Thoughts from Farmington

Wow, I’ve already been in New Mexico a month and a half. The time has flown by. It’s amazing how that happens when you really enjoy the work that you are involved in. There is so much to say since my last entry, but I had to narrow it down a little for today.
My fellow intern Sarah and I flew solo on making our latest SOS collection; the third of our season. It felt good to have the confidence to manage this on our own. Not to say that the collections are difficult, but this way our mentor could catch up on what she needed to do. I am completely amazed by how tenacious these desert plants are. The area has been in a severe drought even for a desert. I don’t know how anything could survive, but they do. The Utah serviceberry we collected from was showing signs of stress, some not doing well at all, but those tough shrubs still put out seed and promise of a next generation, hoping for better conditions for their offspring.

We should be in the monsoon season, but the rain has been spotty at best. All to the north and south the clouds have blessed the ground with their bounty, but our little pocket around Farmington remains parched. When we have been to areas with rain, it seems like a miracle, and for the landscape I suppose it is. Often I look to the horizon and see spectacular lightning shows against distant dark skies, or the cloud phenomena called virga (this does not happen in the east). According to Wikipedia, “In meteorology, virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates or sublimes before reaching the ground.” It’s pretty wild looking, you can see the rain coming down like purple or white chalk smears but it never actually makes a landing because the air is just so dry. I can’t wait to see the second coming of the plants that result in a little rain here. We get really excited when we see arroyos with running water in them. Rain dance for Farmington, because the seed collection options are slim pickings!

Another part of the job that has been thought provoking is the knowledge paradigm. We all have knowledge, of various kinds. Some is nearly universal, some selective. Part of coming to a new place is picking the brains of your new neighbors. What do you know about this area? It’s an unspoken question usually; I wait for the answers and then suck them up like a sponge when they come. Sheila is our mentor; a nearly native New Mexican (moved here from NY when she was 8 years old). Her understanding of the landscape and its ecology and culture is stunning. To have lived in one state so long makes her a NM wise woman in my eyes. She’s taught us some of those less obvious tidbits of local knowledge that are surely gems. We learned that ponderosa pines smell like vanilla if you get up close, that obsidian isn’t found here, so if you see some it’s an artifact, a shard of life of an ancient, and what petrified wood looks like. Our fuels specialist calls out to crows when she’s with us and they call back, and she knows where to see petroglyphs on canyon walls. Specialists in the office are happy to share their passions with us and their specific knowledge. We went out netting tamarisk beetles this week with a herp enthusiast and learned about the snakes and horned lizards that we found. We took some rocks we found – (BLM allows what they call reasonable take – a few pebbles are ok to keep) to a geologist and learned that they were carnelian, a semi-precious stone. I love spending time with these people. Even though I have almost zero local knowledge, we can all learn from each other. I taught Sheila that you can eat Russian olive berries! I continue looking forward to every day as a CLM intern and learning as much as I can in my short time here.