Hello stranger,

In an attempt to reflect on the past 6 months, I will recount the events of just one day – Thursday, November 6, 2014 – and elaborate on the thoughts this provokes.

I woke up at 5 AM, and prepared my backpack for the day.  I was ready for sun, rain, and snow.  I got to the office at 6 AM, gathered the navigation equipment, scraped ice off of the truck, and set out on the familiar drive to the field office.

Let’s stop there.  Waking up before the sunrise has become a habit.  I feel well prepared to work in a variety of weather conditions.  I feel confident driving a pickup truck over difficult terrain.  I can navigate with Trimble GPS units, and if they ever malfunction, then I can still reach my destination with a map and compass.  These abilities are largely a product of my CLM internship experience.

I love the sunrise, and it has been a pleasure to see the majority of them for the past 6 months.  I will miss this sight tremendously:

The sun rises as I enter the field office

Soon after entering the field office, I turned onto a gravel road, and then again onto a two-track road where I was met by rocks, barbed wire fences, and loitering cattle.

Let’s stop again.  I was not expecting to learn so much about livestock during this internship.  However, they are a major player in rangeland dynamics, and I am grateful to have seen where our Nation’s beef comes from.

I’m going to miss these gals.

I pulled over by the stretch of land where I would walk approximately 10 miles of slickspot peppergrass transects.  Some may find this task monotonous, but there is nothing else I would rather do.

Allow me to explain.  The internship began with sage-grouse habitat assessments, which required identifying an abundance of new plants, and mastering new monitoring techniques.  The focus shifted to locating remotely-sensed wetlands, and describing their vegetation composition and water source.  This task allowed us to explore some amazing country, where we often wondered if anyone else had ever been.  Next we downloaded thermographs for water temperature data collection in streams, which were quite welcome in the heat of the summer.  These priority projects were broken up with various trainings and other opportunities such as mineral pit compliance inspections, frog searches, and rain gauge measuring.

After working hard to internalize all of this new knowledge and skill, it was nice to just soak it all in while walking around looking for slickspot peppergrass – to just be out there.

Happy to be out there, and start walking

I listened to the coyotes howl as I began my walk.  Their howling was lost in the wind, which was sometimes interrupted by chirping birds.  I flushed sage-grouse every once in a while, and smiled at the thought that these birds are what brought me out here.  While walking, I proudly distinguished between about 10 different species of dead grass, and marveled at the recently snow-covered mountains.

So while it is time to go home, I leave not just with new botanical skills and land management experience, but also with a strong relationship with a landscape that I could have never imagined.  I am proud to have helped sustainably manage and conserve our Nation’s land, and am surer than ever that I want to keep doing this for the duration of my career.

Thank you,

Jonathan Kleinman

Jarbidge Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

A view of the San Bernardino Mountains, north from the lower slopes of the San Jacintos

Aphids on a pod of climbing milkweed (Funastrum cynanchoides hartwegii)

My field season wound down in mid-October, although many of our threatened, endangered, and sensitive plants are still detectable.  We got the first winter storm of the season on Halloween night; mostly rain, but a bit of snow and sleet at higher elevations. 

The photos in this post are from a (personal) backpacking trip I took down to the San Jacinto Mountains in mid-October.  I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from the village of Snow Creek.  This section of trail has gorgeous views of the steep, forbidding north face of San Jacinto Mountain and is also an interesting passage through different vegetation types.  The trail begins on the desert floor, dominated by creosote bush (Larrea tridentata) and brittlebush (Encelia sp.), and winds up into montane conifer woodland (with white fir, Jeffrey pine, and Quercus species). 

I have been doing a lot of database work, entering the season’s finds into the Forest Service database.  Last week I helped our Restoration crew plant at one of our restoration sites.  I’ve also been spending time in the herbarium, processing collections from this season and seasons past.  The herbarium work has turned up some interesting collections from this field season, including an intriguing Nama species (more later, if it turns out to be something good).

Mountaintop Ranger District

San Bernardino National Forest