Hiking The PCT, Summer of 2017!

I'm hiking the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail in the summer of 2017. CLICK HERE to visit my blog.

Living with Wildlife

I'm back in Yellowstone for the summer season! I've been working with the education office the past two weeks, working with a field trip visiting the park, presenting Skype lessons to schools all over the country, and traveling to an outreach event on nearby forest service land.

http://www.today.com/money/happy-100th-birthday-national-parks-today-celebrate-exciting-series-t86901

Gators Galore

The winter is flying by! Normally, winter in the Everglades is the dry season -- meaning little to no rain and mild temperatures. This winter however, has been exceptionally wet. January 2016 had the most rainfall since record-keeping began in 1932. As a result, the Everglades is still much wetter than normal for this time of year. Because of the high water levels, fish are more spread out than normal, and their predators are too. 

According to my coworkers who've worked here for many years, the visible wildlife is a fraction of normal. Luckily for me, I have no basis of comparison, and continue to be amazed by the wildlife. Alligators especially, so I thought it was time to share some more photos. 

This guy seemed to be napping and basking in the sun right on the trail. He laid there for hours. The fourth grade students I had on my field trip that day went home with a great story to tell!

I saw these two basking on the grass right near the parking lot at Shark Valley, in the northern part of the national park. They couldn't be bothered by the hundreds of visitors walking past.

I'm learning that it's not too difficult to convince northerners to visit South Florida in the winter :)  I was fortunate to have my best friends from Dartmouth visit a couple weekends ago. We had a great time exploring the Everglades, and relaxing on the beach in Key Largo.

We also took a glass-bottom boat tour in John Pennekamp state park. Looking down on the brilliantly-colored fish and coral was amazing. I look forward to going out there again with a snorkel!

"There are no other Everglades in the world"

Happy new year! I jumped into 2016 with a new job with the National Park Service, working as a seasonal education ranger at Everglades National Park. I've been here for nearly a month now, and thought I'd post some photos and reflections.

The list of differences between this park and Yellowstone is long, but one of the most profound is the surrounding population. Everglades National Park sits in Miami-Dade county, where there are roughly 350,000 students in public schools K-12. This a huge opportunity for Everglades, and the Environmental Education office is growing in attempts to reach as many students as possible. 

I'm working with a new field trip program that works with 80 to 100 fourth grade students each day, Monday through Thursday, each week. There have certainly been some challenges with this new program, but I'm learning a lot and the program is getting better each day. Last week, a group of students on one of my field trips got to see an Anhinga spear a fish, fight with it for several minutes, and eventually swallow it whole. Moments like that make my job very rewarding :)

Great white egret. One of many types of wading birds seen in the sawgrass prairies and freshwater sloughs.

American Alligator. The Everglades is the only place in the world where alligators, who live in freshwater, and crocodiles, who live in brackish water, coexist.

This is the amphitheater at the Flamingo campground, looking out on Florida Bay. 

On my drive home one day during my first week, I had to wait for this guy to cross the road.

Yesterday, I went canoeing in Florida Bay and saw many types of birds. This bald eagle seemed like he was posing for me. I also saw a roseate spoonbill, more brown pelicans than I could count, ibises, great blue herons, little blue herons, green herons, and of course lots of gulls.

Here's Betsy Baja in front of the Everglades National Park sign on a big brown rock, which people lovingly refer to as the potato.

"There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them; their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of the their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass, 1947

Photos from Yellowstone

It's been just over a year since I last updated this page, and it's safe to say I have some updates to share.

After finishing up my semester of student teaching at Mascoma from my last entry, I spent three weeks in classes at the Tuck Business Bridge Program, moved to the Midwest to work at a large, international healthcare software corporation, and then moved to the real West to work in the world's first National Park. Here are some photos and tidbits from the summer and fall in Yellowstone. 

This spring, I accepted a job with the National Park Service as a Recreation Ranger with the Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) program. YCC is a work program for 15 - 18 year old students, who live and work, getting paid, in Yellowstone for four weeks. The other Professional Recreators (as we like to call ourselves) and I were responsible for supervising the students on nights and weekends. We lived in a dorm in Mammoth Hot Springs in the northern part of the park, but I led groups of students on day-long hikes and overnight backpacking trips all around the park. I also enjoyed putting on talent shows, movie nights, and the infamous Yellowstone decathlon night. Man, I wish I'd known about YCC in high school!

Here's a litte more info about the program: http://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/management/yccjobs.htm

The last week of each session, we did a "group summit" hike with all 34 students. This photo was taken on top of Mount Washburn, over 10,000 ft.

After YCC ended in the end of August, I transitioned into a position in the Education and Youth Programs Office at Yellowstone. In this role, I work with field trip groups visiting the park, teach lessons over Skype to classes from all over the world, and participate in outreach to local schools and community events. So far, I've worked at a powwow, a teachers conference, with numerous field trip groups, and a cool event called Raptor Fest in Bozeman. I'm enjoying working with such a range of students and getting to teach about Yellowstone. The park is a tremendous place for learning science, history, geography, and conservation, and it's pretty special to get to share my excitement with students.

I've been lucky to have a number of friends visit me in Yellowstone this summer and fall. Here's a photo with my Aunt Linda, taken outside the Old Faithful visitor center. 

And some Dartmouth friends have visited the park as well. Here's a photo with three other Dartmouth '14s on top of Observation Peak! Gerben, far right, was a crew leader with YCC this summer.

I couldn't be happier to be living and working in such an amazing place. People call it "Wonderland" for a reason :)

Regular visitors to this page (both of 'em) have seen this quote before, but thinking about my progression through the past year, I figure it's worth including again.

“If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.” 

― Daniel J. Rice, This Side of a Wilderness

September Update

Today concludes week 6 of my student teaching internship at Mascoma Valley Regional High School.  This fall, I am doing 12 weeks of student teaching and working on my portfolio to complete my NH 7-12 Earth/Space science teaching certification. 

I'm learning a lot. That's my sugar-coated way of saying that I have more frustrating days than successful days. I like to be challenged. I always have. This fall has allowed me to realize that not all challenges are equally solvable and not all challenges are fulfilling. 

The Dartmouth part of my program - specifically the grad-level seminar that goes along with student teaching - has been disappointing. It's easier said than done, but I believe that I can have a meaningful experience student teaching despite the lack of support on the Dartmouth end. I am trying to see this as an opportunity to take initiative to push myself, a chance to direct my own learning. So far, this has been much harder than I expected. I have a lot of room to improve on that front.

I'm helping to coach the cross country team, which has been a wonderfully positive experience. It's a small team - only 6 athletes - but a great group of kids. Going to practice is a highlight of a lot of days. I'm very thankful that the team has welcomed me. I'm really proud of how hard the runners work, how supportive they are of one another, and how much each runner has improved since practice began in mid-August. I hope that I can coach again in the future - wherever I might be.

Goodbye Colorado!

Yesterday was my last day of the season as a park ranger at Colorado National Monument. I was incredibly lucky to have this experience and I'd like to think I made the most of it. I went on a lot of adventures this summer and met a lot of truly wonderful people. Of course, there are more things I would've liked to do, places I would've liked to see, but I ran out of weekends. I prefer to think of those things as reasons to come back :)

Here are a few highlights:

The Firsts:

• 14,000-footer - Mt. Sneffels

• Raft trip - Lower Animas river, Durango

• Mountain bike trip - Rustler's Loop, Loma

• Road Race at night - Moonlight Miles 10K

Things I won't miss:

• The heat!

Things I will miss:

• Junior rangers. Going through their activity books, presenting them with a badge, and administering the oath was a highlight of every day at the visitor center.

• Meeting park visitors from all over the world

• The beach volleyball+bar that we go to on Friday nights

• Getting to hike during work time - that's pretty hard to beat

• Having a uniform - makes getting dressed for work very easy

• Taco Tuesdays with the maintenance guys

• Grand Junction Rockies single-A baseball games

• The drive to work - check out this color-enhanced photo of my commute:

• Bighorn sheep, lizards, red-tailed hawks, snakes, and scorpions (just kidding about the last two)

• My roommate Angela:

And lastly, I am re-posting a quote that I like a lot and sums up my feelings about this summer.

“If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.” 

― Daniel J. Rice, This Side of a Wilderness