As many recent college graduates, I spent the last four years staring at computer screens, huddling over books, and idling in classrooms. Though I dedicated countless hours to reading and writing about the natural world, only a fraction of my time was spent experiencing it. My life was governed by arbitrary deadlines and sustained by florescent light bulbs. The last few weeks have been the exact opposite. As a Seeds of Success intern I have been jolted back to reality; the reality in which the world runs on the sun’s clock and life succumbs to the forces of nature.

“No, no, it’ll be dry here. Vale is in the desert, the hot, hot, desert” Gillian, my mentor, mentioned before my trip out from Colorado. Shorts, tank tops, and sandals all flew into my trunk in large numbers. I threw in one warm hat, a rain jacket, and a few pairs of old jeans, just to be safe. Three weeks later, sopping wet from the snow and muddy to my knees, I thought of my large brimmed sun hat still untouched in the trunk of my car. Faintly, over the gusts of wind I heard the familiar “No, no, seeds still not ready” from the others.

Three weeks of persistent rain, cold, and wind not only affected my choice of clothing each morning it also affected every aspect of our SOS goals. In mid-June most of our potentially collectable plants had only slightly matured, if at all. For three weeks our team, 3G, waited, watched, and wished for the sun to come out so our plants could start going to seed.

Still not warm...

Finally the clouds parted and gave way to full days of sunshine and warmth. Giddy and excited we reassessed which populations would be ready first. Balsamorhiza sagitata moved to the top of the list. Driving to the site, I was excited for my first full day of seed collecting. We got out of our rig, hiked to the exact location and…nothing. Looking closer we spotted the large, sagittate basal leaves. Disappointed and confused we walked back to the car hardly noticing the dozens of cows happily munching on our Balsamroot seeds.

Though my days often end with mosquito bites on my legs, ticks in my clothes, and sunburned shoulders, the daily blast of air conditioning at the office reminds me how lucky I am to have a job so interwoven with nature.

My first month out of the redwood fog in Northern California has been a great learning experience.  Its been great learning the plants of this bioregion,  starkly different from where I came, characterized by the chaparral plant community.  I am truly grateful to be able to spend my days looking for plants, gathering seed, and cleaning seed.  This station is full of motivated people with various projects one can plug into such as cactus wren habitat monitoring and kangaroo rat habitat restoration.  I didn’t realize other members of anacardiaceae occured in California, so it was cool to meet the genera rhus and malosma.  There are a lot of scenic mountain areas here, more than I thought, in a place I thought was just strip malls and urban sprawl.  It is refreshing to note how much biodiversity still exists in San Diego county. I look forward to further exploration of this new, mediteranean-style home.

My internship focuses on restoring Desert Fan-Palm Oases.  Apparently, no one has come up with a set way on how to restore desert habitat.  There is a lot of collaboration and research into finding techniques to use, to restore this habitat.  My favorite method by far is using the Groasis Waterboxx.

Here is a link to show you more about Groasis Waterboxxes, http://www.groasis.com/page/uk/index.php

They are designed by Pieter Hoff who works for AquaPro.  I have used these Waterboxxes to establish seeds of our target species in hard to grow places.  However, because I work in the desert, when you place things like this out there, wildlife tends to use them as habitat.  While monitoring these Waterboxxes, I ran across this little guy in one of our dead Waterboxxes.  (Shown in the picture below)  This is a Desert Banded Gecko, with its tail re-growing.  That is why its tail looks so weird!

This is so cool, I thought living in the desert would mean not seeing this much wildlife, but I totally underestimated the desert.  I thought geckos were needed more water than they could find in the desert.  Obviously I was wrong.

Anyways, restoring desert habitat is definitely a learning process, so if anyone has any ideas feel free to comment and let me know!  These Waterboxxes are in the process of being tested by the project I am working on as well as by many other people.  I really hope the plants that we have planted in them survive throughout the summer!

My first three weeks here have been amazing. I get to travel to beautiful locations all around the county, work at the Safari Park, and live close to the beach. It really could get much better. Its surprising to me that that there are so many new plant species here, I wouldn’t have expected there to be so much variation just a few hours south of where I first took field botany. I never thought I would find the dry desert areas interesting, but the more I look the more there is to see. I am even more excited for the next five months than when I first started. There are multiple projects going on at the park and I hope I can find time to learn a little bit about all of them.

It was halfway done eating a bunny when we found it. It was the least intimidating snake I have even seen. It couldn't even rattle.

I’ve had the pleasure of spending my internship on the Cosumnes River Preserve in central California. This week, I learned how to properly install a barbed wire fence, which sounds much easier than it is in reality. It’s interesting, though. I hail from Kansas, and everybody automatically assumes that capable farm boy has come to town, but in actuality I come from small town Americano. I have worked on farms before, but just as a hand during hay season. I’m just a hayseed… not a rancher.  Now, through the BLM, I have learned to operate many of the equipment used for land management, such as 90 hp tractors, chainsaws, UTV’s, et al. It is ironic that the perception people have of me is now mostly true, but they are unaware of the means by which I acquired these skills. I guess it goes to show that people have assumptions about the lifestyles of peoples’ from different states, especially the assumptions Californians make. I wouldn’t be surprised if the people of California thought that California was half the country, and this is not a preconception, but a conclusion made after meeting Californians. I consider myself well traveled, and there is definitely a self-centralism in this state. That is not to say that I don’t consider California “unworthy” or “irredeemable” in any way. On the contrary, I absolutely love the state of California and all it has to offer. I’m very grateful that CLM was able to extend my internship (and my mentor for making it possible), but I do feel that people here take a whole lot for granted. One thing that the CLM Internship program offers is a way for young people such as myself, who are interested in this sort of job field, to get away and see if indeed the grass is greener on the other side of the fence; to go places far from their realm of comfort and gain exposure that they would not otherwise have the opportunity. I hope the other interns involved in this program feel the same way and don’t take it for granted. Thank you, Chicago Botanic Garden, for creating opportunities, especially in the current economic atmosphere.

It’s hard to even separate the last few weeks from the preceding ones– it’s all been a blur. I can’t believe I’ve already been here for 2 months. But the job is moving right along, mostly monitoring golden eagle nests and watching for plant populations to collect for the Seeds of Success program. The 2 eagle chicks I’ve been watching are almost ready to fledge (leave the nest), which I am excited to hopefully see. I am also hopeful that I will be involved in banding one of them once it leaves the nest and is on the ground for a few days. The seed collection project may have a minor setback, as a significant chunk of the scurfpea population I was planning to collect was washed out and covered with sediment in a heavy rainstorm. Mayhap there will be enough plants left for a collection, but perhaps it is time to go to Plan B and identify alternative collection sites.

Apart from work, I’ve had my first visitors from home this past weekend. My mom and sister came to visit, and I took them to work with me to monitor the eagle nests. We also went to Yellowstone for a day of ecotourism. Last week I watched the 4th of July parade through town and some fireworks. It’s lovely in the Cody Field Office right now; the blue delphinium is blooming and the occassional short but impressive thunderstorm rolls through from time to time, which keeps cooling things off so the summer heat hasn’t been terrible. All in all, it’s still the best job I’ve ever had and I feel very fortunate to be in this place among these people and enjoying working outdoors.

There are lonely hours. How can I deny it? There are times when solitaire becomes solitary, an entirely different game, a prison term, and the inside of the skull as confining and unbearable as the interior of the housetrailer on a hot day. p95 Desert Solitaire

July. Though all the windows are wide open and the blinds rattle in the breeze the heat is terrific. The inside of the trailer is like the inside of a kiln, a fierce dry heat that warps the loose linoleum on the floor, turns an exposed slice of bread into something like toast within half an hour, makes my papers crackle like parchment. p128-9 Desert Solitaire

Edward Abby describes what I am feeling right now very well- loneliness. I miss trees and mountain trails, cold weather and the ability to go outside and not want to die of heat (highest temperature so far this summer: 120 F). The desert is a remote and terrifically hot place at times.

Yes July. The mountains are almost bear of snow except for the patches within the couloirs on the northern slopes. Consoling nevertheless, those shrunken snowfields, despite the fact that they’re twenty miles away by line of sight and six to seven thousand feed higher than where I sit. They comfort me with the promise that if the heat down here becomes less endurable I can escape for at least two days each week to the refuge of the mountains- those islands in the sky surrounded by a sea of desert. The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.” p129 Desert Solitaire

Though I am having a tough time being in Needles CA for my internship at this moment, I realize it is really helping me to do some self reflecting. I have time to spend with myself, and only myself, in order to reflect on what I want to do with my life and how I want to live it- though I feel this way now, I am sure it will only help me grow in the long run.

Laney

Life has been hectic starting this internship with CLM, but good. I am stationed in Denver, Colorado at the state office with Carol Dawson, a wonderful person who is able to get way more done than is humanly possible, and Peter Gordon, a great guy from Australia who is very helpful, fun to chat with, and was an intern through this program himself before joining Carol. Right away, we were off and running with important things to do, from being briefed about what we are doing, setting up at the office, and prepping for our first adventures.

Our first two weeks we focused on monitoring rare plants, Penstemon harringtonii and Sclarocactus glaucus, but will not go into detail about it, as you can read about it from my co-intern, Sama, who posted about it last week. The third week was busy with training in Chicago, where we met all the other interns stationed across the western states, met many of the people behind the scenes of this program, and taught many skills and information needed for most of the internships. This current week, we have performed our other half of our duties, Seeds of Success (SOS).

an opening on the foothills showing the possible seeds we might collect later this year

Opuntia polyacantha - aka prickly pear species in bloom

Our current objective for SOS is to scout out new or old potential locations for common plants that are great for restoration and to collect plant genetic diversity for the security of our future. During our scouting endeavors, Peter takes to time to teach us how to identify plant families (such as the rose family, lily family, etc.), what the common plants are, and using a dichotomous key to figure out the plant species when we are working without him or Carol (such as keying out a prickly pear cactus species of Opuntia polyacantha). He also informs us on what to look for in the size of a population for seed collection, the difficulties of certain species

Geranium caespitosum - aka pineywoods geranium that disperses it's seeds if you touch it when ripe.

if the fruits pop open when touched, scattering the tiny black/brown seeds over 30 feet), and many other necessary procedures we must follow in order to make our collection more accurate and viable for storage (correct labeling, information needed recorded, etc.).

We have yet to collect seeds because it requires a lot of prep work now in order to find what has a large enough population to harvest, save time later and to prevent missed opportunities, and many of the plants are not in fruit yet. But, while investigating potential collections, a phenomenal bonus are all the spectacular landscapes, land formations, and flowers that we get to witness and admire. As Peter has mentioned as hikers and runners pass by us, that they took a day off from work just to be here while we are paid to work and enjoy the marvels of our Earth.

Peter within the area of Paint Mines where erosion is taking place.

Hello from Carson City, NV!
My name is Aileen Shaw and I am working with two other interns, Andie and Sasha, and the Carson City BLM on a Sage Grouse project.
“The greater sage-grouse is a large, rounded-winged, ground-dwelling bird, up to 30 inches long and two feet tall, weighing from two to seven pounds. It has a long, pointed tail with legs feathered to the base of the toes. Females are a mottled brown, black, and white. Males are larger and have a large white ruff around their neck and bright yellow air sacks on their breasts, which they inflate during their mating display. The birds are found at elevations ranging from 4,000 to over 9,000 feet and are highly dependent on sagebrush for cover and food.
Currently, greater sage-grouse are found in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, eastern California, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and occupy approximately 56 percent of their historical range.
After a thorough analysis of the best available scientific information, the Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that the greater sage-grouse warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act. However, the Service has determined that proposing the species for protection is precluded by the need to take action on other species facing more immediate and severe extinction threats.
As a result, the greater sage-grouse will be placed on the list of species that are candidates for Endangered Species Act Protection. The Service will review the status of the species annually, as it does with all candidate species, and will propose the species for protection when funding and workload priorities for other listing actions allow.
Evidence suggests that habitat fragmentation and destruction across much of the species’ range has contributed to significant population declines over the past century. If current trends persist, many local populations may disappear in the next several decades, with the remaining fragmented population vulnerable to extinction.” (www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/birds/sagegrouse)
As part of building the scientific facts for this continued observation of the Sage Grouse a grant has made it possible for my fellow interns and myself to participate in inventorying the plant species found in the Sage Grouse habitat. Andie, Sasha and I have been working in Nevada for the last month, two weeks of which were spent camping in Mill Canyon in the Pine Nut Mountains about two plus hours south east of Carson City. It was an incredible experience. For a native of from New Hampshire the desert is a many layered place- the first is just brown, brown, brown- but along with that are many layers of thousands of shades of greens with miniscule flowers just waiting for someone to see them. Some of the larger flowers that are my favorites are the desert mallows (Sphaeralcea sp.) and the Paintbrushes (Castilleja sp.).
So far we have been lucky (in my opinion) to not have seen any snakes. There are, however, an incredible abundance of lizards. I am not sure of their species, possibly the Black-collard lizard (Crotaphytus insularis), Horned lizards ( Phrynosoma sp.) and Collard Lizard ( Crotaphytus collaris). We have also seen antelope, Jack rabbits, Desert Cotton tails, Sage Grouse, Mustangs, Chukars ( Alectoris chukar) a partridge that hatched out while we were out camping so we got to see all the chicks lined up following mom. Two night that we got back to camp around 9:00 ish at night we saw a pair of owls hunting.
So far the weather has been kind to us and we have had no damaged tents, wet nights or flat air-mattresses. While the days are long, hot and dry, they are filled with all kinds of adventures. Some rather frustrating, like hiking to a GPS point over 2 km away up and down about three “hills” with slopes at about 40-45 degrees to find at the base of the last hill… yup, you guessed- a road. But we did get to catch a horned lizard so that was fun.
As for the good parts…. Imaging being the only three people in hundreds or thousands of miles with a sky so blue there isn’t even the hint of a cloud, a horizon that stretches as far as you can see all around, mountains so big in the distance they fade to blue and purple with snow caps still striking against the sky. Imagine the silence- hardly a plane crosses over head, no cars go speeding by, no radios, no mechanical noises. Only the sounds of nature reach your ears. Only nature fills all your senses. One morning I woke up at 5 and crawled out of my tent and just sat there and listened. There was no sound but the silence was full of meaning, full of life, just holding its breath before the start of another day. A day that started with the music from a single bird’s throat.
So what are we doing besides making a lot of people jealous? We hike to a GPS location, usually a nesting site or a place the birds have been tracked to via telemetry, and set up a transect. Along this three pronged ( 25 meters each) plot we measure the canopy cover, plant heights, percent ground cover, plant species, Pinyon pine and Juniper encroachment ( a 100 meter square around the central plot) and general plant species list of the area. Sounds simple enough, but with GPS points, projecting etc, compass readings, distance estimates and angles and degrees you have to stay on your toes!