Anthony Hatcher
BLM Vale, Oregon

The first three weeks of my SOS internship have been great. Although I didn’t start working until May 24, I feel that my experience really started several days earlier when I began driving from the North Carolina mountains to Eastern Oregon. Watching the landscape slowly change from forested hills to the flat treeless prairie to high rocky mountains to sagebrush filled foothills was amazing. On the actual first day of my internship I realized how much work was ahead of me. The amount of BLM land in the Vale district is immense and there were tons of plants that I needed to learn, the majority of which I had never seen before. I feel that I am slowly starting to learn the plants here but I still have so many to learn. However, I already have noticed an improvement in my ability to use flora keys. It is really exciting to find a wildflower that I have never seen before and figure out what it is. My mentor Gillian Wigglesworth has been so helpful. She has made my transition to this new work and place extremely easy. My favorite thing about my new home and work has to be the isolation. We will be driving around to different places collecting and monitoring seed, and see maybe one or two other cars the entire time. Over memorial day weekend I went backpacking and didn’t see another person for two and a half days it was a very refreshing change from the densely populated east coast. I also attended Seeds of Success training held here in Vale. Marian from the CBG and Mary from the BLM office in DC were very helpful. I learned so much about seed collecting, plant identification, and especially about the entire process from seed collection to reclamation. So far I am loving my internship. I can’t believe I get paid to see all these beautiful places and have all these new experiences.