Spreading Straw My summer as a Bitterroot National Forest seasonal employee

By Tim Peterson

Flaxen wings flutter Golden blades drift to the earth

Many bales to go

“Why would you leave a full-time job with full benefits and retirement for a temporary seasonal job that pays less and has no benefits?” is what several people asked when I left my job with the State of Montana to be a biological technician (laborer according to Curt the excavator operator) on the Bitterroot National Forest. Part of the answer to that question can be found in the speech I gave at the orientation of The Mission Continues orientation of Charlie Class 2015 “How I found my Path in the Wilderness.” The short answer is it is where my soul has told me to go. The first hurdle was landing the job. Since my previous job was as an Employment Specialist and the Disabled Veteran Outreach Specialist at the Bitterroot Job Service I had a leg up on understanding the application process. I also used the tips available on USAJobs.gov to submit a quality application. I applied for as was hired as a Biological Science Technician (Natural Resources) GS-0404-05 with really very little understanding what that meant other than I would be spending 90 percent of my time in the field working with an excavator operator and students from Trapper Creek Job Corps to decommission logging roads in the Darby Lumber Lands. My summer started on May 18th. On that Monday morning I brought in the paperwork required to start getting to work to my supervisor Cole Mayn we chatted about what the summer had in store for me and then he introduced me to the people in the office I would be interacting with.

Photo by Perry Baucus of the Ravalli Republic

The next phase was getting oriented with the Forest Service, USDA, my rights and obligations as a federal employee and licensed to drive a “service rig.” None of which took as much time as I had anticipated and with a little patience and persistence it was quickly behind. That first week I was off to the field with Marilyn Wilde, a hydrology technician, to visit some photo points located on roads that had been decommissioned previously. The decommissioning efforts are monitored regularly the first, third and fifth years following the completion of the roads removal/storage. Marilyn and I loaded our lunches, Forest Service radio, camera, GPS and PPE into a service rig and headed out to North Rye Creek to take the next sequence of photographs for the photo points Marilyn had established. She brought along previous years photos, directions to the locations and GPS coordinates to each point. Some points were located where the road junction used to be. Others were at steam crossings or other significant features the removed road had intersected with. In most cases the flagging marking the point the picture was taken from was still there other times we had to line up objects in the background. On one occasion the tree in the background had fallen down and the flagging had disappeared so we lined up the terrain in the background and replaced the flagging. One afternoon while we were hiking down a road that was heavily overgrown with mountain Alder and pushing our way through the 5 to 7 foot tall shrubs carefully stepping over downed lodgepole pine a loud crashing noise erupted from the shrubs on the uphill side of the road. Marilyn, who was leading the way, querried in a startled voice “What is it ... what is it” and before I could respond a cow elk, looking just as startled as we were, peaked over the top of a bush less than 20 yards away and dashed away up the hill. From that afternoon on before we entered any overgrown areas we called out “Hey moose” or “Hey bear.” For much of the month of May and early June I spent my days spreading seed and fertilizer on burned logging landings and burn piles in the West Fork and Darby Ranger Districts. I did spend a couple days in the Ambrose area of the Stevensille Ranger District where I stumbled on a cow moose and calf as I drove around a corner. The mom bravely stood watch as her calf ambled up the steep drainage and then they both melded into to dense fir stand.

Surprising some elk

View from my office

In mid June the hiking started, Marilyn and I walked mile after mile of old overgrown logging roads getting a feel for what work would need to be done to decommission or store the roads. Decommissioning a road is the complete decompaction and recontour of the cut and fill slope to the hillsides orginal slope then covering the disturbed soil with straw and spreading a mixture of fertilizer and seed mix over the entire recontoured area. To store a road you remove all the culverts recontour the drainages and decompact the road prism. Only the recontoured areas of the stored roads get straw and the seed/fertilizer mix. If nothing is growing on the road prism we spead seed and fertilizer on it. In late June Marilyn brought me along on a couple of days of stream stability surveys in the Tee Pee Creek drainage in preparation for the Meadow Vapor Project. We walked the first couple hundred feet of several streams evaluating the stream bed and bank stability by categorizing the type of rocks in the bed, the roots and rocks in the banks, the sinuosity of the stream and the abundance and variety of the vegetation along the stream. Then suddenly July was upon us and 440 fifty pound bales of straw arrived at the Darby Ranger Station. It was about 90 degrees and windy both days we stacked the straw. Straw got stuck everywhere.The worst was inhaling little bits that came loose as I gasped for breath. Marilyn, Cole, I and the farmer delivering the straw unloaded and stacked about 220 bales each day which took less than 2 hours of sweat drenching labor. Probably the most demanding of all the work I did this summer. On July 6th the work of decommissioning roads started with tracking the excavator up to road 73954. Since the roads in the Darby Lumber Lands hadn’t been used in many years getting to the first road invovled clearing downded trees and boulders, plucking trees and shrubs from the road prism and cut and fill slopes and repairing ditches and culverts. Then the routine of coordinating with Curt to have a truck load of 30 bales of straw and 5 or six bags of fertilizer at the end of the road to be decommissioned when he arrived there began. If I didn’t get the stuff there on time it meant I would be carrying it by hand across debris covered slopes of up to 70 degrees and ankle deep loose soil. In order to cover the soil with sufficient straw to provide cover and moisture retention for the grass seed to germinate the bales are placed about every 50 feet and then a bag of fertilizers is placed at every fifth bale of straw. As Curt recontoured the slope he placed the bales and fertilizer on the

Setting the bales out

Bales & Fertilizer waiting to be spread

Re-contouring a slope

slope. I would first spread the straw and then the fertilizer and seed mix.The straw is put down first to prevent the seed being trampled and buried under the loose soil.

Curt took great care in returning the slope to what it looked like before the road was constructed and ensuring no portions of the compacted road prism remained. This is important so that the sub-surface water flow can be reconnected and to minimize the probability of mass wasting occurring. He also replanted as many shrubs as he could. Since the willow and alder are sprouters most of them will regrow in the spring. Where there are live stream crossings and culverts are removed Curt placed boulders and woody debris in the stream channel to limit sedimentation. Occasionally we placed cuttings from

alder and willow in the stream bank as well. One of the delights of working this summer was having students from Trapper Peak Job Corps’ Natural Resources Department out on the mountain sides with me. Everyone one of the students had a great attitude, worked hard and were truly interested in learning their trade and how and why the Bitterroot National Forest was decommissioning roads. I enjoyed sharing the history of the Darby Lumber Lands, the reasons for decommissioning the roads and other information about forest ecology with all of them. Thank you Jacob, Allyssa, Carlos, Geraldo and Colton and their instructors Stephanie and Dan.

Between July 6 and October 29 about 10.9 miles of roads were decommissioned or stored. It took the effort of 11 people to spread almost 6 tons of straw, 2,500 pounds of fertilizer and 500 pounds of grass seed. In removing the roads prisms and re-contouring the mountain sides over 5 tons of culvert were removed, stored for re-use or recycled. We also repaired drainage ditches, catch basins and installed dozens of water dips while tracking from one road to the next. I the process we opened up dozens of miles of road for recreational use. Although the work was very physically demanding and the working conditions harsh I enjoyed every minute of it. Walking out of the Supervisor’s Office my last of the season I felt the season ended too early and I will dearly miss everyone I worked with – until next year.

Re-contoured stream crossing

Carlos Martinez, Trapper Creek Job Corps