It’s officially my last day here in Wyoming and it feels somewhat surreal. I didn’t realize how quickly the summer was passing until the warm weather had already come and gone. I’m sad to go, but I am leaving just in time to avoid the first snowfall of the year that is expected on Monday. While leaving is very bittersweet, I attribute the fast pace of time to the amazing experiences I had and the beautiful people that I shared these experiences with. Worthen Meadow Reservoir During my time at the Lander Field Office, I have grown in many ways. I have had the opportunities to work with people ..read more

Something about nature, specifically wildlife, has always captivated me. Even as a child, I would rather play with plastic animals than trucks, or action figures. At the age of 29, playing with toys has lost it’s appeal, but over the years I have learned to express my affinity for the natural world in other ways. Just being out in nature isn’t enough. I feel the desire to capture my findings through photography, drawing, and occasionally painting. I’m unsure why I find the urge to express myself in this way. Maybe it’s just how I most readily connect with the world around me, and share feeling ..read more

I learned and did so many interesting things during my time in Klamath Falls. Some things I expected to learn, like new field techniques and endangered species protocols; others I did not, like how the public perceives government work. We found this sucker spp. young of the year while conducting a stream survey for Bull Trout. I’ve grown pretty attached to the less-loved fish (like suckers, see left, sucker spp. young of the year), even though in the end I think I spent more time working with trout. Still, there were so many species to study (and to stumble upon in passing). I’ve added qui ..read more

At the beginning of this month I started my new job at the Bend Seed Extractory and casually moved across the country to Bend, Oregon. I have never been to the west coast before and was finishing up another internship in Pennsylvania when I was offered the opportunity to move to Oregon and start working at the Seed Extractory starting early September. I immediately said, yes. Originally, there were a lot of logistics that I didn’t think through before initially accepting this position (such as finding housing and having a car). However, as I began to plan everything started to fall into ..read more

Adventures in the Chihuahuan Desert have exposed me to some bizarre organisms… At least, they seem that way initially. The harsh conditions require remarkable adaptations that call to attention the tenacity of life. Recent encounters with some perils of this ecosystem have bequeathed me with strength and a tenacity reminiscent of a truly spectacular angiosperm. Koeberlinia spinosa, a native to harsh climates in the Southwestern US and Mexico with unrelenting spines but delicate flowers, permits pollinator passage. While the plant can bear leaves, photosynthesis is carried out in you ..read more

Summertime in the high desert environment of Bend dries your lips, freckles your skin, dampens the path of your back, and leaves you craving a cold one. Although the seeds aren’t kept in the same fridge where your lemonade is kept, they reside in the freezer – larger than my apartment, mind you – located just a matter of paces from the Seed Extractory. A little about the freezer! The main goal of seed storage is to maintain viability. It offers prolonged safekeeping of seed material in ‘ideal’ conditions, which reduce physiological activity of the seed. While in this dormant state ..read more

Seed season is slowly coming to a close here in central Wyoming. It is amazing how different the landscape looks now than it did in the early summer months. Once green and vibrant, the wide open lands are now covered with dead, brown vegetation. One of the only plants down in the basin that has yet to go to fruit is the sagebrush, but the seeds will not be mature until after I have gone. On the bright side, my partner and I have discovered a high elevation oasis – Green Mountain. Because parts of the mountain sit above 9000 feet, the plants here are behind the basin plants in their seasonal cy ..read more