The Bitterroot...?

TINCUP, Friday July 24th. This is Carly reporting for Andrea and AJ's crew in the western wildlands- the Bitterroot...? (We have yet to decide our team name.) At the present moment I am watching four of our seven members debark logs for waterbars while two members are out on personal business and I am sitting on a log with a swollen, mosquito-bitten eye. I'd like to report at this point that Jena, Schuyler, Vince, and our leader Andrea are doing an awesome job working with three people down.

And now, please enjoy some highlights of our second hitch in Tincup:

HIGHLIGHT #1: Makeshift tent adventures. Schuyler lent his tent to a friend over the break who returned it without the poles. This meant, first, that Schuyler spent a night in the open air- or air infested with mosquitoes and was thus forced to stuff his head in his sleeping bag. Suffocating was apparently preferable to being eaten alive. Having no poles, next, lead Schuyler to use other means to erect his tent being: hemp, knots, and trees. Although his tent looked more like a crumpled sack, it did succeed in keeping the mosquitoes out.

Have I mentioned mosquitoes yet? HIGHLIGHT (or low-light) #2: MOSQUITOES SUCK. Besides my swollen eyelid and Schy's open-night air of terror, mosquitoes have taken over our world. When once only a few mosquito bites decorated our arms, now angry red spots have shown up on our faces, butts, EYELIDS!, anywhere the monsters can get at the blood. But, really! How much blood can be coursing through an eyelid?! My second favorite mosquito wound after mine, of course, came from our MCC staff visitor and fellow worker Joe who sported a streak of blood running from above his left eye-brow to below his left eye. I would like to dub this past version of Joe SCAR after the evil lion brother in The LION KING. Let's suffice it to say that mosquitoes were on a death campaign. Lucky for AJ and Greg that they missed the carnage.

CARNAGE- like CARNE meaning meat, which brings me to HIGHLIGHT #3: Eating steak in the wilderness. How nice it is to have mules to pack in our food and how nice of crew members to pack in delicious stuff like Greg's thin beef steaks, marinated overnight in soy sauce, honey, jerk steak sauce, and who knows what other wonderful items. And how nice it is when a day's work intensifies our hunger and shuts our speech as our teeth sink into medium-well done morsels, releasing the bloody, sweet juices. So good.

And so good for HIGHLIGHT #4: was Joe's presence bringing with it help at work, an awesome home-sewn sweater made from an old army blanket, and homemade crumble bread filled with fruit pulp and topped with brown sugar and butter that tingled the tongue. Thank you, Joe!

And thank you for reading through these Tincup highlights. Clearly I care mostly about food when I'm on hitch, but it's not to say that the work wasn't great! We made us some beautiful waterbars and check-steps that week- including Jena's waterbar that our sponsor Steve Bull called "textbook worthy." Good work, everyone!