Thursday, September 11, 2014 – Camp Creek, Baker County, OR
For the last four days we have been with a wonderful woman named Suzanne Fouty, helping her count and measure aspen trees in several exclosures in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (if you want to know why this is valuable work, check out my photo below). Spending 8 hours with trees can be tedious and maddening, but I was constantly intrigued and entertained by watching how my peers cope with monotonous manual labor. Some get quiet, some begin to frolic across the field, and some drink so much water they are on a perpetual pee break. The most entertaining peers to watch were those who turned every measurement into a joke by using accents and word plays to replace numbers and observations.
The jokes didn’t stop after the data was collected. Our evenings were spent inputing our findings into excel. My teammate Sam Traylor was reading me data as I typed it into the computer. For him, each measurement was an opportunity to make me slip up (or engage both sides of my brain, as he liked to put it). New languages, simple math, and words that rhymed were all used to keep me on my toes. Reiterating the dialogue would not capture the hilarity of the moment, but know that we were folded in half in laughter by the time we finished our sheet. Was it efficient? Not in the slightest. Were we feeling delusional? Probably. But it was by far the best time I have ever had while working on excel.
The work, though challenging, was enjoyable when among good company. And even when it wasn’t enjoyable, we learned to navigate each other’s work ethic, to assess our own role, and to look closely at the land in the process. The latter is of the greatest importance. On this trip, we get to spend this whole semester in awe of the beauty of the world and the destructiveness of humankind. Some may think this is depressing, but we are learning to see it as empowering. Everyday I’m gaining a greater appreciation of what a treasure the planet is, and how much power we have to protect it.
