A day in the life…

June 1, 2015 10:44 am Published by Taylor Tonsi 1 Comment

Hi, my name is Taylor Tonsi and I am going in to my second year of school to become a Forest Technologist at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). I am a small town girl who was born and raised in Slave Lake, AB, so lucky for me I grew up surrounded by the forest community. This created a very amazing opportunity for me this summer as I was employed at Alberta Plywood in Slave Lake. I am one of the four summer students doing silviculture for the Woodland Staff. This means that I will be out with the tree planters checking the seedlings once they have been planted, because we want the tree to be able to grow. The couple past weeks or so has been quite busy with the amount of training we have had to do; from putting out fires, to ATV driving course, WOLF courses, Animal awareness, etc. I found this week was very informative as we were able to do lots of the training hands on and it was really nice to see that the company wanted to ensure that everyone stays safe.

A day in the life…

These were my favourite activities for the training we did and I thought I’d be nice to share them with you!

The picture on the left and is a lean-­?to that me and my other summer coworkers made during our survival training. Patti Campsell, who works at the Boreal research Center in Slave Lake, provided the training. To make it we used a stable blown down log and placed lots of long sticks against it to create the back wall. We then took bigger branches of spruce and laid them on top of the back wall and on the forest floor to block out wind and create an insulated protection layer from the ground. To make it even more wind/rain proof we put on two tarps on the back wall, this will ensure that the lean-­?to would keep you dry and warm throughout the night.

The picture in the middle is a little fire that I made during the survival course. The day we took this course was a cold and damp day making it harder to light the fire. We learned different techniques and materials that we could potentially use in case of the scenario. I leaned that birch bark, cattails, Vaseline on a cotton ball, dryer lint, and old mans beard are all very good fire starter fuels for using a flint and steel approach. We of course used other fine fuels that were around such as dead dry grass, dead spruce needles, little twigs, etc. I found that Vaseline and cotton ball were the most effective method for starting the fire that day.

The third picture is of our ATV training course. We were a class of 8 students ranging in various ages. I thought that was very neat to see people like me (a summer student) and people who had worked in the company for many years taking the course together. I own and have drove quads for many years throughout my life but I must admit I learned a few tips from taking the course. We learned things such as how to shift body weight when turning, emergency stops, swerving, riding over debris, going up across and down hills, and loading and unloading the ATV from the trailer.

Although the training was fun and all I am beyond excited to start work in the field and use my new skills I learned over the last couple weeks!