In the past few months I’ve been busy visiting several places and taking part in plenty of different activities. Recently we had the Conservation and Land Management Workshop at the Chicago Botanic Gardens in Chicago, IL. I had a great time meeting other interns and CBG Staff (my bosses), and exploring the gardens as well as the City on some of my own spare time.

During the workshop we had a few crash courses in plant identification, population genetics, and approaches to monitoring. There was a lot of valuable information I took back to Nevada with me as well as great memories. I learned about different approaches to monitoring and how to build a work plan where the most efficient monitoring methods could be applied to answer the questions you are setting out to uncover.  I was also impressed by the diversity of the entire intern group the CBG had recruited to take part in the CLM internship program. There were people from mostly scientific backgrounds but everyone was very unique and had different qualities to offer.

I was particularly interested when my mentor gave an Ethno botany talk about the many uses of plants as food, medicine, fiber, and regular products used in everyday life. As someone deeply interested in plants I found this talk inspirational and will share with you something Dean Tonenna shared with the group that night. He explained that all of the information passed on through the generations of native people about the natural world can sometimes seem lost but is really still out there sleeping, waiting for someone to take the initiative and look closely at the natural world around us and awaken that deeper knowledge. I liked this and not just in a cultural sense where one could delve into nature to find their roots but as a lesson to everyone that there are a lot of secrets we still have yet to uncover about the natural world. I feel like the talk instilled a sense of adventure and wonder that I try to take out into the field with me when I’m at work.