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! 

-Zane