Dear BLP’ers, experience which you never had before and an ...

Dear BLP’ers,

Now that the winter is settling in, we can all look back at the

times we had this summer through these journal pages and

reflect on those times we had. These journals reflect a small

part of what the experience was about, written from your

perspectives. Through them, it will remind you of and

experience which you never had before and an opportunity

which not all have a chance to partake in.

Completing a BLP program brings with it a certain sense of

accomplishment that can only accompany spending time in the

woods with 11 other strangers who then become something of

a family. You forged friendships, scraped knees and fingers

together, and marveled at the work that a small group of

dedicated people can do when working in harmony. Although

not all times out there were perfect, I get the feeling that, in

the end, lives were changed as well as the landscape where

you found yourselves each week.

Thank you for continuing the legacy BLP and keeping the Legacy of NYC

alive in the forests we call the Pacific Northwest. The next generation of

NYC’ers will have the shoulders of giants to stand on – yours.

All the best,

Joe Waksmundski

Youth Corps Director

BLP 2-2012

CREWLEADER: Claire

CREW COLOR: BROWN

WEEK # 1

Today was our first day of work. We woke up at 6:30 ate beagles for breakfast. After

breakfast we put up our bear hang and our kitchen tarp. I must say both look real good.

After that we actually worked, with some on loppers and some doing tread it was a real

warm and good day. Towards the end Jesse came down to see our work. I’m not sure

but I think he thought we did a real good job.

Written By: Austin Russell

Today was pretty good. We have worked all the way down to the burn area and have

finished the majority of the wooden structures. It was a bit harder today because we are

all the way down the hill. In just the past two days we have already become a family.

Written By: Josh Abel

Today is the crews third day of work in the back country. We accomplished a lot, just

like we have the last 2 days. Our bodies are slowly adjusting and getting stronger as we

climb that monster of a mountain back to camp every day. Personally, I am conforming

back to my session last year and remembering everything I accomplished. It helps to

tackle a challenge when I think back to a hard moment last session. However I get the

vague feeling these challenges are only a warm up for the weeks to come. Muhahaha!

I’m looking forward to it.

Written By Kyndal Sorenson

Hallelujah, I didn’t have to do water today! Out of all the chores, that one is by far the

worst. No one wants to do it, especially after hiking so far back to camp. Today felt slow

to me, but I think we did a pretty good job. I hope the contact agrees. So far we’ve only

worked one, the one shortest trail, but we’re super close to the end. On top of working

we’re learning some pretty interesting leadership things. It’s really cool actually. BLP is

a lot different than being on a normal crew mostly because everyone has a strong mind

and personality, aka, everyone or rather a lot of us are good at voicing our opinions and

thoughts. Thankfully it hasn’t been a problem. Hopefully we’ll keep getting along well

and bonding. So far, week one’s been good! ☺

Written By: Pixie

Guess whose b-day was our first Friday! And guess what we finished today. Our first

trail! That right we finished the 2.2miles of trail numero Uno. Spirits are up on this lovely

Friday afternoon and everyone seems happy and accomplished.

Our camp has improved a lot since day one. We’ve got a functioning bear hang to my

right, a latrine to my left with a gorgeous view, and a curiously disturbing string of dead

flies proudly marking our kitchen area. All in all things are coming together nicely and

excitement is in the air for the weekend ahead.

Written By: Emily Vancleve

BLP 2-2012

CREWLEADER: Claire Abidog

CREW COLOR: BROWN

WEEK # 2

PROJECT NAME: Crooked Creek Trail Rehab

NATIONAL FOREST: Payette

Monday- Describe what your crew did this weekend:

We hiked out to re-supply and played a very fun game called Sherman’s tanks. The

game included blind folds and being directed around by a partner. Then Claire stayed at

the cabin for her day off, and we all hiked back with more food. Sunday we woke up late

and made chocolate pancakes and then went on an awesome day hike. We all hiked

back and took the rest of the day off. Sadly Emily announced she was leaving but

overall it was a good weekend.

Written By: Piper Sheldon Young

Tuesday- Describe your project this week; where are you, what are you doing, why?

We are in the Crooked Creek Trail area, working on cutting out fallen trees on the trail

so that when we are done we can clean the trail out better and dig in tread and define

the hinge.

Written By: Graham Harris aka Ritz

Wednesday- Today was eventful it took us two and half hours just to reach the part of

the trail that we finished yesterday ( which was little over 4 miles in). We also had to

split the crew in half so that some of us could stay at camp after work to do chores and

the others could go and get our fresh resupply.


Thursday- Today is Thursday and week 2 seems to go by both fast and slow

simultaneously. We continued to work on crooked creek 7 mile long trail. Instead of

doing a tremendous amount of hiking, we started from the beginning of the trail and

brushed and widened. This was a nice break from all the hiking, but most of us still

come back exhausted from doing tread and sawing trees. I personally am enjoying the

switch up of different things that need to be done on the trail. Tomorrow is Friday son!

Written By: Kyndal Sorenson

BLP 2-2012


CREW COLOR: BROWN

WEEK #3

Once upon a time in the land of No Return there lived a small family of furry chipmunks.

They lived in peace and harmony until one day a band of giants invaded their territory,

causing earthquakes and trampling their food. So the chipmunk family, the Bushy Tails,

sent out their best warriors, to raid the giants, and scare them away. The giants at first

thought the warriors adorable, but as the attacks grew more and more frequent they

started to counter attack! Some of them were peaceable vegetarians, these they did not

gnaw on or destroy their things. One giant tried to trap the bravest Bushy tail, Rufus, by

luring him under a pot with peanuts, but Rufus out witted his silly attempts. An angry

female giant was also this hard, for she hunted them with a Big Stick. The war between

the hairless giants and the mighty bushy tails escalated until one day a young chipmunk

by the name of Sheldon befriended the kind vegetarian. The small Pixie and the even

smaller Sheldon came up with a plan to bring peace to the two neighbors. So they

introduced everyone to the joys of Dookie and Nutella and peace reigned once again.

The End! ☺

Written By: Pixie

The day started with an overcast sky, and the air humid. Breakfast was not too bad. We

had boiling water to go with our flavorless cheerios, brown sugar, and “p-milk”. Josh and

Kyndall were our crew leaders today. Josh made us do forty push-ups because he

thought we were late by two minutes.

After warm up we hiked 3.9 miles to the last spot we worked. It didn’t take very long to

get there, but the hike back after work took forever! When we did get to the worksite, it

started misting rain on us. Thank God, it didn’t last more than a few minutes.

For some reason I thought everyone worked a little slow. Probably from being tired of so

much the day before.

In the evening everyone had begun to attack the dinner crew, “They” as in the crew;

thought that the cooks were not competent of making red sauce out of de-hydrated

tomato paste/powder.

Written By: Peter Kline

So today was terrible! Blake and Claire made Austin and I “LOD’s” Leader of the Day.

Let me tell you about these darn “LOD”s. First, people in the crew like to play this stupid

act. “Oh? What do we do now “LOD”?

I mean come on guys. It’s not like everyone in the crew spontaneously got amnesia.

And forgot where we left off the day before. Another little unforeseeable something

happened today. Our crew ran short on water, so everyone then became dry mouthed

walking zombies on our walk back from work early.

Austin believes we did great for being “leader of the day” I, on the other hand think

otherwise. Nothing seemed right. Like the kind where you ask yourself; why am I the

one doing this?

On the bright side, today is SUPER MEGA HUMP DAY! Were half way thru this

amazing, terrible and adventuress session! We will see if we can make it to the end

before the whole other half of the crew falls apart.


Today was and is our day off. Started off by having pancakes, then we hiked down for

resupply. We really didn’t face any challenges and didn’t really accomplish much. At

resupply we got all our food and then played camouflage. It’s a pretty fun game. Also

we did laundry and kinda sorta washed up then we hiked back once we got back to

camp we had some free time. At 4:15 we did Seed on how to build /Mura A shelter. It’s

pretty simple if you ask me. Now we are doing chores, water, shotgun, supper, and

Claire and Blake are playing cards and Blake is learning how to Shuffle.

Written By: Big Russ

Last day of work till our day off, still a kind of long hike to work but it happens. At work

LOD was Pixie and Kyndal. Both did an okay job. We did good/okay on trail work. We

only focused on trail that needs it most. Same with brushing and water bars and check

damns. We worked a normal 8 hour day. We normally are tired after work, but work

through it and then do it all over again.


BLP 2-2012


CREW COLOR: BROWN

WEEK #4

Well today we hiked about four miles to get to the worksite and started work. We started

to prioritize our tread work to only removing what is in the middle of the trail, and only

widen what is absolutely necessary. We got about half a mile closer after work, making

the hike a lot better.


Dehydration permeates the soul. One is constantly harassed by the thought of cool,

clean water, and receives disappointing results. The brown, bleached water soothes

the thirst but not the mind. Insult is added to injury when it is warm, or you find moss or

pollywogs in it. However, all these things are met with stride, for at least we always

make sure we have enough and don’t ration it. But alas! My sad Nutella jar is lacking!

With every spoonful I reverently place in my eagerly waiting mouth I know I will not have

some for another day in the near future. This chocolaty gift of heaven has saved my

sanity many a time. I have decided to take it on my solo, and consume it all in a full day

of relaxation and Nutella happiness, and since we’ll only have 4 full days after that, I’ll

survive with only having my beautiful sister’s homemade jam to console me. My only

thoughts on NYC are this: Bring food. Lots of yummy food or you will go insane and

start hunting chipmunks. Dear god, it’s already begun with the rest of them. It’s

madness I say! Madness! ☺

Written By: Pixie Herbert

Dear Journal,

On this fine day in the Frank Chruch wilderness of no return, romance was flowing all

around us. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing and singing us a sweet song, all

energy on this splendid day was uplifting and rejuvenating.

Josh and little miss pixie were our leaders of the day. They did a fine job. Ummm …. I

don’t know where I am going with this. We are currently relaxing at camp, din din is in

process, dookie has been made, bodies are decompressing.

Well Journal, I’m beat, Good Day!

Written By: Alyssa Miller

Today was good we worked another nine hour day which is going to make next week

awesome. I did my evaluation today and was quite pleased. Dinner was good and now

Claire is reading us “The Hobbit” so I have to go.


BLP 2-2012


CREW COLOR: BROWN

WEEK #5

The twenty third of August, is the last day for all of the “BLP” to spend alone together.

By the way, is today. We had a lot of fun together wandering the tourist traps called,

McCall. Claire, Allysa, and I met up with one of our contacts Jessie. He gave us a ride

to a store, and invited him to dinner with us at “Crusty”. By the way is an awesome pizza

joint! After having paid for three pizzas and being given a fourth for free. The crew

invited Jessie to come stay with us at our camp site in “Ponderosa Park”. That is where

we all are now, learning about Hera for our last “Seed” of the session.

Now after all our hard work together. We stand by each other around the fire sharing the

moment of life. Before all of us separate and take our own path to success and

adventure. Who may read this, I don’t know. Be assured that I had the privilege of

being on BLP with such unique individuals. I love my crew that I got to know in these

past five weeks! ☺


Well since there is no topic these things normally ask you about I will just talk about how

BLP has gone so far. The work is hard the dust blinding as our tools cut out chunks of

the earth so others may enjoy this place and that makes me happy. We have got a lot

done so far lots of cutting and digging and now we are at the end of BLP everyone is

tired sore and fighting over stupid things but hey that is what 5 weeks of being stuck in

the same place will do to you, me myself hate the fighting I think it’s a waste of time and

energy, sometimes you just have to deal with it sadly. �

Written By: Graham Harris AKA Ritz

Today was an alright day. Woke up at normal time 5:30am; working by 6:00am. Worked

for a few then packed up camp took 2 hours or so. Then we worked a bit longer, some

trail work, but mostly focused on replacing check dams and water bars, we finished at

I’m not exactly sure what time. Then Hiked to the cabin where we were greeted by

Jesse and the two interns. Then suddenly Jesse and Claire and both Interns started

throwing water balloons at us. Many were soaked except me. I hate getting me. So I ran

away, we spent the night in the cabin drinking cocoa and tea and just having a good

time. I myself had a good time.


Today has been great. I woke up after the sun was high in the sky. Had a lot of

pancakes with peanut butter, syrup and brown sugar. Yummm!!! For the entire morning

after stuffing myself, I and the crew hung out and read magazines. Oh, and I can’t forget

the music we all had the privilege of listening too. Around one o’clock we met up to

weigh our gear for the plane ride tomorrow. Then we broke off again for lunch. Being off

work and a little hungry, I made three and a half PB&J’s. MMMMM. ☺

You must think I’m a big fat pig for doing that. But you got to understand that I have a

high metabolism and am very skinny.

Today for Seed Zebulon read out of his forest fire training book. This was really

interesting. Then Kyndal taught us the rules to the game “La Cross”. Learning how to

play makes me want to join a college sports team. But today has been a pretty good

relaxing paradise.


Dear Journal,

Pretty good day all in all, woke up and it was a freezing night and very cold morning. We

woke up and packed up all things. Brought everything down to where the planes picked

us up at. We were picked up around 8:45 am and we had a pretty long (30min) ride

back. At the Airport we got coffee, cocoa and popcorn. Really enjoyable. Then we did a

store stop. We got some food. Thus are headed to “Ponderosa Pine State Park” We are

going to camp tomorrow night we will go out for pizza. We all went wading and

showered! Good Day!

Written By: Russell

BLP 2-2012


CREW COLOR: BROWN

My Most Challenging Day at NYC Was…

My most challenging day at NYC was when my feet were all red and blistered and we

had to hike about 5 ½ miles to work. I remember it seeming like all day. But by the time

first tool count rolled around the hike was over and we were to work. By then my feet

had time to rest and get used to walking on all the sore spots; after a few hours. I didn’t

mind.


My Most challenging day at NYC was when I was really having a hard time with my

dad’s anniversary of death and I was pretty frazzled and almost cried on Claire and that

was just really hard. I was fried that day. Evals were good though.

Written By: Pixie

I think it would have to be after 3 days of hiking 13 miles each day my feet hurt so bad

after that walking only a few miles was hard. Sometimes I thought I could not make it

because of the pain but I did and am proud of it.


Second week of this session on Monday was the hardest hike ever.


Hiking the 6 miles to work and back as well as working a full day. The end of the day felt

so good.


The first week I wasn’t feeling too splendid.


Hiking six mile back to camp after hiking six miles to work, and doing six hours of work.

�


From Now On I Will Always…

From now on I will always be happy and thankful and appreciate what I have and don’t

have

Written By: Austin

Be thankful for toilet paper!

Written By: Pixie

Try even harder to be a better leader.


I will always try to be a leader.


Work harder than ever and know myself better so I can make better choice.


From now on I will not lose my thirst for challenge.


Work hard.

Written By: unknown

Live my best by the saying “Carpe diem”! ☺


My Three Favorite NYC Experiences Were…

My first NYC experience would be being flown in on a little puddle jumper airplane into

the Frank Church Wilderness; also the time when I saw 3 really huge bucks, and to cap

it off working different trails and completing them in time.


Making pancakes and drinking coffee Tuesday morning☺. Kyndal’s PH, haha and

scenarios. Jesse bringing us cookies ☺

Written By: Pixie

Just getting to do BLP. Also starting to get to know the crew and hearing the awesome

seeds that people taught.


Everything. waking up early, the beautiful- magnificent sunsets/rises we got to gaze at

every day. The strenuous hikes on the workdays. The crew all of the laughs.


Fresh Air, Good Views, Jesse’s Cabin.

Written By: Unknown

Walking six miles to work in the morning. Watching the sun rise and all the joke we told

each other ☺.


One Thing I Will Always Remember:

One thing I will always remember is the nights we spent in the meadow at the Cold

Meadows Guard Station. It is defiantly the life to live.

Written By: Austin

The view from the lookout.

Written By: Pixie

This crew and all the good times we had.


My Mohawk Family.


The fun that I had on this crew and all the awesome people that I met.


The fresh morning air and all of the beautiful sunsets/sunrises.


Fresh Air!

Written By: Zeb Long

I will always remember our contact Jesse Lutz! Coolest individual ever!


At NYC I Learned…

At NYC I learned better communication skills with people I didn’t really know. As well as

on the job, also how to put up with people I really couldn’t handle before. As session

went on it got better, and lastly what it feels like to lead a crew.

Written By: Unknown

How hard is it to be a crew leader! Dang! That I’m super passive aggressive, and how

not to be; and I also learned that everyone as bad things in their life.

Written By: Pixie

I learned how to be a better leader and to get along with others also how to dig the best

trail I have ever done yet.


I learned team work, integrity, and that this is my family.


I learned more about myself and about working hard. I also learned more about being a

leader and about relating to people.


I learned an immense amount about working with people from all walks of earth. As well

as how I can improve my leadership skills.


I learned how to be patient with other people.


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