Tag Archives: forest service intern

The beginning of fall

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Early in the morning with the moon still overhead, I stepped out into the cold and slid shut the door of my apartment. It was too dark to see, so I felt each of the keys on my keychain before finding the right one to lock up. Then, I turned around and stopped to look for a moment. The sky was full of stars.

When I started at Ottawa National Forest in early June, the morning sky was blue and dappled with clouds when I left for work, in July I woke to spectacular red sunrises, in August the mornings were dim with the first hints of light illuminating dense grey mist, and, now, I am greeted by stars. I have never watched the seasons change like this before. 

Over the past month, my-cointern Tessa and I have continued to travel the forest mapping and treating invasive plants. We’ve tackled tansy ragwort, honeysuckle, Japanese barberry, glossy buckthorn, Eurasian watermilfoil and more. Sometimes, we hike all day to visit a few small, remote sites, and sometimes we work right along the roadside treating large patches of weeds where invasive species cerews have made gradual progress year after year. 

On a bright Tuesday, Tessa and I headed out to a particularly dense cluster of invasive species infestations lining Trout Creek. Waders on, we trudged through marsh up to our knees. Growing among the reeds were numerous glossy buckthorn seedlings with shining oval leaves that glinted in the sun. The soil was soft, so we could often pull the invasive seedling up by the roots. As we walked, Tessa and I passed ideas back and forth. These seedlings must be coming from somewhere, we surmised, some larger buckthorn that could produce numerous fruits…  the mother tree. We decided we would find it if we could.

Time wore on, yet our efforts to find the mother tree proved fruitless. We waded back and forth through the infestation area and eventually moved on to some invasive honeysuckle sites further along the marsh. 

When we passed through the buckthorn site again, the afternoon was drawing to a close. Making our way back to the truck to head home, we stumbled into a pocket of glossy buckthorn we had missed. Instead of being knee-high seedlings, the buckthorn here was up to our heads. Most of the buckthorn we’ve treated this summer has been no taller than eye-level. We did see one that was fifteen feet once, though. Even though the trunk was only four inches in diameter, cutting through it with a pocket saw felt like felling a real tree. 

With so many plants to treat, Tessa and I decided we would have to come back to the site another day to finish up. As Tessa bent low, sawing through one last buckthorn, I noticed that the normally green, glossy leaves of the plant had begun turning a deep red from the autumn chill. Looking over her shoulder I got a glimpse of a tree colored that same red. Could it be another buckthorn? I looked more closely, following the tree up… and up… and up. Towering over the rest was a great buckthorn, with a trunk a foot in diameter and a crown thirty feet tall. “Tessa… Tessa,” I said slowly, “We found the mother tree.”  

I snapped a photo of the great tree with Tessa standing next to it for scale. Then, we headed back to the office, excited to tell our mentor, Ian, what we found. Before the season is over, we’ll head back to the site to finish treating the remaining buckthorn, including the towering mother tree.

Tessa stands in a marsh with one hand on a very tall buckthorn with red leaves.
The mother tree (center) towers over Tessa

While the search for buckthorn along Trout Creek required wading through waist-deep water, some weed work requires us to get fully submerged. That’s why on a crisp Monday morning, I helped load wetsuits into the truck along with paddles, life jackets, and flippers. Then, Tessa, Ian, a Forest Service botanist named Katherine, and I headed out to Lac Vieux Desert lake for our last snorkel day of the year.

Our job was to find and pull Eusrasian watermilfoil, a highly invasive aquatic plant. Eurasian watermilfoil has a doppelganger though, native, northern watermil foil has fewer leaflets than the invasive cousin it grows side by side with, but if I hadn’t been told to look for the difference the first time we went snorkeling, I never would have guessed they were two separate species. 

We spent the day searching through the water. When we found an invasive plant, we would gather the long flowing stems into balls and follow them down to the lake bottom. When you apply just the right pressure there, the plant pulls up in one continuous clump without the stems snapping and producing fragments. A milfoil fragment two inches long can go on to root into a whole new plant. 

A figure in a full wetsuit with a hood and goggles stands in front of a lake giving two thumbs up.
Ian took this photo of me suited up in snorkeling gear!

The water was chilly, but we checked in with each other often and took turns paddling the canoe when we got cold. Spirits stayed high. As we swam along the shore, swapped stories on the boat, and admired some sizable snails, the buckets of Eurasion watermilfoil we had pulled piled up on the shore. 

On our first day of snorkling for watermilfoil in the early summer, I had to count the pairs of leaflets of every milfoil I encountered to make sure it was the invasive species. Diving on Monday, though, I was surprised to find I could distinguish northern from Eurasian with relative ease.  Everything from the way the plants moved in the water to the feel of the leaves in my hand set the two apart. 

Realizing this, made me stop and think about how much I’ve learned this summer. Under Ian’s mentorship, I’ve been given an invitation to pay deep attention to the natural world and the knowledge to notice things I never would have seen on my own. Now, after months of spending long days in the forest, I’m beginning to see that attention pay off as I recognize the plants around me and see how they change and grow. I’m sure in June I would have walked right by the mother buckthorn and never stopped to look up. Still, I know I’m just scratching the surface. An opportunity to work with the Ottawa’s Timber crew showed me a glimpse of how much more is out there to notice. 

All summer, we’ve been meeting different people on the Ottawa, developing diverse skills, and getting a glimpse at the different jobs various forest departments take on. To this end, on Wednesday we met with Amanda and Megan from the Timber Crew. They gave us insight into all the different tasks needed for managing commercial timber from outlining the boundary of sale areas, to marking trees along future roads, to protecting valuable areas like wetlands and historical sites. Soon enough, Tessa and I were each outfitted with a paint sprayer on our backs heading through the woods to help lay out the boundary of a timber sale area. 

We followed Amanda and Megan through the woods, marking the stumps of trees they selected with bright orange paint. These trees, they explained, would become the outline of a sale area, showing the purchaser where they could go and where they should avoid. 

I quickly learned that laying out the line is not as straightforward as it seems. Skilled timber markers weigh a wealth of different factors as they set the boundary.  As they worked, Megan and Amanda took care to mark trees close enough together that you could easily follow from one to the next. They kept the line smooth, without too many jagged turns, and always ensured that the areas they marked were wide and flat enough for logging vehicles to navigate and turn around. All the while, they made sure to draw lines that avoided fragile wetlands and left a large enough buffer of trees around sensitive areas to provide shade and prevent erosion. Thinking of visitors, they were also careful to leave a good barrier of trees around a popular recreation lake. As we walked, Amanda and Megan sometimes saw great gnarled trees with knots and kankers and bits of shaggy bark. These they also left out of the sale area when they could. They are of little value for timber, they explained, but provide great habitat for all manner of wildlife. As we traveled, Amanda and Megan were teaching us every step of the way, explaining their thought process and talking us through decisions. 

My favorite thing was watching the pair read the land. They paid careful attention to the plants, canopy, and soil as they decided where to paint the line. Blue cohosh, they explained, a knee-high herb with blue fruits and pointed leaves often indicates good timber trees are nearby; black ash, tall with symmetrical pairs of leaflets, on the other hand, is a wetland species that suggests the surrounding area should probably be left out of the timber sale. They chose each tree we marked with careful consideration, taking time to study the landscape. I’m still not sure of my path after CLM, but, after spending the day with Amanda and Megan, I sincerely hope that I can bring the same level of care and stewardship to my job that they do everyday. 

In my first blog post, I explained that I wanted to know all the plants in Ottawa National Forest. What I meant, though I did not say it explicitly, is that I wanted to know the names of all the plants in Ottawa National Forest. Over the last several months, I’ve learned that knowing a plant involves so much more than just knowing its name. It’s a never ending process of seeing how it changes with the seasons, observing its growth and habitat, and understanding its interaction with the world it makes its home. Realizing this makes me hopeful I can meet my goal. I don’t have to memorize long lists of names. I just have to focus my attention on the world around me, be curious, and take notice. 

Ponds, Puddles, and Partners

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I pressed down hard on the gas and held my breath. The truck strained as it inched forward centimeter by centimeter. Then, with a lurch, it fell back. The wheels spun rapidly, kicking up an impressive cascade of mud which rained down on the windshield in great, heavy globs. I sat back with a sigh. We were stuck. 

Over the course of the summer, my co-intern Tessa and I have driven down all sorts of roads, winding dirt roads that lead to nowhere, broad gravel roads driven by thundering logging trucks, and roads covered in dense grass that bear only the faintest indication that they are roads at all. 

On this day, the dirt road we were crossing was full of puddles. They started off small, nothing our trusty truck couldn’t handle. Soon though, the puddles got larger and we found ourselves taking great care to avoid the deepest spots. We got more confident as we switched into four wheel drive, but when we reached the top of a tall hill where the path below looked more like a pool of muddy water than a road, we knew it was time to seriously consider turning back. Still, we had made it this far, and we had only a bit further to go before getting back to pavement. 

We drove down the hill. Slowly, as if we would anger the puddle by driving too fast, we inched our way across the mud. Then, “Squelch!” The truck stopped. 

—

Last week, Tessa and I set out with our mentor, Ian, for Turtle Day 2.0. We would once again be improving habitat for native wood turtles. We were not alone though. Two trucks followed us as we headed north. One contained the Monitoring Crew and another the Great Lakes Climate Corps (GLCC). Though we had been introduced to Ottawa National Forest’s other teams of seasonal workers before, we’d rarely gotten a chance to work with them. Turtle day 2.0, however, required all hands on deck. 

With shovels and mattocks on our shoulders and pruners and saws in our pockets, we hiked through the woods to reach remote riverside beaches. These beaches are known to be the favorite nesting spots of endangered wood turtles. Many of the beaches, though, have become overgrown with dense brush which makes it hard for the turtles to find ideal places to bury their eggs. This leaves the eggs vulnerable to being dug up by predators.

Jelly eggs are nested in the soil and covered in tiny tan dots.
Do you know what kind of eggs these are? Tessa and I haven’t been able to identify them. We know they’re not turtle eggs though!

Our job for the day was Extreme Makeover: Turtle Beach Edition. With suggestions from herpetologists in hand, we went about digging up willow, spraying tansy, and pulling mullen, until the beaches were once again full of sandy spots that any turtle would be proud to call home. The work was strenuous, but with so many hands, the day passed quickly. At lunch time, it rained, and we sheltered in the trees swapping stories of a summer of adventures.

—

After realizing we were stuck, there were a few things Tessa and I tried. We put the truck in reverse and attempted to back out of the mud-filled pool. Earth-brown frogs hopped to and fro as the tires settled further and refused to budge.

Next, Tessa suggested that we could lay a path of sticks in front of the truck to give it some much needed traction. I thought this was a brilliant idea. Stepping out of the truck, I quickly realized that the opaque surface of the puddle hid a rut that was less on the scale of a few inches deep and more on the scale of a few feet deep. In places, the water came up to my knees. We gathered great arm-fulls of sticks, but when we tried to set them in place, they floated away. 

On a feeble hope, we put the truck in neutral and tried to push it. It didn’t move. Deep down, I knew we would be fine, but as we strained to push the big white truck I couldn’t help but feel cold sweat on my palms and a tightness in my chest. The forest suddenly felt very big and I felt very small.

After another few minutes racking our brains, we realized it was time to accept it, we would need to call for help.

First, we glanced at our cell phones. No service. Next, we turned to the radio, but all of the channels looked unfamiliar. Thankfully, we had a SPOT device with us, which can send a location along with limited messages from almost anywhere in the Ottawa. The best message for our situation, “We need help, but it isn’t urgent” seemed a great deal better than nothing, yet frustratingly vague. Tessa suggested we climb the nearby hill to see if there might be cell service there. 

Success! A feeble bar showed up at the top of Tessa’s phone. It was enough to get a phone call out to our mentor Ian. He’d head back to the office and grab supplies, he told us, and be there as soon as he could. 

—

This month, Tessa and I have been tackling purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). Purple loosestrife is, simply put, a gorgeous plant. It bears numerous showy purple blooms, which stand out strikingly against the greens of the forest. The flower loves any place where water transitions to land, be it a lake, river, or roadside ditch. Its dense roots cling to the mud while its tall stems reach for sunlight. Unfortunately, when left unchecked, this invasive flower can completely take over, crowding the coastline until there is only purple. 

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) grows in front of a roadside ditch where a sandhill crane is enjoying a meal.
This sandhill crane didn’t seem to notice the purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) next to it.

Tessa and I have been tasked with following the plant wherever it grows (within the forest), mapping it along highways as cars rush by, wading along lake shores to cut the tall, square stems, and paddling down rivers to pull the plant up by the roots. 

That was our objective early on a Friday morning, as Tessa and I loaded the canoe onto the truck, or, I should say, attempted to load the canoe on to the truck. The back of the boat extended a good seven feet past the end of the truck bed. We sent a photo to Ian who agreed we should head out without the canoe. He would reach out to the partner organizations we would be working with that morning to see if it would be possible to find some alternative floatation.  

We were the first ones to arrive at the boat launch. We got into our waders and ate wild raspberries while we waited for more people to arrive. After a few minutes a car pulled up, loaded with canoes and kayaks. We introduced ourselves and were greeted warmly. Before we knew it, they were showing us how to identify a reed grass called phragmites which is often invasive. They pointed out the length of the little tuft that most grasses have where the leaf meets the blade and the color and texture of the stem. These were all indicators, they explained, that could help distinguish the native phragmites from the invasive. No doubt about it, we had found our people. 

A few minutes later and more partner organizations had arrived. Some were familiar faces we had worked with before and some were new. When all was said and done, we had a crew of nine people. Upon hearing about our canoe conundrum, they had brought extra kayaks for Tessa and I. Loaded with dry bags, sunscreen, and shovels, we were ready to hit the water. 

We spent the day paddling our way along a river, pulling the purple loosestrife that had made a home there. The loosestrife in this area had never been treated before, so pulling up each loosestrife proved a wrestling match. Still, with so many people, the work passed quickly. At the end of the day, we left with half a dozen garbage bags full of loosestrife, a sense of deep satisfaction, and some new friends.

—

With Ian on his way, there was nothing to do but wait. I sat on the truck bed and watched the frogs dive beneath the water. Tessa sat with me and we talked about small things. She read me a letter from a friend back home, and I read her a few poems from a book I carry in my backpack. Sitting there with someone else, the knot in my chest seemed to unwind just a little. 

Slowly, the time passed. We ate lunch, and then, decided to climb the hill again to see if Ian had sent any messages. As we crested the hill, we could just see a Forest Service vehicle carefully making its way across the puddles. Ian had arrived!

In the minutes that followed, Ian reviewed best practices to avoid getting stuck and taught us how to use a winch. The device is essentially a giant lever attached to a reel of cable. One end of the winch is attached to a stuck vehicle and the other a suitable sturdy tree. As the lever is pumped, the cable gets shorter. In the end, either the car moves or the tree does. 

—

On a bright, sunny day, Tessa and I drove to Wisconsin. We were headed to an invasive plant management workshop hosted by a local university, a weed management cooperative, and an assortment of pesticide businesses. Arriving at the address, we found ourselves next to lake Superior. We filled out name tags and grabbed muffins from the refreshment table as dozens of people who had the distinct look of folks who spend a lot of time outdoors filled in. 

One by one, the attendees introduced themselves. People had come from all sectors to attend the conference. Some were local government workers, some were federal government workers, some came from nonprofits, and some came simply because they wanted to learn more about weed management. There were seasoned veterans and interns like us, all chatting, comparing notes, and catching up.

To start the day, we all piled into a school bus. After a bumpy ride, we arrived at a stretch of out-of-the-way roadside. The conference’s experts took us through the different weed treatments that had been applied to various sections of the road. They were happy to answer questions on everything from the right time of year to apply pesticides to how to target weeds effectively while leaving native plants minimally disturbed. 

After heading back to the conference venue, we watched a presentation on local invasive species identification and management. Then a scientist and weed management expert answered questions from the audience. Sitting in the crowd gave me a chance to appreciate the deep symbiosis between research and management. He shared the latest findings on effective weed control with the room and listened with interest to the questions and observations of the weed managers. At the end of the conference, all of the experts invited the attendees to reach out to them with questions big or small.

Some of my favorite moments of the conference were the unstructured times, those moments in between the lectures and presentations when the attendees and experts got to chat informally, ask questions, swap stories, and build relationships. Listening to the conversation, it was clear that everyone at the conference was united by some common goals: control the spread of harmful invasive species, limit their damage to the manmade and natural world, and educate the public about the invasive species in their area so that management work can been done in collaboration with the community.

Most days, Tessa and I are alone. We can spend all day in the forest without ever seeing another person. Attending the conference reminded me of the larger network of people that are working all over to continuously ask new questions, tackle new projects, and promote conservation and stewardship in cooperation. 

This is essential because managing invasive species is a massive task. A map of invasive plant sites in Ottawa National Forest quickly begins to look like a map of stars in the sky, with thousands of infestations scattered all over. Thankfully, though we’re not managing these sites alone. Other forest employees, numerous partner organizations and volunteers, and every person who washes their boat between lakes or wipes off their shoes after a hike is managing invasive species right alongside us. 

From Turtle Day to our loosestrife paddle, all the biggest projects we took on this month we took on with other people. We’ve had the opportunity to learn from so many wonderful land managers who are generous with their time and insights. In so many ways, this summer has been a continual process of offering help to others and finding in turn that, when we need it, help is never far away.

—

Bit by bit, the truck began to move. Still, as Tessa pressed the gas, the tires spun. Finally, with a great heave, the tires began to roll. Not spin. Not splutter. Roll. We had traction. We were unstuck at last. 

Buzzing

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Buzzing. A common cacophony throughout the Ottawa National Forest. From the low hum of happy bumblebees, to the erratic zipping of deer flies around my head, to the roar of angry ground wasps, buzzing seems to be all around me. It took a bit to get used to just how many insects were here on the Ottawa, but I will take the buzzing flies any day over the clouds of mosquitoes that plagued us in June. My mentor, Ian Shackleford, gave us fly patches for the backs of our hardhats to combat against the flies. While these patches are not a necessity all of the time, one day in particular there were a few sites that felt like I was under attack, so I decided to give one of the patches a try. The result? After a little less than ten minutes, twelve or so flies had buzzed themselves stuck to the back of my head.

A part of me felt a little guilty for trapping the flies down this way, but another part of me was glad for the reprieve from them getting stuck in my hair.

The buzz of bumblebees is my favorite one, and with so many wildflowers blooming, I get to hear it often. I got the opportunity to work closely with the bees when I joined up with our wildlife technicians for bee monitoring. The technicians are working on part of a study of eDNA, or environmental DNA, to detect what kind of pollen bees may be carrying. We went out and did the traditional collection of bees, which involves netting for 30 minutes, but then we meticulously set out bee bowls (colored bowls with soapy water) in a crosshair pattern. This water (and the insects that unfortunately for them slipped in throughout the previous day and night) was collected the next day and then run through a filter to collect the tiny pollen grains that insects carried into the water. This filter and the insects from the bowls will then be sent to the lab to run PCR to amplify the DNA of the pollen that the water contained. The idea behind the study is to compare the surrounding environment to what is actually caught in the water and what the bees we netted were carrying. One of the most important things I learned from tagging along these days was how challenging field research can be, especially when the study might not have been designed with the specific location in mind and the difference between theory and practice of data collection. For example, the wildlife technicians have had trouble with slugs climbing into the bowls overnight, which creates a thick slime that cannot be filtered. Additionally, it seemed that the detergent they used also created a problem for filtering the full amount of water, but they had limited supplies and could not use more than one filter. These are all problems that will need troubleshooting in the coming years to make eDNA studies more feasible and valid.

A golden crab spider (Misumena vatia) on purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), one of the invasive plants we manage. The flowers of this plant are very beautiful and attract plenty of bees.

I also get to hear the buzzing of bees when I am working on my primary task of invasive plant management. Ian had my co-intern Emily and I help him with the biomonitoring of two weevil species he worked to get approval to release, Larinus obtusus and Cyphocleonus achates. Larinus obtusus, the more abundant of the weevils we found at each site, eat the seedhead of the spotted knapweed, reducing the seed production and seedbank of the plant. This is vital for reducing numbers of a plant that can have viable seeds in the seedbank for at least 8+ years. Cyphocleonus achates is the root boring weevil of spotted knapweed, and much larger than the other weevil we monitored, yet much more elusive. We only found two individuals in our entire day of monitoring, but this still means that they are present at at least some of our sites, a good indicator that they are surviving (at least at some level) the cold winters here.

My mentor, Ian, takes a picture of the elusive Cyphocleonus achates on my finger. He loves posting to iNaturalist!

In the past decade, the weevils have become more widespread, and I spend a few seconds looking for Larinus obtusus whenever I see a large patch of knapweed. I have had pretty good luck of finding them, even when I am not on forest land. However, it is still unclear if they are actually reducing the knapweed populations. At two of our sites, it seemed humans were the reason for much of the knapweed decline, well, more specifically the vehicles of humans. However, at the last site it seemed that native grasses have started to form denser patches again. This could be because of reduced knapweed populations, intentional native replanting, a combination of the two, or completely unrelated. This ambiguity is what intrigues me about ecology and keeps pulling me back in for more… though it does make it challenging for people like Ian to know if his weevils are working.

A close-up of the Cyphocleonus achates that I netted and counted in our sample.

As a grand finale for our day of weevil monitoring, we went to a nearby site of a rare plant, the dwarf bilberry. These plants resemble blueberries, but as the name suggests, they are considerably smaller. They are low to the ground, inconspicuous, and the berries themselves could fit under my fingernail. Sue Trull, the botanist who focuses on native plant restoration, had planted these bilberries, and they have been thriving at the site, so much so that there was a bounty of them (by rare plant measures) to be harvested to send to Toumey Nursery to grow into new plants that could be planted to help bolster the population of bilberries on the forest. While picking some of these bilberries, making sure some remain to expand the site’s population for next year, we decided to update Sue on the bilberries. She replied with elation about their success at the site and offered that Emily and I could try one if we liked. We both felt a little bit important, getting to eat a whole berry of a rare plant (which each contain three to five individual seeds), and we jumped at the chance. I had low expectations for the flavor of these berries based on their appearance (see picture below). I imagined the fruits must be quite dry and have just a little flavor based on their small, wrinkled form, but the experience of trying something so unusual was not something I was willing to pass up. To my surprise, and overall delight, I had underestimated the dwarf bilberry. The teeny tiny berry packed so much flavor, and while it was reminiscent of a blueberry, it was not the same flavor entirely. It almost seemed to be a sweeter, more concentrated blueberry flavor, like the filling of a blueberry pie after it has been cooked down, but without being cooked at all. It seems every day that the forest teaches me something new, provides me with a new flavor of life, or straight up tells me I was wrong before. I am looking forward to all the surprises to come, and all of the growing that remains between now and November, both from the plants and from myself.

The bounty of dwarf bilberries that we picked and will send to the nursery to be grown for next year.

Tessa Fenstermaker, Ottawa National Forest