{"id":88115,"date":"2024-07-25T13:45:08","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T20:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=88115"},"modified":"2024-07-25T13:45:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T20:45:08","slug":"the-hardest-game-of-i-spy-youll-ever-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=88115","title":{"rendered":"The Hardest Game of I Spy You’ll Ever Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagine spread in front of you is an open I Spy book. You look at the list of objects you\u2019re supposed to be finding in the chaos and \u2026 you don\u2019t even know what any of the objects look like. This is kind of how it has felt for me transitioning from the dry deserts of New Mexico and Utah to the flora in the Alpine Meadows and stands of Pine in Wyoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Sandia Mountains of NM (left), Mount Timpanogos in UT (middle), and Tongue River Canyon in WY (right)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A whole new suite of plant species spreads in front of me that I am somehow supposed to identify, find large enough populations of, and collect seed from. For the past weeks I\u2019ve been searching for specific plants (alongside my co intern in the Big Horn Mountains, Nick Gjording), only a couple of which I\u2019ve seen in the wild before. That\u2019s not even mentioning the grasses that make up half our species list that blend in nicely to the background of the I Spy page in front of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My time so far in the Bighorn National Forest has been spent driving to hopeful plant locations or desperately scanning out the car window (remember those in car I spy games when your sibling would inexplicitly say \u201cI spy with my little eye, something green\u201d? \u2026 yeah). When the time comes to get outside, and I hopelessly scan the ground for the plants on our list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the furious scanning back and forth, between checking grass ligules and looking at the hairs on yellow asters, something amazing happens. When you look so closely at a defined area, you start to notice all the little things that are so easy to pass over. It\u2019s like finding a tiny figure of your favorite dog breed or seeing the cutest rubber ducky on the I Spy page. Some of the highlights in our adventures include spying a light pink Lupin plant (they’re normally a dark blue-ish purple here), a patch of liverworts (which, as a Bryophyte enthusiast myself, was especially exciting), and a multitude of interesting new-to-me plants. I even spied some Yucca, a plant familiar from my \u201chometown\u201d experiences I didn\u2019t even realize grew this far North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My co-intern caught in the act of photographing the pink lupin right after I did (upper left); a very exciting patch of liverworts, species Marchantia polymorpha<\/em> (upper right); the cute white flowers of Apocynum androsaemifolium<\/em> (bottom left); and my familiar friend: Yucca glauca<\/em> (bottom right)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And occasionally, a miracle happens, and you manage to find a suitable population! In the weeks of planning and scouting that have already happened, despite how early in the growing season we are (especially in those higher elevation areas) coming up on those populations is a satisfying feeling like no other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A field of wildflowers on the Bighorns and example of what we end up looking at all day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In one case, we spent a couple of days searching for Eriogonum umbellatum<\/em>, only finding one or two occasional individuals. Then, within the next few days we came across two independent and large populations; all that hard work paid off. Later I\u2019ll get to return to these populations, hopeful that nature will have taken its course, and everything will have aligned so the plants can have bloomed, been pollinated, and be producing seed. Hopeful, I write down the location of the population and cross my fingers that I won\u2019t miss that slice of time when the seeds are ready for us to collect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this real-time, real-life I Spy book, I\u2019ve somehow managed to take a list of unknowns in the large and very green spread in front of me and find what I was looking for, and even more that I wasn\u2019t expecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the season is only beginning. Imagine that in your book more frustration, excitement, and unexpected finds lay in front of you. As the season progresses, you know that things will only get easier; that list of unknowns will slowly but surely become more familiar and understood. The list at the bottom of your I Spy page is no longer full of nebulous, unrecognizable words but a list of familiar and perhaps even crossed off treasures. You\u2019ve now completed maybe the first page of the I Spy book that you\u2019ll continue to work through for the rest of the field season, and you can\u2019t wait to intimately know that crucially important list of objects, their unique locations, and the beauty that surrounds it all.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A rare moment of me NOT looking at the ground or taking pictures of plants courtesy of Nick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine spread in front of you is an open I Spy book. You look at the list of objects you\u2019re supposed to be finding in the chaos and \u2026 you don\u2019t even know what any of the objects look like. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[3634],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88115"}],"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\/7624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88652,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88115\/revisions\/88652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}