There was nothing all around me until the horizon met the sky filled with trees and mountains. You could see the purple mountains clearly behind them and a bit of detail. I was on Beckwith Road in what seemed like wasn’t Modesto, being so west and agricultural. Before that I had gone over 99 and kept going down that one road until I saw a sign that said “Not a through road”. I was worried and hoped I was going the right way. I mean, I had to, I had came from the farthest east that road could go. All the way from Albers Road which was most east that one road could get. I had traveled from one farmy area to the other, but still it was no Yosemite Boulevard. It had to be here somewhere.
It was a little before 8:30 a.m. and there it was the sign I had seen on the website the night before. The welcoming flying bird on it, looked just like the one on my Hollister sweatshirt. There must be a lot of birds here if they are on the sign, I had thought. I parked my small yellow beetle in front of what seemed like endless rows of dirty evenly spaced. I looked around still inside my car and saw only a few birds, and then a white truck coming up in front of the sign. I got out of my car to greet them, I knew they had to be the people directing the planting today. I didn’t get to talk to the man much, but the woman seemed nice. They both talked about the thousands of geese that would go to the fields during their migration in the winter. In my head I was imagining the thousands of geese I had seen during one trip coming back from the Bay Area on 132; amazing.
After a bit of talk I went up to this observation deck which looks like it needed to be above some sort of body of water, but all I could see below me was the beginning of dirt pleats in the earth. The envioronment was anything but plain, the sounds were all so beautiful. I had never heard such calls from birds. I love birds. I have two parakeets, but I wish I had so much more. Their little screeches do not compare to these birds’ beautiful music. I even saw some finch looking birds with red on them that you would think that would be in a pet shop or a zoo. I would hate to see it there, these birds are so much more beautiful in flight, being free. Well back to the planting, I had gotten down from taking pictures and fillming some of the birds and waited with the lady there for other volunteers to come.
One after another they started to arrive, but not very many in all and most of them were doing it for a biology class at Stanislaus State University. I think one or two other people not from my class but from our english teacher Vallee. Some of the students who talked to me were a bit confused as to why an english teacher would want their students to do this. But the volunteer directors definetly did. I was proud.
After they had all arrived, we caravaned into their property and passed many more birds and it was like a whole other world when we arrived at our planting spot for the day. I had heard a hawk, saw pair of geese, it was wonderful. I had gotten my assignment which was to water the plants. This didn’t seem to take a long time but it was pretty laborous. Then one other girl and I had dirrections to kill weeds with shovels. I took out my agression on those foreign weeds; stupid milk thistle! I forgot the name of the other plant we were killing but it was so hard to destroy. It had a long stalk and it looked like it belonged there since there was so many of them but it didn’t.But once we were almost finished I had found a better way to get rid of them which is to twist the plant and then pull them out. My arms were extremely sore after this whole ordeal with the weeds. But for some reason it didn’t seem like it took very long. I enjoyed the scenery and took a few times just to take it all in.
The last task we had was to plant a few trees. I was surprised these small things could survive on hard dry dirt. After planting a few of those, the volunteer directors got ready for us to eat lunch. This was one of the best parts as I got to sit amongst all the work we had done and observe and listen to the wilderness surrounding us. I was happy. I felt like I had actually done something for the world. I know a bird like the one I had done a report on , which is the Yellow-Billed cuckoo appreciated it and these wonderful animals will continue to exist.
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