Comments on the end of a Forest Service Career

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."  -- Maya Angelou

The trees were twenty to thirty feet tall and starting to be high enough to block the view of the valley.  We drove past the old cutting unit and I was thinking, I helped plant those trees.  There are other places around the forest where I was instrumental in reforesting a cutting unit, either from actually planting the seedlings, or as an inspector or contracting officers representative administering a planting contract.

And there are thinned areas that I had helped create, again, either by wielding a chainsaw and thinning out the dense conifer growth, or through administering a contract to thin the forest. 

Time to say goodbye, Starkey Experimental Forest and Range.

Trees are located around the forest that I personally selected to become part of the genetics program for the region.  Timber sale units had been identified and marked on the ground, and trees were marked for harvest, or for leave trees, usually by following a prescription written by a silviculturist, by me.  There are stumps with my stump mark on them.  The first time I marked trees, the prescription was to mark every ponderosa pine larger than 14 inches diameter to cut.  Now, most of the timber prescriptions call for cutting trees with diameters smaller than 21 inches.  How’s that for a change?  Before it was to cut all the yellowbellies, as the larger ponderosa pines were known, now the call is for cutting trees that are of a smaller size class.

There are scientific papers that I helped produce, mostly in the collecting of data for stand conditions, fire return intervals, martens, pileated woodpeckers, western toads and black bear diets.  Who can say they had a job to sort through bear scat to identify the berries and insects?

Basking in the good weather in the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area.

There are biological assesments, environmental assesments, environmental impact statements and allotment management plans that I have had a role in writing.

There are wildfires that I helped suppress, although I really suspect the weather had more to putting out the fires than my little pulaski ever did.  And there were the wildfires I helped mop-up, carrying a bladder bag of water on my back and hosing down every hot spot we'd see.

It has been a great experience working for the Forest Service.  I want to stress that most of the people I have worked with have been stellar.  Fabulous.  Nice.  Pleasant.  Kind.  Understanding of my quirks and incompetencies.  Yes, you would have to be a great person to put up with me.   And the work has been awesome, in some of the best country on earth!

The first year I worked for the Forest Service was the last year that Jerry Ford was President.  There has been some history developed between the agency and me.  And yet, I feel that most of that relationship has been, how do I say this, not necessarily one sided, but certainly less than equal treatment compared to others in the agency.

In a cheap motel in some small town, after work, working on keying the plants found that day.

You see, I’m a second class employee.  You may not have heard of anything called a second class employee, and in fact we are frequently characterized as being temporary employees, seasonal employees, 1039 hires, summer help, et cetera.

But the bottom line is we are not treated the same as the permanent employees.  No matter how well a second class employee does the job they will never receive a step increase.  No matter how long a second class employee works, they will never receive a length of service award.  No matter how many times they try to put money into their Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) account, they will be told they can’t do it.

I was with a group of FS employees a while back and noticed every one of them had a fleece vest or jacket, or hat, or other garment with their forest, or ranger district, or lab stitched, stenciled, or embroidered on the garment.  Everybody except for us second class employees.

It was an absolute pleasure and awesome responsibility representing the United States as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Here I'm shaking hands with the future leaders of the world, Botswana, 1989.

A couple years ago I was starting work on a new project and was told I could set my own schedule.  So I decided to continue my usual schedule of the past thirty years and told my supervisor I’d stay on 4-10 hour days.  Word got back to me that I could select my schedule so long as it was 8-ten hour days, with 6 days off.  So I was very pleased that I was allowed to select my own schedule, as long as it was 8-ten hour days!

Second class Forest Service employees can code up to two weeks of their time to training.  This means that they can work two weeks beyond their limit of 1039 hours.  It does not mean they actually are sent to any training, workshops, seminars or conventions.  What it means is they get to work two more weeks.  That is all fine and well, and I suspect somewhere in the bureaucracy is a bean counter who claims the agency provides X amount of hours of training for their temporary employees.  I once asked a supervisor, when I was coding my two weeks to training time, what training I had actually received.  She said, with no irony in her voice, that it was on-the-job training. This is when I was mainly working by myself, doing a job I had been doing for the previous ten years.

Flowers seemed abundant everywhere, at times.  Grindelia nana and Dianthus armeria in the beard of somebody.

One supervisor sat me down and told I had to remove from a public website, a privately made video that was showing the Forest Service in a poor light.  You see, I noticed a wet meadow that some employees of the Forest Service were using to muddy up the atv’s that they were using at work.  They were driving back and forth across a wet meadow, I was told, literally hundreds of times to build a fence.  Yet the NEPA documentation specifically said the FS would stay out of wet areas.  I was a little torqued off.  So, on my own time I videoed the damage, made the video, and posted it on Youtube.

Which for a second class employee is a no-no.

So, for those of you who haven't seen it, and realize that it is an amateur job, but was rather cathartic for all the frustrations I was experiencing, I've posted the link at the bottom.

Another supervisor sat me down at her desk and told me, "You are too chatty." This was somewhat comical to me, for it seems that most of my life people have told me I need to speak up more; I need to tell people what's on my mind.  But I did change my behavior to avoid the supervisor.  And  afterwards realized that that was a form of bullying.

See you on the trail, out in the woods, wandering the desert, or on top of a summit, such as Mt. Hood.

And then there is the blatant discrimination that is so rampant in the Forest Service.  You may be unaware of the discrimination, but it is there.  I see it a lot in the job announcements that I've seen over the past 25 years.  It tears at the heart every time I would be looking for a more permanent position and there in the small print the announcement would say you can only apply for the job if you are younger than thirty-seven years old.  That statement was usually within a paragraph or two of the statement that says the agency does not discriminate on the basis of age, among other things.

Sometimes the chutzpah exhibited by the agency, and people in the agency, was amazing.  For example, I once applied for a term position that was the job I was doing as a 1039 employee.  I did not get the position because all of my education and experience was not enough.  The agency hired a person from South Carolina, who had no knowledge of the trees.  He did have experience killing people overseas in the US military.  So the agency hired him (maybe because they discriminate against pacifists), and I was asked to train him on the differences in Douglas-firs and grand firs.  Essentially, I was asked to teach him to do the job I had been doing for the previous ten or so years.

Up close and personal with some of the finer vertebrates I've worked with.

Hey, I seem to be complaining too much.  That wasn't my intention when I decided to quit the Forest Service.  But if this is the only complaining I've done in over forty years of working, then maybe I should be writing a book!  If anything can be learned from my second class status, to help those that follow, then perhaps it was worth it.

Overall it was a great trip.  Not, you will note, was it a great career.  But I did manage to get through being a second class employee.  

As for you:  make the most of your life.  It's the only one you may have, ever. Do good.  Be nice.  Respect the land.  And maybe I'll see you on the trails of the world.

Here's the infamous video:
Meadow Creek Destruction

"Ain't it funny how an old broken bottle,

Looks just like a diamond ring."

                           --John Prine

Good Hope

In North America, as it is throughout much of the world, the news coming from the many countries on the continent of Africa, is usually bad. There are civil wars, famine, disease, and other calamities. News around the world is usually bad. That's what makes it news. It is something unusual; something deviating from the norm. News is bad, as a general rule.

But there is good news, and it is usually not reported.

After spending time in Kanye, Botswana, a small group of recently sworn of US Peace Corps volunteers decided to spend an additional week of language training in the village of Good Hope. They were transported from Gaborone, the capital city, south along the Lobatse Highway. Then they turned off the pavement onto a dirt, or sand, track. It wasn't much of a road, but they proceeded west for about twenty kilometers. Good Hope seemed to be a collection of dispersed houses, most made of cinder blocks, but some were the traditional round mud hut with grass thatched roofs. There were a couple small grocery stores, and a primary school. Somewhere in this seemingly random collection of buildings was also a small health clinic.

The Mokgwetse's of Good Hope, Botswana, 1988.

The volunteers were distributed to various families for home stays. The Mokgwetse's welcomed two of the Peace Corps Volunteers into their home. From the Mokgweetse's home it was a short walk to the primary school where the language classes would take place, during a school break when the children were on holiday.

The year was 1988.

In 2013 the two Peace Corps people returned to Good Hope. And Good Hope could be renamed Good News.

Paved roads where everywhere, lined with street lights and utility wires.

Walking through Good Hope with Morris in 2013. Paved roads, electricity, street lights.

Students now do not have to travel to a boarding school in Lobatse to attend classes above the primary level. There was a secondary school, built in the past 5 years, in Good Hope. Classrooms, dorms, gym, library, administration, and staff housing are on the campus.

The entrance to Good Hope's Secondary School.

On the campus of Good Hope's school, with classrooms, library and dormitories.

Further your education is what this statue is implying to the students of Good Hope.

It's hard to imagine a place with no trees. When the Peace Corps Volunteers were there in the 1980's there were very few trees in many of the villages. There were trees outside of the villages, but for the most part people would cut trees around their houses. One of the volunteers was a Forestry Officer whose duties included teaching people the good news about trees--how to take care of them, keep the goats from nibbling them, watering, and the benefits of both the indigenous trees as well as fruit and lumber trees. There were only a couple of tree nurseries in the entire country.

Botswana's Forestry Department has expanded it's reach and influence in the  25+ years between visits.

Changes happen, and sometimes they are very good. Many of the villages the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers visited, including Good Hope and the village they had been stationed at, Letlhakane, had tree nurseries selling a variety of trees, shrubs and even some grasses and forbs.

Bertha, Tapiwa (behind), One, and Morris Modise of Good Hope, 

The good news of Africa usually stays in Africa.  But it is good news nonetheless, and should be proclaimed proudly.

Pula!

The People of the Bush

Boteti sub-district of the Central District of Botswana was a dry, dusty, out of the way place in 1989. With no paved road, no telephones, no electricity, and a six hour drive to the capitol, Gaborone, it was about as remote of a post as one can imagine. The area was sandy, covered with grass in the west, and short, shrubby types of trees in the east part of the district.

One of many magnificent sunsets in Botswana, 1989.

It was here that an American couple were living, she working for the Ministry of Lands as a Drought Relief Technical Officer, in other words, working in community development, and he was a Forestry Officer for the Ministry of Agriculture. They had lived in Letlhakane for a year, and were planning to stay for another year.

The Forestry Officer decided to take a trip to the western villages of the district to view the successes of the recently held National Tree Planting Day. In addition, he was going to inquire as to the need for more trees as well as check on the progress of three village woodlots. Usually, he travelled with a driver who was assigned to his office. There were three or four drivers: Palagabedi, Onkagatsi, Benjamin and Seepeto, but at this time they were all busy. The Forestry Officer was going to have to go it alone.

For several days he travelled west from the populated villages and diamond mining town to the vast open, dotted with tiny settlements along the dry Boteti riverbed. He wanted to get back home on Thursday, and he was hoping that he could do it before it got dark.

Traveling at night could be a terrifying experience in Botswana. There were the ever present bovines, that would wander across the road, or simply decide to stand in the middle of the road for the duration of the night. Then there was the wildlife--ostriches, impala, kudu, that would think nothing of being in the road, without any reflective gear. There were also other drivers. Several stories were told of somebody's vehicle breaking down on the road, and the driver would turn off the lights, not wanting the battery to die, and walk to the nearest village for assistance. Never would the thought occur to someone to pull off of the road.

The Forestry Officer got a late start from Makalamabedi, and after stopping in Motlopi once again, he realized he was running late. He travelled as fast as the sand track would allow him to drive the Toyota Hi-lux pick-up, and as he approached Rakops, he could see a spectacular African sunset happening. He had several hours to go before he returned home.

At the far end of the village of Rakops was a place people would wait to hitch a ride east. In Botswana at this time, in the "bush," it was common courtesy to give people rides who needed them. Private vehicles were infrequent, and public transportation, buses, taxis, were non-existent. There were thirteen people at the hitching spot.

He glanced in his rear view mirror and saw nobody behind him. No surprise. But he did glimpse the continuing spectacular sunset. Thinking that all of the thirteen people weren't waiting for a ride, that maybe some of them were merely waiting to say goodbye to their friends and relatives, he pulled over and after the appropriate greetings asked, "O ya kae?" Where are you going?

The monna magolo, the old man, said they were going to Orapa, and they all wanted a ride. "A re ye," said the Forestry Officer, we go. The women and children started loading their meager belongings into the bed of the small pick-up, and followed their gear into the open back. The old man, and a young twenty something man got into the cab with the driver. Just to be sure he had heard what he thought he heard, he asked the two in the cab with him where they were going, and they again replied Orapa.

A San youngster, Botswana, 1989.

Orapa is a diamond mining town about thirty kilometers northwest of Letlhakane. It is a closed community, with a fence around the area of ten by twenty kilometers. There are guards at the gates and if one doesn't have a good reason for going to Orapa, the guards will turn you away. This group of hitch hikers did not look like they had any reason to go into the town.

Just after they started picking up speed there was a knock on the back panel of the pick-up. Somebody back there wanted to stop. The old man asked the Forestry Officer to stop, and because there was seldom anyone driving these primitive roads, he stopped in the middle of the road. A women in the back jumped out, ran to a nearby rondoval, the traditional circular mud hut with thatched roof, and was quickly returning with a blanket. The driver glance in his rear view mirror to make sure she was settled in, and then focused on the blazing sunset.

Again they were underway, and shortly there was another knock from the back. The driver was becoming a little frustrated. He wanted to make some good distance while it was still light, but with every stop, the seconds, the minutes, where passing quickly, and he would soon be driving in the dark. Once the vehicle stopped, he watched a woman jump out of the back and run down the road. The driver watched, puzzled by her running along the road, but awed by the continuing sunset. Sunsets in Botswana seemed to be more vibrant, longer lasting, larger, than the sunsets he was use to in the United States. The woman picked up some fabric, a scarf, that must have blown off of her head,

Sunset in the Okavango Delta of northern Botswana.

They were off again, zooming along at 60 kilometers an hour. The two passengers were discussing something in a language the driver didn't understand, but he got the impression they were talking about the speedometer.

A short time later, the old man started fishing around in his oversized, well-worn pants. He pulled out a fist-sized amount of crumpled newspaper and opens it up on his lap. He tears off a corner of paper and then sprinkles some of the dried herbs that had been in the paper onto the smaller piece and rolls it into a cigarette. About this time the driver pushes in the cigarette lighter. The old man was fishing in his pockets for matches when the cigarette lighter pops out and the driver hands it to the old man. After the cigarette is lit, there is quite the discussion about the lighter, and the old man pushes the lighter in several times to witness for himself the miracle of fire on the truck.

By the junction of the road to Toromoja, the sky was darkening. The brilliant sunset was fading to dark.  It was becoming harder to see anything outside the headlight beam, and the truck was slowed to about 40 kilometers. By the time they reached Mopipi, it was pitch black.

There was a knock from the back and the driver stopped in downtown Mopipi, population 200. Several women climbed out of the back of the truck along with a child, leaving seven passengers in the back, along with the two men in the cab with the driver.

At the edge of the village there was another knock. The driver thought, what is going on with these people? Couldn't somebody have walked the half kilometer to here? Some of the women in the back got out and squatted. The two passengers in the cab got out, and standing in front of the pick-up, urinated into the headlight beams. Everyone got back into the vehicle and the old man said, "Tsamaya." Go.

It was going to be another hour, at least, to home in Letlhakane, but the road was straight and flat the entire way. The vegetation consisted entirely of mophane, a shrub in the legume family; definately a monoculture of shrubs. The mophane was densely spaced, and uniformly three to four meters tall. In the dark it looked very homogenous. There would be Orapa to deal with, but none of it's lights were visible when there was another knock from the back.

Argh!

How many stops are they going to make, thought the driver, now thoroughly frustrated. The women and children in the back were getting out, handing their bags out one at a time. The young man and the old man in the cab both slid out and closed the door behind them. Everyone was getting out of the vehicle. Suddenly, the old man was next to the driver's side door, and through the open window clasps his hands, bows slightly, and says, "Danki, rra." Thank you, sir.

In the dark, all of his riders stepped into the bush and quickly disappeared. The Forestry Officer got out of the vehicle and peered into the darkness. He reached into the cab and turned the engine off, then the headlights. It was dark and quiet. His nine passengers had disappeared, quietly into the dark, all nine of them. They knew where they were going--home. He looked up and down the road. It appeared just like the other hundred kilometers before and after the stop. No signs. No lights. Nothing that he recognized would indicate that this was a place to stop to let somebody head home. And there were nine people, women, children and an old man walking in the dark to some shelter somewhere.

As the Peace Corps Volunteer stood there in the dark, he tried to ponder the meaning of life. He looked up to the stars spread out from horizon to zenith and into infinity; he looked into the bush, up and down the darkened road; and thought he lived in an awesome place.

The slow drive into Letlhakane was somewhat of a denouement of the final part of his trip to west Boteti. It was good to see his spouse and catch up with all the news, but something was rattling around in his mind--who were they? What were they doing? Where were they going? Are they doing okay? What became of them? How did they know where to go?

They were questions he continues to find the answers to.