I can’t believe it’s almost June! The past month has gone by so quickly. It’s like they say, time flies when you’re having fun. And I’ve been having a lot of fun in the field!

I’ve been going out into the field every day, which is awesome. I don’t mind doing office work and helping the range specialists with their Rangeland Health Assessments, but being in the office for ten hours straight is torture for this nature lover.

The biggest change in the past month is that I have a work partner, Kyle. He isn’t a CLM intern, just a range tech, but we’ll be doing the same work.  After being on my own for so long it was weird to go into the field with someone, but it’s been fun to train Kyle. Once he feels more comfortable doing utilization studies we’ll go into the field on our own, but team up when we have long-term trend plots to monitor.

I’ve been working on learning to identify the many forbes we have in southeastern Oregon. It helps that one of my house-mates, a fellow CLM intern, is working with the botanist here. So whenever I have trouble with a plant I can go to her for help. My list of plants that I can identify is steadily increasing. It’s so fun to go for a hike and be able to identify most of the plants that I come across!

Highlights from the past month: being given more responsibilities at work, learning to identify lots of wildflowers, spending the day with a range specialist and learning more from her in that one day than I have since I started working here.

Allyson Schaeffer

BLM, Lakeview, Oregon

Tufted evening primrose.

I just love purple flowers!