The final month of our field season and our time as interns for the Chicago Botanic Garden has finally arrived. I am both sad that this is the end of a great time that I’ve had in the field in Arizona but excited for the adventures that are next in store. Over the past few weeks, we did a final field trip day at Dude Creek, where we worked with Arizona Fish and Game and the Arizona Conservation Corps Tonto Crew to survey for riparian plants such as alders and sycamores. We also got to see a Gila trout and Chiricahua Leopard frog! We visited Globe for final collections and did some invasive/rare species monitoring near Payson. Currently, we are in the midst of closing up shop and sending our lovely seeds out to their next home in Santa Fe.
A Chiricahua Leopard Frog that we found at Dude Creek.
The past month has been highlighted by work on some of the later stages of seed collecting and production. At the beginning of the month, we completed several trips to a production farm in Chino Valley, where we weeded plots, planted plugs of Lotus wrightii and Argemone pleicantha, and collected several lawn bags of Elymus elymoides and Achiellia millefolium. Later in the month, we worked on the Leo Grove restoration site in Payson, where we raked pine needles and seeded almost 3 acres of land! After finishing at Leo Grove, we revisited Diamond Point to check on the population of the Penstemon linaroides that we found. Thankfully, the population wasn’t wiped out by the recent burn that it was exposed to. We finally made our collection for that point and also found some more quartz points!
Agaves being grown at the Chino Valley production farm.
The past month has been filled with a mixture of hot daily temperatures of over 100, contrasted by frequent torrential downpours. Such is life in Arizona. But, as they say, with the rains, life follows. It’s strange to see such bright colors contrasted with the dead grass and the occasional plot of cow bones. It’s kinda strange to see so many of them in the middle of a juniper forest sometimes. (The Wild West is still alive!) I found my second coyote skull this month in a ditch while searching for some Parkinsonia seeds, and whoop there it was, bleached and slightly dusted, with no other bones around it. Strange, really, how I just decided to go in the direction of the skull like it was asking me to find it. I like to think that magical moments like this are more frequent than we give credit for. I really like the natural metaphors and poetry that the desert provides, and I’m particularly inspired by the level of resilience and life that exists contrasted with such obvious symbols of death, like the cow bones. I believe that death and endings are underappreciated and over stigmatized. After all, it provides the opportunity for something new to exist when it may not have before. Sure, the rain provides life, but we only ever think of the death following it under the scorching sun. It’s just as natural as everything else. I’m still reflecting on our recent trip to Diamond Point near Payson, where we found crystal-clear quartz points when scavenging for some woodland target species. It was interesting to see scorch marks that looks like they may have been from lightning, contrasted by the sparkle of the crystals in the gravel and sticking up from the pine litter.
Machaeranthera in the middle of a wash by Warm Creek. I like to think it’s called Warm Creek because of the uranium mine next door to it.One of the many Payson “Diamond” quartz points we found.
This month, I have been reminded of the resilience and beauty of the desert. I love seeing the giant tarantulas crossing the campsite roads in Payson and seeing the wild Palo Verdes reminiscent of a certain Dr. Seuss book. It’s striking to me the amount of life that lives and thrives in a place that regularly saps my strength at over 90 degrees every day. I put my hand into the soil at a site in the Tonto Forest the other day. The site is called Leo Grove, and over the last few weeks, we’ve been weeding, fencing, and making transects to turn it into an experimental plot. It’s been thinned, but has Ponderosa Pines all around the area. It was striking to me that I could very nearly slip my hand into the soil almost without needing a shovel, and seeing how soft and moist it was under the surface beneath the pine needles. I thought it was funny how consistent Arizona was with spiky things- spiky plants, spikey snakes and insects, and even spikey dirt. Under the surface, however, everything is soft, delicate, and full of life, waiting to sprout. I think that seeing the resilience of the things here gives me hope for the life to come in the future, and maybe, more things could benefit from being a little prickly.
The past few weeks have flown by! Since training, Iran and I have been to the Leo Grove, and the Little Green Meadow sites on the Tonto Forest. Both were very different sites- Leo Grove is a covered pine-forest dry woodlands area, whereas the Little Green Meadow was pretty self-explanatory, a wetland full of rushes with winding small streams through the center. My favorite plant right now is the plant Phleum pretense, mostly because I think it’s a dumb name for a plant, it reminded me of the nonsense words in the Rick and Morty Plumbus commercial and the florets look like little Batman helmets. (See the image below for my super detailed and informative drawing of a Phleum floret.) Also at the Little Green Meadow site, we saw little ant mounds everywhere, and I thought wow! Ants! I hope they won’t bite me. I was more worried about stepping on a hornet nest, but after seeing several large cow bones, a coyote skeleton, and bear droppings, I was more concerned about the larger things. There is a point to this I swear! The moral of the story is that no matter where we are, whether it’s in a pine forest or a meadow by a cow pasture or even in an apartment binge-watching Bridgerton season 3 until 2 am, (I highly recommend by the way) you can’t really worry about the large stuff sometimes, and I think that coming to peace with that is a good way to live in the moment and get more out of your present experience. In the wise words of Grand Master Oogway, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift- that is why it is called the present.” In other words, I’m looking forward to future adventures on the Tonto and seeing many a green meadow later on, and maybe an eldritch terror or two that reside within them. But today, I’m happy about learning the little things and looking at plants, while enjoying a coffee and working in a city I love. Happy trails!
