{"id":79131,"date":"2018-02-05T08:06:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T15:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=79131"},"modified":"2018-02-05T08:06:12","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T15:06:12","slug":"signing-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=79131","title":{"rendered":"Signing Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight months ago, all I knew was that I had accepted a job in Buffalo, Wyoming. I knew I would stay at least\u00a0five months, I knew I’d be moving into an apartment with a perfect stranger, and I was entirely uncertain of what my internship responsibilities would include. I had lived in remote places before, and I had lived\u00a0outside of my home state prior to May 2017, but this move felt especially intimidating. I had never been to Wyoming, but I was very aware of the vast cultural differences I would likely encounter\u00a0between the conservative Western state from my urban homeland of New York.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving in Buffalo and showing up to my field office for the first day of work, the other CLM interns and myself were thrown head-first into the field season. Training after training, deciphering protocols for the various field methods and databases we were expected to know, learning the names of our office coworkers and USDA plant codes; there was never a dull moment, and there was always something needing to be done.<\/p>\n

My time spent in the field was met with a variety of interesting challenges: interacting with landowners who\u00a0make their\u00a0vehement animosity toward federal agencies known; explaining ecological concepts to\u00a0folks who\u00a0are certain\u00a0sagebrush is an invasive species to the American West (**it’s not**); diffusing contentious conversations that inevitably arise within\u00a0a crew containing an array of personalities; learning to identify Carex<\/em> and Poa<\/em> species for the first time. These tasks were absolutely a strain on my mental and physical wellbeing, but\u00a0nonetheless\u00a0served as indispensable growing experiences that have allowed my communication, professional, and botany skills to expand beyond horizons I initially could not see. Of course, my\u00a0 coworkers were instrumental in this journey which has allowed me to reflect and grow in the way I’ve just described. My mentor, Bill, gave myself and his other mentees the\u00a0laissez-faire approach we needed to\u00a0navigate our way through this internship, but was also more than\u00a0helpful\u00a0when we needed guidance. Dominic, my crew-lead and\u00a0absolute\u00a0MVP of the field season, was\u00a0encouraging and excellent company\u00a0at each of the forty-something remote field sites we visited\u00a0last summer. Not to mention the countless other employees at the Buffalo Field Office\u00a0that have adopted me as their intern since October and\u00a0allowed me to participate in the work that they do (Rachel, Charlotte, Wyatt, Chris, etc.) I am fully\u00a0aware of how fortunate I was\u00a0to have been placed in such an inclusive office, at the foothills of a mountain range, and within close\u00a0proximity to several national parks, forests, and monuments.<\/p>\n

I know I’ve written\u00a0about this before, so please pardon my redundancy, but even with all of the skills I’ve gained and\u00a0experiences I’ve had since accepting this internship, I feel my greatest and most rewarding accomplishment has simply been living here. Making a home in a place I never felt I would fit, filling a niche I was certain wouldn’t exist for someone like me, has allowed me to\u00a0realize just how parochial my worldview was eight months ago\u00a0before I embarked westward. No place is perfect, but I am proud of myself for not only\u00a0living in\u00a0Buffalo, but for also making myself feel at home in a place I never thought I could. I\u00a0managed to befriend people both\u00a0inside and outside of my workplace, climb the highest peak in the Bighorns,\u00a0see a mountain lion run along the Powder River as I waded upstream, hold a horned toad, camp underneath\u00a0a starry sky in Medicine Bowe, stumble upon a free jazz concert somewhere in Montana, and\u00a0I\u00a0can’t remember feeling as if I had missed an opportunity or circumscribed myself to a comfort zone.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Shadowing employees from Fish & Game while mist-netting for bats. I believe this one was a northern long-eared.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Forcing my dad to\u00a0try hiking in Wyoming.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Outside of Casper, Wyoming awaiting the 2017 solar eclipse with friends, David & Mart\u00edn.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

BFO Wildlife Biologist, Chris, observing bighorn sheep licking the minerals off our truck outside of Jackson, WY.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Moonrise over the appropriately named Mistymoon Lake after summiting Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Moving forward.<\/p><\/div>\n

I feel an appropriate way to end this blog post, along with my internship, is to borrow words from CLM intern Tyler Rose: “I don’t know if I truly understand all the ways in which I grew through this internship…I do know, however, just how inspired I feel to continue to go forth and engage in conservation as a full-time focus of my life.”<\/em><\/p>\n

As I try to express my gratitude for this internship and programs like CLM, as I anticipate the wave of sadness\u00a0that will overcome me as I\u00a0drive\u00a0toward the\u00a0California coast\u00a0in a few weeks, and as I continue to imagine what the coming months will look like\u00a0while I acquaint myself with\u00a0a new place\u00a0and a new job, I know I will always have my time in Wyoming to look back on and my ambitions as a conservation biologist to motivate me as I inevitably move forward.<\/p>\n

Some of\u00a0the memories from my time in Buffalo are\u00a0more fond\u00a0than others, but all are meaningful, and each has contributed to forming this experience I’ve just had and the experiences I will have when I\u00a0leave. Again, a thank you to CLM, the BFO, and anyone who has been reading these. Its been a pleasure.<\/p>\n

Signing out —<\/p>\n

Elyna Grapstein\r\n\r\nCLM Intern - Buffalo Field Office, Bureau of Land Management\r\n\r\nJanuary 8th, 2018<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eight months ago, all I knew was that I had accepted a job in Buffalo, Wyoming. I knew I would stay at least\u00a0five months, I knew I’d be moving into an apartment with a perfect stranger, and I was entirely … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79138,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79131\/revisions\/79138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}