The Inland Empire Strikes Back

Hidey ho blogateers. Hope ya'll had a good holiday, cause it's time to face yet another year! I decided* to inaugurate it by spending the first month back in Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, a sunny twenty six square mile swathe of southern Colorado River floodplain. The refuge is lovely, miles and miles of arid land split by the river and dotted with fields farmed specifically for the benefit of migratory birds. They rent the land out to local farmers, who grow crops like corn the birds like, harvest them and then leave the remnants for nature. Since it's sunny and seventy everyday in January, the place is packed right now with goose, duck, heron, crane, ibis, cassowaries, kiwis, dodos and passenger pigeons.

Basically what my work day looks like

We've also got an embarrassment of mule deer, coyote, hawk and the occasional road runner (it turns out that my childhood overstated the commonality of rocket powered roller skate hi-jinks in these circumstances by, at minimum, forty percent). This sprawling natural playground is overseen by one, count 'em one, full time permanent staff member and three volunteers who drive their RV's south for the winter to avoid, you know, winter. In an interesting side note, all four men who are currently running this place are former Marines, three retired and one transferred to fish and wildlife, so that makes for an interesting workplace. Also, you have not lived until you've seen a seventy two year old Marine general awkwardly tell dad jokes to mid twenties AmeriCorps members.

Suffice to say they are happy to see us when we're around.

Piles of stuff is the most accurate job description I can give

The refuge itself is, as I have mentioned, worth seeing- it's a large fertile flood plain, surrounded by arid southwest desert, surrounded by jagged, dramatic mountain ranges. A russian nesting doll of concentric biomes. Here's a lil' taste of what it looks like.

ooooohh

 aaaaaaahhh

 Majestic in its austerity

These, while technically pictures of the park in which I have been working, are not accurate portrayals of my experience. For that, you need to think less "grandeur of the American wilderness" and more "I hope these waders don't leak because I'm pretty sure this is at least seventy percent goose shit by volume"

The quiet dignity of blue color work

In addition to cleaning approximately nine thousand irrigation gates, we also got to repaint a semi trailer, reframe part of their warehouse, fabricate hundreds of fence posts, and fish dozens of dead ducks out of a flooded field because I'm pretty sure they guys have a running bet going for what the can get us to do.

The real downer though is that we don't get to live on the refuge- for the duration, we are relegated to Blythe, California (official motto- "Worse Than Dozens of Mysteriously Dead Ducks),** a cozy little community just over the California border that looks like the results of the Dust Bowl if Oklahoma had also been a leading meth manufacturing destination.

Next time on Alex: The Blog- Blythe and Why I Hate the Scheduling Guy at ACE

*was forced to
**probably