… The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.”

I’m not sure how many of the CLM interns or other people reading this blog are old enough to remember Baz Lurhman’s 1999 hit “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” or the 1997 commencement speech, written by the Chicago Tribune’s Mary Schmich, that inspired it. If you are unfamiliar with this little piece of 90s pop culture, please go ahead and look it up.

As this is my last blog post of my internship, I have decided to focus on offering some insights and advice for current and future interns. The majority of CLM blog posts focus on the fantastic new people, places, and things that interns are experiencing. This is great! However, as with all social media, the rose-colored glasses people use can block out some of the more challenging aspects of life. So, without further ado:

Wear sunscreen

This advice is solid, no matter where you are located for your internship. And, really, this is good advice for any time you’ll be outside, working or not.

Don’t dwell on other interns’ blog posts

It can be fun to see what everyone else in the program is doing and learning. It can also sometimes seem like other people are receiving more/better opportunities or training than you are. What the blog posts tend not to show are the periods of frustration, stress, loneliness, etc. that everyone experiences. Don’t focus on other people’s internships. Focus on making the most out of your own.

Communication is KEY

I consider this as important as wearing sunscreen. Poor communication skills are the source of many of life’s frustrations, and cause strain on personal and professional relationships. If you are working with other people, make sure everyone is on board with schedules and plans, and that everyone has a chance to contribute. Listen to other people’s concerns, and if you have concerns or frustrations of your own, speak up! No one can help you if you don’t ask for it.

Stay where you are…

…within reason. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take advantage of weekend trips to places fairly close by. I’m saying don’t use your vacation and personal time to keep going home or keep taking trips to meet friends or significant others halfway across the country. You’ll squander your opportunities to discover the places around your internship location and your opportunities to build relationships with your fellow interns and coworkers.

Use your support system

This likely consists mainly of your fellow interns. Many internships are in smaller towns or rural areas, which means your main social options are who you work with. Build relationships with your teammates and support each other. Spend time together and go on adventures. Isolating yourself not only lessens your own experience, but can also leave your fellow interns on their own.

Be aware of expectations vs. reality, and be proactive

Many times things don’t turn out the way we expect them to. Is your project not what you thought it would be? Is your location not as exciting as you’d hoped? That sucks, but you’re going to have to deal with it. Being perpetually negative won’t fix anything. Being proactive will. Start asking around the office to get involved with other activities. Start networking where you can. Opportunities usually exist, but sometimes they require effort.

Take advantage of and appreciate your time here

Whether you are loving your internship or have hit a rough patch, focus on making the most of your time. You are in (probably) a new and unfamiliar place. Appreciate experiencing a different environment. Appreciate experiencing a different cultural region of the country. Appreciate meeting new people. Appreciate experiencing struggles you may not have faced before, and the personal growth that comes from that.

Take advantage of your time here.

There has been a prolonged stretch of hot, humid days here in Maryland.  This weather can make field work unpleasant at times but there is a silver lining.  The decrease in the amount of rain, which is normal for this time of year, allows the Potomac River to drop to lower levels.  This drop has implications for the rare plant survey work I am tasked with for my internship.  River scour habitats were a new concept to me when I first got here and read about them.  The idea of grassland maintained by erosion from flood waters on river islands and river edge habitats was something I never really thought about.  With the drop in water levels on the Potomac, surveying these river habitats has gone to the forefront in my mind.  In particular, the historical records of the federally-endangered Haperella (Ptilimnium nodosum) within the canal have caught my interest.  The last time this plant was seen on the Potomac was around 20 years ago.  Even though I know the chances of finding it are remote, I still can’t help but hold out a little hope.  This plant has a habit of popping up in random river scour bars one year and disappearing the next.  From the little exposure I have to these scour bars it seems apparent that the invasive plant Japanese Knotweed (among several other invasives) also thrives in this disturbed soil.  One of the harder parts of my internship is seeing situations where rare plants are under assault from invasives and knowing how best to contribute to dealing with the problem in a meaningful way in light of the limited time I will be here.

Looking upstream on the Potomac in western Maryland. The plant at the bottom of the photo is Water Willow (Justicia americana) which is very fond of growing on the edges of these scour bars.

The development of a Weed Warrior program was also one of the tasks of my internship.  Another intern and I will be giving a presentation on several invasive plants commonly found in the canal as well as control methods and native look-alikes for each.  I read a statistic in a published paper that stated 33% of the flora of the Mid-Atlantic region is considered non-native to the region or North America.  I was surprised by that number honestly.  It really underlines the importance of efforts like this for the National Park Service moving forward.  It also poses some difficulties in prioritizing how to develop a program such as this with limited time and resources to train volunteers.

This experience will no doubt be valuable to me as a person that wants to be a nature preserve manager one day.  The part I am looking forward to most is meeting one on one with the individuals afterwards and learning the challenges of maintaining a volunteer-led invasive control effort.  I also hope to learn how to tailor future educational exercises for volunteers interested in invasive removal as well as knowing who these people are and why they chose to volunteer in this particular way.

I haven’t done as much botanical surveying since my last post.  One reason for this is because I participated in a wetland plant identification course at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia last week.  This was a great experience.  Of the three instructors for the course, one was an author for Flora of North America and another had a major hand in developing the wetland indicator codes assigned by the USDA.  He also founded a herbarium.  Needless to say it was great being around so many knowledgeable botanists.  It was also nice talking to the other students in the class, many with permanent federal jobs, who had some helpful advice about seasonal work and graduate schools.

On one of the few trips I made into the field recently I snapped a couple interesting photos.

Purple Cliffbrake (Pellaea atropurpurea) This cool looking fern was growing in the masonry walls of one of the canal locks.

Common Water Snake. When I stumbled upon this snake I thought for sure it was a Copperhead. However, after seeing the rounded pupils of the eyes I knew it was not vemonous.

Coleman Minney

Field Botany Intern

Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park

I’m lounging—literally lounging—on the tundra, reindeer lichens crunching under my Xtratuffs, and I’m not wearing a bug net. I’m not wearing rain gear either. Or a down puffy jacket, or even a hat. And I’m lying belly down on the cushy tundra staring at the mucronate involucral bracts of a Luzula through my hand lens.

Above me, puffy cumulous clouds float through blue sky. Below, a creek rushes through
alders into a series of beaver ponds and the robotic starship song of a gray-cheeked thrush carries up on the wind. We didn’t even have to thrash through those alders to get here. We flew—at 100 knots per hour—on a Robinson 44 helicopter over rolling lichen-covered hills and frost-wedge polygon patterned tundra and streams choked so full of chum salmon you can’t even see the bottom. We sent a grizzly sow and her two cubs romping over the tundra, watched two moose calves follow their mother into an alder thicket, and, tucked in a steep drainage, caught a glimpse of a big lone muskox bull, his long shaggy coat waving in the breeze. Flying along the beach, we saw a bloated dead walrus, its tusks not yet harvested by the local natives who scan the beaches every day for treasures to collect and sell or turn into artwork.

Mind you—this is NOT normal. This is the kind of day we live for in Alaska, the day we can’t stop thinking about for weeks afterward, the day we earn through hundreds of less ideal days in trade. The day we dream of during weeks of office drudgery in December when it’s 40-below and dark at 10:00am.

This is the day I’ve earned by countless others spent soaked to the bone in cold driving rain that deems my Rite-in-the-Rain datasheets un-writable, which doesn’t really matter anyway because my fingers have lost all motor functionality for writing. The days spent tussock-hopping over ankle-twisting towers of cottongrass wearing a suffocating headnet and rain gear not because it’s raining but to guard against the pursuit of a persistent buzzing cloud of mosquitoes that find their way into my shirt sleeves and munch at the gap between my headnet and the collar of my shirt. The days of stifling heat and wildfire smoke that boil the sweat in my muck boots and give me black crusty nostrils and a splitting headache. The miles spent thrashing through alders, balancing on flexible stems and trying in vain to find the “grain” to travel with, toting a 10-foot soil auger in one hand, wondering if I’m due up yet for a surprise bear encounter after five seasons of luck.

None of this is to say that I don’t thoroughly appreciate a good ass-kicking every once in a while. Deep down, even the most timid Alaskan will admit to feeling a sense of pleasure after a day of humbling defeat in a stand of dog-hair spruce and boot-sucking muck.

***

The challenge of getting through this country is one of many reasons I am currently lounging on a hillside overlooking miles of untouched valleys and hills in western Alaska, mapping its soils and vegetation communities for the first time in history, with not a cabin or cut tree or trail in sight. Alaskans are a tough and stubborn breed, and talking to us you may be led to believe that this state is one of majestic wild terrain with megafauna and endless treasures awaiting around every corner. That we eat salmon and moose for every meal and blueberries stain every pocket. Well, it’s true. You just might find our comfort standards to be a bit skewed from the social norm.

***

As I wrap up the last touches on this post, I am watching rain sheet off the windows of our bunkhouse and roofing on the shack next door rattles with the wind blowing off the Bering Sea. It is back to the daily grind of waiting out weather and preparing for another week of wet field work. But as a co-worker and I learned in the evening calm last night, the blustery wind provides luxurious relief from the mosquitoes that frequent the tundra outside town, and we profited with two gallons of blueberries picked in the lovely afternoon light of 10:00pm. Up here, you learn to appreciate the little things. And, well, the little things are pretty freaking amazing.

The monitoring season has come to a pause until next spring. We have checked off all but one of the R/T/E plants (Sericocarpus rigidus) this season and have actually come out ahead of schedule. S. rigidus is just beginning to flower, while others such as Lomatium bradshawii have succumbed to mere litter and thatch, completely indiscernible.  So, for now, I had to come up with some sort of project to work on among the more intermittent tasks I’ll be doing such as seed collecting, site maintenance, monitoring youth crew, etc. For the time being I will be working on a plant identification guide of the West Eugene wetland plants for future interns. We already have a list of all known wetland plants in Eugene, so I am basically building the guide off of that by figuring out their primary habitat type (emergent, wet prairie, upland) based on their wetland indicator status as well as where I’ve seen them primarily in the field, and sorting them by those categories and by family. I have a total of 384 species that I am finding notable characteristics for quick identification in the field.  Part of the idea is that since this is meant for only the West Eugene wetlands, you don’t have to key them out, but instead go to the section according to the habitat type you are currently in, or the index in the back with the species list and page numbers, or use the list of family characteristics I will be providing to verify the species you are looking at. And of course there will be photos associated with each species so if you’re not sure if the description fits, just see if it looks like it.  Since this is for only Eugene and there are only 384 plants to discern between (most of which look nothing alike), the photo you are looking at and the plant in front of you are likely going to be the same species.  I’m hoping this will be an easy, quick, and educational way for future interns to learn all the plants in the West Eugene wetlands.

Here are the main rare and endangered plant and insect species we monitored this season that will also be included in the “quick-guide”:

Lupinus oreganus

Icaricia icarioides fenderi

Lomatium bradshawii

Horkelia congesta

Sericocarpus rigidus

Erigeron decumbens

Until next time!

Danica Maloney

BLM West Eugene Wetlands

Oregon