I did not get much of a tan during my Alternative Spring Break trip to Arizona - probably because, contrary to popular belief, the spring weather conditions were best characterized as snowy with a high of 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Along with 10 fellow University students, I had decided to rough it for the week, and our group headed west to work with rangers of the Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks on environmental conservation projects.
It turned out we were lucky it was freezing. Despite only taking one shower, changing clothes maybe three times and sleeping on the ground, we were too cold to smell much. We thought we were troopers.
We battled Friday afternoon traffic out of Charlottesville - which, by the way, is easier to navigate if you follow an ambulance - to spend a night in Northern Virginia before flying to Las Vegas. From Vegas, we drove to Tuweap, the second-most isolated ranger station in the continental United States located on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. After a brief stop for supplies and an introduction to aspects of Mormon culture in St. George, Utah, we drove an hour-and-a-half on the highway and four hours in mud to reach our Tuweap station.
The first day, we pulled down an old shed. If any structure remains in a national park for longer than 50 years, it is designated as a historical site and thus has park-allocated funds to protect it. The volunteer coordinator, Ranger Todd Seliga, however, did not feel a rusted shed that sheltered two broken generators was very historical. So down it came and onto a truck to be recycled in St. George. We spent the rest of the day sweeping away old debris around the shed and cutting down a dead tree.
Monday, two ambitious hikers repainted signs on the Lava Falls Trail, one of the most treacherous in the Canyon, we began hauling more rusty sheet metal from around the park in a massive cleanup.
That afternoon, we extended the cleanup further out and hiked several hundred feet below the rim of the Canyon to pick up trash that fallen over the edge. This might have been the most interesting trash pickup I've ever been a part of - tourists bring all manner of objects on camping trips. We found the usual small trash and several cameras and tripods, but I certainly wasn't expecting to find a mattress.
Once the snow cleared the next day, we hiked more of the rim along the Tuckup Trail. This was our first active nature lesson - we learned about and discovered cryptobiotic soil - a moss crucial to the delicate ecosystem in the desert to hold soils and organisms together. You cannot step on this soil; it screams if you do. Actually, your site-leader screams at you because unfortunately, it takes 25 years or more to regrow.
The following Wednesday morning, we began an exciting day. We were going to shower - for the first time since the beginning of our trip - at a health club.
Walking into a health club with an unwashed face and muddy jeans and using the hand-sized towels to dry ourselves is one of life's more interesting experiences. Eating lunch in the car park front of an overpacked white mini-van also became a story to bring home.
Cleaned and fed, we drove three hours to Zion National Park in Utah - with Disney and 1990s pop songs pouring out of the speakers the entire time - to camp for the remaining three nights. Unlike Grand Canyon National Park, Zion is a much smaller park located in the base of the canyon, and it was definitely a change from the remoteness of Tuweap. Medical care on the north rim requires a helicopter or a five-hour drive - half of which is spent traversing dirt roads - while the nearest medical facility from Zion is 10 minutes down a paved road.
The excitement of returning to civilization was off-set by the multitude of power tools we used the next day building a fence for the rangers. The National Parks Service will not permit rangers to use chain saws unless they undergo special training. Yet somehow a group of college students were allowed to use power saws.
Fence completed, we took a short sunset hike partway up the canyon before returning to cook quesadillas around a campfire, which I highly recommend. I'll concede, however, the dessert combination of marshmallow, peanut butter, chocolate and Oreo pieces in a tortilla was a bit much.
Our last day was a relaxed mix of light gardening and an afternoon hike. Then, half our group inflicted cold showers upon themselves in the ranger station. My half, clearly more selfish and lazier, decided to stay dirty and inflict our scent on passengers sharing our plane the next day.
That final night, we slept under the stars, partially to prove we were real troopers, partially because we were getting up at 4:30 a.m. and did not want to pack up tents in the dark, and especially because we knew we would not see such clear skies or shooting stars upon our return to Charlottesville. Either way, an 11-person snuggle train ensued. I think out of everything, I miss the stars from out west the most - I've lost count of how many shooting stars we saw that night.
We left that next morning, while it was still dark outside. Our arrival in Las Vegas was not exactly a welcoming sight in the morning. I'm not sure if it was because I love being away from cities so much, or maybe Vegas is just really aesthetically displeasing. Both options seem possible.
After all, I admit I enjoy the occasional shower - but I still prefer to sleep under the stars.
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