My first thought upon arrival at the Lakeview office this summer, looking up at the towering stacks of trend monitoring binders, was “yeah, right.” With 158 three-inch binders full of trend plots in combination with the person-sized cabinets of utilization and project folders, I figured there was no reasonable way we would even open most of them. You know where this is going; four months later I can look at most of those binders and see accomplishment instead of a mountain of endless work. Now starts the real fun of synthesizing all our data with those from the past 40 or more years to determine rangeland health and to assist in the writing of numerous EAs.

Our field season here was wonderful. In addition to learning a ton about plant systematics, ecology, and management practices, we had a lot of fun driving all over the resource area. As a biology purist, I’ve never been very interested in rocks but the area around Lakeview has some of the most interesting geology I have ever seen. In case the southern Oregon desert isn’t high on your list of tourist destinations, consider looking up some of the amazing places we have been on field days: Fort Rock, Crack in the Ground, Hole in the Ground, the sunstone collection area, Abert Rim, the Coyote Hills, the Christmas Valley sand dunes, the obsidian needles mines, and the various lava flows, uplifts, and mesas common to the area.

Although the amount of daily driving has skewed my version of “close,” there are also some amazing sites within a few hours for weekend trips. This little town in the middle of nowhere turns out to be smack dab in the middle of everything. I have not had a single disappointing weekend so far what with the accessibility of Mt. Shasta, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Eugene, Bend, Sisters, Mt. Bachelor, Reno and Lake Tahoe, Boise, and even Portland. It has been a great summer for camping and adventures, but fall is in the air (it has already gotten down to the 30s and 40s here at night) and I’m excited to see what the next few months will bring.