Maggie McIntyre: “We are working with the Nature Conservancy. It’s a nonprofit organization. They are in a few hundred countries around the world. We are part of the Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota Chapter. We do a bunch of different environmental stewardship, environmental helping eco friendly stuff. Our module is a prescribed burn and we’re also doing fuel mitigation. I there is a plan for a prescribed burn, we go and like today we kind of were cutting a line around a unit, making a bigger line so that the fire can’t jump the line. That’s one thing we’ve been doing. We work for the Nature Conservancy but our little module is in partnership with the Kawishiwi Office Forest Service. Right now I am using a flat file to sharpen a brush cutter I was using to just kind of go through and cut some weeds along the line that we were creating. I am from the Twin Cities. Maple Grove. I went to college at UMD. I started working for the Conservation Corp of Minnesota and Iowa. And I had a few projects that were with the Nature Conservancy and we were doing prescribed burns so I was pretty interested in that. I saw that this position was posted this past winter so I jumped on it. And now I’m doing wildfire. It was posted in Cushing, Minnesota which is a little bit south of Brainerd. That’s where we do all of our training. Then we moved up here to start working with the Kawishiwi Office. Our company, the Nature Conservancy, rents this home so we’re all staying here and doing our maintenance out of here as well. From here on out, I think we’re going to go grab some dinner with one of our bosses who is in town. We haven’t decided where we’re going. I like Ely a lot so far. I feel very safe and comfortable here. I’ve been here probably once or twice in 2016/2017. It’s a nice small community. I’ve been walking around the streets in the last few weeks and I’ve felt really comfortable.”Keller Strom and Caleb Ebert: Keller: “I was actually just going to have some fun with my friend and drive around. He has a baseball game. What team are you on?” Caleb: “Phillies. I’ve been doing nothing much. Just hanging out with my friend and that’s about it. We just got back from the candy shop. I have a baseball game around 6:15. It’s for Majors Little League. I have a trampoline which is kind of fun. I just got back from a trip from Illinois. My cousin had a graduation and my great grandpa was having some problems but he is fine now. We were just about to go inside and do something and then I’m going to get ready for my baseball game. We’’ll probably sit down and talk and then have a nerf war with Nerf Blasters.” Keller: “Speaking of which, I have a super cool, kind of like a nerf gun but it shoots like this big of pellets, not very big. Like a half inch. They look exactly like a shrunken down nerf bullet. It’s a hand pistol and you slide them into a mini pistol and it ejects the shells when you are shooting it. You pull back and it ejects.” Caleb: “I am homeschooled.” Keller: “I have five more days and then summer!”Bryce Demers: “I am similar to Maggie in that I used to work for the Conservation Corp and with that I did some work with the Nature Conservancy. I really like them as an organization so when this job was posted I was really excited to apply. I am originally from Massachusetts. I went to school in the UP for a few years and was kind of traveling for work after that. Now I am traveling back here. I really like Ely. I like the north woods. It’s why I went to school in the Upper Peninsula. Ely is great. I kind of like the small town but they also have lots of amenities because of the tourists. So that’s really nice. It’s a nice balance. I’m going to finish sharpening this chainsaw, cleaning it out. It’s what I was using all day today. Afterwards, like Maggie said, we’re going to go get dinner with the other crew members that are up here and our boss. Usually on our crew we have four people but currently it’s three. We don’t know where the fire will be. It’s up to the Forest Service. So we’re here just helping them as extra hands doing fuels reduction. There’s a lot of excess build up in most of the country from fire suppression over the last 100 years. So before we do a prescribed fire we have to take some of that fuel out. So we cut some of the trees out and we usually burn them in piles in the winter and then you can go back and do a prescribed fire later on.”
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