A stick shift, a new truck, and getting paid to catch butterflies

First two days of this week were back at the lynx habitat surveys - now up to 359 of 714 points (the total grew by almost 50% when we were told to survey pure conifer stands as well as stands with aspen). On Monday, Kate checked out the BLM's only manual transmission truck - a little Ford Ranger. So I got my first chance to work a stick. Pretty easy over 10 mph, but I never managed to start out smoothly.

Today Chrissy needed help with insect collection on her potholes project, so Kate and I tagged along. My job was to catch butterflies and dragonflies in a net and to suck up tiny insects using an aspirator (basically a tube with a chamber to catch the bugs). Chrissy tried to wade out to collect aquatic insects and soon found herself mired nearly to her waist in mud. She lost a shoe in the deal, and Kate and I enjoyed ourselves - who wouldn't mind getting paid to chase butterflies? We checked out one of the BLM's newest trucks, a Ford F150 with under 400 miles on the odometer. It might be a long time before I ever get to drive a vehicle that new again.

Michele and Chris arrived around 6 pm. We went out for tasty food at Cafe on Pine (Pinedale's only fancy restaurant) and caught up on stories and news.

Weather has been beautiful - frost again this morning but warming up to about 75. Could be some thunder ahead, but otherwise looks good.

A Tale of Four Moons

I have not always been one to track the phases of the moon, but this natural cycle sometimes provides welcome constancy in transitions and new places. I remember how odd it seemed to lay in a tent in the Andes knowing that back home in Minnesota the same full moon shone, albeit a bit lower in the sky.

Recently, though, each full moon has brought a new adventure, and I would rather like this trend to continue.

May: A night walk in the Arb with Heather. Fireflies are sparkling everywhere and Heather says the moon is brighter in Minnesota, perhaps due to "high levels of background magic."

June: Camping in Yellowstone with Chelsea. A warm night sandwiched between days of geysers, waterfalls, and bears.

July: Sitting in the hot tub at RMBL, first alone beneath the moon then joined by old friends.

August: Atop Fremont Peak with a view like none I have yet seen.

What next? No idea, but life is full of surprises...

Spent the afternoon in Jackson today, shopping for a new hat and eating delicious Mexican food. Time to get some sleep for more lynx surveys tomorrow.

Just completed the Fremont Peak photo essay. Check it out here.

Back from Fremont Peak

Just back from Fremont. Climbed the peak this morning, then back out - 18 miles total. Look for a photo essay tomorrow.

Big winds and big storms - and reflections

Ah...the fickle weather of Wyoming. Storms do not move--they develop and disappear in place, so that clear sky may become rain in an hour or an approaching storm may dissipate before it arrives. Today brought rainclouds around noon - storms that immediately dropped the temperature about 20 degrees with a 40 mph wind. Hailstones and lightning strikes, then back to calm and 70. More storms in the late afternoon. High peaks may see some snow today and tomorrow, but weather still looks perfect for our planned Fremont Peak ascent this weekend.

49 lynx points today - a new record. Not too surprising, as most of the areas were aspen or open sagebrush and so easy to write off as inadequate denning habitat. Both Kate and I are beginning to tire of the daily grind to tick off the points - now at 240 of 458. Should be another two weeks.

Bought backpacking food and final supplies this evening. Now watching Planet Earth (someone has DVDs) and packing - we plan to leave at 4 pm tomorrow to get a good start. Ryan is battling a potential hernia so is worried that he might have to turn back.

Finally got a chance to open the "remember" document - memories of graduation prepared by parents, friends, and relatives. Quite a lot of work went into that! Brings back memories - some wonderful, some sad. Too bad that I really didn't appreciate what Carleton meant to me until a few months before it was time to leave for the last time. I am supposed to add my memories. Perhaps I will sometime, but I really don't have much to say about most of it. Good to see relatives again, but same old questions - what's next? - and just like any other reunion or gathering. Lunches were - well - just food, and the ceremonies were as dry as any other grand production of that institution revered as high academia. Of course it feels good to receive hard-earned honors, but that is not what life is about.

What matters to me is not the ceremony - the end. Perhaps the only importance of the ending - aside from forcing a jump from a comfortable home into the "real world" - is that the knowledge that the end is approaching provides an impetus to step above the daily routines of studying and related anxieties in order to take advantage of all that is offered and to make a lasting difference. In my case, this meant a trip to Louisiana, a song of my own arranging, an geeky but award-winning video, IM sports, various escapades of streaking, and an Arb booklet that was an attempt to give back some of the knowledge and experience gained from four years of intimate relations with Carleton's natural lands.

The last term brought my first attempt to create a social environment of my own design - Wednesday night bonfires. Sparklers, instruments, voices, wings of light in long exposures, Polish mead, homebrew and better brew, and a weekly gathering of friends. Looking back on graduation, I mainly remember my final bonfire - the hurry and scurry to relocate and tell everybody, Ed's original songs, homegrown rhubarb, Aaron (not Erin - Erin is a girl's name) and his improv violin, Heather the elf and her "Caledonia" solo, sad final goodbyes to Heather, late-night discussions with Aaron. The academic achievements and awards are important to me - if I had done poorly I could not have been satisfied with myself or my Carleton experience - but aside from that they mean little. They help me to feel good about myself in some ways, but they are but cold recognition. I will miss the love and acceptance, my role as naturalist and Arb consultant, the community of liberal (if unfortunately atheist) intellectuals as eager to toss a volleyball or a frisbee as to understand the theory of kin selection or the fundamental theorem of calculus. I will miss the A Cappellicans, both as a group of friends and a chance to express through music.

In short, there is very little about graduation itself that I will remember. It is important to those who had few or no other chances to visit Carleton, or to those who count milestones along a life path. But to me it is only a transition - a time of bustle and formality. I can only hope that I will manage to find another community of like-minded people in the coming years, and that when I do I will realize what I have found before the end approaches.

Basketball and a northwest wind

Another 10-hour day under fast-moving clouds from the northwest and temps in the low 60s. A welcome change from the summer dry heat. We found bear claw marks on an aspen where a small bear - probably an older cub - had attempted to climb it and succeeded in making it about 10 feet up. Today's transect followed a little clear mountain stream up a steep valley before breaking out into open aspen.

After dinner, Nick and I went down to the park where we found a local high school basketball player eager to start a game. So I got some good exercise and realized exactly how bad my shots have become since my team play days.

Remaining REI items arrived today, and I bought a little pack at the outdoor shop to carry water and food up the mountain on Saturday.

Clear skies and a new warbler

Back to the lynx work today following a cold front last night that brought fall-like temperatures - 40s in the morning rising to beautiful 70s in the afternoon. The front cleared out the haze, leaving the sky almost impossibly clear. I find it hard to pull my eyes from the full 80-mile-long profile of the Wind River crest against the cerulean sky - every peak seeming somehow more real with the obscuring haze gone. The Wyoming Range to the west and the Gros Ventre Range to the north appear equally clear, and the few cirrus clouds seem a welcome addition to the spectacle. Forecast calls for more of the same beautiful weather.

Kate and I finished 45 points today - shattering our previous record of 36 - but we are still only 1/3 done with the project. Should take us 2-3 more weeks, then on to the range water/birdramp work. Kate is eager to move on to a project at least tangentially related to cattle (she is a range management major with somewhat less interest in nonexistent endangered wildlife).

A group of Townsend's Warblers made an appearance in the aspen canopy as we stopped for lunch. Not too different from their eastern counterparts (Black-throated Green Warblers), but even so it's not that often I find a new warbler species.

A 20+ mile hike

The last two days I have been backpacking to try out my new gear. Check out the photo essay for stories and photos. Also take a look at the photos of the day for a couple of photos from Cheyenne.

Back to lynx surveys tomorrow. Will be working 10-hour days in order to bank hours to take Friday off, so will be starting at 7 am.

Back from Cheyenne

After two fairly long drives and two fairly boring days learning about the BLM, FS, NPS, and FWS, along with unnecessarily long lectures about Section 7 of the ESA which requires biologists working with T&E species to prepare a BA for any project (after which the FWS will respond with a BO), I am back in Pinedale and ready to keep chugging away at the lynx project. The workshop was somewhat helpful (suggestions on how to get government jobs and how to write the type of reports necessary to document impacts to sensitive/threatened species) but in large part unnecessary (BLM background info, safety discussions, etc.).

There were, however, three good things about the workshop:

1. Chrissy finally finished Harry Potter, so I started the book on Sunday and finished Monday evening. (Having finished the series, I highly recommend it to any reader of any age.)

2. Our hotel was about 100 feet from the Union Pacific transcontinental mainline, so I could always watch trains (~100 per day).

3. I had the opportunity to meet and hang out with a good number of interesting young ecology folks. Such meetings inevitably lead to the perception of a small world, as the number of young ecology folks is not that large. People included:
Annika, just graduated from St. Olaf and now working in Tucson for the BLM
Sasha, from Ohio and good friends with Jens Stevens (Carleton grad and senior Arb naturalist last year) from an REU program
Cristin, from Delaware and familiar with my good friend Liana Burghart through frisbee.
Pacifica, from California and former labmate of Chiji Ochiaga, one of my housemates from RMBL last summer.

Also had a chance to buy stuff at radio shack and sports stores (we now have an aerobie, a volleyball, and an X-box).

Dubois - twin foals, warm springs, and smoky tetons

The town of Dubois is 40 miles away as the crow flies. By road, it is 160 miles through Jackson or 220 miles through Lander (the problem being the presence of the Wind River Mountains in between). It is also the not-so-humble abode of the Box Hanging Three Ranch, run by the grandparents of my college buddy Andy Tolan. As Andy is at present spending a sort of summer vacation at the ranch, I took my hard-earned day off to drive around the mountains to find him. We spent the first afternoon swimming in the Warm Springs River that runs through the ranch - an aptly named stream that is always a comfortable temperature thanks to its hydrothermal origins. After that it was prime rib at the local steakhouse and early to bed.

Today began with a morning walk, followed by a long horseback ride up a ridge and down a canyon - quite fun for a fellow who is lucky to land his ass on an equine backside more than once in a year. Two foals are currently running around the front yard - rare twins who lost their mother in childbirth. They act rather like puppies, following people around and trying to chew on clothes. I came back the northern route through Jackson and found the Tetons mostly obscured by smoke - must be a big fire up that direction. Around Pinedale it is still perfectly clear - the haze has gone.

Tomorrow we leave at 10 am for Cheyenne to be "trained" by the Chicago Botanic Garden. Odd that we should be trained when our contracts are nearly half over, but it seems the Garden has money to spend on training and so has to do something with it. At least we get full pay, free hotel rooms, and paid travel expenses. We will probably get back to Pinedale late Tuesday night with the goal of getting to work on Wednesday - so expect another update Wednesday evening.

Photos of the Day updated.

Back to the Lynx

Pothole bird surveys are done, so Kate and I headed back out west to start the next round of lynx surveys. Kate, a junior at Brigham Young University in Idaho with an interest in wildlife and range management, is a good companion and worker - and much less of a complainer (and a much safer driver!) than the other two women I have worked with. We found some top-notch lynx habitat that was also, of necessity, bottom-notch human habitat (four-foot deep stacks of fallen trees all twisted together, with the occasional yellow jacket nest to watch out for). If the whole area is this good, we will be out there a long time - but that is unlikely given our previous experience.

Came home after work to find nobody here, so decided to make my tofu dish for when the others arrived. 7 pm came and still nobody. So checked my voicemail and discovered that the others had gone to Jackson for dinner - they tried to find me but I went straight to the grocery store after work. So there are leftovers for tomorrow...

Freakish rainy spell has ended and we are in beautiful weather. Tomorrow should have a high of 77, coolest since my first days here, and a low around 38. Certainly not Minnesota heat and humidity here, but I do look forward to temps in the 60s and 70s instead of daily 80s and 90s. Still have a persistent haze that blocks distant mountain views - blown in from fires in Idaho and Montana. Locals say it will last until September.

Finally heard from Andy Tolan - he is at his ranch across the mountains for the next two weeks and is planning on coming here to visit at some point - perhaps this weekend.

A downhill hike and the end of the pothole-bird saga

(Sunday) After a late morning, Nick finally managed to get me off of my ass (and computer game) to go for a hike. Nick and Chrissy wanted an easier trail so opted for Photographer's Point. As I had already been there, I set off on my own on the Pine Creek trail, which drops 2,000 feet into the canyon of Pine/Fremont Creeks and Long Lake. It was a pleasant hike, and I only passed two other people - most folks take the easy route to Photographer's Point, Miller Lake, and beyond. Long Lake lies at the bottom of a deep glacial canyon carved into the ancient gneiss and makes for a beautiful up-valley vista. I hiked down Fremont Creek to the north end of Fremont Lake. A storm arrived with some serious wind just as I reached the lake, blowing spray and horizontal rain in my face. But the storm mostly missed me - the rain lasted only about five minutes. I chose a different trail for part of the return, but found it to be largely abandoned and difficult to follow in places. After a brisk hike up the 2,000 feet to the trailhead, I made it home in time for supper.

(Today) A good day of watching birds for pay - unfortunately my last as we are now finished with the area. Lots of yellow warblers, western tanagers, red-naped sapsuckers, and Brewer's sparrows. Clouds built up but didn't drop rain today. I worked on prep for the lynx survey in the afternoon. Played basketball with Nick before dinner - so far we haven't managed to find a 10-foot rim but have been enjoying the 9-foot rim near the library.

Paid to watch birds...

I realize it's been well over a week since my last "daily" update. I have acquired a computer game (Sacred) that is rather addicting and so have been doing that rather than posting on here in my free time. This past week went rather fast, with the first four days occupied by prairie pothole surveys. These potholes, formed when large blocks of glacial ice melted to leave depressions, formerly provided good habitat for Trumpeter Swans and all manner of waterfowl and shorebirds. Now all but 10 (of 100) are dry, a testament to the severe drought in recent years. We are surveying plants and birds and photographing each site. As I am the only "bird nut" in the office, birds are my responsibility. So far I have found Brewer's Sparrows, Sage Thrashers, Red-naped Sapsuckers, Mountain Bluebirds, Warbling Vireos, Yellow Warblers, Willow Flycatchers, several species of teal, Buffleheads, Willets, plenty of Killdeers, Red-tailed Hawks, and many other species. Friday was less exciting as the anomalous rain continued and kept us in the office. I worked on setting up the next part of our lynx habitat survey (which will take a solid four weeks in the field) and preparing for another project involving inspection of range water sources and installation of bird ramps so that birds that fall in while attempting to drink can escape.

This weekend has been rather mellow - mainly cleaning, catching up finances, laundry, and of course my computer game. Chelsea is leaving tomorrow, so we had a farewell dinner at the brewpub last night.

Website updated with two new photo essays.