AmeriCorps 2020: The advantage of having a brain

This post continues the tale of my AmeriCorps term in Boulder, Colorado in 2020. The rest of this series can be found here.

My previous entry in this AmeriCorps series detailed events that took place on August 26, 2020. On that day, my coworker Clay and I tried to move a large rock with rock bars: thin, iron poles that could act as levers when used intelligently. Since intelligence was something that neither Clay nor I excelled at, we failed at moving our rock to the designated spot.

Thus, on August 27, 2020, our first task was to finish moving the rock.

As some context, Clay and I were standing on a steep slope underneath the Fern-Mesa trail that we were building. This slope was covered by pine trees, and a thick layer of pine-needle duff carpeted the ground. Clay and I were attempting to push a rock that was too heavy for us to lift up this hill, by propping one end of the rock off the ground with a thin, metal bar, and then making a rowing motion to hopefully move the rock a few inches at a time.

Also, every time we pushed on the rock, the rock pushed back on us, because of some physics nonsense. Since it was impossible to get any traction on the pine-needle duff, this meant that Clay and I slid backwards, down the hill, every time we tried to yeet the rock upwards.

The other, larger problem was that using rock bars required communication, planning, and finesse. Clay and I weren’t good at any of those things.

Jo, the agent of trepidation herself, saw our struggle, and decided to help us.

In previous entries in this series, I’ve portrayed Jo as the Dark Lord herself. This was a lie. To this day, Jo remains one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and considerably smarter than myself. Jo gave Clay and I lots of advice, which included telling us about this new concept called “teamwork.” With Jo’s help, we were finally able to get the rock into position.

Working with Jo and Clay was fun, but also bittersweet. As I have said before, our time on the Fern-Mesa Reroute project was nearing its end. This was sad for me, because I loved working with Jo and her colleague Kait. They were both fun and kind-hearted people, and spending my workdays with them in the Colorado sun was pure joy.

However, I knew that my time with my boss-friends was running out, so every interaction I had with them was tinged with sorrow.