Ponderings of SCC Culture

Written by Jacob Zillhardt, an AmeriCorps Climate Corps member with the Los Valles Region:

Jacob and "his family" getting ready to head into the field

Young people join the Southwest Conservation Corps for as many reasons as we have unique back stories.  In case the reader is wondering, that amounts to a lot!  My crew alone represents eight different states with previous work in everything from construction work and painting to yoga instruction and hair salon management.  We’re aged twenty-one through twenty-six and have educational backgrounds in a variety of subjects like geography, Spanish, philosophy, art and outdoor education.  One thing unites us all, though, and that is a love of the outdoors coupled with the desire to improve our communities through conservation.  Admittedly, each of us has personal motivations just as our perspectives determine how or why we value nature.  Nevertheless, whether it’s busting our tails ten hours a day placing boulders into drywall, repairing eroded tread near the foot of Mount Gerard or taking a pleasure hike on a full moon onto the Great Sand Dunes, sharing these experiences with so many fun and interesting people is simply sublime.  At least for the duration of the program (to borrow the idea of one of my crewmates), one’s crew is a family.  After daily tool maintenance at the end of work, everyone does chores – procures water, cooks meals, cleans up – just about everything in company except bathing, which doesn’t happen at all for nine days straight.  So much more could be said about roughing it with latrines and cat holes or traversing breathtaking landscapes while breathless under sixty-pound packs, but I have to say that sitting in van at the end of hitch is the most comfortable I’ve been in over a week, and that this moment is just too serene to continue looking down!