I’ve officially been labeled a short-timer here at the Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming.  As I prepare to head back to the Pacific Northwest I’m finding it hard to think of words to describe my time in Wyoming.  Ever since I arrived here I’ve struggled to full accept that the Powder River Basin is energy country.  Energy production is the reason I have a job, the reason everyone in my office has a job, the reason my lights come on at night, and the economic backbone for the majority of this beautiful state.  Yet I still can’t shake the voices of my environmental philosophy professors preaching the horrors of exactly what’s going on in the area I work.  I do not support the thousands of miles of two track roads, the countless produced water reservoirs, the fragmentation of habitat, the draw down of aquifers, the possible extinction of the sage grouse, or the risk of selenium tainting the Powder River – and yet I think I’m starting realize I can only lament so much when I don’t have a better solution.  The reality is I enjoy electricity, I enjoy driving my car, and I enjoy having a job.  I guess all I can really do is observe how things are done here currently and continue working to be part of better solutions in the future. 

My job itself has been a great experience and I have learned a lot of new skills.  For the last couple of weeks I have been working on a project to sample soils in the reservoirs filled with water that comes from natural gas production.  I think I would have enjoyed this project just as much as an eight year old child.  Basically I’m getting payed to play in the dirt.  Using a hand auger is messy, especially when used in the bottom of a reservoir.  I come home everyday with my jeans ruined and my hands smelling like a vulgar mix of mud and cow poop, but it’s fun work.   Hopefully though all my dirty days will produce some valuable information that will influence how reclamation is done in the Powder River Basin. 

As I think  I stated in my last blog, the best part of this experience continues to be exploring the beauty this part of the country has to offer.  I spent the last weekend basking in the glory of autumn in Yellowstone.  It’s hard to complain about walking the boardwalks around Old Faithful without the yammer of a thousand people or standing alone at a view point over the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  It may also be worth mentioning that we saw a very large grizzly bear near Yellowstone Lake and two wolves snacking on a carcass in the Lamar Valley.  Besides Yellowstone I’ve also gotten to travel to Grand Teton and Glacier Nation Parks in addition to the time spent in Big Horn Mountains a couple miles west of here. 

I’m going to miss Wyoming.  The sky, the landscapes, the geology, my friends, and co-workers are all things I’m going to look back on fondly.   The internship has been a wonderful experience personally and professionally.  I could not of have gotten my next position without the skills I’ve learned in Wyoming. 

Jacob Dyste

It is hard to believe that 6 months has gone by already! In that short time I learned the SOS protocol from mapping suitable populations in the beginning all the way to the end product at the Bend Seed Extractory. It is the first season of SOS for BLM Surprise and my project was SOS from start to finish. I really enjoyed working with BLM volunteers Ed and Wendi Lutz who have a ranch over in Nevada about 25 miles from the office. They are doing germination studies of native plants and small scale garden studies. They really kept spirits high even on scouting trips which weren’t so successful and on days where the weather was not ideal.  Our trip to Bend was made exciting by the fact that we got to see our collections at every stage of the process. The workers at Bend don’t just stand there at a machine and push seed through-they have to be inventive for those tough collections that can’t go through the machines. We had a collection of Balsamorhiza which consisted of mostly flower heads and they put the entire collection in a wire mesh tumbler that reminded me of the things they use at the grocery store for raffle tickets and drawings (see picture). Turn the crank to mix them up and the achenes drop through to a collection bin.  We watched as the workers pulled seed out of the brown paper bag I helped put it into and then feed it into the hopper of a deawning machine and see the seeds come out one end and all the awns out another. We saw x-ray photographs taken at this stage that show the ratio of filled seed to empty-our Thurber’s needle grass looked excellent! We saw material that looked like lawn clippings being fed into a Clipper and watched as the machine sorted the material out by weight separating seed from straw-my mentor Kathryn and co-intern Maike really enjoyed this!  The neatest thing was seeing the package of seed with our office code on the label along with information on seed purity and quality. I enjoyed the small town of Cedarville even without the services one is used to in more populated areas and I really enjoyed seeing some of the beautiful back country of northwest Nevada and northeast California. I saw, for the first time ever, wild mustang and bighorn sheep and I got to camp at High Rock Canyon which requires a 4×4 with adequate clearance and at least 8-ply tires to get through safely. I may not have had the adventure of a lifetime but I certainly accomplished my goal of working on a project from the beginning and seeing it through to the end and I call that success.