7/8/2019

This morning I was part of the cooking crew and we made pancakes with chocolate chips, then headed out to potato hill. On the way we saw a black bear in the middle of the road, it looked right at us before running away, I felt excited as it was the first bear that I had seen yet. The base of potato hill was very grassy and full of different flowers, Jessica warned us about the mosquitoes but they weren’t that bad. I am not an active person so the hike up potato hill was a real challenge but I made it to a spot where I didn’t feel bad that I did not make it to the top. Actually I was surprised by how far I walked up the hill as when I looked back down the cars looked so small in the distance. I was mad at myself however that the path I took ended up being the hard way. When ground water drains down the mountain it creates a path down the steepest slope and erodes away the surface so there is a clear path of dirt. This was the path that I took but this was the hardest path also my shoes had no traction so I was slipping and sliding for a while till I learned what it was then I moved off to join Brandon and Monet on an easier path. We were told that lots of people used to go up the hill but recently less people have gone so the actual path that people used to take has grown over. On the way down there were a couple of the younger kids that were using the water path to side down the hill which looked really fun. The reason we visited potato hill was because of the cultural aspects of the huckleberries that grow on it. Huckleberries are fire reliant so the past campaigns to stop fire have impacted them greatly. When we were talking as a group someone said that the pine trees help the berries as their needles cover the ground and smother grasses and other plants that compete with the huckleberries. This was interesting because I thought that the pine needles were smothering the huckleberries as over the years all the pine needles pile up and with no fire to burn them all they would eventually smother all the bushes. I myself have never had huckleberries but the people who have seem to really love them. After we got back to the camp we pressed flowers that we collected at potato hill, the goal is to have a book of pressed flower by the time we are done with our trip. Also we got showers at camp Chaparral, thank god.