For the fourth hitch of the season, yellow and red crews teamed with BLM to attempt wetland restoration in Wyoming’s high desert. After a six-hour drive with views of the mountains in Big Sky, Yellowstone, and the Tetons, we spent a week in the dusty alternative south of Marbleton, where washboard roads meander to derricks and stock ponds, gas flares, and rickety corrals. In the desert, every resource is precious; above ground, grazing allotments support local ranchers, and below, oil waits for Exxon - our gracious campground hosts - to extract it. Our goal: to enrich wetland habitat to create more resources for the wildlife.

Under the instruction of our project partner Janet, we learned to build rock dams, which raised the creek’s water level to encourage wetland development, inviting beavers and moose to the area. We reinforced existing beaver dam analogs by mattressing willow boughs into their frame, and live staked willows into a creek’s bank to accelerate the growth of riparian habitat. By building a Zuni bowl, an anti-erosional structure developed by Bill Zeedyk and the Zuni Pueblo, we promoted soil integrity. In places where small creek branches stagnated, we created rock rundowns to deliver water back to the prospective wetland. It was exciting to watch the water rise above successive rock dams - or drop below an improved beaver dam analog, then reach for springtime’s high water line as it brimmed the new space we created.

As dry and hot and cold as the desert was, we had a blast working there. We spotted moose, coyotes, mule deer, and antelope, listened to owls in the morning, and watched the stars at night. We saw the sunrise light the Morrison formation in Jurassic purple, the scarlet collar and spotted cape of the Colorado River Cutthroat, aspen, and willow leaves shivering gold in the heat of a fall desert, sagey and sere. We worked hard, achieved all of our project partner’s goals, and left a day early, nursing our sunburns and smiling chapped lips.