The time will come when winter will ask what you were doing all summer” –Henry Clay

Although Clay was referring to a long forgotten era when surviving the winter was a direct correlation to how much food a farm produced in the summer, taken broadly it is an appropriate aphorism of my time as a CLM intern. Just as early agrarians invested in the summer to prepare them for the future, through the CLM program I have garnered a hoard of skills and experiences towards that end. I either learned or enhanced my skills in:

*GIS processing, changing tires, patience
*Cruising timber, FORVIS stand inventory, getting sap out of clothes
*Range monitoring, fire rehab monitoring, staying hydrated
*Salt desert scrub plant id, sagebrush steppe plant id, subalpine conifer id, walking
*Remote sensing, DOQ interpretation, patience
*Class III cultural survey, NHPA of 1966, SHPOs and NRHP, celebrating the little things
*Right-of-way compliance, invasive plant id, appreciation of the Grateful Dead
*Wild horse trapping, public inquiry, diplomatic response
*RMP planning, AMS vegetation description, patience

What I will miss most about the job are the professional relationships I’ve developed with coworkers.
What I will miss most about Carson City is being a stone’s throw from the mountains and my favorite lunch spot on the Carson River. Given these positives, I will indubitably recall my desert and mountain solitaire with nostalgia.