i am able to safely and responsibly operate a government vehicle
August 4, 2025
What up gang! Does anyone read this? Please find a more productive way to spend your time! God knows I need to.After a dull and eventless June that drove me totally peanuts, the next four weeks had me running around like a headless chicken. First, I started my internship with the Natural Resources Department at the New River Gorge National Park, doing forest health and restoration. Although it's a strange year to be a transgender immigrant in the Park Service, I've always had this dream of working for NPS and becoming a ranger, log cabin living in the deep forest, walking around in that cunty little uniform. So far, it's been incredible! My job mostly entails of frolicking through the forest and looking at plants all day, which is the same thing I was doing when I was unemployed. Here some projects we are working on:
1. Planting and monitering the endangered Spiraea virginiana, a pretty floodwater flower, along the Bluestone and Gauley rivers. Monitering can get suprisingly intense, as some of the plots are in the middle of a raging river and can take a bit of adventuring to get to. One day, we were nearly hit by a falling tree, poured on for hours, and then had to wade through waist high water to an island full of copperheads! One cool thing about working near the river is finding awesome trash. The Natural Resources department has a collection of haunted baby-doll heads, which frequent my dreams.
2. Surveying cliff-top pine communities along Bubba City and Endless Wall, which have been heavily impacted by hikers and climbers. I frequent these crags to climb in my free time, so it's been interesting to view them from an ecological perspective. I will say that I have once used a fragile Virginia Pine speciman as a tree anchor... I admit it, I have sinned! The Virignia pine trees are very shade intolerant and only thrive on the very edge of the rocky cliffs, where no other tree is tough enough to grow. Their pine needles drop into the substrate and make the soil acidic, leading to the development of blueberry bushes and lichen blooming all over the sandstone. Isn't that cool? Unfortunately, a large part of this project is to analyze the negative effects of rock climbing on the environment. I'm convinced: ban rock climbing forever!!!
3. I also got my pesticide license and have been commiting mass genocide on populations of kudzu, japanese knotweed, multiflora rosa, and tree of heaven around the abandoned mining town of Thurmond. I look quite small and silly in my little plastic backpack. Is conservation... just killing stuff?
4. Most of my job is just doing whatever boss-man Doug says. He's always sending us on random side quests. Last week, I joined some rowdy forest stewards to hack and squirt (violently murder) a bunch of native maple and sassafras trees, in order to restore oak and chesnut dominance to the forest. The next day, I helped drill holes into boulders and then zip-line them across the woods to build a new trail at Kaymoor. This week, I've been at chainsaw training. Wow, this job allows me to operate a government vehicle, deadly chemicals, and a chainsaw! What unlimited power! Surely this will result in no tradgedies!
July was also the month of Queerclimbtastic, a LGBTQ rock climbing festival right here at the New! This was my second year attending, and my first time hosting the Trans-Nonbinary meet-up, which I decided to locate at Junkyard. Last year's trans meet-up was only five people, so I was shocked to see a crowd of around thirty participants! Although we were cut short by the rain, it was fun to hang out and force my friends on my favorite climbs, like the classic hand-crack New Yosemite and the five-crux all-rounder Satisfaction Garunteed. On Sunday, I got to whip out my beloved inflatable kayak, which I got for free last month in exchange for photos, Instagram posts, and my soul. My initial plan was to kayak from Salmon Run put-in to Orange Oswald with my roomate, but they were being so negative, insisting that it was going to thunder, calling my plans stupid, complaining endlessly... I couldn't take it anymore! Eventually, I had the genius idea to pack up my boat, drive and dump them at the Summersville parking lot, drive back to Salmon Run, re-inflate my boat, and finally kayak out. In hindsight, this was the first stage of our friendship break-up that would happen later this month... that's foreshadowing for you. The day still turned out sunny and excellent as I towed way too many people around on my boat, and finally worked up the courage to try the scary cave climb Narcissus.
As my job is walk-through-forest, I've begun a deep obsession with mushrooms. It's a great year for them, and the forests of West Virginia are blanketed in chantarelles, boletes, and milkcaps. A few months ago, I saw a sign for the West Virginia Annual Mushroom Foray, which takes place every August in Davis. I didn't plan on going, until I almost got decked on a ledge... lemme rewind a little bit. The last week of June, I went climbing with my roomate at Third Buttress. Upon arriving at the crag they were distracted, conversating loudly with another couple WHILE they were climbing, and WHILE they were belaying me! When I led Coffindaffer's Dream, a tall climb with several flat ledges, or "coffins" to rest on, I yelled 'CLIPPING!' in preperation to clip a bolt right above one of these ledges. Instead of feeling the rope loosen, I felt a sudden TUG downwards, nearly being yanked off the wall. Frantically grabbing the quickdraw, I yelled, 'CLIPPINGCLIPPINGCLIPPING!' in which they responded, 'Oh, I thought you said TAKING!' ...aaaauughh. Hey, TAKE and CLIPPING are two very distictive terms that even new climbers easily differenciate. It was clear to me that he was not paying attention in the slightest! When I came down, I analyzed what would have happened if I had not instinctively grabbed the draw. I would have fully decked on a ledge, fallen, and then decked on another ledge! At best I would have to been helicoptered out, at worst I could have never climbed again. When I have a near miss, I like to talk to my partner about what happened and how it can be prevented in the future, but he was defensive, deflective, and told me there was nothing he could do to improve. So I decided then to cut things off, my first climbing partner 'break-up'. This made him very upset (over saying I wouldn't climb with him anymore, not over almost DECKING me) and as he climbed the same route he made sure to bark 'CLIPPING!!!' down at me, like I was the one that almost decked him??? Yeah, I think I've made the right decision. Anyways, look at this mushroom that looks like a dick.
Over the weekend, I escaped the house to go foraging for mycelium in the mossy spruce forests of Canaan Valley with the elderly, identifying and preparing my shiniest findings for DNA sequencing. I attended workshops and talks from mycologists about russulas and fairy rings and this rare fungi that look like a coconut. I tried some mushroom dishes, took some cool photos as everyone hauled their findings into the gallery, and probably learned more in two days than I did in three years of college. I also got into a violent bidding war over the cutest vintage mini-microscope, a discontinued japanese product by Nikon that goes for 600$ on Ebay. I felt fortunate to have nabbed it for 75$! I am going to have so much fun taking it out into the field... To wrap things up on this very long blog post, on the way home from the forage I stopped by Seneca for shrooms, where Maddie easily convinced me to maybeee spend the winter in Colorado. It'll be my first time living out west, as west as Colorado can be. Exciting, but although I just started my internship I'm dreading letting it go, letting this summer go. I think it's been the best summer yet, which is crazy because I thought last year was the best summer yet. Stonks baby! I wonder when this trend will end, like statistically what comes up must come down, ya know? The stock market must crash! But what if my life just got better every year, and I just got happier every year? Yeah... good luck bitch.