A Glimpse into the Corps Experience
by Tessa Marie
The Washington Conservation Corps has given us a unique opportunity to make an impact for our local streams and wetlands. We work together with Skagit Fisheries to plant trees, remove invasive species, and work on a variety of construction projects aimed at improving our environment for future generations.
There have been some surprising lessons along the way. For example, I never knew of a planting technique called live staking. To live stake, we cut off a limb of a mature cottonwood or willow tree and stick it about a food deep directly into the ground. Doing this in the winter months allows the dormant limb to focus all of its energy into growing roots and then presto! It becomes a new tree! I had no idea that starting a baby forest could be so easy.
Going into WCC, I also had no idea how much work goes into prepping planting sites, let alone the actual planting process. At a site known as Marietta Creek, we spent several weeks in October building about one mile of fence through a cow pasture to keep the animals away from the stream. We returned for several more weeks in December to transport 4,099 potted plants and stage them in our planting area. We rented a UTV to help us transport plants across the pasture, and also crammed hundreds of plants into a Skagit Fisheries truck and trailer.
Our restoration crew coordinator Joe pulled up to the fence and hopped into the trailer filled with spruces in 2-gallon pots. He picked one up, turned toward my colleague Nathan, and asked, “Are you ready?” Nathan readied his stance. Joe tossed the pot into the air, over the fence, and into Nathans’ arms. I watched in awe, “You’re kidding right?” No, no they weren’t kidding. That’s an actual spruce flying through the air. Nathan set the spruce down just in time to catch the next one that Joe flung towards him. Once I took a moment, watched a few more tosses to reconcile my disbelief, I got ready. Joe pivoted towards me and tossed me a spruce. Next thing you know, Joe is hurling spruce after spruce over the fence with precision, giving Nathan and I just enough time to set it down and get ready for the next plant. That was an exciting and efficient offload! I was completely out of breath by the time we had the trailer emptied. I will probably always chuckle to myself when I think back on this project.
I am one of six members of a Washington Conservation Corps crew based in Mt. Vernon. We work with Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group to restore habitat near streams that feed into the Skagit and the Sauk River. In the fall we focused on construction projects and some site maintenance to prepare for the planting season in the winter. Now that it’s springtime we are focusing mostly on invasive species removal with brush cutters. Before this position, I had no experience with power tools and very little planting and construction experience. I feel super empowered to be able to run a brush cutter, chainsaw, a drill and other construction tools. It is extremely rewarding to know that our projects are a result of our hands and our pure hard work.
