Mission accomplished

People keep asking me what it's like, but it's difficult to describe exactly how it feels, sitting here on my (uncomfortable) ACE mattress on my last evening here, having returned to Santa Cruz yesterday from my final project.

Yesterday, when we returned, ACE's head honcho Chris Baker appeared at the house having travelled all the way from Flagstaff (that's the main ACE base), and assembled all 22 of us volunteers to ask us about our views and experiences of ACE California. Upon reflection I found myself feeling indescribably happy to be done: to have finally completed my ten weeks of difficult, gruelling, often boring and sometimes thankless tasks that have constituted my "conservation" experience. I've struggled with the sometimes amateurish work of what you might ironically refer to as the ACE "organisation". I have felt so frustrated, thinking about what I would change about the projects and the way it's all done if only I were in charge.

But I can't deny that I have some brilliant memories, met some great people, seen some really very beautiful places, built up some good arm muscles, worked in some crazy situations, and generally feel that these past ten weeks have been well, well worth it. I wouldn't say that I'm exactly sad that to be leaving tomorrow - not yet, anyway - but I do suspect that getting back home (after my two-week roadtrip with cousins on the East) will be a bit of a strange experience.

I won't miss waking up in the dark at 6am to defrost the ice in the cooking pot in order to make coffee. I won't miss being yelled at by crazy Europeans for passing the logs down the human chain to the roadside too quickly. I won't miss finding cactus needles in my socks (the painful way) or being charged through the teeth for my swollen mosquito bites. I certainly won't miss the endless, mind-numbing monotony of repeating the same simple but physically demanding task over and over again for ten hours a day.

But I will miss being in California. I'll miss the crisp air of the mountains and the marine layer of mist that hangs over the Pacific in the morning. I'll miss being governed by the Terminator, and seeing all the weirdos inside and outside the 7-11 on the corner. I will miss the lovely people I've met from all over the world, whom in all likelihood - let's face it - I'll never see again, and the word games we played to keep our minds from imploding with boredom during the hardest days of project. I will miss the novelty of being the only English person around!

Would I recommend ACE to a friend? Well, cautiously, yes. I guess if I'd known what I was in for from the beginning I probably would have steered well clear, and I suppose that means I'm grateful for my ignorance, because I am so glad to have done it. I guess the toughest things turn out to be the really good things - the important things in life - and as a coward that means I have to not know in advance how tough they're going to be!

I'm not sure if I'll keep writing in this blog as I travel on the East. After all, I think I can say I've won already.

Thanks for following this blog. Unlike lots of people I've met here on ACE, I really do love my life back home, and it means a lot to me to feel like in some way my friends and family are here with me. I miss you lots, and am really looking forward to seeing everybody when I get back.

Until then... word.

p.s. anyone know of any fun job vacancies for December..?

Final ACE weekend off...

So Daylight Savings Time is finally paying me back the one hour I invested back in March. I feel like I used to when I got back from my swimming lesson, put the key back in my locker, and suddenly had 20p in my hand, and thinking of all the things I could do with it.

Well, it looks like I'm spending my bonus time by writing in this blog. I'm pretty sure I'd be better off using it by sleeping in preparation for another week's hard work, but this seems more appealing right now.

Let me first say this: this project really does SUCK. All day, every day, we haul logs up a big bank to the roadside. And stack them. It's a lot like the Yosemite project only this time we're in a sizeable neighbourhood location (rather than in a meadow in a National Park), the logs are heavier, and the bank is steeper. Our supervisor, Kyle, is hard to please and during our work days seems to say nothing to encourage us and is quick to criticise even when everyone is sweating and aching from working so hard. We work from 7am on the dot til 5pm on the dot. Oh yeah, and instead of being too hot for little old English me, it's been freezing. Literally, every night (down to -11c), and some of the days. Three weeks before the ski season begins, and we're camping!

But secondly I'll say this: I love Lake Tahoe. My weekend off has been amazing. I've cycled miles, sorted a load of admin stuff for my post-ACE trip, walked around a lot, sat out by the campfire (in multiple layers of clothing of course), seen some incredible views, and enjoyed the new dynamic of a very different team. Within the crew we have three 18-year-old boys, whom I could very well imagine being some of "my kids" All Saints (except for their American/Dutch accents), as well as representatives from Spain, Italy, Korea and Germany too. Supervisor Kyle is surprisingly fun to hang out with outside of work time. I'm far from at the "core" of this group - there's not one person that I knew before I came out here, and many of them have already been on project together - but I'm very much happy with it being that way, just sitting back, watching, happy to hang out with one or two people or on my own.

Here are some pictures from the last couple of days:


Moonrise over the mountains


Fallen Leaf Lake at twilight


The boys (some of them)


"Inspiration point", overlooking Emerald Bay


Incredibly clear water of Tahoe as viewed from Nevada beach which I cycled to, just across the stateline.

Only four more days of ACE to go!

God bless you, DRob

Sometimes the task of updating my blog towers over me like that of a rental car I've not figured out how to book yet, or the ordeal of unpacking and packing my stuff that I'm yet to tackle since my return to Santa Cruz. You might think this is a good thing - an indicator of how much there is to say; of how many crazy fun experiences I'm having. On the other hand, it could simply be a result of the fact that I don't really feel I have any great insights to share - or at least that my thoughts are too jumbled up to digest them sufficiently to result in any amusing anecdotes or profound reflections. What's most likely to result is either an incoherent stream of consciousness - which might help me to process my experiences but is largely meaningless to anybody else, even my own parents (who probably comprise about 50% of my viewing figures) - or alternatively it will end up as one of those lists of "things I have done recently", the type that Miss Foley used to complain about every week of class 13 when it came to writing our journal.

And I wouldn't like to upset either my mental “Miss Foley” or my literal mother, which makes updating this thing seem (probably unnecessarily) stressful. Ah, woe is me!!! Haha.

Life is good though. I mean, when I think about it, even though I'm tired, it's really very good.

It was strange leaving Catalina: our last breakfast together; digging up my last root; saying goodbye to the small Conservancy community at the Tuesday pot luck (where a beautiful man named Marco, Catalina's school music teacher, persuaded me to play a couple of songs pretty badly on Charlie's guitar). It'll probably feel even stranger tomorrow morning when Amelia and Liz head back to Two Harbors with the new crew and I'm not with them. It had really become a pretty cosy little life for the six of us. We'd become fluent at the “kitchen dance” necessary for all making our breakfast in such a small space every morning. We'd even decorated the walls of the house with our own artwork! And I feel sad that I won't be there ever again. But then I only have to recall that familiar aniseed scent of fennel to remember I'm pretty happy to be moving on as well.

And moving on is always better when it involves a brilliant three-day road trip through some of the most beautiful coastline in the country in a fancy big car. After a six-hour drive to escape Los Angeles and get onto the famous “highway one”, we eventually arrived at Kirk Creek campground, at the southernmost edge of Big Sur. Sitting around the barbecue, drinking a couple of beers in the starlight, the sound of the Pacific waves crashing on the rocks below the camp site, I felt like this might just be the coolest part of my American experience so far.

That night I decided to sleep under the stars. I was slightly unsure about not putting a tent up because I was concerned about the affect of the damp air on the warmth of my down sleeping bag. In fact, it turned out the raccoons that scour the campground for scraps of food were more of a problem. And they're nothing like as cute as in that cartoon that used to be on Live and Kicking on Saturday mornings. As I was just starting to drift off to sleep I was rudely awakened by a raccoon tapping me on the leg to see if I was really asleep. I went to the car to find the tent.

The next day we hit the road again early, taking in the incredible rugged coastline, frequently stopping the car to get a bit closer to the noisy, angry waves that pound the rocks. At one point we found ourselves exploring the beautiful chapel of a small Benedictine monastery where my Jewish friends asked lots of questions that I realised I probably should know the answer to.

That night we cooked steak over the campfire and had another beautiful night, without any raccoons or damp to worry about and just a sky full of shooting stars above our big, open, almost-deserted campground.

Friday we hit the bay town of Monterey where we blew a lot of money on seeing (and not seeing) sea-life. The famous Monterey Aquarium did have some pretty cool sea otters, and an exhibit that makes you wonder how you can have lived on the planet for 25 years without anybody telling you that they make seahorses that grow in the shape of seaweed. The “egg yolk” jellyfish and the huge tuna that randomly shows off its 50kph speeds to the visitors were other highlights.

After exhausting the aquarium for fun we headed to the pier for a three-hour, thirty dollar whale-watching trip during which we saw exactly zero whales, zero dolphins, three seals, and one ten-year-old English girl vomit over the side of the boat.

So we returned to Santa Cruz slightly dejected at our lack of photos of blue whales, but very happy to have been privileged enough to see some other pretty cool bits of nature's stuff. I found that in the house we can now steal wi-fi from some guy named “DRob”, that I've been promoted and now sleep on a bottom bunk (hooray!). Today I went to visit some giant Redwoods at Henry Cowell State Park, which were pretty cool, and even stood right inside a huge hollowed-out-but-still-living-how-hardcore-is-that tree.

Tuesday I'll leave for my final two weeks with ACE, in Lake Tahoe. Rumour has it that the work there sucks even more than my other two projects, but based on previous experience I guess I'll probably manage to have some fun anyway.

Ready to leave the island I think...

I'm sure it would seem perverse to those of you suffering that familiar descent into gloomy English winter that I could be lying here in the hot sunshine on the lawn outside my fancy condo on a desert island, thinking that I can't wait to get out of here.

Perhaps it's just one of those days. We were supposed to be off this project by now, but due to an administrative mix-up we're here for another week. And not that the prospect of another 40 hours of fennel killing time doesn't fill me with delight, but I think we're all just ready for the next thing now.

But maybe I should focus on my achievements instead of my frustrations.

For example, our weekend in Los Angeles. I'm incredibly proud that I managed to negotiate LA traffic in our rental car without crashing even once (as long as you don't count a slight non-incident downtown -I never did understand the logic of trees in car parks). I learned that you probably shouldn't try and drive in a big city without a road map of some sort. I managed to persuade my friends to come with me for a drink in the bar where Mulder first met Kurtzweil in the first Movie. We stayed at a hostel in Venice Beach with all the skaters and weirdos, just like in Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2. I witnessed my first real live bar fight, in a trendy bar in Orange County, where we watched a girl band play embarrassingly bad music.

And as far as my fennel-killing career is concerned, I have survived a temperature-rise into the high 80s over the past couple of days without *too much* complaint (in my opinion anyway). I am growing more tolerant of the swimming pool-flavoured water that comes out of our taps, and more adept at avoiding cactus spines. I have seen a couple of endemic island foxes on the roadside, and eaten lots of fresh venison steak and burgers hunted by our friend Charlie.

Meanwhile, the world outside goes on. Siblings celebrate birthdays. Friends have babies. I find myself apparently the only person in a thousand-mile radius who's ever even heard of the pop star and Brewin family idol whose sudden and shocking death brings me to tears. I am comfortable enough here with these people, in this place, doing this work, but it's not home. To borrow a clumsy-sounding Timor phrase (it probably sounds better in Hebrew), "Yes, I am happy, but I don't feel myself complete". I guess I'm looking forward to looking back on this experience from the place that just fits me better.

Soldiers, pirates and fennel killing

Well, we've finally made it.

I've just finished my surprisingly good cowboy coffee (which I was forced to learn to make after I broke the coffee jug the other day) on the morning of the first of five glorious days off, for which we have worked moderately hard for the past couple of weeks, putting in ten-hour days (or at least that's what the timesheet's going to say), slowly cleansing the island of its dreaded aniseed-scented nemesis one plant at a time.

On the weekend before last's camping trip at Shark harbour - which I am assuming is named after the fin-shaped rock formations and not the local sea life - I had a somewhat humbling encounter with a young Hawaiian named George.

As happens often on this small friendly island, he and his girlfriend Rhi asked Liz and I what it is we do here on Catalina. I enjoy saying "we work for the Conservancy" - it sounds important, and gets us perks like being able to camp and hike wherever we want without a permit, or ride the once-a-day Safari bus to Avalon for free. After describing with a drama similar to that of my last blog post (see below) the near-100 degree heat of our then eight-hour work days, and the physical demands of killing fennel, and just how hard our job is, I politely returned the question: what do you do?

It turns out George had just come back from serving in Iraq. In a very matter-of-fact manner he described working in the 140-degree heat in the desert. When Liz asked what the food was like, and he said that some days they had enough to eat, other times they would go whole days without eating anything at all. He looked out to the ocean, smiled, and noted how nice it was to be back for the time being at least, musing that he would probably be sent out to Afghanistan sometime soon.

Liz engaged him with questions about how the soldiers were received by local Iraqis, and what he thinks about the conflict, and that kind of thing. I just kept quiet and decided I should probably think about George before I started complaining over the coming weeks. I don't think I'd make a very good soldier.

That night I slept ridiculously well in the sand under the stars, warmed by the campfire and lulled by the sound of the waves breaking a few yards away. Only the flies that swarmed over our sleeping bags first thing, with no sense of occasion, failed to recognise just how cool the whole thing was.

The second day of our weekend was pretty badass too. (By the way, "badass" is my new favourite American adjective. You should try it in a sentence, it feels pretty badass to say it.) We got to sample the bright lights of the island's only city, Avalon, where there are all sorts of futuristic things like paved roads and Von's grocery store. We got pizza at this crazy old-movie-themed diner where they have tiny jukeboxes on the tables (a quarter for two songs) and really fascinating magazine articles from the 60s on the walls of the toilets which make people take ages having a wee, we did our food shopping, and then drove the 20-mile, hour and a half drive back to Two Harbors, where Amelia's Dad - possibly one of the coolest Dads ever - who was visiting with a friend on a fishing trip for the weekend took us out on his boat, and I got a seriously badass photo of me diving into the ocean for my Facebook profile picture:

Having mentally prepared myself for more stupidly hot days, I was pleasantly surprised on the Monday that the Santa Ana winds which apparently were responsible for the ridiculous temperatures of the first week's work had dropped, and we found ourselves working in much more bearable conditions. That evening, however, we were landed with the dismal news that we were to change our work patterns: instead of working five eight-our days per week, we were going to be working seven ten-hour days out of the next eight, in order to allow our supervisors the time off to go to a conference on invasive plants (which I imagine is absolutely fascinating, although not in the way that the conference organisers probably think). Don't get me wrong, five days off sounds great, but we had been enjoying so much our afternoons during the week, and I really didn't like the idea of just enduring ridiculously long work days in order to get to that time off.

In fact it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Our breaks became somewhat elongated in order to allow for some quick dips in the ocean, or some quality sunbathing minutes, and we made it to our one-day weekend fairly painlessly. The most traumatic point was probably the day that we woke to find our burly tattooed neighbour Josh, crouching in anguish by his best friend, a huge, soft sixteen-year-old dog who that morning was unable to stand. "I think Bodie's dying," he said sadly. Just before we left for work we watched him carry the helpless dog to his pick-up truck, and then later, as we worked by the roadside, saw him drive past, a shroud covering the body that laid in the bed of the truck.

Our second most traumatic time occurred on the evening before our Saturday off, for last weekend our tiny town of Two Harbors faced an invasion. Seemingly thousands of pirates arrived on our shores, camped out in the fields or slept in their boats, or possibly just under a bush outside the general store, all with bandanas or eye patches, or hooks for hands, or dragging rats on leads. "Buccaneer Day" was quite an experience... and not my kind of experience. At first dressing up like a pirate seemed like a fun idea, and we bought a bottle of rum for the occasion and dressed Timor in a bikini (although I never really understood the pirate link there).

The party, crammed into Two Harbors' only bar, was pretty grotesque. With hindsight I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised: pirates are after all the original "dirty old man". But after being assaulted one too many times by rich middle-aged Californians acting like teenagers on the dance floor I decided to call it a night and head home. Unfortunately the pirates stayed for about three days, and so on Saturday Timor, Asaf and I decided to get the hell out of Two Harbors.

Our five-mile costal hike to watch the sun set over the ocean was well worth it, and walking back in the moonlight was pretty spectacular. Pictures really don't do it justice - but what the hell:

After that it was back to work for just three days, and now it's time to decide what we want to do with our five days. Thankfully the Conservancy has given me permission to drive the Jeep (which makes me feel pretty badass too), so at least we're not totally stranded here in Two Harbors. I've called a meeting at noon so we can figure it all out. Watch this space!

Happy weekend to me...

At the end of the driveway to our group of houses there's a laminated A4 piece of paper, attached by string to a traffic cone, which reads "caution: lazy cat". And sure enough, that mangy cat is always there, permanently lazing around in the middle of the road, ignoring any of the 4x4s or person who passes him by except for those who will give him some attention.

The sign might as well read "caution: lazy island". That's the feeling the place seems to exude this Saturday morning, and indeed each of the afternoons and evenings after we've finished work, when we've wandered down to the beach to put on a snorkel and check out the sea life, or borrowed ocean kayaks from the boy scout camp at emerald bay, or rocked up at the "pot luck" dinner with the island conservancy guys with a plate of stuffed eggs. People just seem to be relaxed and happy wherever we go.

Before you go getting too jealous though, I have to point out that this pace of my post-2.30pm weekday life contrasts dramatically with that of my 5.50am-2.30pm working day.

I don't like waking up in the dark. I guess you'd say that I am more of a "morning" person in general, but there's something wrong about an alarm clock that goes off before 6am. Getting up and ready in a house is a hell of a lot easer than in a campsite though, and the drip coffee machine in the kitchen makes the whole thing taste better too. The 6 of us are out into the jeeps and on the dirt tracks that qualify as "roads" on the island at 6.30am, from where we've watched a couple of spectacular sunrises over the cloud inversions.

Then, after some morning stretching, our fennel-killing tools (pulaskis, cut-o-matics and shovels) in hand, we get to work.

It's usually around 8am that I make my first complaint about the heat, which is at this stage higher than any temperature reached in York or Stockport throughout the whole summer. My jeans cling to my legs and sweat carries sunscreen down my forehead stinging my eyes, and it feels like all my energy is being washed away with it. The temperature then continues to rise throughout the day, probably reaching around 100 degrees at its peak. It's hot enough that even if I were in shorts and t-shirt and lying in the garden I'd probably still think about going inside for some shade and a cool-down, but this island climate doesn't seem to lend itself to growing big shady trees and so there I work, cocooned in heavy jeans, ACE t-shirt, gloves and, if I'm behaving myself, hard hat, in direct sunlight for the whole day.

And the work is physical. For those of you not familiar with fennel's growth tactics - and I would hope that's most people reading this - it likes to hide in cactus, establishing huge roots which often lie horizontally under rocks. Lots of the roadside patches we're "treating" (which sounds very 1984 to me) are on 45-degree-plus inclines and we have to do battle with the weed on this steep, rocky, spiky terrain.

All in all, it makes for a pretty hot, tired, stressed, Jen. I mean, I signed up for this: I knew it was going to be tough at times, and I suppose I do want to be challenged, but sometimes, when I stumble for the third time on a rock and come crashing to the ground bruising my hand yet again, that I find it really hard not to have a huge temper tantrum. Which is kind of silly, when I'm the oldest member of this crew by a couple of years and everyone else seems to be coping just fine. I comfort myself with the knowledge that to be fair, 2 of them are from Israel, and the others have been working in this heat for a while now.

Anyway, I've survived a week of it already, and I do love living here. We've been working well as a team- with the exception perhaps of last night's doomed attempt to walk out to watch the sunset, ending up with us lost in a sea of cactus (and at least one rattlesnake) on a mountain with nothing but moonlight to guide us. I'm loving island life, and looking forward to camping out somewhere tonight and then going to the island's only city, Avalon, tomorrow, where there's a blues festival going on, and then taking a boat trip into the ocean in the evening. I'm enjoying hearing debates and conversation that switches between English and Hebrew depending on whether or not I'm in the room. I love being able to drop a couple of emails to friends and family before I go to bed at night and knowing I'll probably have a reply when I wake up in the morning. I like having Turkish coffee and banana pancakes made for me, and I like bbqing beefburgers on the beach. I love those big orange garibaldi fish (why would you name a fish after a biscuit?) that swim right up to you when you're snorkelling. Yeah, I like Catalina.

Sun, sea, sand and wi-fi!

In case you haven't been able to tell from what I've written so far, since arriving in the USA I've definitely experienced one or two "what the hell am I doing here" moments. Times when, sweating profusely and at the end of my energy levels and dealing with homesickness I've been unable to control the urge to reassure the people on my team that I am actually really quite good at some things - lots of things, actually: things like set theory, and troubleshooting computer problems, and talking to large groups of children. It's just that I'm not very good at this.

But then there are moments like today, sailing out of San Pedro harbour in the brilliant sunshine, leaving the famous LA smog behind and heading for my desert island home for the next 4 weeks, when I wonder how the hell I got this lucky. Admittedly, I am here to do weeding for 40 hours a week (ACE has been nicknamed "American Killing Experience" - presumably by illiterate volunteers. Probably Americans.) and perhaps after my first day's work tomorrow I'll not be feeling quite as spoilt as I do right now, but it's hard to deny it's a pretty cool place to be.

I'm staying with five other people in a lovely USC-owned house in the town of Two Harbours on Catalina Island. We have a kitchen (clean!), a bathroom (clean!), beds with bedsheets, towels provided, and perhaps most importantly, wireless internet. The clear blue ocean, which allegedly boasts some of the best snorkelling and diving in Southern California, is just a few hundred feet from our door. At $65 for a return passenger ticket on the ferry, there really don't seem to be many tourists able to escape the claws of Los Angeles to reach this island, and it seems to be mostly populated by those rich enough to arrive by private yacht. And somehow, I, a redundant youth worker, am here too!

My weekend off in Santa Cruz was pretty cool too. Highlights included:

Spotting an official sign with Arnold Schwarzenegger's name on it at the skate park (and I'm pretty sure it's spelt wrong)

Being watched by this small (but very committed) burrowing rodent as I did my laundry outside the house

Finding there weren't any waves to go and surf in, so blowing the money in a great burger joint instead

But this is where I am right now:

HA!