New Friends

As Monica, Mari and Christina accompanied me to Idyllwild for supplies, we began to talk about how quickly and how well this year's crop of SCAP students have developed friendships. Despite coming from all over the country and from highly diverse backgrounds, they found that they had much in common ... a love of the outdoors, a strong interest in learning, a passion for games (ultimate frisbee, cards, ninja, karaoke), good computer skills, and an improving work ethic. Yeah, it took a couple of days to get them geared up for the intensity level of the fieldwork. But they learned that it gets easier when they work together and get it done before play time :-) One of the pleasures for me in mentoring SCAP teams is watching them bond. If only adults could learn to trust each other as quickly as my 2010 team. These pictures attest to the reality of instant friendships.

Its all about quality, not quantity

Monday:
The day began with an early start for the Blue Team, who unlike Team Orange had a monstrous hike ahead of them. After packing up all of the necessary materials we (Sarah, Colyer, Jesse, Monica, Chris and Rusty) headed towards Deer Springs. Team Blue was aware that this would be a difficult hike, but we were not prepared for the four mile ascend, during which we climbed approximately 3 thousand feet in the heat! After hiking for over 3 hours, we managed to use our last bit of strength to reach the camp site. Exhausted and extremely hungry, we settled underneath some shade, or in the boys case, on top of some rocks and filled our bellies. After lunch some of us...ahem Jesse, Colyer, Rusty and Chris decided to take a little Siesta in order to refill their energy tanks. Nap time didn't last long and we were soon up and running trying to find plant specimens. Unfortunately we were not able to collect nearly as many plants as Team Orange, but we did get to enjoy the view and the satisfaction of knowing that we mastered the climb, while they were lounging in their car.

Of course this wouldn't be an exciting day without a nose bleed. After 10 minutes of descending we get a call on the radio from Julie. She says, "Wisconsin (Mari) got a nosebleed and its not stopping. Wheres the medical center in Idyllwild?" After communicating back, Rusty told us that we had to get down as fast as we could to go help Mari. It felt like we sprinted down the mountain and in record time: about 1 hour. We quickly drove to Idyllwild to find Team Orange along with Mari eating snow cones. She was fine, but everyone else had interesting stories about their traumatic experience.

There was some discussion about teams and who was the best. Team Orange claimed that because they had collected 40 plus plants that they were superior, but we all know that Team Blue's hike up Deer Springs clearly wins the title.








Tuesday:
Yesterday morning began a little later than usual, Team Blue stayed behind to clean up the James reserve, while Team Orange got a head start on the days work. (We thought we should mention that Team Blue did an AMAZING cleaning job!) The drive to Santa Rosa Mountain was quite lengthy which meant that we had less time to collect. The road up the mountain proved difficult, with LOTS of rocks which made the ride very bumpy and uncomfortable. Once to our destination we collected unique specimens. Along the trail we found lots of trash. It seemed like Santa Rosa was the party mountain. Again, a day would not be complete without a nosebleed. The twist was that this one was not Mari, but Colyer. Who will be next?

Team Blue got to head out to Palm Desert once again to get some gas and other necessary materials. On our way out, we started a bet, to see who could pinpoint the temperature. On our last journey out there it was 115, so some of the guesses were pretty high. We guessed between 109 and 117. Surprisingly it was only 108, meaning Jesse won.

We came back to the James Reserve after picking up dinner to discover that Team Orange had collected 53 plant collections. Although they thought they got bragging rights we all know that its about quality, not quantity.

-Sarah and Monica