Chocolate Strawberry Kabobs!?

An article about my recycling project was printed in The Register-Guard (the Eugene, Oregon newspaper) today. That means, a newspaper a full 125 miles away (as the car drives) picked up my story. Pretty cool!

The story has been in the Coos Bay newspaper The World 3 times in the last week and was even on the front page (within a larger “Fair goes green” article) yesterday.

I look forward to sitting at the CoosWA/Recycling booth in the natural resources tent at the Fair on Friday and Saturday; helping kids make “Sammy the Salmon” and “Billy the Beaver” puppets, directing people to the native plants display, recruiting volunteers and e-newsletter subscribers, and educating people about local recycling.

Other highlights should include milkshakes at “The Purple Cow,” chocolate strawberry kabobs, taking a video of how ridiculous llamas are up-close, and maybe even a ride on the Ferris wheel.

The Eagle Has Landed

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon. I celebrated by seeing a marathon of free documentaries about the Apollo missions at the Egyptian Theatre.

First was “For All Mankind,” a documentary comprised of all original footage and some narration. The most impressive parts were the up-close views of liftoff (it looks so slow at first) and of Buzz and Neil bouncing around in their lunar rover “golf cart.”

The second movie was “In the Shadow of the Moon,” another [Ron Howard!] documentary that was mostly based on interviews with the actual astronauts. I think Mike Collins is hilarious (he was the guy who had to stay in the command module while Neil and Buzz got to walk on the moon). “I was described as the loneliest man in the universe. Which really isn’t true. I had the command center yakking in my ear half the time. So, it was actually nice to go around the far side of the moon.” [where they couldn't send him radio transmissions]

Did you know Apollo 15's David Scott performed Galileo's gravity experiment on the moon? Sure enough, the hammer and the feather hit the ground [lunar firmament] at the same time.

It was interesting to hear from the Apollo astronauts how they felt about being involved in this mission while the rest of the world was dealing with the free love, civil rights, and women’s rights movements and the Vietnam War. They said that they sometimes felt they were living in a bubble and that some of them have extreme guilt complexes about not fighting in the Vietnam War. After all, most of them were fighter pilots before they were recruited as astronauts.

It was also crazy to think how much they accomplished with the technology of the 1960s (those computer images looked ancient!). And we haven’t been back to the moon since…

NASA has a great website they are building to commemorate the Apollo missions. Check it out here.

It's Happening!

Recycling at the Coos County Fair is definitely happening this year. I am so excited! I feel like this project could really make a difference. 50,000 people are estimated to attend the event over 5 days. If only half of those people buy a soda bottle, water bottle, or soda can, and only half of those people actually put it in the recycling bin: then that is still making a big difference.

I have also never coordinated a project that impacts such a wide geographic scale. I sent this press release out to 23 media outlets (6 radio stations, 6 TV stations, and 11 newspapers (including The Oregonian in Portland!)). And am anxiously awaiting some actual press coverage. I mean, who wouldn't want to write or talk about a county fair implementing a recycling program after 94 years?!The best part: "Marley Bice, an AmeriCorps volunteer through the Northwest Service Academy, is coordinating recycling for the Fair. “We hope to be able to divert the majority of single-use beverage containers from landfills, thereby reducing the negative environmental impact of this community event,” said Bice, who is serving as Watershed Outreach Organizer for the Coos Watershed Association this year."

Le frigo est plein de boustifaille

Wow, some days I am shocked by the stuff you find on the Internet (usually in a good way). Here are some awesome pages I found today just in my usual travels of reading my environmental e-newsletters, working on native plants fact sheets, and lots of randomness.

• Ever wondered if you need to refrigerate mustard or if those eggs really should be thrown away as soon as the sell by date passes? Check out stilltasty.com for these answers and lots of other tips about how to reduce the amount of food you throw away unnecessarily.
• Want to get outside but don’t know anything about local nature preserves or parks? Check out the National Wildlife Federation’s NatureFind application.
• Want to watch a time-lapse video of a stand of trees changing into their fall foliage? Virginia Tech’s dendrology website has a cool video.
• Need some help working up an appetite? Check out the Rogue Brewing Company’s menu! They are just up the road in Newport, Oregon.
• Need a reason to go to Colorado? Check out the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre. They have a really cool sounding “Film on the Rocks” program on Tuesday evenings. Who wouldn’t want to watch movies in a natural rock amphitheatre that is taller than Niagara Falls in the Rocky Mountain foothills?

The Mt. Adams Experience

I did a lot of hiking in Washington this past week. Firstly, on the way to my AmeriCorps training, I had to take a detour on to Washington state highway 14 because a truck with tens of thousands of pounds of hot asphalt turned over on interstate 84, closing the highway for almost the entire day. Although I was at first bummed about this detour because I had planned on hiking Multnomah Falls (again), this detour ended up sending me past Beacon Rock, the second largest rock mass in the world that I wasn’t able to summit in January due to high winds. Thus began the series of hikes.

Beacon Rock was a 1-mile hike to a summit at 850 feet (approximately 850 feet elevation gain – it is right on the Columbia River). The next day, I hiked to the top of Sleeping Beauty peak, a 1.2-mile hike to 4,900 feet elevation (1,400 feet elevation gain). The abandoned lookout at the top provided amazing views of Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Rainier (before the clouds covered it up). We could hear a thunderstorm brewing on Mt. St. Helens and it was clearly raining on the South Butte of Mt. Adams, where a group of us would be hiking the next day.

View of Adams from Sleeping Beauty Peak

The next day after hours of being in the sun and walking around, 11 of us started up the South Spur trail of Mt. Adams at 6 pm. (All along I had thought we were starting this hike on Saturday morning…) This left us with 3600 feet to our goal; “the Lunch Counter,” and less than 4 hours of daylight to get there. Another thing that made this trip difficult for me was the snow conditions. I was prepared (or thought I was) for the idea of having to hiking a snowfield up to the false summit (so, starting at 9000 feet). But it turned out there was up to 2 feet of snow starting at 6500 feet.

Early on, on the trail.

I was extremely thankful for loaned ski poles and yak traks but after 2000 feet of snow hiking, I knew I wasn’t properly equipped for another 4000 feet of it. So, I decided to stay at base AmeriCamp at 8300 feet the next day while most of the other people got up at 4 am to hike to the summit. It turned out I was perfectly content to sleep in until 8 am and wake up with a panoramic view of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest 3000 feet below.

Getting dark on the first night

Sunset from 8300 feet with Mt. St. Helens to the East

Marley and Mt. Hood to the South the next morning

In my 3000 feet of hiking, there was one snowfield that was particularly adventurous to traverse. On the way up, we had to kick-step-pause up a 100 foot “snow ladder” a la the Klondike Gold Rush ladder. And, on the way down, the “safest” way to get down this snowfield was by glissading the 300-foot drop from farther up the snowfield. At the time, I was, well… scared, but looking back it was fun and other than several scraped knuckles, I came out unscathed.

View from the top of the snowfield

View from the bottom of the snowfield. Marley and the glissade chute in the background.

In fact, we all got as far up the mountain as we were comfortable with, and all got back down safely under clear skies the entire time. Some days, you can’t ask for more than that. Plus those huckleberry smoothies back in Trout Lake were awesome.

She's Going to do What?!

I can hardly believe it either, but in less than a week, I will be tackling my biggest physical and mental challenge ever: Mt. Adams. Mt. Adams stands at a mighty 12,276 feet above sea level, above cloud level, above comfortable oxygen level…

Adams is a stratovolcano but it hasn’t erupted in the last 200 years and it is second in eruptive volume only to Mt. Shasta within the Cascade Range. But it is still active; the USGS reports that there are “fumaroles emitting steam and hydrogen sulfide in the crater area.” The main cone is estimated to be 220,000 years old.

Adams, along with Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood, has been described by Northwest Indians for centuries. It has been called Klickitat and Pahto in different legends. Interestingly, its current name is left over from an 1839 scheme to make the Cascades the Presidential Range.

I will be setting off on the 11.6 round trip, South Spur Trail with a group of fellow AmeriCorps friends in the wee hours of July 11th. We will spend the night in bivouacs at a place called the “Lunch Counter,” make water by melting snow and throwing in iodine tablets, and then hike to the summit!

Hiking with an overnight pack (extra food, clothes, tent, sleeping bag, etc) will be harder but I think it will be worth it to sleep on a mountain at 9000 feet. I hear the stars are amazing. Plus, I hear the worst part is the snowfield up to the false summit, “Pickers Peak,” so better to attack that after a few hours of rest. Although some hikers have said it feels like a 45-degree climb, the max angle on the whole trail is [only] 30-degrees.