mushroom [he/him]

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: November 19th, 2023

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  • this is not exactly headline news to most, but the US Forest Service will not be hiring any seasonal employees at all next year, except for firefighters, due to budget constraints. the forest service employs thousands of seasonal workers across the country in trails, maintenance, archaeology, natural resource management and science positions, etc. without seasonals it’ll be a hell of a lot harder to keep the millions of acres of forest service land well maintained - especially considering that many non-fire seasonals are called in to help fight the fires in one way or another when they begin, and since so much FS land can hardly be called “well maintained” already. i have to imagine this will also put a strain on the national park service and other land management agencies who’ll have to deal with thousands of applicants to a far fewer number of jobs - not to mention the seasonals at those agencies who’ll be looking at this and seeing that their departments could be making the same decisions a few years down the road.

    as always, congress can spend billions at the drop of a hat for bombing children across the planet, but breaks out the fucking abacus when it comes to hiring people who actually do useful and decent work. wonder how long before they just decide to straight up sell entire forest service ranger districts to timber companies or ranchers. can’t be too long, at this rate!





  • i found a developed camp someone made in forest service land a couple years ago. they’d brought out a couple couches, built some stairs and a rail into the slope, had a loft in a tree. two old boats that had clearly been worth something at some point were just abandoned out there. there were also a couple dolls heads hanging around, and a rolled up carpet that i was relieved to find was empty. i was working at the time and my crew and i poked around a little bit but didn’t want to run into whoever made it so we left quickly.

    another time, i found a beaver skull in a long stretch of protected sand dunes along the coast, far away from creeks or streams or anything that id picture in my mind as beaver habitat. no clue how it got there, but i found tons of bones out in those dunes, without much vegetation it’s pretty easy to find that stuff, but the beaver was the most wtf for sure

    also i heard a mountain lion in heat screaming at night one time while a friend and i were about to get high. mustve been within 100 yards, probably closer. thank god we hadn’t started already because if youve never heard a mountain lion scream it sounds just like a person. second we heard it we just took off running, didnt even say anything to each other, pure instinct. that was scary as hell in the moment but pretty cool to have experienced once it was over