by Mel Bashore, PIT Volunteer
In early September 2003, 15 PIT volunteers showed up at Swett Ranch—triple the number that organizers expected. Organizers were used to “no-shows,” so in 2003, they decided to overbook. However, that year, the pattern broke. People came from Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, South Dakota, Colorado, and Texas. My wife and I were the only home-state attendees. And, oh yes, there was Izzy, a PIT legend who claims to be homeless, moving from PIT project to PIT project. The plan for this year’s project was to replace an aging dairy barn roof. A crew of a dozen hard-working prisoners sporting green Daggett County Jail T-shirts had been prepping the barn for our assault.
On Day 1 when we were having lunch at the ranch house and making introductions, we could hear the prison crew ripping off old roof boards and trying to square up the sides of the barn. We took a walking tour of the century-old homestead ranch situated on the south side and hundreds of feet above beautiful Flaming Gorge reservoir in northeastern Utah. Oscar Swett liked to situate his ranch outbuildings at some distance from each other. Nonetheless, we were intrigued with the remnants of an early ranger station and enthralled with the story of early-day Ranger Bill Green, who in 1917 disappeared and was never found. His horse and canoe were found tethered on the banks of Green River just north of the ranch. On the heels of hearing about this mystery, we visited puzzling and intriguing prehistoric Anasazi and Fremont sites.
On Day 2, we began and almost finished work on the barn. With the large number of PIT volunteers and prison crew, it was not without frustrations and a few heated confrontations. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. Some experienced volunteer carpenters voiced impassioned (and sometimes conflicting) opinions about how the building should be reconstructed. That’s when Tex, wielding the voice of reason, entered the fray. He raised his voice and punctuated his sentences with a few carefully chosen words to make it perfectly clear how the barn was going to be restored and who the boss was of this ragtag outfit. Tex Leflet is head carpenter honcho (official title) for the Ashley NF. He directed all of the restoration work conducted on Swett Ranch. He’s good, and he’s real funny. After the rafters were pulled back into a semblance of straightness, collar ties affixed, and new roof boards nailed on, the barn started to look pretty dang good.
On Day 3, Byron and Tex divided us into small groups to work on various ranch projects. The prison crew dug a diversion ditch above the root cellar. Some of the PIT crew finished the barn roof. The old walk-in root cellar, dug in to a north-facing slope, became the focus of some serious attention by the remainder of both the prison and PIT crews. It was the third root cellar built by the Swetts (earlier ones had deteriorated) and featured double doors that formed an airlock to help keep the cellar an even, cool temperature. When rain put a damper on our work, many toured the Flaming Gorge Dam, while others drove to the Ute Fire Tower, Sheep Creek geologic feature, or an impressive petroglyph site near Vernal.
Before leaving us, the prison crew distributed their classy green Daggett County Jail T-shirts to each of the PIT crew for a group photo. The PIT crew put them on backwards so it would show the jail identification on the front (and so you could tell us apart). Camaraderie among the FS, the prison crew, and the volunteers was very gratifying, and the experience was a first for the prison crew, who said they had never been permitted to work with outside civilians before.
On Day 4, the weather improved, and we went back to work putting up stringer and framing for a wood interior wall and building a solid, cemented rock wall. We stopped short of finishing to get ready for the evening Dutch oven dinner. For some, it was their first taste of Dutch oven cooking. On our final day, we finished off the root cellar walls and did all the odds and ends to clean up the place. My wife, Karen, and daughter Sarah and I gave watercolors of ranch scenes we had done during the week to Tex, Byron, Nan (FS volunteer coordinator), and to our new prison pals, Big Dog, Rudy Roo, Steve, Valdez, and Chris. We told them that next year we hoped to see them there as PIT volunteers rather than wearing their prison greens. Julie (from northern California) expressed our sentiments exactly when she sorrowfully screamed, “I don’t want to leave!”
The PIT and the Outhouse at
Old Wildcat Guard Station
Dixie NF, 2003
by Michael Dant, PIT Volunteer
I’ve heard a lot of come-ons in my lifetime, but when Marian “Omar” Jacklin, the head archaeologist for the Dixie NF, said that the highlight of our PIT project would be pushing over an outhouse, I had some misgivings. Those misgivings were soon allayed.
The main part of our project was to continue the work of previous PIT volunteers, restoring the Old Wildcat Guard Station (ca. 1911). The site is on the Dixie NF just south of Torrey, Utah. The previous groups had shingled the five-room cabin and applied a coat of primer paint on the outside. Our task was to strip paint from the ceiling molding, sand the floors, apply the final exterior paint coat (a kind of railroad station red that had been the original color), dig a French drain, and do general cleanup.
The goal is to make the cabin enticing to folks who will participate in an artists-in-residence program beginning three years from now. Painters, writers, and sculptors will be encouraged to rent the cabin and take inspiration from the surroundings as they create their works. The Boulder Mountain area certainly should inspire them. A small stream runs through the valley, which inclines to small meadows surrounded by aspen copses and larger forests of big pines, eventually topping out to a craggy peak. Deer and elk graze the pastures, seemingly unafraid of humans. What an idyllic setting for any artist!
Marian was an easy taskmaster, so the atmosphere for the six volunteers was quite relaxed. Like many of her peers on other projects, she was eager to share her two decades of knowledge of the area as well as to take us on an afternoon side trip to some well-preserved Fremont and Ute petroglyphs in Carcass Canyon, many of which she could date based on various studies. She didn’t want to try to interpret them, however, saying “I don’t want to presume what was in the mind of the artist.”
One of the amenities, which she provided, was unexpected but certainly welcome—a solar shower. We found that a five-gallon container of solar-heated water could easily provide three much-appreciated showers. Conservation at its best. I think all of the shower users were surprised at how little could be sufficient, and I suspect that we all went home thinking about how we could try to conserve our water.
The razing of the outhouse was delayed until the last day. And for those of us who had never toppled one, it was truly a highlight. No, it was not being used at the time! As always, the benefits of PITing come from establishing new friendships and knowing that we had contributed to a worthwhile project.