike YAY. We got back home on time and overall it was a great experience. I got to meet a lot of people I hadn't before in the freshman class and revisit one of my favorite places.
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