Thank You

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

As my internship wraps up I want to give gratitude to Central Oregon in terms of its landscape and its people. Both personally and professionally I feel like I have taken as much advantage of Central Oregon as I possibly could. No evening was wasted and no time was spent wondering what was next on my plate. And what is next on my plate can only be described in one word: epic. I’ll be backpacking the 211 mile long John Muir Trail, which will give me some focus on what I should take on next in my life. I’m interested in the intersection of teaching and science, but there are so many places to wrestle with this nexus that the trail will hopefully give me some direction in which to go.

Focusing on the past, I’d like to highlight some parts of this internship that expanded who I am today. Though I’ve had previous botany jobs, there was always a mentor who knew all the species so my keying skills were not as sharp. My mentor Kristin is new to this area so I spent hours under a microscope looking at the fascinating features of taxonomy. Due to its minute flowers and complex Asteraceae terminology, my proudest moment was keying to species a Solidago canadensis. As part of keying to species, I learned how a herbarium is a valuable resource in verifying my ID skills and I feel much more confident in explaining the importance of them.

Enjoying and protecting nature’s beauty was a large part of this internship for me. From Forest Hills Natural Resource Area, to vast sagebrush ‘oceans’, to the paleontological wonders of the John Day region, there is a large amount of stunning landscape at the Prineville Field Office. I am blessed to have been part of the Seeds of Success program and the weeds infestation program in the Forest Hills NRA because this year a large portion of it was burned. Our data on both the biodiversity and the noxious weed populations allowed this fire to receive extra funding for restoration. The restoration of this gorgeous wilderness area would not have been possible without CLM interns on the ground.

Another project I worked on was organizing the monitoring of a rare plant in the mustard family called Thelypodium eucosmum. It lives on steep, rocky slopes and its monitoring program is governed by multiple agencies with different databases. These two challenges pushed me both physically and mentally which resulted in visiting species that had not been seen for decades. Hopefully the more organized paperwork will enable ranchers and land managers to have a better understanding of this species needs.

Overall I’d like to thank my mentor Kristin Williams, my co-worker Tiffany Druba, the CLM/CBG program manager Krissa Skogen, the staff and the guest speakers that put on the week-long conference in Chicago, and Megan Haidet who coordinates the Seeds of Success program in DC. It’s phenomenal how much coordination is put into this program and I am very proud to be part of it.

Best of success,
Debbie Pattison
Prineville, OR Field Office