Today marks the second month of my internship. I am writing
from the hotel, after proudly losing to a watermelon-smashing competition, and
I am wondering where the next month is going to take me. This last month has
been truly inspiring. Rolling over hills covered with Oak and Pines, standing
on top of a mesa where the first Navajo families settled, witnessing my first
New Mexico sunrise- all these simple things that one could do any day if
feeling so inclined, yet is apparently different and altogether unique from daily
mundane life. I am starting to get a sense of what this new land means to me,
beauty in simplicity.
The ball has started rolling; I spent most of the first half
of June monitoring populations whose seeds seemed to take forever to ripen,
then suddenly demanded our (Jamie and I) collecting the week prior to leaving
for the workshop. There was a sudden shift and we found ourselves
passing the day feeling worth and seeing yield in our work. I realized soon
after collecting our first population that there is something so therapeutic about
tuning everything out, focusing on the task at hand and enjoying the landscape.
I only hope for this to continue.
This last month of work has challenged my skills as a
botanist; being able to recognize the common plants in the area now has shifted
most of my attention on searching for target list species and determining viable
populations for collection. A nice change of pace if I might say, and one that can’t
come at a better time now that many species are beginning to take to seed.
It is near the end of the week and I fly back to Farmington
soon. This workshop has been more than amazing; it has been an absolute
pleasure to see the faces of this program and where CLM Internship came from/is
going. To be able to come out to the Chicago Botanic Garden is such a privilege
and I feel lucky the resources are available to do so. Now it is time to head
back and continue working my way through this internship. I am sure many more
species are ready to go and the workload is piling. The simpler life waits and
is only getting more beautiful. Enjoy!
Anthony Wenke