Squirrel. Chris Magee, Western Wildlands

21 years old and still my command of the ground squirrel language remains undeveloped, how embarrassing. I could not at first understand why it would be myself and an elite team of 6 others chosen to act as ambassador to this, the noblest of burrowing mammals, especially when my experience in the field was so minimal. Sure, at first I was skeptical, the price would have to be right for me to join, but less than minimum wage, all the foodstamps I can eat, and some education award I'm probably too lazy to use, yeah that sounded about right. I wasn't sure how easily being absorbed into the GS (ground squirrel) community would come at first, I couldn't even be positive we would see any, but sure enough our base camp was silly with em. They quickly helped themselves to our rations and ate their way through our tents as a sign of friendship, this was a good sign. Some of the more eager crew members had no problem at all adopting these social behaviors and could be seen munching through the tough unpleasant fabric of my rain fly hoping in earnest to steal my nutty trail mix. It did not come so easily for some of us. Ostracized, pushed to the outside of the community we became GS outcasts, paraded in front of elite underground society as a less fortunate, underprivileged, and awkward lower class. The liberal party jumped at the chance to help us and after a series of charity functions we found ourselves in possession of no small sum of GS currency, (dirt, toe nail clippings, pinenuts, etc.) Well turns out there's not a bank on earth that will exchange this for any other form of currency and so most just went into the trash or a series of well sealed zip lock bags scattered amongst our rig. But all good things must end and without any real documentation, scientific, or otherwise, we went away empty handed back to town. Some people will remember the food, some the grueling work required of any adult GS, but I will remember the simple life, slowly passing days of dirt, decomposition, mundane and unintelligible conversation, and peace that really showed just how much we have to learn from our closest relative in the animal kingdom, the ground squirrel.