Sometimes there’s no escaping the country music in Wyoming. If no other stations come through, you’re assured one country and one Christian station. In light of this, I’ve tried to turn it into a game and a learning experience. So far, country has taught me some spectacular pick-up lines. Lines I only use on my dear friend, Autumn, and which she uses on me so we can have a laugh and sing a little together.

On long days of driving and seed collection, laughter is very important. Sometimes, so is dancing badly in the oil fields. Especially in celebration of the completion of our collections. Tasting edible plants, smelling flowers, hugging trees, and playing with toads are also very important.

Oenothera pallida spp. trichocalyx– Evening primrose population in an area known as Hay Reservoir, near the Red Desert on the eastern edge of sand dunes adjacent to gas fields and uranium mines.

The Blowout Penstemon, Penstemon haydenii, the only endangered plant species in Wyoming, has a distinct vanilla scent.

If you tell me it’s edible, I will taste it. Better than celery, not as good as carrots.

Training at the Chicago Botanic Garden was a wonderful and much-needed opportunity to recharge. So much of the experiences and information have been invaluable back at work in Wyoming. However, stepping away from the work and from the scenery of the oil and gas fields of Wyoming, I found myself referring to the barracks as home. I missed the daily adventures with our neighbors (the bored wildland firefighters), and I couldn’t wait to jump back into community dinners and experience my first ‘Music in the Park.’ Returning to Wyoming, I suddenly had a greatly increased appreciation for the beauty of the rolling hills, the flat expanses of sagebrush steppe, and fell in love with the mountains and rock formations. Even the gas wells start to fade into the background and become less noticeable after a while. (Right, well, that last part is a bit alarming: working in this country has only increased my passion to move to alternative energy sources and reduce my personal impacts on the land. Those oil and gas wells should be painted bright orange with flashing lights so no-one can forget what they are).

Coming back from the CLM workshop in Chicago, we jumped right into collections. In one week, three species were ready to go. We’ve finished six collections at this time. Now we’re back to monitoring and we’ve started prepping the seeds for shipment and the data sheets to be sent to Megan.

We’ve also had a blast volunteering with the Fish and Wildlife Service outside Laramie, WY completing toad surveys at Mortenson Lake. The lake is one of the first sites where the Wyoming toad, Bufo baxteri, has been released and monitored as part of a huge breeding and reintroduction program. Wyoming toad populations faced a steady but rapid decline in the 1970’s. By 1984, with only an estimated 10-25 (depending on which source you check) individuals left in the wild. Pesticide use, the presence of red leg bacteria, and the chytrid fungus are theorized as causes for both the decrease in population size and the decline in fecundity. By 1998, a captive breeding and reintroduction program was introduced by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department among other partners. This is where our volunteer efforts come in. We spent one day training for surveys and two days conducting surveys. I personally found only one toad but was on the upslope side of the survey site. My partner found 26. All in all, it was a fun and productive few days and I learned so much in such a short span of time. Plus, the Wyoming toad is just too freakin’ cute!

Toads just seem to be wherever we go since the surveys. Another fabulous day was spent working with our wonderful fellow interns from Cheyenne hiking the dunes in the Ferris Mountains and looking for Blowout penstemon. The scenery was beautiful, the company welcome, the surveys were very casual and I suppose successful, and of course, we found a toad on the hike out! We believe it’s a Woodhouse’s toad, Bufo woodhousei woodhousei.

An unexpected find in a creek at the base of the Ferris Mountain sand dunes.

Thanks for reading my rambling!