What a whirlwind these past 3 months have been. There have been a lot of positives and negatives during my experience in the desert, but overall I have grown, learned, and am now off in a new direction in my life. I’d like to thank Dr. Skogen, Rebecca, and everyone else in the CLM program who have made this opportunity possible and works so hard for such a noble cause. Meeting the other interns in other field offices during the Chicago training makes me feel optimistic that we have some passionate and conscious people who will step into government offices and continue to protect our public lands and the plants and animals which call this vast western wilderness home. Cheers to all the interns and the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Now to wrap up my time in the Mojave.

The desert gives you a lot of time to think. There’s few people, noise, cars, and even animals (during the day at least) besides the chirp of the lizards at mid-day from under the creosote bushes. There is beauty and peace in being able to access such isolated areas and I take pleasure in knowing that these kinds of places still exist. On one of my last days I had grabbed a few flowers from an apricot mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) and paused for a few second to admire some butterflies when suddenly a hummingbird came out of nowhere and started drinking nectar from the flowers in my hands, hovered in front of my face and cocked his head, probably thinking what an odd looking plant I was, and flew off. There are some magical moments in the desert, and while not in such geological marvelous places like Arches in Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, the Mojave is still a true wilderness.

But it’s a tough place to live if you’re a social animal, and as Abbey said the only thing better than solitude is society. Needles doesn’t have much of a sense of community, or at least I couldn’t find one. The lack of people (like-minded rather) was the toughest challenge for me to overcome, and not the 115 degree days. Without having other people to hang out with was a struggle so I had to find other ways to occupy my free time. But at the end of a day in the Mojave sun, it was hard to muster up the energy to do anything outside, so I spent a lot of time reading and cooking. By taking the time to slow down, and really think about myself, my emotions, was a very contemplative and necessary time especially right after finishing college.

But being in such a desolate area certainly has its joys. One of the best feelings about when you’re so far from civilization and stop to realize you’re in a location where you can hear no planes, cars, construction, etc. and it fills you with a child-like excitement. I’d say that this experience mostly allowed me to learn about myself, and while I had to end my internship early, without having gone through such a challenging internship I wouldn’t be as content now with where I currently am working. Each new experience places a different lens in how we perceive the world and when we look at our lives in that light it allows us to accept each new challenge and question how it has changed ourselves and how we can learn and progress.

~Dean

As the temperature continued its gradual rise in the Mojave desert, we entered into July and the Monsoon season began. Finally the rains poured and it was an amazing spectacle. Lightning crashed and thunder boomed, the streets roared with water, and 30 minutes later it was over. A few more storms had come and gone through our office but luckily we hadn’t been caught in any of the flash floods.

A storm system north of town.

The summertime in the Mojave makes seed collecting difficult both for the heat and the lack of flowering plants. However the early monsoon season was a pleasant surprise as we wait for the ephemeral post-rain annuals to pop-up in August and September.

The sky after the monsoon had passed.

One nice break from the heat was an education program we had put together. The Needles public library hosts a summer reading program for children and Steve and I were given the privilege to create a presentation. We chose Animals of the Mojave: Past and Present. We talked about the extinct Shasta ground sloth and prehistoric horses, rattlesnakes, scorpions and mountain lions. We had the kids attention, especially with all the skulls we had brought, but what really got them excited was Lipton, the baby desert tortoise. The kids had fun, we had fun, the parents had fun, and everyone learned some more about the desert wildlife.

The house and visitors center at Mitchell Caverns

One week I had talked to Chris, the NPS liaison in our office about Mitchell Caverns, a cave which had been closed to the public for years. She had put me in contact with a guy looking over the property and he invited me out to help with a vegetation survey in a nearby canyon for exchange of a tour of the “closed” park. In the surrounding area there are badgers, bighorn sheep, and gila monsters and within the cavern there are ringtails and a type of Niptus beetle found nowhere else in the world. Aside from the caverns, there are 4 houses standing that were built by hand in the 1930’s  by Jack Mitchell, and the walls contain volcanic rock, petrified wood, and even petroglyphs (wrong, yes, but pretty amazing). I had a tour of the caverns and watched an outstanding sunset from high up in the Providence Mountains while hanging with Chica, the adopted ranch dog. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

Snakes are also quite fond of the temperature in the cavern.

Chica hanging out looking for lovin.

As most of you reading this will agree, the Chicago workshop was a blast and an excellent learning experience. It was revitalizing to be around other young people and the weather was a nice break from the desert heat. In the short amount of time I made a lot of friends and learned a great deal from the workshops which I am now applying in the field. I felt the Chicago experience really enforced a sense of pride in the collective efforts of all us interns and our commitment to being good stewards of the environment, especially to the plants.

The first day back to the Mohave we met up with some wildlife biologists doing bat research on the lower Colorado River with the Bureau of Reclamation. The location was a small re-forested cottonwood and mesquite forest on Native-American reservation land. This patch of forest was put in place in an attempt to imitate what the floodplain ecosystem may have looked like before damming up the Colorado and altering the periodic flooding which maintained these types of habitats. We set up a series of mist nets along corridors between the trees and spent the next 4 hours or so going from net to net, retrieving the captured bats out of the nets and recording the species, size, and sexual maturation. It was an extremely successful night with 44 bats being captured.

Pallid bat – They eat scorpions

Over the weekend one of the ladies from our office took Steve and I out fishing on Lake Havasu, and although we only caught one fish the whole morning, we got to cruise through the cliffs of the Topock Gorge which was absolutely gorgeous (pun intended). In the Mohave language the word Havasu means blue water and it sure was.

Topock Gorge and the blue waters of Havasu

One day we got sent out to monitor a spring where there was an infestation of a non-native tamarisk down a steep-walled canyon. Along the upper portions of the flat rock there were numerous petroglyphs drawn onto the weathered stone. The enigmatic images were all different shapes but I noticed a recurring image of what looked like an incomplete figure 8, and an even-sided cross. One small drawing even resembled a dinosaur

Petroglyphs

As the mercury continues to rise each day, seed collecting becomes more and more difficult. The other day it reached 113 degrees farenheit during the day and only dropped down to 102 at night. It’s unreal how much water we drink each day. We have been seeing many wild burros and have even caught a few fleeting glimpses of desert mule deer. I can’t even fathom how those animals survive in that heat every day. Until the next hotter week.

Cheers,

~Dean

Whats the vine covering the Palo Verde (Parkinsonia floridum ssp. floridum)?

Its a milkweed! Funastrum cynanchoides

A long drive from Detroit, Michigan to Needles, California was made short with stops visiting friends in some beautiful places in Colorado. I camped out the first night in my truck outside town with a friend who happened to be near while travelling through. The morning revealed an amazing contrast of the blue waters of the Colorado river splitting the tan and brown desert mountains of the surrounding Mohave. With the thermometer reaching 100 degrees by 10:30 a.m., we immediately headed down to the river and lounged out in the shade of a cottonwood tree.

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The first week of work consisted of meeting everyone in the office, learning about the field office area, learning the plant vegetation, and getting trained in off-road driving. The first day out in the field with our supervisor we saw what we believed to have been a Mohave green rattlesnake, potentially one of the most venomous snakes in North America. As we continued the walk up into the wash, getting acquainted with identifying the local vegetation, a white barn owl flew right over us. An exciting first day.

We spent the past few days driving out to different spring sites to monitor the water levels, check for invasives, document the surrounding flora and fauna, and begin looking for potential candidates to collect for the Seeds of Success Program.  A quick glance at what looks like a desolate wasteland void of life has been drastically changing in our perspective, as we learn more and begin to see the diversity and life that is hidden to most passing by in cars along the famous route 66. While beautiful and intriguing, the extreme heat and lack of people in the Mojave desert will make for a challenging time, but one that is sure to build character.