I had a pretty FUN-gi weekend here in northern Arizona.
Hehehe… puns.
My friend Megan, who recently joined the Arizona Mushroom Society, asked if I wanted to be her plus-one to a Sunday morning mushroom foray in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness here on the Coconino.
Why the heck not?
I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while.
Given the current state of… *gestures wildly,* I’ve been making it a point over the past year to upgrade a LOT of my household staples to more eco-friendly versions.
I mean, given that the Supreme Court just decided that the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t actually have the legal authority with which to protect the environment…
AGH.
Deep breaths.
Anyway. I’ve spent the past year investing in a few reusable upgrades to common kitchen and household supplies. I know I’m one person and any changes I make are pretty much futile given the current state of affairs, but still. It feels good to reduce the number of single-use plastics that end up in local landfills!
I can’t believe how close we are to August!
With that said. It’s been a few weeks since I posted about my first ever high-altitude gardening attempt, and so I figured I’d do a little check-in now that it’s been six or so weeks since that post.
Hahhahaha. So. Remember my last post about the Pipeline/Haywire/Double fires? And how excited I was that monsoonal rains had hit Flagstaff because it meant that fire season was over?
JOKE IS ON ME!
I spent alllll of last week working on the Committee Fire, a relatively small (acreage-wise) fire that was highly visible from Sedona.
This past weekend was, thankfully, pretty chill.
After weekends spent paddle boarding… and paddle boarding… and paddle boarding…
…and working on fire… after fire…
…I needed a break.
So, I spent this weekend doing nothing taxing and everything relaxing.
That means running our local urban trail system with Yukon. And taking (not teaching!) classes at the yoga studio. And going to the farmers market. And reading (and FINALLY finishing!) a book. And cooking.
And… learning how to knit!
YEEESSSSHHHHHH. I’m finally getting around to writing this one.
I wanna preface this by saying: Monsoons have arrived and fire restrictions have lifted (for the most part) here in northern Arizona and our local fire season is effectively over.
Fire season here in the Southwest works a little differently than fire season in the rest of the American West. Here in Arizona (and New Mexico), our spring starts out warm and dry. We have cooler nights up here at 7,000 feet, but humidity is very low, and a historic 1,200-year drought has exacerbated the lack of moisture here.
We deal with hot, sunny, dry days in April, May and June, and then once July hits — we get monsoonal rains, which typically end our fire season.
Of course, this is all climate-dependent, and due to the drought, the last few monsoon seasons in Flagstaff haven’t been as wet as normal.
Anyway. Our season got started WAY early this year with the Tunnel Fire that broke out back in April.
Once the Tunnel Fire was fully contained, we were still all holding our breath waiting for rain.
And… then instead, a few weeks later, we got the Pipeline Fire.
Ryan and I (OK, entirely Ryan) finally got around to bringing a long-discussed project to fruition.
We built a deck in our side yard!
I’m now several paddle trips in with my new inflatable stand-up paddle board and I’m having a hard time believing I had to sell myself SO hard on buying it.
I’ve taken it out a good half-dozen times now: Both on weekday sunset cruises around Lake Mary, and on some longer weekend excursions! I went to East Clear Creek right before the Pipeline/Haywire/Double fires broke out (seriously, more on that later I swear) and spent this past weekend up at Lake Powell.
WELL. Haven’t done one of these in a hot second.
Thought I’d take a blog post to return to my quarterly trend of recapping all those little moments that ended up stuck in my phone camera roll because they weren’t deemed worthy enough of an actual blog post.
So, keep reading to see a few under-the-radar things that happened in my work and personal life over the last four months. Here are a few of the miscellaneous things I bought, trails I hiked, meals I cooked, books I read and people I saw this past spring.
So, I got my Red Card!
Which reminded me… you guys probably have NO idea what a Red Card is.
And… you probably have NO idea what I’m talking about half the time when I recap my Forest Service PIO (huh!?) experiences on Type 1 incidents (what!?) like the Backbone Fire and the Tunnel Fire.
Ah, the joys of working for the government!
During my stint in the Peace Corps, I ended up writing a quick blog post explaining all the acronyms, initialisms, slang and jargon I commonly used during my service… and here on my blog.
So, I’m going to do the same for my current job.
This one’s a long one.
