Hitch # 6 & 7 – Santa Rita Mountains & Black Canyon

Once again scheduling and contracting conflicts meant two one week hitches the last two weeks. This means working ten hour days, which kick our butts in the Arizona heat (it has been hitting th 90's) During hitch #6 we worked in the Santa Rita Mountains building the Arizona Trail. The Arizona Trail is a nearly finished 800 mile trail that runs from Mexico to Utah. An SCC leadership development crew from Colorado came down to work with us. It was only their 3rd day building trail and many of them had never even swung a pick mattock before so we spent a lot of time sharing our trail building knowledge from building retaining walls to body mechanics. The crew leaders of the Colorado crew are both male so us TTC gals spent some time with the Colorado gals showing them the tricks of how to do the same work as our male counterparts with less upper body strength. It was a great hitch. We were camped in the middle of the mountains, the weather was beautiful, and the full moon rid us of the need for headlamps.

Hitch #7 was in Black Canyon City building the Black Canyon Trail, which is the most beautiful trail I've worked on thus far. The desert is in bloom adding to the beauty of the mountains, plateaus, and well laid out trail. The soil makeup of the area is constantly changing from foot to foot only adding interest to the trail and to our work. Only a large pipeline scar the plummets across the mountain range and the occasionally in view highway take away from the beauty. We camped in the middle of Black Canyon City across from the family dollar. Not exactly classy accommodations.

Hitch #7 was my boss Daniel's last hitch. He got a job with the Silver City, NM hot shot fire crew. He will be very missed.

On the weekend off between hitches, I became not homeless. I am now living with a friend of my boss who needed some help with his rent. So I moved onto the couch of a vouched for stranger named Matt. It was a good choice. Our neighbors Ana and Heather are wonderful. They've all known each other for years and now I am part of their little duplex family. I spent last night helping Heather and Anna search for Heather's missing 17 year old cat. We never found her. Prospects are not good. I saw a neighborhood dog running around with a dead cat that looked like Murphy in its mouth earlier that day. Heather has come to terms that her cat is dead. Today Heather made us all pancakes for breakfast then we went to see “I Love You, Man,” and we got Indian food for lunch. It was a good day even with the loss of Murphy looming over us.