{"id":79175,"date":"2018-04-04T12:38:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T19:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=79175"},"modified":"2018-04-04T12:38:05","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T19:38:05","slug":"oregon-intern-part-2-not-quite-field-season-aka-office-adventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=79175","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Intern Part 2: Not Quite Field Season AKA Office Adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi all!<\/p>\n

First off, I\u2019d just like to say this: I\u2019m beyond excited to be a part of the CLM program again, and I\u2019m so incredibly happy to have been placed in Oregon for a second time, as it had become a second home over the course of my first internship. I can\u2019t quite say I\u2019m a full-fledged Oregonian yet– that takes a lot more time, flannel shirts, and locally roasted coffee. But, I do feel a lot of love for the land here. Oregon is peaceful.<\/p>\n

This time around, I\u2019m stationed in Medford, Oregon, a bustling city nestled snugly between the Cascade Range and the Siskiyou Mountains. I feel pretty lucky to be living here. Looking out my apartment window, I can see tons of gorgeous snow-capped mountains, and the valley itself is home to tons of orchards and vineyards. Ashland, the next town over, is home to the Shakespeare Festival, as well as a diverse music scene. I predict many hikes, concerts, and wine-tasting ventures in my future.<\/p>\n

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A view from Tallowbox Mountain<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On my first day of work, my mentor introduced me to the area through a long hike to the top of Tallowbox mountain, where I was able to get a bird\u2019s eye view of the Medford district. It was a lot like that scene in the Lion King, where Simba and Mufasa are sitting on top of Pride Rock and Mufasa is like \u201cLook, Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom.\u201d (I\u2019m mostly kidding, ha ha). I was glad to see that many of the species I had become familiar with from my internship in Roseburg were also common to the Southern Oregon, and I spent some time learning a few species I hadn\u2019t heard of before.<\/p>\n

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Garrya fremontii<\/em>– Fr\u00e9mont’s silktassel<\/p><\/div>\n

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Ericameria nauseosa<\/em> (rubber rabbitbrush)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Field season hasn\u2019t truly kicked off yet (many of our field sites are still covered in snow), so my first couple of weeks with the Medford BLM were spent immersing myself in a variety of cubicle-based activities. I can say with a fairly large amount of confidence that I am now intimately familiar with the botanical survey file cabinet. One major benefit of my office adventures has been that I\u2019m beginning to have a much better understanding of the inner workings of the BLM. Throughout my first internship, I spent most of my time in the field, so I had no real conception of the incredible amount of bureaucracy that can go into a managing public lands. By spending more time in the office I\u2019ve begun to wrap my head around the type of work done by full-fledged botanists: multitudes of meetings, boatloads of paperwork, hours of GIS work, and endless emails. Just the other day, I sat in on a meeting between the district botanists as they spoke about their new annual treatment plan and the upcoming field season. Contracts were discussed, plans were made, dozens of acronyms were used. I questioned whether or not they were speaking some foreign language. I had already known that the government speaks in acronyms, but I didn\u2019t know what the majority of them meant. The botanists were very kind and paused their conversations periodically to explain what certain things meant, and how they related to their work. With time, overwhelming confusion faded into a desire to keep up with the conversation. It\u2019s been hard, but I\u2019m starting to get the hang of it!<\/p>\n

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The Big Friendly Filing Cabinet<\/p><\/div>\n

Overall, these first couple of weeks have been educational, to say the least! I\u2019m definitely looking forward to field season, but I\u2019m really glad to have been able to spend some time learning about all the office work that goes into that. It\u2019s given me a lot more respect and understanding for this type of work.<\/p>\n

Aleah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all! First off, I\u2019d just like to say this: I\u2019m beyond excited to be a part of the CLM program again, and I\u2019m so incredibly happy to have been placed in Oregon for a second time, as it had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7414,"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\/79175"}],"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\/7414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79181,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79175\/revisions\/79181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}