The Cookcamp Chronicles

Our sylvan saunter sojourning for seeds has scattered us scouts though streamsides, summits, swamps, steppes and ski slopes. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of driving up and down many a bumpy dirt road, hunting far-flung patches of plants and filling bag after bag with countless thousands of seeds. Our basement is starting to be overrun with an ever-growing tower of brown paper bags with eerie-sounding Latin labels – are we botanists or Hogwarts wizards?
Our wide-ranging adventures over two national forests mean that we’ve been camping almost every week this month to cover enough ground. After the first few days of eating only hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches, I shifted gears and decided that if I was going to do all this camp cooking this summer, I was going to do it right. I like a good camp-cooked meal as much as anyone, so it’s a good thing I have a job that makes me hike a lot.

With enough determination, one can cook (almost) anything over a campfire or a single-burner stove that can be made at home. On one such adventure, I spent an evening frying Monte Cristo sandwiches over a campfire – a delicious combination of ham and cheese between French toast, drizzled with pancake syrup. For dessert, I wrapped two Pillsbury crescent rolls around a stick, fried them over a fire, and filled the resulting tube with pudding and whipped cream for an eclair that would make any French chef proud. .I followed it up the next two nights with French toast and a recipe from the original 1911 edition of the Boy Scout Handbook for Canned Salmon on Toast, essentially a glorified if archaic tuna salad. The recipe begins, “Dip slices of stale bread into smoking hot lard.” I’d call the result mediocre at best, with a pallid gray color unbecoming of salmon, but nothing tasted better after a long day of hiking (especially when I followed it with a round of French toast for dessert). The next week, I went out on a limb and tried a recipe for spicy potato and leek soup with shrimp that originally came out of an old fantasy book I read in middle school. It took near the entire evening to simmer over our campfire but boy, it sure tasted good! On the contrary, the recipe feeds about four people – being only Dan and myself, we awkwardly taped the pot lid closed and set it in the trunk of our jeep. The next morning, Dan was souped out, leaving me staring down a very large breakfast of seemingly endless shrimp. If you’re going to cook enough to have leftovers the next morning, make sure you have someone who will actually eat them!

Denali and Cordova

This month, Josh and I got to do some more travelling outside our known areas in the Chugach. The first weekend in August we were able to do some backpacking in Denali. This 6 million acre park was originally created to protect wildlife, as wildlife biologist Adolf Murie studied the decline in Dall sheep. He has been called “Denali’s Wilderness Conscience”, as he spent 30 years rigorously studying ecological relationships, writing articles for popular conservation magazines, and favored restricted human development in the park. This mentality is still withheld today, as there is a landslide blocking the road roughly around mile 35, making the remaining 55 miles of road impossible to travel via vehicle. The woman who gave us a ride worked there a while back and she said there is some controversy on re-opening the road. Apparently it would be easier to construct an entirely new road, however, this completely goes against Adolf Murie’s advocacy. On the issue to improve the park road during his time, he wrote “my point of view will stress intruding and injuring the spirit of wilderness as little as possible, with sometimes a little inconvenience resulting. I would rather err in that direction.” There is also a surprisingly low amount of trails throughout the park, it is just literally 6 million acres for you to roam around. Although we went on a day that had mostly clear sky, you can only barely see Mt. Denali, which unfortunately is like going to the most acclaimed restaurant only to smell the food. The views were still great, and it was nice to see a new ecosystem. There is a shuttle bus around every 30 minutes that takes you to where the landslide is so you can see more of the park.

Looking out on the park road a little past mile 20
Cathedral Mountain in Denali National Park: the gray area is the Cantewell Formation, a thick bed of sedimentary rocks. This is toppled and intruded by the volcanic activity of the Teklanika Formation. The Teklanika Formation is younger and characterized by reddish- or yellow-brown rocks.
Dall sheep ewe with her calf. The populations within the original boundary of the park are not hunted (because of Adolf Murie) and still share their range with other larger predators.

Cottongrass, Eriophorum species. This grows commonly in the Alaskan tundra

Another cool area we traveled to the second week of August was Cordova, one of the other districts of the Chugach National Forest. Although the town of Cordova is only 139 air miles away from this side of the Chugach, it is not connected to the main Alaskan road systems, making it only accessible by ferry. This 7 hour boat ride took us through Port Wells, between Glacier Island, then into Orca Bay. After speaking with the terrestrial crew leader, she advised for us to have a goal to make a grass and a Carex collection by the end of the week, I think this is because she wanted to have seeds for a wetter area and seeds for a drier area. It was exciting to get to a new place with different species that were more prevalent on our list. Cordova seemed as if it gets 2x the amount of rain Moose Pass does, and a lot of plants seemed to be behind in phenology, especially in the glacier area. Cordova also has way more bears than on the other side of the Chugach, and to be in on a trail anywhere out there, you need to be gun certified. At first I was rather bummed that we weren’t hiking as much, but then our 2nd to last day we saw a grizzly nearby our mapped Carex site. I had thought it was a car on the dirt road and then I saw the 4 legs moving into the forested area. After hiking most the Chugach without a bear encounter, I was rather scared. I turned some music on a portable speaker, clenched my bear spray tight and continued to pick Carex in the pouring rain.

Low tide sunset in Cordova
Josh getting ready to create a Lupinus nootkatensis polygon at the base of Sheridan Glacier
The trees in Cordova are absolutely covered in Usnea, a beard lichen. It is very stringy and flexible, the presence of Usnea in an environment is a good indicator of clean air.
Glacier right outside Whittier where we got the ferry ride

Another interesting fact about Alaska in general is in 1964, a 9.2 magnitude megathrust earthquake caused ground fissures, collapsing structures, and tsunamis. This was caused by an oceanic plate sinking under a continental plate. In the Turnagain Arm area closer to Anchorage that Josh and I are more familiar with, the earthquake dropped this area around 8 feet. This is seen today by the ‘ghost tree forest’, from all the spruce that became water logged after 1964. However in Cordova, the ground was raised, causing new wetlands to emerge. Overall, it has been cool to learn about how this recent history has affected the ecosystem differently from the ground shifting to opposite elevations.

Stolen from ‘https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/alaska/ghost-forest-is-hauntingly-beautiful-ak/’ but I wanted to show a good visual of the ‘Ghost Tree Forest’ from all the spruce that got flooded by the 1964 earthquake.

Overall, we have collected 1,562,248 seeds from 22 populations, consisting of 12 different species and 12 different locations. Other than a couple more collections of grass and maybe some Juncus, we should be finished and starting to process all of this for storage.

This is another cool time of year for the fish viewing sites. These are what most locals refer to as ‘zombie salmon’, where they are typically at the end of their life. If you can see them this far upstream, they typically stop eating and put all of their energy into spawning. These fish do NOT taste good, but it’s easy pickins’ for the bears.

Collecting Seeds in the Rain and Alaska Adventures

Collecting seeds in the rain is just as fun as I thought it would be! Even though August has been the wettest month in Alaska it has also been a month full of adventures.

During the first Week of August I got to Visit Denali National Park. There was a landslide that made it so you could only get to the 45th mile point. Unfortunately you can’t really see Mt. Denali from there but we still got to ride the bus all the up to where the landslide happened and see more of the park. We even got to see some Caribou!

On our next adventure our Mentor sent Katie and I on a ferry to Cordova, Alaska to collect seeds from another part of the Chugach National Forest that is only accessible by boat or plane. Cordova was very wet and rainy. It rained every day we were there except for our last day. We got to see one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen and even got to see tiny sea otters just hanging out in the water. Collecting seeds in the rain wasn’t very fun but all the things I got to see made up for getting so wet.

The bunkhouse that we live in is off of Kenai Lake. We used to have 17 people living in our bunkhouse and we would often have campfires by the lake. Most of the people we live with here at the bunkhouse were doing internships that ended in August and now there are only 6 of us here. The picture of me in my hammock below was taken at our last group campfire by the lake. The second photo is a really cool looking mushroom that I found outside of our office building. I thought it would be cool to share a close up photo of a cut test that Katie and I performed on Bluejoint reedgrass which is one of our smallest seeds that we have collected. The last picture below was taken in front of a beautiful sunset in Anchorage by my parents who came to Alaska to visit me.

This month Katie and I collected seeds from many of the sites that we had been monitoring for collection. In total we have collected from 22 populations a total of 1,562,248 seeds from 12 different species at 12 different locations.

The Nonsoon and Nightlife

Peanut butter toads

Wonder why the monsoons lag

They dream of rainfall

I thought I would start this month’s blog with a poem about the seasons. For my haiku, I channeled the perspective of a spadefoot toad–Spea multiplicata. It might not seem that they have any thoughts behind those eyes! I tried to imagine a lot goes on behind their blank stare, particularly weather patterns. S. multiplicata is a nocturnal and opportunistic species that spends most of its time in underground burrows dug using their namesake spades. The life history of the toads is closely tied to the monsoons. Monsoon rains rapidly fill up pools in low-lying depressions, which can dry up just as fast. As a result, the average breeding period is only ~1.6 days, and the eggs hatch within 42-48 hours. The tadpoles must complete metamorphosis in as little as three weeks! While there has been enough rain to fill some of the spadefoot’s breeding pools, it’s been inconsistent and patchy.

A haiku seemed fitting for a poem, where I could reflect on the monsoons or lack thereof. In my first blog, I alluded to the monsoons that would “soon arrive”. It appears they never did. As a result, the plant abundance and diversity have been subpar this season, making seed collection a challenge. Only a handful of our target species occur in populations large enough to collect from. Of the populations that are borderline in size, grazing from elk, cattle, or feral horses has reduced them to a size below our collecting threshold. However, what we do collect is important for conservation as the populations that are able to reproduce represent local genetics that are resilient when drought-stressed!

Many people working for the Forest Service have noted the abnormal monsoon season this year. Some weather forecasters have even called it a “nonsoon”. Angie Munoz, a wildlife biologist from the Sacramento District, grew up in the Tularosa Basin. Being a local, she grew up accustomed to the typical monsoon patterns, even though they can be unpredictable. Recently, she took us around D2 to help us identify quality scouting localities. She was taken aback at the absence of wildflowers in places where they’d been abundant in the past. Larry and Taylor, our mentors, also took notice. They joined us in scouting Benado Gap to look for some lower-elevation grasses and wildflowers. Below are photos from this year and two years ago in 2021.

Rocky Mountain Zinnia (Zinnia grandiflora) and Blue gramma (Bouteloua gracilis) abound in 2021

While other crews may be at peak collecting, we’re just getting started! Many species are behind in flowering or fruiting because of the delayed rain, but others are doing their thing and making seeds. Some species we’ve seen set seed include Mertensia franciscana, Monarda fistulosa, Allium geyeri, Allium cernuum, Asclepias asperula, and Pedicularis procera.

Evie and I were able to make our first collection this month–for A. cernuum! We quickly realized what impact differing maturation rates of seeds on the same plant had on planning seed collection. The A. cernuum collection is incomplete, but we hope to revisit the population in a week or so to check on seed maturation progress. Once the fruits mature, the seed capsules quickly dehisce, giving us a narrow window of time to collect. Hopefully, we catch the next wave of mature seeds. Other populations have given us trouble, too. We were going to do a small collection of M. franciscana, but the seeds had dropped before we had a chance to collect them. We also had a couple populations of M. fistulosa we were planning to collect from, but a combination of rain, grazing, and small population size prevented that from happening. After doing seed calculations, one of our larger P. procera populations seemed ideal to collect–we estimated being able to collect 8,000 seeds! Despite having good seed fill, nearly all the seeds were shriveled and soft. Additionally, their insides were a strange black color. We collectively decided not to collect. Collecting is more of an art than a science!

Ironically, we got some decent rain last week! Evie and I tried to sneak in a visit to the nodding onion population last week. Not enough seeds had matured since our first visit. Even if they were ready to collect, the plants were too wet. It almost felt as if we were in the Pacific Northwest, with how foggy and rainy it was! We probably got a month’s worth of rain in 8 hours.

The view overlooking our nodding onion (A. cernuum) population

I went herping the night after the rains to see what creatures they unearthed. Since going on my first “road cruise” for herps in early August, I was hooked after seeing a Chihuhuan or Western “hooknose” snake. These nocturnal and diminutive snakes typically max out at 11″, are non-venomous, and prey on spiders, centipedes, and scorpions. Their upturned, hooked nose helps with burrowing in search of prey.

The Western hooknose snake (Gyalopion canum)

The following pictures include those prey species! When it comes to creepy crawlies (or cutie patooties to invertebrate nerds), nighttime is a great time to see these chitin-clad critters.

A “Jerusalem cricket” (which is neither from Jerusalem nor a true cricket)–a wild-looking
Orthopteran in the Stenopelmatidae family.
A scorpion I spotted using a black/UV light while hiking at White Sands National Park.

Making Headlines in August

A highlight of this month was working with the Fish & Wildlife and KIC (Ketchikan Indian Community) crews on restoring salmon habitat to streams at Last Chance campsite. Before we started this project the stream looked like a bowling alley, the water was flowing straight down and starting to erode the bank into the nearby campground. When a stream is flowing like this, there’s no pools or pockets for fish habitat or breeding grounds. We spent the week digging trenches along the creek, then pulled downed trees into the trenches, and covered them with rocks. After a week of manual labor, the stream ended up with more S curves, waterfall features, and pools. We even made the front page of Ketchikan Times! The seeds we are collecting this season will be used on projects like this in the future to restore vegetation to the stream banks.

The rest of the workdays of August were dedicated to collecting and cleaning seeds. On August 28th we were able to send off 7 out of our 8 completed seed collections. The 7 collections that were shipped on August 28 were Vaccinium ovalifolium (Blueberry), Chamerion angustifolium (Fireweed), Ribes bracteosum (Stink Currant), Oplopanax horridus (Devil’s Club), Aruncus dioicus (Goatsbeard), Hercaleum maximum (Cow Parsnip), Gualtheria shallon (Salal). Our 8th collection will be Spirea splendens (Rosie spirea), which we aim to ship out in the next two weeks, hopefully along with Scirpus microcarpus (Panicled Bulrush), and Carex aquatilis (Water Sedge).

Some other noteworthy things happened this month. I stumbled upon a tree covered in “Chicken of the Woods.” Sautéed with salt, pepper, and butter they truly taste just like chicken! The less appetizing photo on the right features some dead salmon. Several species of salmon have almost concluded their runs back to the lakes and streams they were born in. Once they make it back to the lake they lay their eggs or spread their sperm. After such a dangerous and exhausting journey they can rest easy and rot away in bliss knowing they’ve completed their life cycle. Ward Lake in Ketchikan is very pungent and getting harder to visit, but seeing the lake fill up with salmon is a reminder on just how extraordinary nature’s processes can be!

Finally, the top highlight of the month was hiking the Deer Mountain Traverse. Last Saturday afternoon Neave and I sent it up the Deer Mountain trail head right in the center of town and at 4pm on Sunday we reached the parking lot at the base of Mahoney Mountain on the far south side of Revilla Island. The ~18~ mile hike through the alpine, past many lakes, and over several peaks was a once in a lifetime hike. Absolutely beautiful landscapes and perfect weather. It was a great way to cap off an awesome month!

The First of Many

It has been an eventful and uneventful month. Now you might be wondering how it can be both. Well, as I looked over my camera roll to determine the subject of this month’s blog, nothing stands out. That’s not to say that I didn’t do anything exciting this month because many interesting things happened at work as well outside of work that included many of my first.

First Seed Collection

For instance, Peter and I started our first seed collection of the season since seeds here are finally starting to mature. Our first collection is none other than the lovely Allium cernuum. However, this was after a few failed attempts to collect seeds from Mertensia franciscana and Mornada fistulosa. The plants were either grazed by elk and wild horses or most of the seeds dropped. It was a bit discouraging at first and a learning lesson, but I knew there was other species to collect from.

First UTV Ride

We spent the rest of the month scouting for more species across the forest and monitoring the phenology of scouted populations. As a result, we had the privilege to ride a UTV at the Sacramento Ranger District (SRD). Angie, the Wildlife Biologist at SRD and the one who drove us around, insisted that we take a photo in it to brag to our Wildlife Crew members as they don’t have any.

Although it was a fun experience, I don’t think I will ever get on one ever again. That’s because as we drove, a long stick went through the UTV floor and hit the seat next to me all while making a loud noise due to a stainless steel bottle on the floor being shoved out of the way. At the end of the day, I rather not be impaled by a stick while riding a UTV just to get to a location faster.

Peter and I awkwardly smiling while seated in a UTV.

First Salamander Encounter

The amazing part of being at the Smokey Bear Ranger District is the opportunity to join the wildlife surveys. Usually, the Wildlife Crew at the district joins the Salamander Crew to survey the Sacramento Mountain salamander (Aneides hardiiI), but Peter and I were able to help them for one day since the Wildlife Crew was busy with other surveys. I had never seen a salamander in person before, so I was excited not only to learn the process of surveying them but also to finding one myself.

So after disinfecting our boots to prevent any possible spread of chytrid fungal pathogen to the salamanders and going over the protocol at the site, I was ready to find salamanders. The process involved flipping a lot of rocks and logs, but eventually I was able to capture a few. Initially, I was afraid to pick any of them up as some were tiny that I thought I was going to harm them in the process of putting them in a bag. Moreover, I didn’t know how the salamander would feel. However, the fear quickly went away.

In the end, different data was collected that included surface area of the object where the salamander was found, soil moisture, the weight, and length the salamander captured. Any new adult salamanders that was captured, were marked with a “tattoo”. Which really involved injecting them with a needle filled with fluorescence pigments in a specific sequence to help with identification if they are recaptured again in future surveys. Once all the data was collected, the salamanders were placed back to where it was found.

First Meteor Shower Party

Growing up in Chicago, I never had the chance to stargaze due to the light pollution. As a result, I never knew about the Perseid meteor shower. Peter, on the other hand, knew all about it and that’s because he watches it every year on his birthday. Now, that I reside in smaller town with minimum light pollution, I was determined to experience my first meteor shower.

I searched up places that had a meteor shower party and found that El Malpais National Monument was having one after Ranger-led bat outflight guided walk on August 11. Bats and meteor shower on the same day? Count me in! The only problem it was 3.5 hours away and there was a chance of rain, but I figured it was a perfect opportunity to do a weekend road trip.

In the end, I got to see some bats despite it raining, but I didn’t get to see the meteor shower due to the clouds blocking the night sky. Thus, my first attempt to watch a meteor shower was unsuccessful. Fortunately, I returned to Ruidoso in the afternoon the next day and there was no clouds in sight. Spontaneously, I and a Wildlife Crew member from SRD decided to camp at a lookout that night to see the meteor shower.

Not only was I able to see my first meteor shower, but also the Milky Way!

– Evie

This month is heating up in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest!

With most of our seed populations hitting or nearing their harvest date, it has been extremely important to prioritize time efficiency during our daily routine. We have been camping weekly to reduce our overall travel time and on further trips we just backpack in.

This month we logged our most intense trek in yet, a daunting two-day and 16-mile trip with steep elevation. We had the Bitterroot team tag along as we hiked trough miles of post-burn forest, then up a mountain pass and back down to a beautiful lake on the other side. We made frequent stops to catch pollinators along the loop and were botanizing along the way.

It was great to have volunteers and Hiccup along for the trip because it was definitely a different vibe than going in a smaller group. It was a lively and fun experience to backpack into the wilderness with 10 other people!

After setting up camp, pinning our bees and making dinner, our group was treated to a beautiful sunset displayed on the face of a nearby mountain. Then, early the next morning, we continued catching bees and hiking the return route back to the trucks.

We were off running after the backpacking trip with thousands of seeds ready for harvest. The coming weeks were spent running between surveying wetland rare plant polygons, searching for white bark pine in pre-treatment areas, and marking/collecting seed populations. We try to rotate between areas daily when not camping, or weekly when camping, so we often are marking, monitoring, collecting and surveying for differently things as we come across potential populations. It is easy to distinguish potential habitats for species at interest in an area with such abrupt changes in features. Between wet meadows, lodgepole forest and steek scree deposits, we are spending less time locating the habitat, and more time surveying in the right spots.

Crawling around in vegetation puts you eye-to-eye with some super unique insects! We have come across some interesting galls, moths and caterpillars while surveying. I think that entomology is an awesome way to break of the monotony of identifying/looking for the same plants over a long day.

Salt Marsh Moth (Estigmene acrea)

We utilized a few new techniques in some interesting studies this month. At the beginning of August, we deployed our first pollinator “vein traps” and we collected the jars this week. This trap uses yellow color to lure pollinators into its basin which is coated in a slippery substance. The collection is bagged and preserved in alcohol, then sent to Montana State University for identification.

Collecting our bee vein trap from the only tree in the area

We also surveyed a biochar application and reseeding site. This area was a post-burned lodgepole forest with transects of different applications: Seeded with annuals, seeded with perennials, and treated with varying amounts of biochar. Our survey was the second revisit of a long-term study, and it was really interesting to see such stark differences between species in each transect. We used a pencil drop method to record plants at each interval and stood on a crate to use photo frames to estimate vegetation coverage per species.

The biochar treatment in a post burn forest

This August culminated with seed collections on top of seed collections. Considering my limited amount of office time, it has been very hard to get much seed processing and electronic documenting done. Instead, we have been working to maximize our populations quantities and abundance. We are beginning to prepare our first seed shipment, but our daily priorities are much more urgent. So, our methods for now are: Collect, collect, collect and document all data! and we will deal with office hours once seeds are done for the season.

One of our sites had two large populations of Penstemon albertinus (Alberta Penstemon) and Heterotheca villosa (Hairy False Goldenaster). It was right next to some abandoned charcoal kilns and made for a long day of collection at one site. Last month was filled with grass seed collection, so it has been great to target other types of seed. Overall, we completed 6 quality collections between these two species.

The canyon creek charcoal kilns

I try to make the most of my limited free time and squeezed in some great adventures during this month. Some highlights were watching the meteor shower from the top of Blue Mountain, backpacking in Glacier National Park, hiking to Storm lake, touring Lewis and Clark Caverns, digging in Crystal Park, and always… the great local hot springs!

Fishing at Lake Otokomi

I am running away from seasonal depression.

Alyssa cooking breakfast while reading, an icon.

After much scouting, monitoring phenology, and waiting we have finally collected seed. Since, I worked as a seed collector last year too one might think that I would be more accustomed to the less-than-predictable and uncontrollable nature of wildland seed collection. Yet, I am still constantly surprised when I look at my record of our daily activities throughout this summer just how much time we’ve spent scouting and monitoring potential collection site compared to how many seeds we’ve actually collected.

The beautiful Ribes aureum fruits aka Golden Currant. A good collection and a snack that’s hard to stop munching!

But now, finally, I am happy to report that we’ve made 6 collections this month. Don’t mind the fact that only 3 are likely to meet the 30,000 seed minimum requirement….

One of the collections, a collection of Golden Currant, is the prettiest picture I have from the whole month! I mean look at those veins.

But I have surprisingly no pictures of flowers this month that are blog worthy. A sign that the flowers are on their way out for the season? Already?

Recently, I’ve found myself missing flowers than I saw back in April and May (cactus blooms, my old friends) that I won’t be able to see again until next spring. The flowers that I saw on my first camping trip of the season where I hiked barefoot with my sweetie for 5 miles through a sandy desert canyon crisscrossing a stream that was coming back to life as the snowmelt from the La Sals resupplied its flow. The flowers that represent the reawakening of the natural world, where outside becomes inviting and beautiful again.

Cactus blooms- Echinocereus ssp.

I’ve been noticing that the longer I do field work the more I track time based on the flowers that have passed, the flowers that are in bloom, and what flowers I can still expect to see later in the season. This work requires a heightened awareness of phenology and I have come to enjoy keeping time in this way. But what happens when the phenology isn’t noticeably progressing anymore, when everyone closes up shop to wait out the cold? As we come to a time where more of the flowers are behind us than ahead, I begin to confront the dread I feel for the impending winter season.

I’ve been attempting to prepare my brain to learn to appreciate what winter has to offer (what does winter have to offer?) since the beginning of the season, since the end of last winter really. I’ve noted things that I only spend time doing in the winter, clothes I only wear in the winter: the coziness of taking a bundled up walk along a frozen lake before coming home to our warm apartment, the comfort of then making hot chocolate and playing a board game.

But all of a sudden it’s looking like I won’t have to deal with as much of a winter for the next few years. I have been offered a permanent position in a mysterious location where winter doesn’t mean snow….will the growing season be longer? Will there be a chance to grow foods I’ve never been able to grow before? Will I be able to do my favorite summer activities for more of the year? Will sitting outside possibly even feel pleasant in January? So many things to wonder about and soon I will know the answers!

My sisters visiting me in Utah, a lovely winter memory.

A Glance at August…

Boy was this a busy one. We started the month with monitoring the pollinator islands that were established in landing sites throughout the forest last year. One of the goals was, of course, to remediate the land that was cut down and compacted from tons of lumber. However, another goal was to essentially build a pollinator bridge – to bring the pollinators from the forest and encourage them to head down to the farms below. Our purpose was to perform line point intercept in order to understand how the landscape is changing after planting and seeding last year. The seed mix was a very long list of all the different native pollinator-friendly species in the forest and so far it seems like most of the plots are doing well. The hard part about seeds though is that it can be tough to judge the success in the first year because many seeds won’t come up the following season, and could possibly not come up for multiple years. So even if the seed success isn’t impressive the year after planting, that doesn’t mean the project is not a success in the long term.

First day on the monitoring grind!

We spent a while monitoring these 17 plots, but to break things up, we had a cross-over episode with the Beaverhead-Deerlodge botany team at the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness. They taught us all about how to survey for bees – where to find them, how to catch them, and what to do with them after. This was also my first time backpacking!

Bitterroot botany team takin on the wilderness!

From here, we did a bit of surveying. We focused on areas that have planned pesticide treatment, and we looked at historic populations that may be in the area. Although we didn’t find anything, we got some great views! Other than that we also worked on some timber seed pilot monitoring, where we looked at seeded skid trails and temp roads to see how the grasses are growing in. Most were pretty successful, with Bromus, Psedoroegneria, and Elymus being the most common. We have been working on a bunch of these plots in two finished timber projects, one on the west side of the forest, and one on the east side. So far, these plots have been quite promising, but we will see in thee coming years how the seed mix is working.

Lil ol’ me checking the species for this LPI

Last, but of course not least, we have spent days and days working on seed collection. We have collected about 30 different populations – most on the smaller side. There are still lots of plants that we are waiting to collect, but I’m surprised at the amount that we have found ready. I hope this next month we will get some larger populations!

Eriogonum umbellatum and a peek at the Sapphires.

Smoke Everywhere!

Oh, August you could not get smokier if you truly tried (this is in fact not true at all as it’s supposed to get worse next month). Waking up to pillars of smoke covering the sky was something I wasn’t entirely ready to get used to when I moved out to Oregon. The AQI of the closest major city, Eugene, this past week reached a total of 450. Just to be clear, that measure is part of the maroon category also known to be hazardous to human health. The effects can certainly be felt.

Mount Thielsen

Other than hazardous smoke conditions the Umpqua has been beautiful as usual. Everyday feels like a surprise in this forest. You never truly know what beautiful spectacle you’ll get to witness. Some of our collection sites are truly like working in a mirage. These incredible sites are surrounded by some of the most picturesque collection species. Not only this but most collection sites have a wide breadth of species to collect from. As we have a target list of around 30-40 species, these luscious meadows hold the key to most of our success. My personal favorite of these habitats are the hidden alpine meadows we’re to collect many of our September/October species from.

Our weed treatment adventure continues as well. One of the worst treatments so far occurred this past month. A couple of coworkers and I ventured out to the infamous Poo Lagoon (wastewater dumping site). The task at hand was incredibly daunting. The major focus here was the Common mullein which surrounded the multiple waste pools. Laced between these stands of mullein, however, were some of the vilest stands of Canada thistle imaginable. These low-lying pests numbered in the thousands hidden underneath the water-fed grasses. As well, since Canada thistle is rhizomatous, we were not allowed to just pull and move, we had to individually cut each stem with hand loppers. If fire restrictions were not at their strictest, we might have been able to use brush cutters. Coupled with this was the 105 degrees heat that made it incredibly difficult to function. But we all made it out alive and that’s all you can truly ask for.

Clark’s nutcracker on top of whitebark pine

Personal events this past month saw my mental health slightly deteriorate. It’s truly a shame of the personal struggles because this experience has been nothing short of incredible. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t control the events that unfold. These events leave you feeling absolutely abandoned in a place that was already foreign to begin with and all you can do is try to dig yourself out of the hole that makes you feel so powerless. It’s difficult but you have to do it because you can’t keep living your life in the gallows of past events. You must push through it because nobody else will do it for you. Sometimes life just hits you with the hardest metal pipe to the knees unexpectedly. You fall and have no choice but to get back up, of course after feeling the immense amount of pain from the initial hit for a considerable amount of time. Eventually you’ll get back up from being beaten and the pain will progressively get easier to handle, although it will always linger. This is just a roundabout way of saying that unfortunately life can be incredibly unfair, but most of the time you can’t control it. You just have to keep going until it gets better.

I truly hope each intern had an incredible month. For those who finished their term this month, congratulations. For those that are still along the journey like Casey and I, only a few more months until it’s over. Make the best of the time that we have with these incredible opportunities.

Crater Lake
Alpine meadow
My coworker Alejandro and I fixing a tire