Well, my final days as a CBG intern at the Salt Lake Field Office have come and gone. Once I wrapped up the last of the collections and entered all the data, I had the chance to work on some side projects. One of these was to greatly spruce up the office herbarium. The old herbarium was contained in two old, fake wood cabinets that were literally falling apart. Every time I opened them, it seemed like a chunk of weird, spongy material fell out of the inside. One of the doors was completely off its hinges. There was hardly any space left either. By some miracle, we had enough room in the budget to order a shiny, new, and huge herbarium cabinet. What’s more, we were able to convince the powers that be to put it in the “intern bullpen” area so that next year all the seasonal teams can have access to it. The old herbarium was located in a part of the office that not many people visit and a majority of the office had no idea we even had an herbarium. Not anymore!

New herbarium cabinet with all specimens inside!

It was quite comical to hear everyone’s opinions of the new herbarium. Some people called it an eyesore. Others were very enthusiastic. The other herbarium side project was to digitize all the plant specimens in case some disaster happened or if someone wanted to do a quick look up of a species. This involved stamping and photographing every single specimen, which amounted to 1390 vouchers! Some were in horrible shape, some were very old, and then I got to add the ones I made this SOS field season in to the mix. It felt very satisfying to accomplish all that.

One of the vouchers I made from this year’s collections

During my very last week, I got the opportunity to help out the new wildlife biologist with a Bat Week presentation at a local elementary school. This turned out to be a cool experience and we were relieved to find that the kids were super attentive and willing to participate. Their curiosity was very refreshing! I’m sure the teachers enjoyed a break from their regular schedule as well.

Reflecting back on the entirety of this field season, I am proud of what I and my coworker accomplished. Despite some difficulty along the way, we surpassed our collection goals, camped in awesome places, and improved on many botany skills. Having a good coworker certainly makes or breaks a field season, so I felt really lucky to once again have an awesome field partner. It also helps to have a good mentor, and ours was definitely a great one, striking a good balance between being available when we needed guidance and also trusting us to get work done on our own(and not micro-managing!). Hopefully next year the communication between the various organizations doing seed collections will exist and that next year’s crew will have a less confusing time of things on that end.

As far as the next step in life goes, I am in a state of limbo. I definitely want to spend the winter in Utah and see how that goes. I’m conflicted as to weather to pursue other seasonal opportunities or try and get the elusive full-time job. This field can be frustrating at times, but I am determined to keep pursuing it at the moment. I can’t thank the CBG enough for giving me two amazing field seasons in two great locations, and for opening my eyes to all that the West has to offer!

It is now my turn to say goodbye to Shoshone, Idaho. As everyone else has stated, this internship has flown by. But in hopes to truly appreciate and learn from the growth that I have experienced here – I am going to attempt to reflect on it all. Wish me luck.

The Adventures:

Looking back on my calendar from these past few months, I can confidently say that I’ve tried my best to explore the area as much as I could. Camping and road trips stacked up nearly every weekend. It would be an understatement to say that Southern Idaho is a beautiful and adventurous place. No doubt, if you are an outdoorsy individual, don’t overlook Shoshone. During the summertime, this area is truly a dream. A quick escape to forests, mountains, rivers, canyons, and so much more.

The 360 degree sunset on top Hyndman’s Peak (12,000 Ft) during the 2017 Eclipse.

The Internship:

I have already reflected a little bit about this in my most recent post, but to reiterate: for me, this CLM internship has provided me with extensive opportunity to immerse myself in government work culture, further develop my communication, project management, and problem-solving skills, and gain the valuable insight I needed to help me decide where and what I would like to do next and further down the road.

I’ve decided that after two seasons of fieldwork – first with the Forest Service and then this summer with the BLM -I do not want to continue working in ecological research and instead, I am going to navigate towards community outreach and development work. This doesn’t at all mean that I did not enjoy my internship this summer. It simply shows that I’ve been able to learn more about myself. I have had the problem of having too many interests. I love the environmental field, but there are so many things you can do! So yes – I’ve had a hard time figuring out what I like, but with every new opportunity (especially seasonal work), you are given the chance to explore your interests, and really narrow it down. And, even though, I am going to be going in a different direction – I stand very confidently as a candidate, knowing I have this experience to speak of.

Communication. Time Management. Project management. Reliability.
 Willingness to take the Initiative. Independent and Team Worker.

Just to name a few – these are skills I strengthened this summer, and they are all extremely valuable in any field. For a future employer, I can not only emphasize that I have these skills, but I have a personal/unique experience and reference that I may use to back it up. At the end of the day, even if you don’t 100% like what you are doing, you need to perform and accomplish the work that you were brought there to do. Employers are going to remember your attitude and willingness. Plus, nothing is ever permanent, and I’ve experienced way more good than bad days this summer. Life is all about learning and adapting, and for me, simply coming to sense with that, made this summer 110% worth it.

Overall Highlights:

Because looking back, calls for remembering all my favorite moments 🙂

• Taking a chance and finding my housing through Craigslist – rooming with a complete stranger, and it turning out to be the best situation I could have ever gambled for. (My boyfriend did drive up with me to scope out the situation…so if you are going this route too.. do whatever you need to make you feel comfortable.)
• Backpacking trip to Hyndman’s Peak in Sun Valley, Idaho to watch the totality from 12,000 ft.
• Girls Goat Lake Backpacking Trip
• 1st time rock climbing outside-  all the amazing places I got to climb around Twin Falls: City of Rocks, The Fins, The Basalt Channel in Shoshone, Boulderfest in Dierkes Lake
• Stanley, Idaho camping trips
• Grand Tetons and Yellowstone
• Chicago for Training Workshop – This work trip allowed me to visit family in Chicago that I haven’t seen in years! I got to reunite with my cousins (for free!) and we went to the Blues Festival in the park (also a free event in the city!)
• Boise – really awesome city that I would highly consider moving to
• Rafting in Buhl
• When my little sister and boyfriend flew out to visit me 🙂
• Getting together with highschool friends in Ketchum (small world)

Thank you for the amazing opportunity CBG!

Thank you Danelle for your mentorship!!

Wishing all the best to all future CLM interns and all my fellow interns that I was so lucky to have worked with this summer.

Goodbye Shoshone, Sagebrush, and Southern Idaho. You’ve treated me well.

~Patricia

It has been a while since I have posted, so I am going to try to make up for lost time.  Things have been fairly consistent over the course of the summer.  I have been doing juniper clearances for most of the summer, interspersed with with setting up bat detectors and a couple of days of building fences.  I got to explore some of the farthest reaches of the district in search of bats.  Along the windy dusty roads I drove my old chevy for the last time and broke in my new Ford-150.  Parting is such sweet sorrow, but I have gotten to like my new Ford F-150 with its new car smell and USB charging cord.

I have continued with my juniper clearances and have actually made great strides.  I managed to finish huge section that I was assigned over a year ago, only to be assigned to help design the next one.  No good deed goes unpunished eh?  Finishing this lifted a weight off my shoulder and now I can start doing small clearances on a project by project basis instead of having another massive workload hanging over my head.  Some highlights of the juniper clearances include walking miles down a slow babbling brook.  It was a beautiful warm fall day with the fall colors finally starting to come into their own along the river.  I finished all of the clearances I had in store and got to eat a relaxing lunch along the stream.  Other clearances have yielded numerous sheds (in this case mule deer antlers).  The best day I found three as you can see from the pictures below.  

Besides juniper clearances I have continued to deploy bat detectors.  This brought me out to the far reaches of the district and to some real beautiful hidden gems.  I also got to head out with some of the range staff to help construct a fence to protect a post-fire restoration area.  Although I am comfortable working with my hands and with tools, it was great to have the opportunity to go outside my comfort zone and tackle a new challenge and learn a new skill.  We quickly got things started with a nice flat section of fence that we finished quickly the first day.  The second day proved to be much more of a challenge as we were working down a steep hill.  We also had some technical difficulties which arose due to the very sandy soil.  IT ended up being a long exhausting day, but we managed to finish the fence up in the nick of time.  I really enjoyed my time with the range staff building fence as cross-training is always valuable and it was enriching to see another perspective on the problems that the Prineville office faces.  It was also a great break from the day to day grind and it is great to accomplish something tangible instead of completing a project with an immaterial or delayed result.

I currently am finishing up for this field season with a lot of time indoors both due to work load and to poor weather.  I am going to be headed home for the holidays for an extended period of time and cannot wait to spend time with my family.

-Andrew

I moved to Baker City, OR at the end of April to begin my tenure as the Recreation Intern for the Bureau of Land Management’s Baker City field office.  As I made the final drive into Baker, passing through lush green canyons along the I-84 corridor before dropping down into the Baker Valley with the snowcapped Elkhorn Mountains serving as a backdrop, I couldn’t help but immediately fall in love with the place.  After spending the previous couple of months walking dogs on the gray, drizzly sidewalks of Chicago, the new job and new setting were a much needed tonic.  I was ready for anything this place would throw at me.

Or so I thought.  From driving on winding one-lane dirt roads cut into steep canyon sides, to spending days trying to perfect (or just accomplish) backing up a trailer, to the arid climate, difficulties steadily stacked on top of each other.  By the middle of July, I felt like I didn’t even have the energy to lift a dust-caked hand to wipe the sweat from my forehead.  Seeing as I spent most of my time driving and updating signboards, I was surprised by my creeping lethargy.  Most of my previous jobs had involved much more physical exertion, so why was all this driving wearing me out? (Upon reflection, it was probably some combination of sleeping on a couch for the first couple of months and spending almost every weekend camping/road tripping).

My job often felt like an extended Dodge Ram commercial.

As the season progressed, and as we passed the insanity that was the lead up to the Solar Eclipse, the season became easier.  I settled into a more consistent routine and got my much needed rest, allowing me to better appreciate my surroundings.  I began to study the landscape as I drove (since I drove over 10,000 miles this summer, I did a lot of studying), which turned that monotonous task into one of my favorite parts of my day.  Early morning mists rose from the agricultural fields, the dried grasses around them dyed a pale gray-pink by the rising sun; the Grande Ronde River snaking through the countryside, creating a winding oasis; the sagebrush adding subtle greens to the rolling brown hills.  Surrounded by so much beauty on a daily basis, it was hard not to love those solo drives.

Myself and my supervisor Kevin Hoskins at the end of a successful river patrol.

The Grande Ronde River in its autumnal splendor.

Now those drives come to an end.  The season is over, and it is time for me to move on to my next job, this time in Colorado.  I’ll make one last long drive to get there, and I’ll be sure to pay attention to the landscape as I go by.

Michael Messina
Recreation Intern
Bureau of Land Management – Baker City Field Office

All the leaves have fallen, as the snow returns to the mountaintops; my time here in Alaska has come to a close. It has been a pact summer of traveling, staying in the remote wilderness, native villages, and cabins all over Alaska. One does not truly get a sense of the seemingly endless amounts of wilderness until you are up here and in it. Alaska stands alone. I still struggle trying to conceptualize how all of this land can be managed in an appropriate and efficient manner. I guess, one aspect I have learned is that Alaska is allowed to be wild, in the sense that there is so much public land it is hard to evaluate and monitor every piece year after year. For many places, it requires extensive planning and resources to travel to monitor a spot for an extended period. Often times it includes taking planes, helicopters, boats, snow-machines, or ATVs to reach these areas. Consequently, with such low population density, fire regimes have been preserved, there are fewer invasive species (as of now), and human disturbance is minimal. This allows nature to hold on to its wild unique qualities and ecosystem dynamics, which has been lost in most places around the world.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time spent exploring and learning numerous ecosystems Alaska has to offer. Through this internship, I have been able to stretch my knowledge outside of just trees, too a multitude of plants, lichens, and mosses. Alaska has also provided some of the juiciest, delectable blue berries I have ever tasted, as well as a plethora of new berries to try including one of my favorites, the cloudberry. It has presented a ton of new opportunities to challenge myself, over come obstacles, and connect with some great people. Alaska has me constantly turning my head to look at the next mountain peak, constantly looking out the window for the next glimpse of wildlife, and constantly asking questions about the unique environmental attributes. I have cherished every moment serving as a conservation and land management intern up here, down to the last mosquito. Until next time Alaska.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

As November approaches and my crew enters into month eight with the BLM in Grants Pass our field work is also coming to a close. We have weathered many conditions, survived dehydration, exhaustion, and sometimes repetitive mindnumbing tasks in the outdoors. We have spent countless hours in the car listening to music, podcasts, finding the best coffee shops to fuel our energy, nearly getting stuck navigating BLM “roads,” and figuring out how to turn our big red truck (clifford) around on such roads. We have learned many new plants, and forgotten some of them. We have gotten to know each other through the many hours we spend together, learning our lunch preferences, our guilty snacks, artist preferences, podcast opinions, significant other troubles, and of course we have figured out our goals, hopes and dreams. We have bonded over poison oak rashes, naps in the sun, office day boredom, and the frustrations of our Junos. We still have a few more weeks tying up loose ends and entering data, but I am grateful for the many months we spent outdoors exploring and learning.

Shout out to clifford, our big red truck monarch cocoon found when collecting asclepias fascicularis

Fall work days

Wow, I cannot believe this internship is over! It feels like the season went by in a heartbeat, yet it also seems like I have doing this job for an eternity. The season is changing, fall is coming, and I am feeling very ready to move on to other things. I am really grateful that this internship has brought me the enchanted land of New Mexico, which is truly a hidden gem. Coming from the California coast to the high desert, I was initially in shock of the different landscape, air, and how magnificent the sky is out here. Learning a whole new plant community has also been a treat, and experiencing the summer monsoons, the heat of the desert, the aspen leaves turning, lightning and wind storms waking me up in the middle of the night, spending more time outside then inside, learning the plant communities throughout the state, being able to spend my time monitoring and trying to protect rare plants and help cultivate a native seed supply for restoration, and overall focusing the past 5 months of conservation in various landscapes and scales has been such an amazing opportunity.

I was expecting to just be doing SOS all season, and once I arrived to the New Mexico State Office I found out that I would be primarily focusing on rare plant monitoring throughout the state. I was a little surprised at first because my expectations were shifted, but I was excited for this new learning opportunity. I wasn’t expecting as much camping as I had this season, but it became such a routine in my schedule, within a few weeks of my internship I was more comfortable sleeping in my tent then in my own room. Being able to sleep under the stars, wake up with the sun, and completely interact and engage with the outside world was really grounding and special to me. I think this internship has allowed me to sink roots in New Mexico and help build confidence within myself, as I spent a majority of the past 5 months virtually alone in my thoughts.

I was able to have ownership over so much of the work that I did in this internship, which was really sweet. Navigating to a site, determining if it is suitable to monitor, then setting up the proper transect area depending on the plant distribution, and collecting data on each plant with data sheets that me and my co-worker created ourselves, and then later entering this data that will be used to examine and analyze these populations. It is pretty amazing that I was a part of the first year that the BLM in New Mexico is doing a widespread demographic trend monitoring project of the rare plants in the state, especially since I had no prior rare plant monitoring experience! It is also so important to have a baseline understanding of these plants so decision makers and land managers can make informed choices when they are confronted with interacting with these species. And over time, this baseline understanding can lead to a greater knowledge of how the plants shift and respond to disturbances, development, herbivory, and everything in between. It is really sweet that I helped start this project that will be going on for the next 10 years!

I really enjoyed creating a poster for the Native Plant Society Conference, I liked being able to communicate the work that I have been doing for the past 5 months to a wider audience. It was also rewarding being able to share my experience and answer people’s questions about the work. I think it is so important bridge the gap between science and the greater community, using outreach, social media (such as this blog..!), attending conferences and conventions, hosting volunteer events, and so on. All this research and time spent on examining these systems aren’t worth anything if no one has access to it!

There is a very specific energy in the desert, the seemingly sparse appearance of life creates space for your own reflection and appreciation of beauty. You just have to be open to it and pay attention to the little things. The way yucca grows so forcefully out of basalt, how the incredibly vibrant and rare Eriogonium gypsophilum thrives on the mooncrust gypsum, how the sage smells so sweet and strong after a monsoon rain, the sweet relief of seeking shelter under a juniper or pinon pine when the sun is excruciating, are just some of the countless wonders I have been so lucky to experience. My primary thoughts behind this internship, besides getting the transects done in time, making sure I observed the right plant height, tag number, and number of seeds, was trying to give as much love and special attention to all these plants that are threatened by a world focused on development and growth of the economy, by a changing climate, and by hungry critters seeking nourishment. I hope I was able to do that, bring more than just sound science to these struggling species, but form some sort of connection in hopes that will survive.