I love it here. Everything is so beautiful and green. Moss, ferns, lichen, and mushrooms grow everywhere in the woods, there are meadows exploding with goldenrod and burnet saxifrage scattered throughout our property, and the gorgeous, 153 foot deep Grindstone Lake is just down the path from our house. I love living next to a lake. LOVE IT. For the few weeks of August and the first week or so of September, we swam in the lake everyday. It was so refreshing to go through a day of training and be able to jump into the lake for a half hour before dinner to refresh and soothe my aching feet before more training after dinner. I saw my first wild painted turtle sunning itself on a rock on one of my first days swimming in the lake and swam over to it to say hi. I swam during sunset and watched as the sun sunk below the silhouetted pine trees across the lake in a burst of oranges, pinks, gold, and blue (the sunsets here over the lake are amazing). We've gone on night swims together and leapt into the water holding hands, dreading how cold it might be and realizing that it actually is an incredibly comfortable temperature. Every time we swim in the lake, ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT, we panic when we realize that one of the boys has dived under the water, since this usually means that soon something will be grabbing our feet. Despite the bad reputation that horror movies have given night swims, they are actually the most peaceful and illuminating experiences I have ever had. To swim in glassy smooth water beneath millions of stars is a breathtaking experience, I can't even begin to explain it. Maybe I'll write about it one night in one of my journals and try to describe it then. The stars here are completely different from anything I've ever seen in Utah, even out in the desert or the woods. I don't remember seeing so many galaxies, constellations, colors, shapes, or clusters there, but maybe I've never paid attention as much as I do here. I have less interest in spending time on my computer or being inside at all at the moment (though I clearly am on my computer now, and I know that I'll definitely want to be inside once winter comes...), so I spend as much time as possible outdoors or with my friends. Another thing I LOVE to do is hang out on the pontoon. We read on the pontoon, study on the pontoon, do homework on the pontoon, hang out on the pontoon, tell jokes on the pontoon, dive off the pontoon, etc. The pontoon is like second home base (besides the staff house and the barn).
The outdoors ARE AMAZING! This entire blogpost could just be about how in love I am with these woods, the lake, the creatures, and nature in general (the answer is giddily, gleefully in love), but I'll spare you that and instead try to catch up on the past month as much as possible. The first couple of days here I had off, since it was a move-in weekend for all new interns. My dad and I road-tripped it up from Utah, experiencing Mt. Rushmore and some of the Badlands along the way, and arrived in the afternoon the day before technical move-in. We unpacked my stuff, went out to dinner, hiked, unpacked more stuff, and the next day he left after some canoeing and more unpacking. I felt a little unsteady at first (and yes, I did cry), but I got over it and immediately dove into socializing with my new housemates. We all instantly became friends. I feel like they are family now after only a month and I look forward to nine more months of shenanigans with them :) Anyways, I digress. Once training started, we were working twelve hour days in order to learn all of the information we needed to teach classes for the naturalist part of our internship and to take care of the education animals for the wildlife part of our internship. That first week we were trained in orienteering, where my compass wouldn't work correctly and so my partner and I bushwhacked through the darkening forest during a rainstorm in the wrong direction, canoeing, where we learned how to do T-rescues and how to teach different strokes, climbing wall, where we learned how to belay, high ropes, where I learned how to free-lead climb and how to push myself out of my comfort zone, low ropes, where we all learned how to be a team, and how to do barn chores.
The barn is our education animal palace, where us wildlife interns hang out 80% of the time (well, when we're not teaching). Chores include things like food prep for raptors and Spike (our porcupine), cleaning mews, feeding and cleaning the amphibians and snakes, cleaning aquariums, and cleaning procedures for the barn, like sweeping. In our first week, we met all the birds (who were very wary of us) and were assigned a training book to read in preparation for training our own birds (who we were assigned the next week). The book is Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor and I extremely recommend it, even if you aren't an animal trainer. It's an amazing reference for anyone who wants to "train" someone, even people. I plan on using the techniques on my children some day. One of the interns last year apparently trained a girl to wear a pink headband to work everyday, so needless to say we're all sort of worried whenever anybody wants to compliment us EVER. We had a day where we played the "Training Game" which was SO FUN. Basically you use the principles of operant conditioning to train different people to do a difficult task. For instance, I was the first person to be trained. My bridge, or cue that I did something correct and thus get positive reinforcement for it, was a foot stomp. Every time I did something that furthered the possibility of me performing the desired behavior, I got a foot stomp and an MnM. My task turned out to be laying down on the bench, which my trainer got me to do by reinforcing me for sitting down on the bench and then reinforcing me whenever I would look under the bench. The lower down I looked, the more MnMs he gave me. Finally, I had what's called a "lightbulb moment" and I realized I SHOULD LAY DOWN! And I got a mouthful of MnMs and applause. It's REALLY fun, I would play it again and again and again. I recently found out that the bird I will be training is Cecilia, or Cica, our red phase eastern screech owl.
(this is a picture of a random screech owl, as I haven't gotten one of Cica yet)
I love her. She was hit by a car and thus has some brain damage which has caused her to have about a ten second mental delay. She wouldn't be able to survive in the wild due to this delay, as she would be too slow to hunt anything or avoid predators, so that's why she is at ACNW. My training plan for her involves making her comfortable with stepping up on the glove again and sitting comfortable for programs. Then I eventually want to be able to feed her on glove. I also have a pipe dream of training her to do free flight, but small owls are very different behaviorally from other raptors and Cica's mental delay makes her much more jumpy and "out there" compared to the other birds, so this might never happen. Oh well, I can dream. I realized this morning that I've been responsible now for two small owls that both have names starting with the "s" sound: Silva and Cica! I did my first training session with her last night and she was so, so good! She twittered a bit when I first went into her mew (a screech owl's sign that she/he is UPSET), but she quieted down as soon as I entered and stood in front of her. She jumped to her food platform, indicating some jumpiness, but I managed to slowly get the glove just an inch away from her with no flickering nictitating membranes (more signs of stress or being upset) and with slightly relaxed feathers (which had originally been almost all the way poofed out). Then I rewarded her with her food for the night. The entire session was only about five minutes long since I want her to mostly get used to me first and to associate her bridge with her reward of food, since no one remembers what her bridge used to be (probably least of all Cica).
Oh geez, I totally nerded out there. I'll go back to other things. I'm now officially passed off on handling our two kestrels, Isis and Gibwanasii (or Gibs or Gibsy Doodle), and our beautiful red-tailed hawk, Dakota. This is me handling her for the first time and grinning ecstatically.
Helloooo profile picture.
Our second week consisted of training in classes such as animal signs, where we hiked through the woods and determined where squirrels had cached their acorns, what kind of scat we saw (we think deer?), and I grabbed a garter snake. I have a bad impulsive habit of wanting to catch creatures and study them for a short period of time, which has led to me catching (or trying to catch) frogs, lizards, butterflies, caterpillars, marine creatures, and pigeons (LOTS of pigeons, though only one with my hand once at the art's festival. I named him Gaston). I've never caught a snake before, however, considering that most of Utah's snakes are poisonous (good life choice), so I went after this one and felt ecstatic that I caught him. However, once I caught him, he bit me. Six times. And then he musked me. Garter snake musk smells like misery and hate. I wanted to vomit for awhile after. Jeff, our wildlife coordinator (and one of my bosses), said I at least handled it better than a fifth grader would have. Still, it was a learning experience. An experience that I will probably not repeat for awhile (I'm not ruling it out completely). We went on more hikes, explored the woods, helped drag trees from the woods to the area where we're going to build a wigwam, went on multiple field trips to learn about Ojibwe culture, fur trappers, and the Great Hinckley Fire, learned how to teach a class called Stream Superheroes where we collect macroinvertebrates from the stream that feeds into Grindstone and then we categorize them and look at them under microscopes (I fell into a vernal pool), and I learned how to facilitate survivor, where we teach the kids about survival situations and have them build their own shelters and fires. Then at the end they boil water for hot chocolate, MMMM! I taught that as my first class today, BY MYSELF, and with our first school group of 5th graders. A BIT OVERWHELMING but the teacher and chaperone said I did a good job, I got a thank you card, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it! So I'm glad :D I've co-taught a couple of other courses so far too, such as climbing wall and high ropes, and I already feel like I'm learning so much about teaching by watching others. Another AWESOME class that has just been implemented this year is ARCHERY!!!
We are all now trained archery instructors. We are like KATNISSES! Hardcore. The instructor loaned us the deer 3D target, which is our favorite thing to shoot at. I keep trying to hit it in the eye (and succeeded once!)
Not only to I adore our birds (of course), but I also love our porcupine. I never thought I would think a porcupine was so adorable, but Spike is SO SO ADORABLE I CAN'T EVEN HANDLE IT! He has the cutest little teddy bear hands and makes the cutest little "mmm mmm mmm" sounds when he's excited! Every morning we go to feed him, he makes his excited sounds and greets us at the door of his pen. We allowed him to play in the barn and get used to our scent the first week we were there, where he crawled into my lap and scent marked both my legs. Yesterday when Megan and I went to put back climbing equipment, he saw us and started making his excited noises! HE RECOGNIZES US!!! I was so, SO happy! One day I offered him a rodent pellet to lure him away from the door of his pen (since we can't really open the door with him there), and he put his little paw on my hand to steady himself as he stood on his hind legs (like a little bear), and then took the rodent pellet with his other paw and stuffed it in his mouth. It was THE CUTEST THING.
(picture from ACNW's fb page)
Major training has ended and now we'll be teaching more regularly. I start doing raptor programs next week (SO EXCITEDDDD!!!) and am going to start training Cica three times a night. As for ADVENTURE news, I went rock climbing outside for the very first time ever! I have pictures of it that I'll share another night, but it was awesome. I was terrified at first and felt sort of like I was going to throw up before I started climbing, but I almost made it to my goal point! Unfortunately not the top, but at least I did it and challenged myself! That's all I need. I also accidentally went on a three hour bike ride the other night with Leeann where we mistakingly didn't turn at the correct road. The great parts about the ride were a) we saw sandhill cranes! (my first time seeing them in the wild) and b) at one point I was so tired that we walked, until we saw turkeys crossing the road. At that point I leapt on my bike and rode like wildfire in order to see them before they disappeared into the forest.
As well as going rock climbing outside (which was for JMack's birthday), we also went to Blueberry Falls, where we played until sunset. There were no blueberries, unfortunately, but there were still waterfalls and small caves to be explored. The forest near there was amazing, the floor was composed of the spongiest moss I've ever experienced, so every step was like bouncing. It was awesome.
We also went to Clarissa's house for a potluck (school group coordinator), where we frolicked through her nine foot tall grass prairie with sangria. We played hide and seek once it got dark and screamed a lot (especially when we were tackled by either a dog or one of the boys) and I almost lost my phone. Whoops.
I can't believe it's only been a month tomorrow.
The good news about taking about 900 pictures since arriving here is that I now have to be selective about which ones I put on my blog (since I rarely have time to blog now, though hopefully it will become more regular than once a month...maybe), so I will try to only post my BEST, FAVORITE pictures.
(p.s. I also learned how to take fish off of hooks safely, how to cast, how to tie a knot to repair a broken line, and how to measure different qualities of a lake)
(I want to start taking more pictures of people, including strangers. So I took this picture of one of the people at the watercolor retreat that occurred a couple of weeks ago)
synopsis: I LOVE IT HERE! I LOVE MY FRIENDS AND NEW FAMILY! I LOVE THE BIRDS! I LOVE THE MAMMALS! I LOVE THE WILD CREATURES! I LOVE OUR GRAY FOX KITS WE'RE RELEASING ON SUNDAY! I LOVE MY BOSSES! I LOVE THE CLASSES! I LOVE NATUREEEE!
Whoa that was pretty intense.
:)
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