{"id":79452,"date":"2018-06-05T21:08:56","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T04:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=79452"},"modified":"2018-06-05T21:08:56","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T04:08:56","slug":"new-and-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=79452","title":{"rendered":"New and Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks into my second summer with the Casper BLM, I am struck by the simultaneous newness and familiarity of it all. Driving for hours over highly-eroded dirt roads or hiking through public lands that haven\u2019t been inventoried since I was four years old, I am reminded of the thrill of living and working in a place with so much uninhabited land.<\/span><\/p>\n

A year and three weeks ago, I left behind 22 years of big city life and arrived in Casper, Wyoming — where for the first time, I could walk into a coffee shop and be the only one there.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things I\u2019ve learned about working somewhere like Casper is that the abundance of open land makes the work diverse. As a hydrology technician, I do so much more than look at water. The first two weeks of this summer have consisted of a lot of planning, some map making, exploring new areas, 15+ hours of driving, a lot of mud, a Proper Functioning Condition (PFC) workshop, processing water samples, and a family of mice found in a cardboard box of sample bottles.<\/span><\/p>\n

When every day is an adventure, the unexpected becomes the norm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everything isn\u2019t always clearcut. It\u2019s important to be flexible because plans will change. A rancher will call with a leaky pipe that needs to be fixed immediately. A 50-year rain event will render bentonite roads untravelable for days. What appears to be a 40-minute drive on a map will take an hour and a half on sketchy dirt roads. Occasionally, an afternoon hail storm will leave you fishtailing back to the office. Planning and organization can only get you so far.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting knowing what I know from last summer and seeing new interns experience Wyoming country and all of its challenges for the first time. It\u2019s easy to forget that I was once that person who gawked at every pronghorn and had never navigated using ownership layers. Two hours seemed like a long drive to me. I hadn\u2019t experienced wet bentonite and barely even recognized the rocky dirt on the side of the mountain as a road my first week in the field.<\/span><\/p>\n

These Wyoming country quirks seem so second nature to me now. Township, cattle guard, and allotment are everyday words in my vocabulary. And yet, there\u2019s still a particular wonder about exploring new parts of Wyoming, watching baby pronghorn frolic through the fields, driving for hours without seeing another vehicle. I\u2019ve learned a lot in the past year, but I still have a lot to learn. I look forward to all the new adventures this summer brings and all the old memories it reawakens.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Two weeks into my second summer with the Casper BLM, I am struck by the simultaneous newness and familiarity of it all. Driving for hours over highly-eroded dirt roads or hiking through public lands that haven\u2019t been inventoried since I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7489,"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\/79452"}],"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\/7489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79481,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79452\/revisions\/79481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}