When I left my home state to join the Big Sky Watershed Corps program, I was more than ready to go. I was tired of all the time spent sitting for hours in fluorescent-lit classrooms or counting grass roots in a range lab without setting foot outdoors, leg jumping under the table, ready to go, ready to do.
I spent my first week in Hill County, Montana wondering what exactly I had signed up for. I moved in on a -27° day, my first time even in a place with snow, in a town not much larger than my college graduating class. That first week at the Hill County Conservation District was spent not-so-quietly panicking as I came to the realization that for the first time in my life I had no plan, no road map laid out before me. I had to make one, and how much I did or did not accomplish was entirely up to me. How was I to even make that map? Conference calls with different administrators told me what conservation districts were, and thirty years of files stacked on every surface told me what this conservation district had been. But what did it need to become?
So I asked. I went and I showed up and I did and I moved and I stubbornly pushed forward and started accumulating precious days and moments like these:
The locals laughing with me as I attend a winter calving in jeans. Frozen but awed as I run my hands through still-wet hair above large black eyes.
Smiling conversations in the town grocery store with others who served with AmeriCorps once upon a time.
Identifying native plants to high schoolers on the county nature trail, their fingers running over feathery yarrow leaves and smooth red dogwood, repeating names under their breath.
Three generations of community members guiding 4th graders around the community garden with the students leaning down to discover life in the soil beneath their feet.
Sharing a vision of a beautiful summer with the residents who come to pick up carefully packaged wildflower seeds.
Accompanying a producer through a restored prairie and celebrating every dusty blue western wheatgrass sprout.
Watching wheat sprouts struggle to push through drought-crusted soil.
Sitting in MacGyvered trucks, just listening.
These past five months I’ve learned and done much more in this position than I ever expected. Grant writing and management, social media management and graphic design, water quality testing and range assessment. I’m looking forward to building confidence, skills, and relationships for the remainder of my service and beyond, seeing how much more we can accomplish in these short eleven months.
