And Then It Was Christmas

Another week gone by.

After our experience with Speedy last week, my interest in adding to the Speedy Journal was a bit subdued. Being the week before a holiday, things were a bit up in the air. We worked some extra days and started some new activities.

Sunday is usually a day off but Craig asked us if we wanted to go up to Brown Canyon to check on the Environmental Education Center building and help him clean it up a bit. A group from the Desert Museum have rented it and are arriving next Monday. We will be welcoming them at the visitor center and then bringing them up there. We'd never been to the EEC before, so this was a learning opportunity. We went up with Craig to vacuum the mouse droppings out of drawers, make sure the systems were working and check the smoke detectors and fire extinguishers.

It is an interesting building. Like everything else in Brown Canyon, it is off the grid. It has a large solar array and an off-grid power system for lighting and refrigeration. It also has propane for heating and cooking. It is a lodge with a kitchen, a library and a great room with a fireplace on the first floor (complete with a stuffed Jaguar) and lots of bedrooms on the second floor. Ellen and I cleaned out bedrooms while Craig, who was quite familiar with the place, checked the systems.

On our way out, we stopped to look at the Casita, a small house that used to be used by volunteers who would maintain the canyon buildings and trails. It was later used as either overflow from the EEC or as a rental for a small group. It was locked and we didn't have the key, but we could see inside. It is an adobe style house with a nicely furnished great room and open kitchen and a single bedroom. It is also solar-powered and has a roof deck with great views up and down the canyon. It is not currently being used because its well has failed and there is no water. I hope they can get it back in operation because it is too nice a building to let deteriorate.

Two years ago, when we were first applying for volunteer positions, we actually applied for the Brown Canyon caretaker position, which would have included the Casita as housing. After seeing how isolated Brown Canyon is (it is a long drive up a very rough road) and how difficult access to the Casita is (driving a 4x4 truck we actually walked the last 50 yards), we are glad we didn't get the position. On the other hand, it is an utterly charming house.

On Monday, we went to visit the gabions. This was a tour out onto the refuge led by Sally, the refuge manager. It included Ann, the refuge biologist, Chuck, Betty, Ellen and me. The gabions are structures made from wire baskets filled with rocks and used as leaky dams for erosion control, sort of like rip-rap seawalls along the coast. The ones on the refuge were attempts to mitigate the erosion in washes and restore the original valley landscape. I wrote about gabions earlier this month. This was a chance to see some of the ones that had been installed in the past.

The early gabions we saw were rather ineffective as they had been installed by volunteers and were incorrectly engineered. The first one we visited was very large and in a large wash. It was built directly across the wash with only a small high opening in the middle. The water coming down the wash just eroded the banks around the sides of the structure, as it wasn't tied into the surrounding landscape, and just made the wash even larger and deeper. The second one we visited, which took a bit of hike to find it, had been a bit more successful. While it had blown out along one side, it was smaller and the sediment had built up behind it.

Aside from the failure on one side, it was an example of what they are intended to do. The idea is that, when constructed correctly and in the appropriate places, they will slow the water flow in the washes, allowing sediment to build up behind it and repair the erosion damage. This new gentler landscape would allow the water to spread out, and if trapped by native grasses, dissipate into the ground rather than flush it all downstream. All they need now is the funding to do it right,  now that they know what "right" is.

After returning to the visitor center, I went over to talk to Ann about mapping. I'd been able to convert the files showing fence locations to a form that she could use on the refuge GIS system and she was able to load them into the system. We also talked about digitizing the historical data on fence removal. In the data that I'd been given by Gary, there were scanned maps with the original fence lines and I'd also photographed his maps that had his annotations on fences that have already been removed.  I offered to look into geo-referencing the scanned maps and digitizing the fence line data using software I had on my map. Ann was able to give me the base map GIS files for the refuge to work with.

After lunch, I gave it a try. After trying several alternative methods, I was able to successfully geo-reference the 1985 map showing all the ranch fences at the time. I began to digitize the lines on top of the map, but didn't get very far before running out of time. It was a bit difficult on the small screen of my Macbook, so I've borrowed a large monitor and hope to hook it up this coming week (I needed an adapter to connect it to the Mac ... Amazon Prime is my friend and it arrived yesterday, just in time for Christmas).

Tuesday was a day off for us and we spent most of it at the Sonoran Outpost, our home away from home, but I did spend several hours on another computer project, programming extensions to the hydrology data spreadsheet we've been maintaining as part of our weekly data collection. I wanted to build a generator program within the spreadsheet to normalize the data and also do some manipulations. I hadn't done any Google Apps programming and it was/is a learning experience both in the use of Javascript and Google Apps apis. I spent Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday on this task.

On Wednesday, we were on our own. Dan has gone to Wisconsin, to be home with his family, and both Ann and Sally are also off for the holidays. There are only volunteers left, as most of the staff are off as well (except for the usual law enforcement guys). I continued with my programming project while Ellen went off to remove fences with Rob, Reta and Emily, the SCA intern. This was a chance for her to see another part of the refuge and do something different. They removed about two hundred yards of barbed wire fence in the southern part of the refuge. This still leaves over 50 miles yet to be removed. The work is slow and strenuous but when you're done there is a great sense of satisfaction. Because the refuge used to be a ranch, miles of barbed wire fence were installed and now serve as dangerous barriers for wildlife. After removing and coiling the barbed wire, they then hauled it to the scrap yard and went to Arivaca to carry out several sections of broken handrail. Needless to say, Ellen was beat by the end of the day.

Thursday was our first normal day of the week and our first real normal Thursday at Arivaca. After checking on and feeding the birds in the flight pens, we headed off to Arivaca Cienaga to do the hydrology measurements. This week, however, we got to stay around. It was Christmas eve and no one was around to give us another assignment.

The original idea for Thursdays was that we'd do the measurements, then "rove" the Arivaca trails, cleaning up any litter, noting anything that might need work and interacting with any visitors that we might meet. If we did a little birding as we walked along, it wouldn't hurt. This was the first week that we were actually able to do this. We did our hydrology survey, took a trip to the short Homas Pond trail to get a look at the trail and the pond, then came back to the Cienaga and walked the entire trail. We actually met and talked with a couple of visitors. It was a good Thursday. After a quick stop at the Arivaca Mercantile for milk and veggies, we got back early enough for Ellen to bake oat squares to give to the other volunteers as Christmas gifts. They came out quite well and were delicious (there was one left for us).

Which brings us to today, Christmas. We spent our Christmas day at the outpost. We slept in and lazed around in the morning. Ellen went off birding and I hacked around a bit more with the spreadsheet programming. We got together with the other volunteers, Craig and Evelyn and Chuck and Betty, for a shared Christmas dinner in the community trailer. Craig and Evelyn supplied home-grown Taos Pueblo squash and a salad. Chuck and Betty provided a roast chicken. We had a steak, potatoes and snap peas. We provided pies for dessert and Craig added ice cream. A good time was had by all.

We have photos — Merry Christmas to All!