What I did with my weekend Part 1 (Pulling daisies and crappy dinosaurs)
It might be surprising to learn, but for the most part the first weeksof week of Americorps isn't really that exciting. Instead of planting trees, helping families and rebuilding houses the initial training focuses on the protocols for those actions as well as other fascinating concepts like travel reimbursement and insurance policies. Now while I am not putting these parts of training down as they are actually very important for success in NCCC it didn't really make the most exciting thing to write about, which is why I've decided to skip to my first actual active assignment, removing flowers in Denver City Park.
Like most large and relatively affluent cities, Denver puts great stock in the aesthetics and quality of their public parks to the point where one public display out of step could be a
major embarrassment for the city, which includes dying flowers. Because Denver is in the middle of a frigid
high desert with little moisture and most colorful flowers are either seasonal or come from tropical enviroments, they tend not to last very long in the winters. This can lead to the few plants that stay alive in winter being surrounded by a sea of decay despair and death fit for an all plant version of a soviet work camp.
To curb this and make sure the park keeps up the illusion of being a semi functioning ecosystem my fellow Americorps members and I were called out to pull the dying flowers and make the land suitable for replanting the winter flowers which would be destroyed in the summer. To start this task before many people noticed everyone who was assigned to this task would have to wake up at around 5 am, drive in a van with their teammates and immediately get to work with the provisions of bagels, orange juice and coffee unti 12 Pm.
The work itself was actually fairly satistfying and it felt pretty awesome knowing that my contributions would have an affect on metropolitan park. To give you an idea of what we would do, we ripped out the dying flowers with our gloved hands, throw them onto a tarp and when that was finished start flipping chunks of soil upside down and breaking them apart so new plants could be added.
After finishing the work 30 minutes earlier than expected, and having nothing scheduled later that day I decided to visit the Denver Zoo.
As I walked along the park's many winding paths I noticed signs advertising one thing that I usually
associate Colorado with, Dinosaurs. For those of you who don't know Colorado is one of the most fossil bearing states in the union with an incredible amount of material from the Jurassic which is one of the three periods dinosaurs other than birds existed in. Because of a love of dinosaurs due to being stunted emotionally in some respects and a desire to see things for the sheer terribleness of them created by a never ending well or cynicism and sarcasm I just had to go.
The entrance to the zoo was actually quite nice and almost peaceful in a way with the relatively
innocent Halloween decorations put up around the front, the reason I said almost peaceful is because they were playing the relatively ominous and climactic music from the tail end of Jurassic Park which
made for an odd experience when accompanied by the sight of banded mongeese digging around in the dirt.
The dinosaurs themselves were exactly as I expected with inaccurate, features, garish colors, stiff movements accompanied by obvious pneumatic sounds, and bellowing out stock sounds recorded between the 1970s and 1990s. Surprisingly they did give more accurate than usual feather coverage, to the utahraptor and citipati, though this was more than made up for by the anorexic parasaurolpohus an spitting dilophosaurus.
In the end the zoo was relatively nice, jerking robotic monstrosities and all and provided a nice place to be alone and parece out my situation in between observing two species of hyenas, baby gorillas and the deafening low quality roars of an electronic albelisaur.
Pictured Above Statue of some Roman Senator/Emporer/Philosopher/God(dess) in city park
major embarrassment for the city, which includes dying flowers. Because Denver is in the middle of a frigid
high desert with little moisture and most colorful flowers are either seasonal or come from tropical enviroments, they tend not to last very long in the winters. This can lead to the few plants that stay alive in winter being surrounded by a sea of decay despair and death fit for an all plant version of a soviet work camp.
To curb this and make sure the park keeps up the illusion of being a semi functioning ecosystem my fellow Americorps members and I were called out to pull the dying flowers and make the land suitable for replanting the winter flowers which would be destroyed in the summer. To start this task before many people noticed everyone who was assigned to this task would have to wake up at around 5 am, drive in a van with their teammates and immediately get to work with the provisions of bagels, orange juice and coffee unti 12 Pm.
The work itself was actually fairly satistfying and it felt pretty awesome knowing that my contributions would have an affect on metropolitan park. To give you an idea of what we would do, we ripped out the dying flowers with our gloved hands, throw them onto a tarp and when that was finished start flipping chunks of soil upside down and breaking them apart so new plants could be added.
After finishing the work 30 minutes earlier than expected, and having nothing scheduled later that day I decided to visit the Denver Zoo.
PFor all intents and purposes I have never actually visited the Denver Zoo, my mom as well as
other relatives and family friends say I have and saw an insanely awesome looking fish, but as someone with an almost eerily good memory for these sorts of things I kinda doubt it. Originally I was planning on going on this venture with a few people I kind of consider friends but as often happens they were unable to come.
associate Colorado with, Dinosaurs. For those of you who don't know Colorado is one of the most fossil bearing states in the union with an incredible amount of material from the Jurassic which is one of the three periods dinosaurs other than birds existed in. Because of a love of dinosaurs due to being stunted emotionally in some respects and a desire to see things for the sheer terribleness of them created by a never ending well or cynicism and sarcasm I just had to go.
The entrance to the zoo was actually quite nice and almost peaceful in a way with the relatively
innocent Halloween decorations put up around the front, the reason I said almost peaceful is because they were playing the relatively ominous and climactic music from the tail end of Jurassic Park which
made for an odd experience when accompanied by the sight of banded mongeese digging around in the dirt.
The dinosaurs themselves were exactly as I expected with inaccurate, features, garish colors, stiff movements accompanied by obvious pneumatic sounds, and bellowing out stock sounds recorded between the 1970s and 1990s. Surprisingly they did give more accurate than usual feather coverage, to the utahraptor and citipati, though this was more than made up for by the anorexic parasaurolpohus an spitting dilophosaurus.
In the end the zoo was relatively nice, jerking robotic monstrosities and all and provided a nice place to be alone and parece out my situation in between observing two species of hyenas, baby gorillas and the deafening low quality roars of an electronic albelisaur.
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