meadow at black rock hot spring
Coming from the lush, green, deciduous forests of Kentucky where every step outside reveals another dribbling creek or hanging vine to push aside, I wasn’t quite sure how I would fare in sagebrush country. I remember back to my first day…I met my mentor and fellow intern and we headed out to familiarize ourselves with the surrounding area of northeastern California and into northwestern Nevada. The dirt roads we followed were splashed with the colors of spring wildflowers: deep purple delphinium, violet lupins, and all the colors of the sunset captured in the Indian paintbrush. We saw pronghorn antelope run up and over the mountain mahogany covered hills and Jack rabbits dart out from under the greasewood in front of the rig. But it wasn’t the wildlife that sold me on this strange new place. It was the wildness of the place itself.
It didn’t take long to be mesmerized by the vastness of this place. This desert. Sure, we’ve got “country” in the South, but this is a new definition of the word for me. This is the Wild West and never before had I looked out over a seemingly never-ending landscape. Never before had I been to a place where I can stand on top of a mountain and fail to see one glimmer of human civilization. That is rare beauty.
Just as I was surprised by my new found love and respect of the desert, every day at the BLM Surprise Field Office has been, well, a surprise! Looking back on the last 3 months, I am amazed by the variety of projects I have been able to participate in as a CLM intern here in Cedarville, CA. Each day I anticipate another amazing opportunity awaits…and to think I still have three more months to go!
As a plant enthusiast, I was especially enthused to find that the first couple of months would be spent searching for rare plants in the Black Rock Desert, specifically within the Jackson Mountain range. This has been our longest ongoing project so far. The work week usually consisted of spending 3 to 4 days out in the field at a time.
View from the top--looking down on potential rare plant habitat in the Jacksons.
We most often camped at our favorite canyon, McGill, because of a deep pool of fresh spring water we could bathe in after a long day of work. Once we located and identified the plants, we collected data such as population estimates, habitat type, and exact location using a GPS unit. More recently, we have been analyzing the data by making maps using GIS and preparing reports.
As I said before, I have been part of a wide variety of projects. So far I’ve seen real cowboys round-up horses with a helicopter at a wild horse gathering, was dropped off at the top of a mountain and backpacked for 3 days on an aspen stand monitoring project, and most recently, went to Burning Man 2009!
A rainbow on the playa pre-Burning Man.
Burning Man is held in the Black Rock Desert on the largest playa in North America (the dry bed of ancient Lake Lohontan) and is part of 1.2 million acres of NCA managed by the BLM. For only a week out of the year, Black Rock City, the home of Burning Man, becomes the fourth largest city of Nevada. Burners (attendees of the festival) live by the “Leave No Trace” motto and are encouraged by the event to incorporate green principles into their everyday lives in the “default world”.
One of the many things that impressed and inspired me at the event was the fact that not one trashcan was provided to attendees and yet very rarely would there be a piece of trash on the ground! FORTY-THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE AND NOT ONE PIECE OF TRASH?! I find the implications of this phenomenon to be incredibly powerful. All burners are highly encouraged never to create M.O.O.P. (material out of place) and the community follows these golden rules for the most part.
That’s where my job came in! I worked with a team of volunteers as an environmental compliance officer to ensure that these principles the event holds dear were constantly in practice. Each day we patrolled Black Rock City ensuring that no serious M.O.O.P. violations were occurring. For example, gray water is an issue that all camps/villages have to deal with. Some have elaborate contraptions set up so that their gray water evaporates over the course of the week. However, sometimes there are issues of gray water leakage or dumping on the playa which is prohibited. Our job was to make sure these things weren’t happening.
The Man!
Needless to say, I saw some amazing, bizarre and beautiful things while protecting the environment and educating people on how to be a green burner. And just as I feel I did my part to spread the word on sustainable activity on the playa, I venture to say I was even inspired and enlightened by the event myself.
So here I am with three two months to go and I continue to learn something new every day. This internship has been one of the great experiences of my life and I cannot wait to see what else is in store for me at the BLM Surprise Field Office!