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Alternative title: It's a hog trap!

Pictured above:

1. That's the weirdest looking hog I've ever seen
2. Okay, that is one huge bear
3. Emily gets into position to open the trap but the door is stuck
4. The bear sticks his head alarmingly high through the raccoon hole in the top of the trap
5. Goodbye for now - we will return later with assistance to get the trap door unstuck
6. Leaving corn at a different site
7. WE ARE VERY OFFICIAL AND IMPORTANT
8. Hog wallows
9. Revisiting the trapped bear, only to discover it has escaped
10. Yes, that is the giant hole the bear tore in the top of the trap to escape to sweet, sweet freedom

I had another resource day today, but this time instead of mapping ash trees, I got to go out with the wildlife SCA intern, Emily, to go check hog traps.

Wild hogs have been an invasive species in the park for about a century and cause a lot of damage to the natural environment. In an effort to curb their populations, the park has been trapping the hogs in these giant, chainwire traps and then delivering a PETA-endorsed kill shot in the brain, just above the eyes (think of how Javier Bardem from No Country For Old Men would do it). 

We checked a handful of traps today, and here are some things we found instead of hogs:

• Evidence of wild turkeys
• A LARGE puddle of coagulated blood from a recently executed piggy
• A black bear

The very first trap we checked had a giant, surprisingly calm black bear in it. I was offered the honorable option of fleeing to the safety of the vehicle, but like the opportunistic invincible young fool I am, I stood at a distance to snap pictures while Emily, the wildlife SCA, attempted to open the now badly-warped trap.

Sadly, I never got to see the bear amble off because she was unable to dislodge the stuck trap door, and by the time we returned with help, the bear had made its timely jailbust and escaped. Still, it was exciting for me and a great excuse to get out of the office.

PS Happy St. Patrick's Day, especially to Levi since he has Scarlet Fever and is obsessed with the color green. Feel better, buddy!

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1. Yours truly next to a jar of pickled hellbenders (aka giant salamanders)
2. Why'd it have to be snakes?
3. A skull of something or other
4. What's cuter than a stuffed bear cub?

There are multiple visitor centers in the park and each has its own educational program. This week, the other SCA Educational Interns have arrived, and together with the rest of the Resource Education staff, went through training together.

It has definitely been nice getting to know some other people in my position and seeing the different working conditions we're in. For instance, at Cades Cove, the two interns have Wednesday-Thursday off instead of the weekend and they share housing with each other. On the North Carolina side at Oconoluftee, Laura gets to dress up as an old-timey Southern Appalachian woman and guide kids through a historical cookie-making activity.

In the pictures above, Adrian, the museum curator, showed us the park's archives, which were pretty damn cool. Have you ever seen rattlesnakes stuffed in a jar? Or plant specimens that are a hundred years old? Or a buttload of disgusting beetles pinned to a tray all fancy-like? I have, and it was cool.

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Pictured above:

1. Following Sarah up the snowy, slushy trail
2. ICE TO SEE YOU!
3. This is what I look like standing under a waterfall
4. Grotto Falls

Grotto Falls is the only waterfall in the park you can actually walk behind, and as you can see from the pictures, it's pretty neat. Round trip was about 3 miles or so – a nice, gentle start to the hiking season if I do say so myself. Plus, I got to go out with my coworkers, who made the slushy-muddy trek up the mountain a hoot and a half.

It's been the nicest day since I've arrived in the park, so as soon as I got back and ate some lunch, I changed my clothes and decided to walk into Gatlinburg for the first time.

On the surface, Gatlinburg appears to be a shrine to hyper-consumerism, the epitome of all that is toxic about American materialism, and it sort of is. Underlying its miles of putt-putt, novelty restaurants, and Cooter's go-kart racing/Dukes of Hazzard Museum is a sort of saccharine self-awareness. Gatlinburg is not, as I first thought, simply a side effect of the park, but a destination all its own, and people come from miles around just to visit the town, regardless of its proximity to the park.

Sure, there are a thousand fat white people walking around and old-timey photo studios on every corner – that's what the tourists are expecting, and damn it all to the hell if that ain't what they're gunna git. Leave your pretenses at the door and be prepared to spend exorbitant amounts of money on average-quality fudge and you've got yourself a good time.

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Pictured above:

1. Snow outside my back door this morning. Quelle surprise!
2. A small heater for a small person.

There was just enough snow on the ground this morning to make me feel slightly less weird about wearing my long johns into work today.

I knew I was going to be working in the office all day today, and the let me tell you what – the basement of the Park Heardquarters building is comparable to something of a hermetically sealed freezer, climactically speaking. The combination of being sub-terrainian and managing the impossible feat of absolutely no air flow means that there is a palpable temperature differential from one side of a doorway to another. Fortunately, I have long johns, tea, and the world's tiniest heater to help combat the cold.

Tonight I'm going to have dinner at Joy's and then HOPEFULLY get to bed early to catch up on some must needed sleep. I'm hoping to get a hike in this weekend too – cross your fingers for good weather!

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(That's not 100% true, as Josh did send me a copy of my amended tax return. Thanks for doing my taxes Josh! Keep up the good work.)

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Pictured above:

1. Susan and Doug measuring an ash tree
2. How to use a stick to avoid poison ivy while measuring an ashtree
3. The Christmas fern, so named because of the little nubbins at the base of the leaves make them look like Christmas stockings
4. A trilium
5. Virginia creeper

Next week, other SCA interns from different parts of the park will have arrived, and together we'll commence Spring training along with the seasonal staff. I imagine that after then, my schedule will start to fill up a bit more and I'll probably have more directed tasks, but until then, most of my time is spent exploring the park, shadowing other members of Resource Education during presentations, and doing whatever else pops up.

This morning, I went along with Emily and Sarah to a meeting about a couple of impending ecological threats to the park, including the emerald ash borer (EAB), a grossy little green beetle. You can read more about the EAB on the park website, but for the purposes of this post, here's what you need to know:

• The EAB burrows in ash trees, killing them within a few years
• Their populations can spread hundreds of miles a year due to the transportation of infested firewood
• The EAB has already been found in pretty much all the states north of here, all the way up to Ontario and Quebec
• There are two types of ash tree in the park - white ash and green ash
• We aren't sure of how many ash trees we have, nor what their distribution is

Naturally, we need to figure out a way to detect the presence of EAB in the park, but first we need to find out where the ash trees are. Yesterday, I got to go out with Susan, a biotech, and Doug, a "citizen scientist" (which is a really sexy way of saying park volunteer) to map and measure ash trees.

In other words, I got to hike around for a bit while trying to learn how to identify trees. It's really difficult by the way. Apparently you're supposed to be able to differentiate between bark texture, color, trunk shape, branch type, etc, but they pretty much all just looked like trees to me. Even distinguishing the trees from the tree-like shrubs was difficult. Trees are hard!

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Good news! After a thousand terrible experiences with Verizon, I finally got my phone situation figured out, and I'm happy report that this update comes to you via a brand new, mega-geeky Droid 2. Tomorrow everything should be business a usual, and I'll post some backlogged posts and pictures from my exiting weekend, including the following shenanigans:

• That time I fell in a river
• Alicia learns how to use a map and compass, kind of
• Hot guys playing hockey and getting in fights
• My first self-administered haircut, motivated by rage

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I spent this morning making the 24-mile drive out to Cades Cove, where the preserved buildings of many Appalachian settlers still stand resolute. The Cades Cove loop is a one-way road that runs 11-miles around a wide valley where many buildings such as churches, houses, and schools, remain in tact. Most breathtaking of all was the landscape. It was crystal clear today, and the "smoky" clouds hung over the trees like a veil, suspended in place by invisible strings just below the freshly-powdered ridge. The sun was shining, the air was cool, the brooks were babbling, and I saw deer, woodepeckers, and even my first wild turkey. And it looked absolutely delicious. Yeah, it was kind of idyllic like that.

Unfortunately, this is one of those pesky areas of the park that is so beautiful, all the dumb people come out to see it too. The 11-mile loop is one lane with scenic pullouts every few hundred feet or so. Interspersed with these pullouts are signs that say something to the effect of

DO NOT STOP. PLEASE PULL OVER TO ENJOY VIEW.

To be fair, these signs are awfully distracting amidst all the beautiful splendor of nature; they sometimes can take seconds to read, so it should come to no surprise that every single car you come upon will be parked squarely in the middle of the road, its inhabitants oggling some spectacle of wildlife. After several minutes of hemming and hawing by said inhabitants, it will then necessarily dawn on someone that, oh! other people in the world exist in addition to ourselves? This is a shock to most people and often results in a further delay of at least two or three minutes – up to five if they are truly flabbergasted. At this point, something like a shifting of gears happens as the driver attempts to recall what seems to be the forgotten skill of driving. After some time, the feat is finally accomplished, at which point, I have peed my pants or starved to death or come to some other unattractive end, all while forcefully maintaining my "I'm in a government vehicle" smile, which I do because I am a good employee*.

It is a testament to the beauty of Cades Cove that this ordeal was absolutely worth it in every respect. You soon come to find out that every person you were stuck behind always gave a cheerful wave as you passed, indicating that none of them were the drooling mouth-breathers you had pictured, but instead, were good-natured tourists, dumbstruck by the beauty of the cove. And then you remember that the busy season hasn't even started yet, and then you feel slightly sad once more. Such is the dichotomous nature of a park, I suppose.

*I am, in fact, not an employee at all, but a lowly, unpaid, peon intern. Weep for me and my plight.

Pictures coming soon, I promise!

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Well poop. I was hoping to go on a hike today, and I guess I still could've if I didn't mind snow-shoeing back, but the thing is, yuck. Also, it's Sunday, and Sundays are for being lazy, so I'm not really sure who I thought I was kidding with this whole "wake up early and go on a hike" idea.

The good news is, I've gotten lots of chores done today. I did my laundry, washed my dishes, cleaned my bathroom kind of, and I even gave my bed a good sleeping in. Good job, me!

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The class was almost exclusively in the classroom, and I got to learn cool things like

• The different components of a map
• How to read a topographical map
• The difference between True North, Grid North, and Magnetic North
• How to use a map and compass to get from one location to another
• What a spur, draw, ridge, and saddle are 

Of course, I immediately forgot almost all of this, which was a shame because 1) it's quite interesting, and 2) we had to put it all into practice in a simple exercise at the end of the 7-hour class. This, of course, resulted in me taking the "hard route" and "crossing" (splashing about in) a river, only to find that my last compass reading was a tad inaccurate (completely and irrevocably wrong). Naturally, I found this whole pride-killing exercise brilliant, and I left the class smiling, soaking wet, and with a cute little pin as an affirmation of a job well done.

Tonight I went up to Knoxville with the girls from work to grab dinner and catch the hockey game - Knoxville Ice Bears versus Fayetteville FireAntz. We ate a restaurant called Cancun, and I think this may be the only Mexican restaurant in the history of the planet to not have hot sauce out on the table. Also, the restaurant had far fewer topless men and women than its name would have you believe. Color me disappointed on TWO counts.

I have been to one hockey game before in my life, and this game was only about a gabillion times better. First of all, SO MANY FIGHTS! It was great. If there's something better than sweaty, athletic men sucker-punching it out in ice skates, I don't want to know. Plus, we got free posters of the team, which is great, because the walls of my efficiency apartment are looking pretty bare…

*Although the field school is independent of the park, their classes take place throughout the park and even in some of the park's indoor facilities. It's my understanding that they get to do this for free in exchange for letting employees take courses for free, which is pretty great for hangers-on like me.

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Unspeakable things happened at the Sevierville Verizon store today. Here are some things that did NOT happen while I was there today:

• I received a new phone
• I was treated like a smart person
• I had a good time

Honestly, I would've been happy if at least one of the abovementioned had occurred, but sadly, this ain't Sea World, this is real as it gets. All I could do after such a stupid and aggravating experience was come home and vent my frustrations by giving myself an "angry haircut" in the bathroom.

Obviously, this sounds like a terrible idea, but if you remember that I am something of a genius when it comes to not cutting my ears off (I've not cut my ears off 100% of the time), then I'm sure you won't be surprised at all to hear that it went quite swimmingly, and that in future self-administered haircuts, I intend to interact with Verizon in some capacity in order to focus my rage into a quiet, hair-cutting nirvana, because apparently that works for me.

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I had a long day today. It doesn't help that I stayed up until, like, 4 AM reading and eating fruit snacks. D'oh!

The Parks as Classroom program is a joint effort by the local schools and the Resource Education department of the GSMNP to connect students with the great natural resource that is the Great Smoky Mountains. Part of this program involves kids coming to the park for field trips to learn, and part of it involves us coming to the schools to teach. And that's just what we did today.

Mostly I just followed around Beth as she presented different... presentations to different classes of kids throughout the day. In this particular school, each class representa the entire group of kids for that grade - in other words, the sixth grade class is ALL THE SIXTH GRADERS IN THE SCHOOL. Nuts!

Beth ebbed and flowed like a madman for basically five straight hours. It was really neat to watch her change pace, vocabulary, and approach for each age group, and she changed with such alacrity it made my head spin a little. Bombarding as it was, it was cool to finally see what kind of material I'll be presenting when my time comes. And it will come...

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I spent most of the morning sitting shotgun and navigating while Joy drove us around to various schools in the area to drop off educational DVDs about the park. It was warm and sunny, so the car ride was relaxing (if not completely nap-inducing) and we got to talk about lots of random things from music to tattoos to sushi.

I went on another walk this afternoon on a nature trail near the visitor's center. Towards the end of the trail was an old cabin that had been restored by the park using mostly its original materials. Needless to say, it scared the poop out of me. I could hardly approach the damn thing - the nearer I got, the more I thought, "Isn't this the part where lone ethnic woman gets captured by mountain people, only to have her skin peeled off and fed to her?" Think Deliverance meets that episode of the X-Files where they find that incestuous, deformed, murderous family out in the boonies. Scary, yeah??

Tomorrow I am going out with other people in Resource Education (the division I work for) to finally see some classroom presentations in action. More on that tomorrow!

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1. Hiked one of the park's most popular trails
2. Saw a pretty waterfall
3. Watched deer frolicking in front of Park Headquarters
4. Looked for salamanders under tree cookies
5. Drove up to Newfound Gap (the second highest point in the park) and overlooked both Tennessee and North Carolina
6. Stood where FDR stood when he dedicated the park in 1940

A few years ago, Amy and I decided to go hike Wallace Falls. A short hike with great views, it promised to be a pleasant drive and an easy "break-in" hike to start out the season. This hike turned out to be a little more popular than we bargained for. People who wear street clothes and swing grocery bags full of food by their sides is one thing – people who smoke while hiking is a whole nother thing. Laurel Falls is kind of like that hike, but in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Paved, accessible, and under 3-miles round trip, I had been warned that Laurel Falls was something of a dilletante hiker's Mecca, so I was advised to try to knock it out before the season started to pick up and things really started to get crowded on my off hours. Fortunately I have this really cool internship that you may have heard about, so I just went on the clock today under the guise of completing my first assigned task: take care of "Flat Stanley."

Flat Stanley is a project where kids in classrooms all around the country send some flimsy paper doll to national parks as a kind of ambassador on behalf of the student. The parks then send back brochures, maps, and other promotional materials – in this case, pictures of "Flat Jessica" and "Flat Intergallactic Space Traveler" on a hike in the park. Needless to say, I looked really awesome taking pictures with a paper doll while people with strollers left me in their dust.

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Pictured below:

1. A tree cookie
2. Checking for salamanders
3. Look at me, I'm FDR!
4. A terrible picture of frolicking deer in front of park headquarters

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I think today went rather well, but that might just be because I did a lot of the one thing I do very well in any situation: stand around like an idiot. Basically, I followed around Park Ranger Joy the whole day as she showed me the facilitie, introduced me to very important people whose names I forgot instantly, and received texts from the National Weather Service indicating a steadily approaching tornado warning.*

In addition to the nearby Sugarlands Visitor Center - which houses a theater, a museum (crappy cell phone pictures above), and the requisite gift shop - I also got a mini-your of the Twin Creeks educational center, a relatively new building a few miles away. Apparently it was built with environmentally-friendly architecture so as to take advantage of natural light and respond to environmental changes, though in practice, the building has turned out to be less Disney Channel Original Movie "Smarthouse" than originally planned, and now everyone has to open windows the old fashioned way (with hands instead of robots). 

After work I went out with coworkers to Blockbuster to clean up on their going-out-of-business sale, then to the Pigeon Forge branch of the Smoky Mountain Brewery for dinner and trivia, which we won because we're awesome.

Lots more exciting things happened today, but since I'm updating from my phone, you'll just have to wait. Stay tuned for:

• Trivia at the Smoky Mountain Brewery, or Alicia Tries to Censor Herself, or Alicia Goes All PG-13 Up In This Motherfucker 
• Driving Government Vehicles: Who Hired The Asian Woman Anyway? 
• My new boyfriend, Flat Stanley 

*No such tornado actually touched down as far as I know, but there was a good hour of torrential rain, which in Seattle is what we call Monday, but in Gatlinburg, was enough to turn Backcountry Clownville into a rainy ghost town.

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I almost forgot - a huge thanks goes out to everyone who helped me along my journey here.

• David - Even though your pipes make a terrible, terrible sound, I forgive you. Thanks for taking me out to Deschutes andletting me crash at your place.
• Tim - You kindly overestimated my hygenic habits and were patient with me while I chased the decidedly impossible dream of drinking Younger on tap. You're the best.
• Christian - I can imagine few things greater than sitting around all day, moderately hungover, watching episodes of SVU with you. You complete me.
• [No one in Texas because Texas is horrible]
• Erin's parents - The gifts you bestowed upon me (a full stomach of authentic Mephian ribs, several paperbacks, a lunch box, and a ton of food for the road) pale in comparison to your hospitality and generosity. I can't say "thank you" enough, but that doesn't mean I'll stop trying.

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I'm still pretty damn tired from yesterday, and probably from the last 10 days too.

Got in around 4 PM yesterday and met my supervisor, Joy, for the first time. It was so lovely to finally put a face to the voice I've been in contact with for the past few months! She introduced me to a few people in the office and gave me some packages that had come for me (including my SCA shirts and badges), then took me to the place I'll be living in for the next three months (crappy pictures in the last post).

Up until I got this position, I had no idea that there was on-site housing for park employees. In the GSMNP, this housing ranges from "efficiency" apartments like I have (which is just a confusing way of saying tiny, 1 BR apartment), to regular apartments, to shared housing. I have no idea how many people actually live in the park, but the area where my building is probably only houses 10 or so. We have mailboxes, trash, coin-op laundry, and even a fire pit behind my complex. I'm not going to lie - I'm kind of excited to do smores.

I spent the next 2 hours unloading my car, putting everything away, and rearranging furniture. One of my coworkers, Sarah, lives near me in other park housing and took me out to dinner afterwards to the Smoky Mountain Brewery, where she and the other employees frequent for good eats and trivia. Sarah also drove me around Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge a bit, pointing out places of interest and some less-frequented roads to help me get around as the busy season really starts to get going.

While names like Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg may conjure bucolic scenery and wholesome country-time fun, in reality, these cities are shrines to the commercial and gaudy. Gatlinburg, little more than a strip of novel putt-putt and "mirror mazes" (of which there seem to be an abundance) is more pedestrian-friendly and downright quaint compared to Pigeon Forge, whose 6-lane main street necessitates the use of car. The "good" news is that there are lots of amenities at my disposal, including outlet shopping, the aforementioned brewery, dinner theater, a replica Titanic (whose purpose I have yet to divine), and a Walmart.

Right now, I'm at the Gatlinburg Library, which sadly is open little outside what will soon be my regular work hours. I don't have internet at my apartment in the park, so this is about to be an interesting few months for me.

Plans for today

• Buy groceries
• Veg out

Plans for tomorrow

• Go on a hike and/or bike ride
• Walk into town to do some exploring on foot
• Buy work pants

PS This library has a cat named Porter C. Bibliocat.

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According to my GPS, I should be there in 6 hours and 20 minutes, which is almost exactly an hour less than what Google Maps quoted me, so alls I know is that I'll be there in some amount of time, probably between 6 and 8 hours from now.

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I have never seen lightning like I saw today. No thunder, no rain, no hail - just crazy-ass, jaw-dropping, continual lightning for most of my drive into Memphis. Totally awesome, and apparently totally normal, because I nearly killed everyone within my general vicinity today on I-40 while staring at the lightning while everybody else seemed content to be on their merry way.

I don't have a lot to say because I'm pretty tired after having just had my first real face-to-face conversation since Tuesday morning, but here's a basic breakdown of today's events:

• Celebration! I was not murdered in my sleep.
• Most pitiful continental breakfast I have ever seen in my entire life. No thanks.
• Endless driving on I-40 eastbound.
• Finished listening to my first audiobook - In a Sunburned Country. I now know lots of extraneous facts about Australia. That's cool! ...said no one.
• Dinner and conversation with Erin's parents, including authentic Memphis-style ribs, authentic Memphis-style pulled pork sandwich, and very shortly, authentic Memphis-style gas.

Tomorrow I make it to the park, get to meet my boss, Joy, get to unpack, and finally see the place where I will be staying for the next 3 months. Do you think that you can handle it?

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