Howdy from the high, lonesome rangelands of Harney County, OR y’all!

Well, actually, I’m writing to you from my office at the Rea Selling Berry Seed Bank on the campus of Portland State University in sunny Portland, OR. Thus is the duality of my new lifestyle as a CLM intern. Every other week I leave Portland and drive eight hours to one of the remote places in the contiguous United States, immersed in solitude, totally at one with myself and this brand new flora for six days in a row. The rest of the time, I live in the heart of this wonderful, bizarre city, surrounded by my weirdo friends, in a totally different ecoregion with lots and lots of moisture.

Listen guys, the range is no joke. I mean seriously, you could die out there doing the most routine field work. Last week, the local BLM botanist in Harney County told me of a few places I should put on my “must see” list, so I decided to take a little field trip to Foster Flat Research Natural Area to scope an ephemeral playa lakebed Artemisia cana/Poa secunda plant community. “Oh, only thirty two miles down that there dirt road, I should be there in less than an hour,” I said to myself. Three hours later I made it to Foster Flat.

The Burns BLM district is dry — really, really dry — receiving about 7-12 inches of precipitation per year. That said, thunderstorms and showers are common in late spring. As I made my first forays into Foster Flat on foot to examine the miracle of desert plant life, I noticed a very large thunderstorm in the distance — looming, menacing, threatening. I then recalled an anecdote relayed to me by my former supervisor and friend Tom Kaye at the Institute of Applied Ecology in Corvallis, OR. Apparently Tom knew a guy who got caught in the middle of one of these little rain events in the hollers of Harney County back in the old days, and the fellow ended up bogging down his vehicle and getting stranded back there for a week! Yes indeed, one whole week. Was it true? Was it lore? Was Tom just giving me a little gentle hazing? I looked around at the bleak, godforsaken (yet botanically rich!) landscape, lovingly stared into the depths of my iPhone for the slightest hint at cell reception and muttered a few choice phrases as I imagined the thirty two mile hike out of Foster Flat. Those poorly drained clays and silts are unforgiving, and I wasn’t waiting around long enough to find out if my Subaru could levitate out of the all-but-certain quagmire that approached. I spent the rest of my work day channeling New Zealand rally car legend Possum Bourne as I (slowly and safely) navigated through the epic landscape of the Harney Basin, “Stairway to Heaven” blasting on my vehicle’s sound system all the while.

Yep, just another exciting day on the job in Harney County. The outsider might gaze upon the desolate terrain and decide that there’s not much to see except a denuded wasteland. In reality, I work in a botanical wonderland — windswept, silent and mystical. This harsh, unforgiving landscape has many stories to tell, and yet more to be written.