Into the Wild

Well, it has taken some time getting use to being back in the city. It seems like all I am doing is driving around and driving around some more. Part of that has to do with trying to find a place to live. It’s a bit challenging because most places want a one year lease and it is hard to sign a one year lease when school ends in eight months and then four months of work experience will probably not be spent in Edmonton.

It has been a pretty cool week though, settling back in. I wish we had a couple days off though to run around and take care of some personal items that got backlogged while I was away but things are slowly starting to come together.

We started silviculture again. I would have been nice to have a couple of more silviculture courses while we were out at Kidney Lake. It seems like the only course that I don’t have a good grasp on. We did have some courses as well as some exams but I guess I just feel a bit behind in this particular course. It could turn out to be one of my favorite courses though.

We had a chainsaw lab earlier this week and I was surprised at the location. We ended up across the street from the farm I grew up at so I was able to have a little walk down memory lane. I have a bit to improve upon for the chainsaw segment but I’m pretty safe, or safer then I would have been if I just picked up a chainsaw and started going.

Anyway, off to bed. Midterms are coming up and I have some latin to learn.

Well, we have returned from camp. It was a great deal of fun including all the late night sneaking around and practical joke playing. There were some good ones and I had some good ones pulled on me as well. It is amazing what you can do with a bear banger.Anyway the camp was really fun and over the six weeks I didn’t die at all. In total we had 17 mice in our cabin because of my roommates ability to leave food and food garbage all over. We also had a visit from a bear one night, but it wasn’t asfunnyas when some of the guys in camp pretended to be a bear and attacked out cabin. That was funny stuff.

On our last night we had some people come out, including the chair or the program and the dean of the department. The speeches were short and the food was great. I should also take a moment here to mention that all of our food was cooked by one of our campmates that used to be a chef.It seems a bit strange to be back in the city and I wish that I could have done a bit more writing about what it was like in camp including all of the funny stories and events that went on while we were all there. I didn’t want to give away private moments from any of my campmates lives though. Even though a lot of things are on the internet these days I felt a need torespecttheir privacy which is also why you will not see any pictures of them either. My instructors are a different matter though. They work for NAIT and have no choice.Speaking of NAIT, my blog is being commandeered by NAIT and will soon be moving to their website. It will be great fun and perhaps little easier for my to keep I up to date. I’ll post the new address when I get it as well as taking all these posts that I have already entered and move them over to the new blog.That is all for now but I will write more later tonight. Whew, catching up after six weeks in the bush is a full time job. Speaking of full time jobs, Jack Layton should get one.

I have been pretty swamped with school stuff and trying to finish my plant press so you get some pictures from this past week. One day I’ll have to fill everyone in on how to properly eat dirt and how I got a four wheel drive truck stuck on flat ground.

…you are doing really well in your engineering class and you like it.

I think I will go buy a pocket protector.

II’ve finished for the day and I am pretty happy about that. Today was supposed to be a day off for me but because of an admin error I had to go to class which wasn’t bad into itself. It did however throw a wrench in my plans of getting caught up in some subjects. Back in my career life I would never have made the decision to place the value of one over the value of four, but that is how it works when your in school if those are the cards you are dealt. Fortunately I got to work with a couple of my favorite instructors and had some fun even though there were some tests and assignments lingering in my mind.

As a side note make sure you keep focused on your class if your class has you running around with a chainsaw.

K, back to studying.

Yup, so after a weekend in Edmonton I am fortunate to come back for another three weeks of good fun tromping through the bush. Things have been taken up a notch, including visits from the night time mice.

I was pretty happy to head back to Edmonton even if it was only for a few days. Like any short trip though it was just not long enough. I was able to get a few things accomplished like buying some back to school clothes with my god-daughter. We also had some marble slab, that was a pretty nice treat as well.

So, I came back to a traverse that my partner and I had to do. Basically we walk through the woods and keep looking at sine pegs and hope that we did everything right. My partner is pretty cool and we were able to walk away with a 0.03% margin of error which was pretty good considering our margin for error could have been 1.0%.

Today we made a fire line during class and it was really interesting to see how it was done, and since I have some pics you can see as well. I think one is upside down but I will fix that when I get back.

Off to bed

My phone has been acting a bit strange, perhaps, from being in the bush. Anyway some of the blog entries are MIA but my phone might be fixed now.

What have in learned in my first three weeks in the bush as part of NAIT’s Forest Tech program? I need to work out when I get back a bit more often and there are some pretty cool people in my course.

Today was a great NAIT day. We started out with one of my favorite topics, wildfires and then progressed on to helicopters and then as the icing on the cake, we stopped at Tim Horton’s. Our first moment incivilization in three weeks.

I love our fire class. I love our fire class. I think I may have mentioned how much I love our fire class. I need to transfer some of that love to silviculture but I will leave that for another post.

Today was pretty cool as we learned about fire strategy and how fires react in various scenarios. It reminded me of old war movies where the generals would stand around a table with a map of the battlefield contemplating the best way to win the war. With so many variables in fighting wildfires it is like a war to a degree.

I think it would be pretty cool to be a bird dog and fly around with the overhead view of what is going in during the entire campaign. But, I will leave that for another post as well.

This afternoonwe went and toured the airport in Whitecourt and learned some specifics about some helicopters that are commonly used in fighting wildfires. I sat inside one and could see that it was a bit tight but I could also see thepotential for a lot of gear to be stored if packed right.

As much as everyone loved the helicopters, it was the surprise stop at Tim Horton’s that made everyone double happy. I wasn’t sure what to order though. After three weeks in the bush it as actually surreal seeing other people in another setting

Anyway, finished if the day checking on weather and then helping roll some hose. Not bad for a full day at school. I even played some crib.

P.S. Still using my phone. Please excuse grammatical errors.

We had some fun yesterday figuring out how to measure tree height and I’ll be damned if it didn’t work. However much fun yesterday was last night was even better and I am paying for it today.

In measuring the height of trees we use this handy little tool called a clinometer which basically takes you, the top of a tree, and the bottom of a tree and turns all three into a right angle triangle. After that with some simple calculations you can figure out the height of the tree. It was pretty fun and gives you an idea if how tall all these trees are that are around, if your into that type of thing.

However it was the massive campfire and scary stories that kept me up until four in the morning. We had some pretty good story tellers and then to our surprise someone went walking by at three in the morning and we were not able to figure out who it was but from the way in which they walking it seemed as though they were sleep walking. It was a but freaky especially since there have been so many wild animals spotted in the area. In fact, the tree right outside our front cabin door was used by a bear the other day to sharpen his claws. Nice. So I have started sleeping with my knife not that a knife will do much about a bear attack.

Anyway, one of our SRD guys has organized doing a HAC fitness test today to see where we fall. I’ll probably go but I have to study for to tests tomorrow as well as get ready for a six hour hike. So in saying that, I am out of here.

Today was the first of our two “death marches”, as they are so affectionately referred to, and it wasn’t that bad at all. Not only that I was able to put my farm boy knowledge to some practical use.

The third system of survey is an archaic way of dividing the province into small piece of land that all have a unique identifying number. It isn’t necessarily a bad idea, it is just using very old units of measurement. The interesting and fun part, well the part that was fun anyway, was now knowing where the term ‘section’, ‘quarter section’, ‘township’, ‘range road’, and ‘baseline road came from. However the real cool moment was finding one if the old survey markers that was used when this system was put into place.

Our death march actually took us from one survey market to another through some pretty hairy bush. I ripped my sappy shirt and got a bit tangled up in some logs, but it was a great hike after all and our instructor let us fire off some bear bangers.

Tonight is pretty low key as the rain is now coming down in sheets and the air is getting a but cooler. A good time to catch up on some sleep, which is what I plan to do tonight.

I forgot to mention that there have been some timber wolves spotted in camp. Cool.

Today I had a pretty good day learning about wildfire fighting and all the things our government is doing in fighting wildfires. Then, I got to actually run through the bush with the hose.

Our team definitely faced some challenges getting set up as one of our crew got lost in the bush for half-an-hour (me) while the rest of the crew worked on trying to get a broken water pump to work.

But, after the lost crew member (me) found their way back to the pump and we switched the pump for a new one, we were off to the races.

In a matter if minutes we seemed to have this system going that worked really well for us and in no time flat we had laid out 2000 feet of hose, the first and only crew to do so. It was the teamwork and communication that helped us reach the goal so quickly and efficiently.

So the experiment with the Icebreaker gear is going well but I have noticed they are getting a bit sappy. The layers I have for the weather we are getting is perfect. Now, I just need to get the sap out, or hope the sap comes out, when I get home.

I have decided that I need to make my entries briefer and more frequent. So today I did NOT chop any of my body parts with a chain saw. However I did get my chainsaw stuck in a tree. I was a little excited because I found a really big tree to “buck” (cutting a fallen tree into small pieces). In my haste a made a bad judgment call and the tree sort of sucked my chainsaw right in and then everything stopped. It was so bad I had to actually get a friend to cut my saw out.

In the meantime my shirt is as good as ever and my watch is fun to play with when I am bored.

I have also started trading one hour of Internet usage on my phone for food products that are more exciting then the ones I have.

: )

As always I am typing this on my phone so please ignore the bad spelling and horrible grammar.