arizona

I have love for a lot of different habitats. As I've stated before, I am in love with the ocean. I also love forests because I am, indeed, a child of the woods.



But there is something about the desert. I adore the hues of orange and red, the plants that can survive based on elaborate and elegant water-gathering systems, the hazy heat, and the surprisingly colorful fauna that can be found in the sagebrush.





I love the desert. I throw around the word "love" a lot, but that's only because I really am in love with so many things. I am incredibly passionate about so many things, and the desert is definitely one of them. I went on an advanced field ornithology course that travelled down to Madera Canyon, a mecca for migrating birds located just 50 miles north of the Mexican border, two years ago. It was there that I truly fell in love with Arizona and the beautiful Sonoran Desert. I live in Utah, which is home of many different deserts, and it's ironic that I had to travel elsewhere to appreciate what I have here. Not only to I have access to the amazing deserts of Southern Utah, I also can frolic in the woods anytime I like, considering I live at the base of an immense range of mountains.

I tagged along with the same field course this year, though this time it was not as a student. I did my own independent research project, which put me on par with the graduate students TAing the course. Since one of the TAs had to stay behind due to Pneumonia, I became (essentially) the third TA for the course (though with half as much work). The first time I took this course, I learned a lot about birds. I learned how to locate them with binoculars, how to identify their calls, how to correctly ID them, and simple research collection techniques in the field. I made friends, I came out of my shell a little, and I fell more in love with birds. This time around, I learned more, both about birds and myself.

The discovered that I love field work. Before leaving for the trip, I had a somewhat romantic idea of what field work would be. It would involve long days going on epic adventures, exploring beautiful habitats where birds were easily visible, and data would be collected like nobody's business. I had dreams where my PI was just blown away by how competent I was at collecting data. Unfortunately, this is not exactly the truth. Field work is hard work. INCREDIBLY HARD WORK. There were days where I got dehydrated. I almost got heat stroke one particular day and then burst into tears. I got hideously sunburnt. I got up at four AM and went to bed at eleven PM, if I was lucky. I spent hours scouring the desert and sometimes found absolutely no data. It got to the point where my PI would make comments to the graduate students about how I was making little to no progress, who would then relay this to me, which would then horrendously depress me. Basically, there were was a rather large rough patch at the beginning of the course. I had a long tearful talk with the graduate students where they convinced me that I should be more assertive and say what I wanted. So I did just that. And since then I have been a lot happier (though still rather stressed). It was after this point, where I sat down with my PI and told him what I needed to do and what I wanted to do, that I started getting real data. I started having more fun. I was elated.

Now onto the awesome part of field work. Being out in the desert (or field in general, I suppose) is just a wholesome experience. I didn't wear makeup, I didn't shower, I didn't brush my hair for several days, and I still felt great. It's because no one cares. One of my friends has a shirt that says "I'm not a lesbian, I'm a field biologist!", which describes my situation perfectly. I still felt healthy and beautiful despite the absence of my usual day crutches, like concealer and shampoo. Days were spent collecting data, hanging out with friends, and, if there was nothing else to do, hiking. There was limited access to internet, so if there was down time that wasn't spent napping it was spent hiking the many trails littered around our experimental station.

Our usual schedule involved getting up at 4-5 AM (depending on that day's scheduled outing), eating breakfast (or not), driving/jamming/talking, birding/collecting data for 8-9 hours, driving/jamming/talking, and then arriving back at the research station where we made dinner, hung out for awhile, and then returned to our special TA house and drank beer. Basically, it was amazing.



I caught a lot of lizards. I also got hurt trying to catch a lot of lizards.

















Ocotillo is my favorite desert plant.

I'm in love with field work, I'm in love with Santa Rita Experimental Station, I'm in love with the desert. It actually made me really sad to come back home from that, since I was so happy. But I just have to remember the good times while I'm struggling through my stress (which is starting to diminish!). I just have to remember how in love I was with everything.

Also I just want to leave you guys with this