Another near death experience

This has been a crazy few weeks. Jamie, our regular crew leader, has been in and out of town due to personal errands, so Derik, a seasonal in his second year here at the Ashley, has been our crew leader. Though that has been a big change, it seems like our workweeks have been more regular. We've been spending three or four days in the field, and a day or two in the office, mostly working on the North Flank, which is just what we call the region were logging and burning projects are going to occur. It has been mostly uneventful, yet difficult, except for some (extremely) bad weather.

One day, we went up a ridge to survey, unfazed of the storm in the distance. By the time we reached the top, the storm was directly overhead. First, lightening struck a little unnervingly close, but we thought it would pass quickly. Only a couple minutes later, the lightening and thunder were simultaneous-- we couldn't tell which direction it came from, and were expecting a nearby tree to have been struck. We then decided it was not worth staying on the ridge top at 9000 ft, and ran down. Then, it started to rain, shortly followed by more rain, then massive hail. We were soaked from head to toe in a matter of minutes and bruised from the aggressive hail. After we got down the ridge top, we had to walk about a mile and a half to the car wearing wet denim and hiking boots filled with water. The water broke my phone, so that I can no longer see the screen well and I lost my sunglasses in the frantic run down. That was not a fun day. We went back to the ridge to survey later that week, and the hail was still on the ground; it looked like snow.

This past weekend, we went to Salt Lake. I was able to hang out with Hannah, and we all went shopping. It was so nice to be in civilization again. Also, I've been especially home sick these past few weeks, and it was good to see a familiar face. Not to mention the fact that Hannah was super awesome and made me a bed with sheets and everything. I haven’t had sheets in six weeks.

It's confirmed, my last day of work is the 28th of August, which is a Thursday. Plan accordingly?

One last piece of good news, I finally submitted my abstract to the GBAC (Great Basin Anthropological Conference). I'm doing an oral presentation of a paper, and a poster to accompany it. The conference will be from October 8-10 in Portland, Oregon. I don't know when my presentation will be yet, but I invite anyone who wants to come see me (I'll need the moral support).

I hope you're having a good summer, and save some fun for me when I get back! I can't wait to come home.