I was getting ready for work Wednesday morning, packing my bag for the field when my phone buzzed on the table. It was an email from our mentor Dean: he had an unexpected and important meeting to attend late morning at the office, and our field work would have to be delayed. Disappointment settled in. We had been putting in a lot of office hours in the month since I arrived at the BLM in Carson City, and Wednesday had promised a full day of scouting planting sites in the mountains. Though I know full well that all this indoor work is a necessary prelude to the field season, I still squirm in my chair by the end of each day, rubbing my computer-tired eyes. Because of the trip’s long drive and hike, a morning’s worth of delay might likely have meant “not today”. At least that was my thought as I begrudgingly changed into jeans (of course I still brought my hiking pants, because you can’t get caught with no work pants on.)
At the office the hours swept by in anticipation, leaving me glancing at the clock and thinking, “At what point will it be too late to leave?” I focused my attention on cartography, and putting my new GIS skills into practice, layered contour lines on top of aerial images to create a clear map of our site. By noon I decided to take a break outside to soak up a healthy dose of apricity, and lull my anxious mind. Just as I was dozing off (yes, I did set a timer!), Anna came out to tell me it was time to leave.
To the Pine Nut Mountains!
You can see why I was so eager to get here – it’s beautiful!
The TRE fire burned for 5 days in May of 2012, blackening over 6,000 acres of BLM-managed land in the southern Pine Nut Mountains. The high intensity fire killed off much of the perennial vegetation, most notably pinyon, juniper and mountain mahogany. Our goal, as we scoped out this stark landscape, was to find suitable places to plant 400 mountain mahogany saplings. We split into two groups and began the long hike up, up, up, to the tops of our respective mountains. We didn’t come across the charred remains of mountain mahogany until about 7,000 feet, near the top.
There, over yonder!
Of course, it did take a few minutes to hone our identification skills and distinguish between the different types of charred trees. All of us being new to the area, we had a good sense of what a live mountain mahogany tree should look like, but a dead, blackened one proved more of a challenge. It was an important distinction that would allow us to plant the saplings in a suitable home, and to emulate the pre-fire habitat.
charred pinyon
charred mountain mahogany (please ignore the beckoning, snow-covered mountains in the distance, even though my camera’s auto-focus couldn’t.)
The evening sunlight lit up the diaphanous cheat grass, and the radiance temporarily distracted us from noting its onerous stronghold on the land. Weeds seize the opportunity of disturbed soil, burgeoning and preventing native plants from establishing. Hence why it is so important for native plants to reestablish after a big disturbance such as this fire.
cheat grass at its finest
The two teams reunited en-route back to the car, and thanks to Dean’s keen eye, we got to see a mountain mahogany tree making a concerted effort at regrowth after the fire.
John and Aaron inspecting a tenacious mountain mahogany
We reached the car, and in the darkening sky watched the nearly full moon rising in the east. Lassitude settled over the rest of the group as we discussed who could stay awake long enough for the dark drive home. I volunteered, still filled with an unequivocal vim from an exciting day in the field.