I began this internship with little knowledge of desert ecology as well as the plants that live within that ecosystem. As the internship progressed I became more aware of the multiple organisms found within the desert. I learned about the diverse dynamics and the severe negative affects of fire on an ecosystem that is not adapt to such a disturbance.

Erodium cicutarium an annual plant

I have learned so much from this internship. I began my internship with a quick introduction to the annual plants found in the desert. As the months progressed I learned how to set up transects and assess 100% perennial plant cover, which of course came with a quick introduction into perennial plant identification. My favorite field site was Nevershine. It was the field site we began our field work on and it contains a beautiful calm; or maybe it was just the nostalgia of sleeping out under the stars the first week of work.

Our first field site, Nevershine, AZ.

Once annual and perennial plants had been documented and assessed we got to dive into individual projects. I had the pleasure of learning how to collect seeds for various plant species, herbarium data entry, R- program for statistical analysis, in-depth scientific research for project proposal writing, as well as methods for bromas seed collection, and much more. Instead of going to the training in Chicago, since I had already completed field work at that time, I chose to attend a different training course, Wilderness First Responder. Which I found to be a valid choice since I had been bitten by a creature and evacuated from the field. I though it would be good to know how to help others if anything were to happen to them. I learned how to examine a patient, wound assessment and care, CPR, moving a spinal injury patient, splinting, re-setting dislocations, patient care/ treatment and knowledge to make evacuation decisions. I am now a WFR.
I think the best part of my internship was the seed collecting trip that took me on an adventure to the Grand Canyon, Escalante area, around Lake Powell and through Zion National Park. I felt like a little kid on a specially guided nerdy geeky tour. I learned so much from the two scientists that I got to hang out with. My knowledge has increased significantly during the entire internship. The connections I made and everything I learned made my internship a valuable part of my life. Not to mention my fellow inters/friends/roommates made my experience even better. They are all wonderful people. I am glad I had the opportunity to work with, learn with and from. I look forward to seeing were their lives take them.

I had a wonderful opportunity recently. I went on my first seed collecting trip! I know it doesn’t sound exciting but it was…I will tell you why.
·    First, I got to go on this seed collecting trip with two senior scientists. One of the individuals is from our USGS field office and the other is from a USDA field office in Utah. Not only did I have the opportunity to work with two fantastically smart people I was a part of an inter agency cooperation project.
·    Second, I learned how to collect black brush (Coleogyne ramosissima). For an individual who is easily amused, which I am one of them, this was a blast. The process of collecting C. ramosissima is rather simple, it goes like this:
Grab a large canvas net (hopper)
Grab a sturdy stake
Take both of these objects with you and walk up to a bush. Place the hopper under the massted bush and beat it! Yes, beat the bush with a stick. How great is that?…It is pretty fantastic!
·    Third, I visited many areas to asses black brush distribution and to collect seeds from massting individuals within various populations.
o    Lake Powell’s surrounding area
Lake Powell is a blue beauty that appears in the red rocks winding through the surrounding canyon.

o    Little Colorado
The Little Colorado River feeds into the Grand Canyon. The red and white striped walls of the canyon rise high and cast magnificent shadows across the landscape. The black brush likes to hang out on the benches/plateaus of the mesas. (Honestly, I thought the Little Colorado was more beautiful than the Grand Canyon)

o    Grand Canyon National Park
This is a vast Canyon, crazy deep with many extending benches and plateaus, much of which was covered in black brush. The canyon is full of colors… and very very large.

o    Zion National Park
Zion was perfect! I was privy to a private, one of a kind, tour given by the senior scientists I was traveling with. Zion is beautiful from the moment you enter the canyon area, even before you reach the park entrance. The beauty only increases as you travel into the park. It is green with plant life, the rock provide a color palate of red, white and yellow. It is a majestic place!

It was the best trip ever! I felt as thou I was a child who was taken to Disney World. I had never been to any of these places, so being able to experience them with people who knew the area was beyond amazing. Every question was answered and a lot of information was given and I tried to soak it all up. Now, we did work while going to all of these places and the presence and absence of black brush was documented through-out the whole trip, unfortunately we could not collect ion the National Parks.

I had the pleasure of having an incident during my internship. I guess it is now my duty to tell you about what happened. Also, how my evacuation turned into a surprising team building exercise.

As you may know, I work in the Mojave desert where I sleep in a sleeping bag atop a ground pad and a tarp. I was peacefully sleeping when some venomous creature slipped into my sleeping bag and invenomated me on my left gluteus maximus. I actually have no idea how the spider got in my sleeping bag, as a matter of fact there is still an on-going debate on wither or not I was bitten by a spider or stung by a scorpion. I think it was a spider. Well, whatever the invertebrate, it somehow found the opportunity to bite me, in the bum. It was a classy organism.

I was not aware of the bite until I was packing up my gear the following morning. I felt a tingling/ burning sensation radiating from my lower left gluteus maximus and through my upper left leg. Soon after this sensation started, I began to have slight cramping in my lower back and abdomen, since this can be commonly associated with something else…I did not think much of it right away. But I did realize that I may have been bitten by something and I did have a raised dot on my bum, so I informed my team leader of the situation. We then grabbed our gear and started the morning hike to our field site. I was having severe craps at this point but I thought I was being a pansy, so I told myself to suck it up, get up and hike. During this hike to the site I was slowing down my team because I kept stopping while I got sick and walking became more difficult.

My team and I eventually reached the bottom of the hill that we were to hike up. Things had progressed, my lower back was spasming more which made walking even more difficult and uncomfortable. I sat at the bottom of the hill for a few minutes trying to prepare myself to hike up. I willed myself up the hill, telling myself to stop over exaggerating and that I was fine. By the time I reached the top of the hill my legs were shaking so much I had to lean on me team leader while we walked the rest of the way to the field site. I heavily collapsed next to our plot.  My team insisted that I rest. I laid down but the pain continued to get worse and soon I was having difficulty breathing. This was the moment my team leader became aware that it would be wise to take me to the hospital. In preparation for the evacuation I was helped up, but my legs had stopped working so I quickly sank back down to the ground. Thankfully I have two co-workers that have first aid training and wilderness first responder training, so they began trying all the different carrying methods they could think of . One person was sent ahead to pack our gear and prepare the car while the other three assisted with carrying me down the hill while monitoring my breathing, pulse, and consciousness. Like I previously mentioned, they used a variety of methods to carry me down the hill to allow different muscles to be exhausted. Each time we stopped and they had to hoist me back up off the ground and into another caring method I would think, ” Man, I know I am in a lot of pain but I am glad I am the one being carried.” The hill was extremely steep and was covered with cactus, yuccas, and other very poky plants that seemed to be intentionally place exactly in the way, making it even more difficult for my co-workers, no, friends to carry me down the hill.

While monitoring me, the Wilderness First Responder trained co-workers, kept telling me to breath and count to ten. I was conscious but this task seemed too hard and it boggled my mind, I knew that there was no way I could count and breath at the same time, my mind could only focus on so much at once. I chose to breath and I looked into her eyes so that she knew I understood. Well, this co-worker, who I am very grateful for, kept talking to me and telling me to breath and count and was very attentive. I was trying to breath and listen; it was difficult to do both I just kept thinking, “Please shut up, I am trying to breathe!!”. I had to keep telling myself that she is amazing and  helping me, so I should chill out, but man did I want her to stop talking. I really do appreciate her.

After my team of co-workers got me to the car they laid me down in the back, my head in one co-workers lap and my legs in another co-workers lap. My legs were spasming so much my co-worker could feel the muscle spasms. They all monitored my breathing and heart rate while driving as safely, but swiftly to the nearest hospital. My vitals seemed to be stable. Once we reached the hospital I was admitted to the ER where they asked a lot of questions multiple times, and I kept asking for pain medication, I just wanted people to stop talking to me and make the pain go away. Finally they gave me lots of benadryl and other things, not sure what, but I fell asleep. This was a significant improvement from the pain I was in before. My co-workers waited at the hospital with me for hours to make sure I was okay and they did not leave until I was safely out of the ER and in a overnight room. They are wonderful people and I am very grateful to and for them.

So this is my story. The next week I was back out in the field sleeping on the ground again. There is no reason to fear the desert or the things in it, it is a beautiful place and sometimes bad incidents just happen. I hope that no one is discouraged or scared by the contents of this blog. I encourage everyone to try sleeping on the ground, it is delightful and I will continue to do it.

The second week in the field yielded a very interesting week full of lessons. We began this week of field work at 6:30 am. It was a very windy morning, there was a haze being created in the distance as a result. As we started to drive to the field site the amount of cloud cover began to increase and before we knew it had begun to rain. I found it delightful because I love rain. I love the smell, sound, and the refreshing crisp air that it provides. Well, it WAS wonderful until we reached the field site and I realized that I was in no way prepared for the cold rain. I had packed no rain pants. I quickly thought that it would all be okay, I would just tough it out. I soon realized  that my soaked field pants provided no protection against the biting wind.
I am not entirely sure why I did not pack my rain gear, I may have thought… ” Well, I know it rains in the desert but there is no way that it will rain on me.” False

Lesson one: always pack your rain gear

As the week progressed the rains diminished but the cloud cover remained. My hands got chilled every time I took them out to pluck more plants from a plot. I would have loved a pair of gloves to keep my hands warm or hand warmers so that I could hold something warm periodically. Both of these things are normally in my pack even in the summer. For some reason I took them out of my bag and forgot to place them back in.

Lesson two: Always make sure you have something to warm your hands.

As the clouds began to leave and the sun began to warm the earth, all of our spirits began to brighten until we all realized that no one had packed the group food bag… we were all running out of food. We had no bread, peanut butter, Nutella, rice and all the other staples that supply carbs for continuing field work. Thankfully, I had packed my normal “just in case food” and I knew that I was not going to go hungry. I feared that the others were not as well off as I was.

Lesson three: Always make sure someone actually  packs the communal food bag before leaving.

All of these were lessons that I learned this week. All of these are lessons that I had no desire to learn about, that  is why I usually over prepare and over pack. Now that I know how horrible it is to be unprepared I will do my best to not get caught out in the rain without my pants again.

In the rain and cold

I have the pleasure to be working in the Mojave dessert with the USGS, and three other interns. Within the first week of the internship we were tossed out into the desert. It is amazing learning about the desert and observing it all in person. It is interesting to see how the desert is home to such a vast and beautiful environment that houses multiple ecological systems providing a suitable habitat for a variety of organisms. This multifaceted ecosystem also provides a uniquely beautiful landscape, which makes any field day worth the effort.
While we were driving to our field site we got to see something very unique. The Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) were in bloom. Since this is not an annual occurrence it was a special event, for me anyway. They are beautiful trees with a large inflorescence sticking straight up from the middle of the leaf blade bundles. It was beautiful to look out across the landscape and see a desert full of blooming yucca.

A beautiful Yucca brevifolia in bloom.

On the first day in the field, our team was given a crash course on the 18 plants that we would be plucking for biomass assessment. Once we were done learning about the different morphological distinctions of each plant, we went straight to work. One by one we plucked out each species, which we then put into a bag that contained the identifying initials for that plant. It was interesting to find out how much diversity can be found in a 50cm by 20 cm area in the desert. It was also fascinating to note that the plots that seemed sparse contained the greatest biodiversity. It became a tedious job at times, but at the end of the day it was rewarding to look back at all the sample bags that I had in my pack and see how much work had been accomplished. It was a greater reward to walk back to camp watching the sun set on the horizon illuminating the red rocks and canyons surrounding us.

The beautiful area (Nevershine, AZ) that we got to work in for the first week of our internship.

Whoever has it in their mind that the desert is a barren wasteland that has nothing in it, should take a deeper look. The desert provides a beauty uniquely its’ own.