Written by Kile Stumbo, Wild Stew Field Crew Assistant Crew Leader.
On Wednesday, under the direction of our fearless leader Joe, our crew loaded up the work truck and trailer with all the hitch necessities and drove to Payson to camp at the Forest Service’s Houston Mesa Horse Campground. Viola, Eric, Foster, Kile, and Joe set up camp before heading out to scout out the condition of the road taking us up to our work area. We were able to hike out to the start of our work area near the Highline trail and we built “one rock dam” (ORD) structures for the rest of the day.
We continued building these erosion control structures on old decommissioned sections of the trail, finishing around 106 structures before calling it a day on Thursday. On Friday, due to the extensive snow in the foothills of the Mogollon Rim preventing us from accessing the trail or even being able to see the ground in our work area, we diverted to brushing and clearing out the horse campgrounds in Houston Mesa Campground. At one point, due to his shenanigans possibly violating “horse law”, Foster was placed in Horse Jail.
He was quoted as saying “when I ask about my bail, all they talk about is hay.” Luckily, Nico, our office-based Conservation & Wildlife Associate said he would contact our legal counsel and “see what legal arguments we can stirrup.” After several more incredible horse puns were shared, Foster was let go on account of good behavior, and continued the important work of clearing brush out around the campground horse corrals.
As temperatures warmed up and the snow began to melt, we were able to return to building ORDs. On Monday, after a morning of work, we returned to camp, packed up, and headed back to Tucson for a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) class. In total, we built 156 one rock dams and brushed most of the Horse campground sites and all of the unoccupied sites of the Mule Deer, Mountain Lion, and Black Bear loops of the Houston Mesa Campground.
On Tuesday and Wednesday our esteemed colleague Nico Lorenzen, who is also a trained member of the Southern Arizona Rescue Association (SARA), did a fantastic job teaching our WFA class at the SARA building near Sabino Canyon. Despite it being his first time teaching first aid, he knocked it out of the park, helping us efficiently learn and understand the concepts, with lots of useful practice and medical scenarios. This level of first aid training allows us not only to safely do our work in many remote areas, it helps build skills that we can use to help people who might get hurt or sick while recreating out on our public lands. Thank you to Nico and to SARA for the generous use of their building and training resources!
And as a final friendly note to all our fellow public lands workers and volunteers, your work is needed, important, and much appreciated. YOU are needed, important, and appreciated. Not only as a steward of our public lands, but as a human being. Never forget that. I’ll leave everyone with a quote from Mister Rogers. In times of tragedy, “always look for the helpers. Because if you look for the helpers, you’ll know that there’s hope.”
Let’s all strive to be helpers.
Sunshine & Snowstorms 
on the Highline Trail