Since my last post I have been working on wrapping up the capstone project of my summer. Over the past couple months I have been working on the prepping for large scale Wyoming Big Sagebrush Seed collection. It started with over 14 hours of GIS work to isolate potential sites for seed collection. I spent the months of September and October field checking the sites and monitoring the phenology of the sagebrush. Then, finally, when November rolled around it was time for collection. With the help of the two other interns and the Fuels crew we collected a grand total of 235 pounds of raw sagebrush seed! It was amazing to see the project from start to finish, and it was a great end to my Seeds of Success work.

Wyoming Big Sagebrush seed

Marissa and I getting ready to drive 235 lbs of sagebrush seed to the forest service nursery.

We also had the chance to help with some plantings along the Little Wood River. First, we worked with Blaine County’s 7th and 8th graders to plant willow cuttings along the river for a National Public Lands Day project. It was great to see how excited the students got about getting outside and planting. We then came back a couple weeks later with the Fuels crews in our district and planted river birch in the same area.

The planting crew for the willow planting at the Little Wood River. (Photo by Marissa Jager)

The National Public Lands Day t-shirts at the willow planting site. (Photo by Marissa Jager)

At the end of October we decided to do a Halloween themed final exploration into the White Cloud Mountains. We did a 6 mile hike to Boulder City, a ghost town. At one point Boulder city was a bustling mining town with several cabins, a saloon, several mines, and several mills. We weren’t totally prepared for the fact that there was knee deep snow at the old mine town, but it added to adventure. We rounded out our Halloween theme by hiking last mile on the way back in the dark. And we finished with a nice dinner in Ketchum to celebrate all the adventures we had this summer.

Marissa and Nicki hiking the last half a mile towards Boulder City

Boulder City, Idaho

I’m having a hard time digesting the fact that 6 months have passed since I first arrived in south-central Idaho. It has been a whirlwind half a year during which I have moved twice, lived with 8 different people, visited more than 6 national parks, and had the chance to explore and work with some amazing people. This internship has been a great opportunity to get my feet under me after graduating, and has helped me figure out what I need to do next. I will be making the trek back to Virginia at the end of this week, and will be putting in my applications for a couple M.S. programs. At the moment it looks like my next step will be to start a thesis in late spring, early summer. All of the skills I have gained and the projects I have worked on this summer are what made it possible for me to gain the attention of potential advisers. If I had to do it over again, I would in a heartbeat.

My parting advice to any future interns is to get out and explore the area you are in while you can because time will go by a lot faster then you think. If you are collecting seeds find a good podcast or two. Not only does it make the time pass quicker, but you’ll also find that it makes you more productive. Don’t be scared to take on a project that seems like it’s beyond your skill, you’ll be surprised at what you are really capable off.

And if you are lucky enough to end up in Shoshone, Idaho then you are lucky enough.

• Abby Goszka, Shoshone Field Office, BLM

Not your typical range improvement project: A bathtub with a view.

Got to love small town Idaho traffic jams

And of course your friendly neighborhood CBG interns ft. the AIM crew

When I first told people I accepted a job in Shoshone, ID I received a lot of interesting comments.  From, “isn’t the whole state just potatoes,” to “are there even people there?” For this post I have decided to compile reasons why Idaho is more than potatoes, and why it has grown on me.

I have found Idaho to be an excellent home base for exploring the west. I have had the opportunity to visit Crater Lake, the Wallawas, the Avenue of the Giants, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Craters of the Moon, and Glacier National Park. I feel that it is fitting that I have been able to visit so many of our National Parks during the park service’s centennial year. I am also excited that I got to see one of Glacier National Park’s 25 remaining glaciers, which are predicted to disappear as early as 2030! Something else I have enjoyed doing is comparing the photos I have taken at these places to pictures from 1961 that a past professor has been sending to me as I visit them. As you can see below, not much has changed at crater lake in 45 years except the photo quality.

Grinnell Glacier today

Grinnell Glacier in 1961

Wizard Island in Crater Lake today

Wizard Island in Crater Lake in 1961

Phantom Ship in Crater Lake today

Phantom ship in Crater Lake in 1961

The gem state also has a lot of “small hidden gems” that don’t exactly fit into the precious stone category. My fellow CLM interns and I have stumbled upon a hand carved Tibetan prayer wheel blessed by the Dali Lama (one of two in North America), the widest main street in the nation (right here in Shoshone!), the jump site for when Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River in 1974, the Perrine bridge that people commonly base jump from, Shoshone falls (which is 45 ft taller than Niagara falls!), the tallest single-structured sand dune in North America (Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park), Hells canyon which is the deepest gorge in America, the first city in the world to be powered solely by nuclear power (Arco), and the site of the first nuclear power plant and nuclear meltdown in the world (Atomic city).

Another benefit of working in the Shoshone field office is that the staff is amazing. There is never a shortage of garden fresh veggies or fruit for us to take home, they are extremely helpful with career advice, looking out for new opportunities for us, and can always be counted on to give great recommendations for weekend recreation. From the beginning they have all made us feel welcome. Both my mentor, Danelle, and the other CLMs’ mentor, Joanna, deserve a special shout-out. They have gone out of their way to make sure that we get the most out of our internships, which I feel like is a challenge since there are 5 CLM interns in the office.  Even though I was hired for Seeds of Success, the list of projects I have participated in takes up almost an entire page, and I expect it to continue to grow until I leave in November. We recently received the excess from our collections back from Bend. The amount that we got back shocked me, since it feels impossible to gather over 10,000 seed when you are actually collecting. However, turns out that we well surpassed that limit on 6 of our collections, and still have one more to send in!

The excess seed from our collections. It is so satisfying to see how much we got back!

Perideridia gairdneri collection

There is never a dull moment here. As I was finishing this post the woman who works the front desk came into our cubicles, and told us a bull snake was in the hallway by the break room. Marissa, one of my fellow CLM interns, sprinted down the hall to wrangle the snake. Being the team player that she is she, in her own words, “threw her body in the way to protect everyone in the office,” and as you can see he was truly terrifying.

Marissa after capturing the snake

Our Thursday afternoon visitor

With the temperatures rising the past couple weeks in Shoshone, ID our crew was looking for a break from the summer sun. So, when the GeoCorps offered to take us through a couple of lava tubes, and teach us about the geology of the area we did not hesitate to go. The first cave they took us to is the second largest lava tube in the lower 48. It was a two mile walk from the mouth to the back of the cave. Sometimes it was like walking through a train tunnel, other times we had to scramble over rocks or skirt around ledges, and at other points you could see where two or three clearly defined lava tubes stacked on top of each other.

The next cave’s opening was a long spout like tube that curved down in to a large room that mimicked the body of a tea pot, and if you stood in the middle of the room and looked up there was a large, almost perfectly circular skylight. Under the skylight there is a large pile of rubble, and growing among the rocks is a mass of ferns. This caused us all to ponder, since this is only place I have seen ferns since moving to southern Idaho.  We also discovered that this cave was the perfect place to take ethereal photos. The trick to achieving the beam of light cascading down over the ferns was to wait for the afternoon sun to stream in though the skylight and then kick up a massive cloud of dust. The results are amazing.

The final cave we went to was my favorite due to the fact that there are little individual droplets of water hanging delicately off of the ceiling and walls of the cave. If you shined your flashlight down the length of the cave at just the right angle it caught the droplets in such a way that they looked like shimmering drops of molten silver clinging to the walls of the cave. We tried several times to capture this effect on camera, but to no avail. Exploring these caves made me feel as if I were entering a whole other world that I was not supposed to ever see.

Tea Kettle Cave

My plant duties have been slowly shifting over the past couple weeks. I am still doing scouting for sagebrush collection, generally while helping the range techs as they are working on range improvements, but I have also been working on plant clearances and rare plant documentation and verification. I have found that I really enjoy this work, especially making the plant lists for the clearances. The first clearance was in a riparian area, which presented us with several mystery plants that we were not familiar with since most of the summer thus far has been spent in the sagebrush steppe. I find the satisfaction of figuring out an unknown plant adds another level of enjoyment to the work. Next week will be spent verifying a couple rare plant occurrences, sagebrush mapping, and monitoring a willow planting sites. However, I did just learn that one day will be spent tagging monarch butterflies!

After some large collections in the past several weeks the seed collection has slowed as we wait for the last of our lower elevation target species to reach the dispersal stage. At the moment my days are filled with driving from site to site, checking phenology, and on occasion getting a little lost. If I learn anything in this internship it ought to be using a map to get back where I am supposed to be.  In this down time I have taken on a GIS project to identify sites for potential sagebrush seed collection. While it is frustrating at times it is nice to apply the skills I learned in a classroom setting, and that feeling of satisfaction when something works is more than worth it. Hopefully when I go out to verify these sites I find that it was a successful project.

Last week we were able to go visit another field office to see the process for planning for juniper treatments. The juniper trees have been spreading from their historic habitat into Sage Grouse habitat due to fire suppression and historic land use. We got to see sections that have not been treated, and then went to treated sites to observe how the recovery was progressing. It was interesting to see the decision making process on what type of treatment should be done where, especially since I had had the opportunity to read about the effects these treatments have on the native plant community. There is so much thought that has to go into the treatments and how to coordinate their completion that it is amazing that these plans are able to come together. I am excited that this internship gives me the opportunity to experience what goes into making rehabilitation and management plans. It is something I am extremely interested in, and I am hoping that after this summer I will know if it is something I wish to do in the future.

As seed collection comes to an end I am starting to learn about some of the projects I will be tackling in the upcoming weeks. I am excited to start sagebrush mapping and vegetation clearances, and to get acquainted with some new plants!

Sage-Grouse Chick

Seed collection at Macon Flat.

Bags of seed ready to send to Bend!