High Desert Flier: Temporary insanity

I guess it all began when I didn't get much in the way of Fire Calls this summer. Goodness knows every thing in the West was either on fire or going to be on fire. My company, for what ever reason, got almost none of the calls for Water Tenders. I admit I was a bit frustrated. My bags were all packed, and I could be on my way in less that an hour. No one called.

I had wanted to get a Sauna for the place here, it seemed like the perfect addition for those cold winter nights and evenings. Finely, I got a call for Northern Nev. and spent about four days. Netting about $1100. Things were looking up. The Sauna's went on sale and they had the one that I wanted for $900. 00 off. Its a sale, right? So I jumped on it, and soon had it together and installed in the Shop.

All that worked out great, but I was still a $1000.00 in the hole. I wanted at least another job to finish paying for the thing. That led to me volunteering for other work that the company is doing. He is always short handed and having difficulty to find someone who would work. Something that I always find amazing, but not too surprising since it appears to be easier to get "free" money than it is to work for it.

Well it just so happened that he had a contract to "treat" about 724 acres of mixed Juniper and Pinion Pine forest. By treat, I mean to grind up enough trees so that they were spaced out about 30 feet apart. Basically a park type setting. I assume it is to slow any fires that might come that way, nothing is for sure however as there is really no rime or reason visible to the naked eye as to its real purpose.

This was to be accomplished with a couple of machines that are realistically "tree mowers".

This is the one that I ran.

This is what the forest is supposed to look like after we were done. The shredded areas used to be trees.

Some of it was pretty easy, as it was mostly Sage, the rest could go to

thick, "dog hair thickets". Lower down, the trees were fairly small.

Higher on the hill, to large formidable trees.

So we began getting every thing ready the 9th of October. Three days of hauling machinery and setting up camp.

The camp is at 6500 feet altitude. Every thing went well for a week, and by working 10 hour days, we were making some headway. Then on the 6th day of work the belts that powered the grinding head burned up. I will admit, that it was my fault. Bad technique I guess. Well that took about three days to fix, so I went home until they fixed it. The drive is 7 hours, so its nothing that I really am interested in doing on a regular basis if I can help it.

I went back on the 21st and met the new guy, who took the Boss's place, while he went to Colorado to work on another project. The idea was for the two of us to compete as much of the project as we could before the weather set in and stopped work. Kenny Smith is a rancher that has worked for EC (boss) for years and is very good at it, but doesn't work all that often. He mostly does Fire Boss work in the summer, and spends the rest of his time working on his ranch. I guess he too thought he needed some cash.

Kenny, being a Cowboy also prefers to cook with a campfire. My own particular motto is " patience my ass, I'm going to kill something", I preferred my gas griddle, but what the heck, never insult the cook. Even with a bit of Sage brush thrown in to flavor the fire, I have to admit he did well.

The weather of course kept getting a bit colder, but nothing really out of the normal range of comfort for a coat or jacket. My machine apparently has a hole in the heater core, so I had to glean whatever heat I could get out of the air conditioner side of the set up. If I tried to use the heater, the entire cab would fog up and I couldn't see a thing. As you might imagine with a whirling grinding wheel about 6 feet across and carbide teeth all over it, dust could be a bit of a problem. Visibility is a premium and a necessity. Windshield cleaning was a regular feature of work.

I had worked my way quite high up the hill and came on a great Pinion tree. It towered over all the other trees around it, and was crowned with lots of cones.

I guess the Pinion only has cones every third year??

Apparently this is the year.

These are where the seeds are. Notice the yellow at the ends of the cone "leaves", that is pitch. Lots of it! The area supported a lot of Ravens, Pinion Jays and Ravens. I only saw about 15 Jack Rabbits, two Coyotes, and six Cows. Nothing else there.

I noticed a skull over to the side of the Tree.

A wild boar! I was amazed, but I learned later that there were a few of them in the country.

The interesting part is the 30 cal bullet hole between his eyes. Its a bit low, but it was just high enough in the head to at least shock his brain and stop him. A very good thing for the shooter, Pigs really get pissed if you shoot them in the sinuses.

One good thing about the work, is that I had no time to take a nap. I got up at 5:30 in the morning, ran outside, started the generator, then perked a pot of coffee, made a lunch and breakfast. Work until 5 PM, fix dinner, read and try to stay awake until at least 9 PM and do it all again. I had cell service, barely, and thanks to a cell booster that I bought for $325.00, was able to get emails and call out. Its worth it to be able to talk to Karen on a regular basis. That way both of us could rest easy knowing that every thing was OK.

Then last Sat. my cell phone began dumping to a non existent voice mail, or just cutting off after two rings. The only place that I couldn't call was home. I could send an email however and could request Karen to call me. I spent one entire evening talking to Verizon and three days later I could again use my phone to call home.

We had gotten almost all of the easy stuff "treated" and then my machine again broke down. This time, it wasn't my fault, just general maintenance.

One of the problems that I was having was my left knee began hurting, bad! As the result of an old motor cycle injury in 1970, I had over the years developed a bit of Arthritis in it. Somehow working on the machine aggravated it so badly that it was swollen up and I had trouble walking or much of anything else. I was using a heating pad along with Ben gay and aspirin. None of it helped.,

Karen and the dogs came to visit on the 27th. and I took half of a day off. We had a good time and she went home on the 28th. Two hours into my shift the seal on one of the hydraulic heads went out. I limped back to camp, and after notifying the Boss, spent the rest of the day sight seeing. The day was a bit of a bust any way. It began raining after noon and there was snow on the higher parts of the job.

I visited the town Of Eureka Nev, and just drove around a bit. The next morning after talking with the boss, learned that it would probably take a week to get parts for the machine and to get it repaired. I elected to pack up and come on home. It is only going to get miserable, and more difficult as the month wears on. I was afraid to leave the trailer there for a week, with no one in it to keep it from freezing up. I just checked the forecast, up to 7 inches of snow by Monday. Time to go home. I had 128 hours, going to have to be enough.

It had been raining all morning, with a few snow flakes mixed in. The clouds were hanging just above camp, and the area that I broke down in had a skiff of snow on it.

The Mountains were all covered on their upper slopes.

On my drive home, I could finely see where the clouds part, and where all our rain goes. This is McDermitt, Nev. right on the border. If you will notice to the right is rain falling behind McDermitt, and to the left rain is falling on the Oregon Canyon Mt's. In the middle it is basically clear, and right in the middle is where our house is 49 miles north.

An evening in the hot tub, does wonders for sore knees. I even managed a good nights sleep in my own bed, and even though I was still grinding trees in my sleep, I woke to a new day, a new promise.