Saturday February 15, 2014
15:20

Front Royal, VA - One month has passed since I began my internship here at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and I can say that I have already learned many many things. Perhaps nothing more powerful than my new appreciation for wifi - the stuff is gold. I joke, but truly, living in an old farm house nestled in the woods a mile away from anyone really makes one appreciate the small things. Life as an intern is definitely different than life as a student. Of course everyone knows that but, this being my first real internship anywhere, I had a lot to learn. First and foremost is that I am answering to a boss now. A boss who is none other than Dr. William McShea. Also, I am now working a consistent 8-5 schedule (never less but often more). Being an intern certainly has its perks, however. I am now part of “the other side of the curtain” and am in the unspoken, and probably not even recognized, brotherhood of other interns and researchers. I rub elbows and share bathrooms with researchers every day. I am peers with other youthful, vibrant, determined people working each day towards our careers as the next generation of conservationists. Being near so many Masters and PhD hopefuls really has helped me focus and redefine my goals. I’m still very clueless, don’t get me wrong, but I have become much more confident in my choice to take each step slow and sure. To work each day trying to learn as much as possible, and to never stop hunting for the next wild research opportunity. A researcher I work with put it perfectly, “You’re young and don’t have too many responsibilities, now is the time to go out there and do crazy shit! Go explore and research in the craziest places while you can still handle it!”. Words that made me laugh at first, but very much resonated in my head for days afterwards.

The BiodiversiTree project is certainly coming a long. In only a month we have plotted out all but one of our 35m x 35m plots and have flagged 10 of them. My time is divided between working in the field with our land manager, Kyle Rhodes, and working in the office for Virginia Working Landscapes. I have to say, I much prefer hiking up and down snowy slopes carrying hammers and tapes and rebars than sitting in a quiet office pulling out my hair to teach myself enough excel to only have to redo the file 5 times. Computer work is where the future is, even in conservation, and excel is the most basic tool of all - I’m getting there. 

Living in the Leach House has been a wonderful experience for me so far. The old farm house is secluded but not so secluded that the maintenance team can’t get to us with their plows. It is filled with old furniture and photos from past teams of interns. The rooms just resonate with history and creepiness. It’s like living in a historic building. At times I feel like I should be preserving it - not shitting in its toilet. I occasionally take my DSLR out and explore the area around it. One can easily see remnants of Captain Leach’s farmland. By our pond are two abandoned barns (one of which I think Leach Cat lives in) and along the sides of the house one can see the broken down remains of stone fences. I love the winter but at the same time am eager for the warmer weather. I long to be able to run outside and feel the sun on my skin again. Once it warms up we will be able to clean up our garden and perhaps even grow vegetables. 

Last weekend I flew up to Michigan to visit Laurie. It had only been a month since I last saw her but I already missed her so much. It’s definitely been hard dealing with the distance. This being my first go at a long distance relationship (her third), my 8-5 daily schedule (get up at 7, dark by 6), on average only seeing 5 different people a day (she’s at college) and the lack of social outlet (we have two bars and a bowling ally, no wifi) - it was easy to see why she was doing so much better than me. I admit it wasn’t ideal to cash in my one flight so early in the game but because of her lacrosse schedule and encroaching exams - I had to work around her schedule. I am terrified of flying. For example, when I took off from Dulles in that tiny little plane I held my hands together, closed my eyes and blasted “Let’s Be Still” by The Head and the Heart. My heart was nearly in arrhythmia. There are just too many variables (I would be happy never flying again and driving and sailing the rest of my life if I had the money and time). And to see my darling for the weekend I had to take off and land 4 times in 2 days. I don’t know if she’ll ever understand how much I care about her but I do know that the people unfortunate enough to be in the seats next to me certainly do. All my melodrama and near death experiences aside - flying up north gave me the chance to see some of the most beautiful views of my life. Flying into Chicago at night is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The city is an endless, illuminated grid. There’s really no better way to describe it other than that it looked like yellow Tron. On the other hand, flying into Detroit on my way back home looked like an endless ocean of ice and dark blue water. Flying above the winter storm made me feel like I was gazing down upon the Antarctic…When I touched down in Chicago it was already 2200 and I knew that it was a solid three hour drive back to Holland, MI. I don’t think I can really describe the 2 short days I got to spend with her. She’s good for my soul. Life has always been rather hectic for me - I never seem to think I am doing enough or doing the right thing. My mind wanders and loses itself very often in the mess of my own self-expectation. In terms of Love, I have never fared well. My past relationships have always been the perfect storm of my own insecurities, idealism and, there’s no way around it, terrible women. Laurie has always had this sense about her that I have not found before. She is straightforward, tells me what she is thinking about, tells me how she feels and tells me to tell her what’s on my mind - she makes me talk. She is realistic and always knows how to ground me again when my head gets too lost in the clouds. She is, at the same time, the tenderest person and the hardest person to me. She just knows how to drive me forward. The two days were filled with meeting her housemates, seeing her campus, walking around Holland’s downtown, taking in the Michigan winter and meeting her siblings. I can definitely say I am still in love with the north. As much as she hates it I still very much want to live somewhere where the winters are harsh and the summers are beautiful. Somewhere where the mountains meet the ocean and I can make my future FJ Cruiser really put it’s 4x4 to the test. Perhaps my second favorite moment of the trip was trekking across the frozen beach of Holland State Park with her and gazing across the frozen expanse of Lake Michigan (the first favorite being meeting her family, of course). It was both my first time seeing any of the Great Lakes and seeing this much frozen water. I remember turning towards her and staring into her eyes as the wind and snow blew around us. The snow illuminated her eyes and I couldn’t help but pull her in and hold her. Too often I count my blessings because, to me, nothing ever lasts as long as you want it to. This weekend was half way done, my internship will end, she will soon graduate and sooner than I want we will both be cast again into the next hectic chapters of our lives. And the hard part that I force myself to not think about is the very real possibility of us parting ways. She’s a realist, I am a idealist - there has been a disconnect since day 1 on how we see our relationship and it’s something that simply won’t change. Time can make or break things. We will be doing our wild research all over the world and it’s pretty certain it won’t be with each other. When the time comes that we can’t hold onto this anymore I have to be able to take it. So I held her…But before this tangent becomes completely depressing - I finally got to meet her siblings. I got to meet the brother, sister and sister-in-law I had heard so much about before. We had brunch at her brother’s house in Chicago and it was like walking into a Pottery Barn magazine fused with a bookstore - I loved it. They say when you are with someone their family unconditionally comes along with the package and man am I glad they were so carefree and fun to be around. Fresh pancakes, good music and good conversation is what we had for breakfast. I admit I was nervous that an all out interview was going to happen but it wasn’t at all like I anticipated. They were kind, interesting and interested - it couldn’t have been more perfect. 

All too soon the weekend ended and a week of work went by. The passing storms have been beautiful but tough on us at Leach House. It’s hard to get out of here to main campus without our pickup and the gracious help from the maintenance guys’ plows. Though, being snowed in does have its perks. It gave us a chance to rest and enjoy living in the woods. Something I didn’t expect was how being out from 8-5 really leaves you with no energy (or daylight) to enjoy the simplicity of the farm house you live in. We just get back, eat dinner and sleep. Walking through the deep snow with my camera allowed me to capture some peaceful and beautiful moments of Leach House. The first month here has already taught me so much. I am here till June and fill my spare time with reading, writing, applying to jobs/internships and PBR. I think about her all the time and I think about the future more than I should. She always tells me I think way too much into things and I don’t think she could be more right. I always seem to miss the small things and yet obsess over the little moments - if that even makes sense. But, the long and the short of it all is that I know that I am blessed, that I know life goes on and that I know there is time. She came into my life quite unexpectedly and has shown me so much in so short a time. She has made me happier than I have ever been and has lit a fire in me that has burned away the dusty, old things that have cluttered my head and my heart for too long now. I am becoming a new man with each passing day and I owe her for that.

Here’s to the next steps and trekking on.

Chris

Saturday December 21, 2013
11:34

It’s hard to look back through my SMSC photographs and think about how quickly the last 4 months have passed by. 4 months is nothing at all - simply a semester’s time, and yet during those few months it felt like I was part of a different world. I don’t know if it’s a sudden upwelling of premature nostalgia, or a need for final words - closure. But I’d like to quickly recount the last weeks of my time with my SMSC family as well as where my life has taken me since. 

Our finals were comprised of 3 hour long situational questions. However, SMSC isn’t your average semester program and surprised us with situations were we had to go through camera trap photos and create species abundance graphs as well as species present at a carcass data analysis. There was a moment when we needed to pack our things and move to our computer lab and update a GIS map of our campus with new roads. The hands on, out-of-the-box method of teaching SMSC provided is something that made the 4 short months spent there worth years of lab and field experience - and I am forever grateful for that. Our finals week was, however, a bittersweet experience. Not because of the exams themselves but because of their implications. We were quickly and unavoidably getting closer to the end of our semester. As a result every moment of those last two weeks of class were not spent studying or reviewing but were spent together. We played Magic: The Gathering, we watched movies, we made friendship bracelets, we played in the snow, we hiked, we had pizza parties and we snuggled erratically. It was as if  we were’t just holding onto the last moments we had together as a family, but were holding onto to the last moments we had as carefree college students. Before a number of us lay a long and difficult road of job searching, grad school applications and internship hunting. Before all of us lay the selfless, underfunded road of conservation. Through the echoing of the hallways I could hear the voices of the 11 people that had become my family. I thought about our futures and how drastically we all have changed since the first day. I believe it was a coincidence that 12 extremely sentimental people were thrown into the same semester (it’s a fact that other semesters were not nearly as close or awesome as us) and hold it true to myself that it was a miracle (it literally was, ACS’ class was only 5 people which was under the minimum amount of enrollment needed - it was almost cancelled) that we all got to meet each other. 

When our last week finally arrived we were once again thrown into a flurry of activity - it was final presentations and closing week. Having already delivered our group monitoring plan presentation a few weeks ago, we were left with presenting our individual visual essays describing our practicum experiences. It was the first time we were all able to see what our classmates did for their mini-internship. We got to see how much poop scooping, bush-wacking, camera trapping, tree finding, park educating, turtle finding and food prepping we all did. We truly were a class of comedians and made short work of making our practicum advisors, teachers and supervisors cry with laughter. Then came our closing ceremonies. Gathered in the dining hall we had all come to love, we watched as our beloved teachers called us up one by one and explained to us exactly how much they loved us and how much they will miss us. They recounted to us our quirks and sayings, they brought up memories and jokes and did it all in front of us, our families, researchers and visiting conservationists - for each and every one of us. I don’t think I’ve ever smiled, laughed and nearly man-teared so much. These teachers were our friends. They went above and beyond every day to teach us, drive us, feed us and even secret santa with us. Throughout this semester I talked to them as well as several of the researchers as humans. I tried to learn more about their likes and dislikes. Their families and their goals. I saw them all as good, honest, hard working people and not just teachers or supervisors - and it all paid off. I came away from the semester with a group of fantastic people I can call my friends. This came in quite handy when nearly all of them jumped to tell me that they would gladly say good words about me while I was applying for internships. Speaking of which, the last two weeks for me were a flurry of stressful internship applications, emails, contacting and reference hunting. What emerged from all of it was a shiny, new 5 month long internship at SCBI with Dr. McShea! I had done it! I came into this semester with 2 main goals: Learn everything I can possible learn and get a job/internship. Landing that internship was the product of nearly a years worth of hard work and determination. As this blog can attest, I needed this lifeline desperately. As I walked away from Dr. McShea’s office through the campus towards the Residence Hall I thought about the place I would soon be calling home for another 5 months. I thought about how empty the halls were already - my friends leaving in their cars one tearful round of hugs after another. I thought about how we were like god damn dragon balls shooting away all across the world never to be reunited again for a long long time. I thought about how it isn’t the buildings that truly make a place special to you - it’s the people in them. As I walked away from that office my feelings of excitement poured out of my brain and churned with the overwhelming tide of sentiment pouring out of my heart. By the time I found Becca, Jeff and Laurie sitting on the floor of our desolated hallway I was a mess. After helping Becca finish up her packing, Laurie and I exchanged last hugs in our parking lot and watched our two RAs walk back into the now completely empty Residence Hall. It would be only a short time before I would be coming back here - but not for a long time would I be seeing any of them again. 

I had the amazing fortune of meeting Laurie Stubenrauch this semester. She’s a strong-headed, strong-willed, rough and tumble girl from Long Island studying biology in Michigan and I absolutely adore her. What started off as casual late-night study sessions and conversations turned into a wonderful friendship. Fast forward 4 months and I just got back from meeting her parents and friends in her hometown of Huntington, NY. She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met. To put it plainly and in a nutshell, I’ve never met a girl that so perfectly blends a love of the outdoors, art, music, fashion and sports without the streak of utter bullshittery so many girls nowadays have in them (I mean no offense, unless you are the type of girl I am alluding to, in that case you are absolutely awful). Again and again I find myself realizing how lucky I am to have met a woman like her. We spent the week after our departure from SCBI having a tour de meet-the-parents. She spent 3 days in Virginia meeting my friends and family prior to my visit up north and I must say it was a collision of many of my worlds. Seeing her there in my house eating with my family, seeing her in my room helping sew my worn out jeans, seeing her interacting with my friends and walking with me in Fairfax Corner past my REI - it was all surreal and special. For so long I have discounted my chances of romance. So worn out has my heart and mind been from the terrible relationships that have made up my past. My mind was so set on getting to where I wanted to be professionally I felt I wouldn’t meet anyone, let alone actually pursue a relationship until after I was independent and living on my own. She blindsided me. In our short time together she has inspired in me a new type of hope I haven’t had before. She has encouraged me to believe in myself as well as my dreams. She has shown me that not all is as dark as it seems and that hard work and a little luck is all one ever needs. She has shown me the value of being wild and spontaneous as well as the value of just sitting back and listening to each other exist. But most of all, she has shown me that despite the distance, despite the timing and despite the many many variables of our chaotic futures - there are things worth holding on to. In the words of The Oh Hellos, In Memoriam, “If you leave from the start then there was never love at all”.

It’s been a crazy 4 months of my life. As it all comes to a close I look back at it with a final reflection and think to myself, “it has only begun”.

Here’s to the next step, the next adventure.

Chris

Tuesday November 19, 2013
21:14

It’s hard to believe it’s only been a month since I posted in here. Living out here at SCBI, there’s so much to do that time seems to pass much faster than normal. A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to road trip with Laurie to Boone, NC to visit her friend, Danielle, at Appalachian State University. Hands down, it was one of the best weekend road trips I’ve ever taken. App State is a beautiful school filled with beautiful people. To describe the campus in a nutshell I would say that it was like walking through a ski town (not ski resort, the small towns built into the mountains leading up to the resort - big difference) filled with little mom and pop eateries and outfitters surrounded by mountains and REI magazine models. The women and men were all rough and tumble looking, the air was crisp and you could see the mountains around you. Now there are plenty of schools near mountains but there always manages to be people that don’t care for the outdoors. One of the first things that stuck out to me during out little campus tour was Danielle saying, “Campus is empty because its the weekend and everyone is out camping”. I was pretty much wet and sold at that point. App State was one of the schools I wished I had applied to towards my last years at GMU during my phase of complete regret and depression at my current emotional, physical and educational state. After the campus tour we went for a quick hike up the Hawksbill Mountain Trail. The trail was easy for the most part with a steep incline at the last 50 meter stretch. What was interesting about the hike was the massive amount of Rhododendron aka “Rhododoodoo” lining the path. At the summit we were blown away by a fantastic view of the Blue Ridge spreading endlessly before us. In terms of effort put in vs. summit gained, I haven’t found a hike that can beat this one. The three of us spent easily an hour up there looking at the tree covered mountains and talking to the trail crew. While the girls went off to take selfies by the edges I had the fortune of meeting and talking to Bill Hodge, the director of the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards, while he waited for the rest of his trail crew to reach the summit. We talked about the geography and history of the Linville Gorge Wilderness, native species of Hawksbill Mountain, his career with SAWS and the invasive species monitoring programs SAWS has been working on with the Forest Service. He was a kind, hard working man that I could tell was passionate about his work with the service. The fact that he was also wearing a buff (the PCT map one) made it even easier to connect with him as we talked about my life and work at SCBI this semester. Before we began our descent I made sure to get a card and a firm hand shake from from Bill. We ate lunch at a fantastic burrito joint and spent the rest of the day relaxing in Danielle’s apartment until it was dark enough to emerge into the outdoor, hipster-but-actually-outdoorsy-hipster, craft-beer-fueled college town that is Boone. It was fantastic. The trip culminated in an attempt at an early sunday morning, Cook-Out, a sweet gear consignment shop (i got a patagucci fleece for 40 dolla) and a tight hug from a new friend. It was only a weekend but I was already sad to be leaving Boone. Danielle was a out-of-this-world host and a wonderful person. I’m glad to have met Laurie just to have met Danielle and her future husband, “bearded GIS”. 

This past weekend was a non-stop flurry of colliding worlds and special people. A world of special people colliding if you will. In the spirit of getting things finally off of my bucket list, I collaborated with my good friends Sean Lacey and Mason to set up a car camping trip/ Front Royal/ SCBI tour with all of my NOVA friends. We chose the beautiful Shenandoah River State Park as our destination. It would be the first time a lot of my friends from home have been camping and, considering the time crunch us SMSC guys were on (we were driving back from the National Conservation Training Center in WV), it was a perfect choice. We couldn’t have asked for a better camp site. Gravel floor, big metal fire pit, bathrooms, stream-side view and unlimited pre-packaged firewood!? This was basically glamping. Gathered around the fire that night I couldn’t help but feel this sense of gratitude. Nearly 10 months ago I was sitting alone in my room applying endlessly to USAJOBS, hope dripping out of my fingertips endlessly onto my keyboard. But here, 10 months later I was sitting besides a warm fire (and my schmoking hot lady friend, Laurie) as my closest friends, coworker and classmates shared stories of their lives. It was the collision of three very big parts of my world. In a sudden rush of realization and gratitude I understood how good life for me had become. I understood how important this seemingly simple moment was. How important all of these people were to me. The morning after camping we hiked a quick 5 miles on the Bear Bottom Trail it was a wide, easy hike through a sprawling oak forest. Near the 3 mile mark or so we came across a fantastic view down a deep, long valley. The hike gave me time to catch up with my NOVA friends, show them some trees and explain what life has been like here these 4 short months. I also discovered that my friend Quin is a terrible hiker (haha sorry Quin), you can’t just drop a city boy into a forest. After the hike I took my friends on the grand tour of Front Royal and SCBI. I showed them the town’s historic district, the fantastic Apple House, my dorm at SCBI, some animals, the SI-GEO plot that I work in, the NEON tower and the vistas from Longhill and Race Track Hill. I felt like a SCBI tour guide and have to admit that I loved it. I never realized how much I had learned about the facility and my practicum until I had to condense it all down to be explained to first time visitors. Watching my friends walk through SCBI 1 and 2 was eerie to me at first. These were the people that I grew up with walking through the trees I have come to know and love. So different were the worlds they represented - so strangely did I feel like I was part of both. 

This past Sunday I woke up early and headed to Harper’s Ferry with the Herps to do some stream surveys around Tyler’s farm. We weren’t doing it for any particular reason at all, we were doing it simply to get outside and see what we would find. I love my conservation friends. I’m not sure how long we waded through that chilly stream but just when we thought it was a bust Elliot pulled out this amazing snapping turtle! He/She was too cold to snap at us so we were able to get a lot of good pictures of it. The poor thing had leeches attached to its head. We thought of removing them but knew better than to get that close to its mouth, cold or not it would probably get a finger or two. Our survey took place near a big power line clearing. On the way back to Tyler’s farm I couldn’t help but take a few pictures of the beautiful lines they created between the farm and forest patch habitats. Tyler’s farm is near damn perfect. He has three dogs, several heads of cattle, some sheep, two goats, some rabbits and I’m not even sure what else. I can see why he’s such an early riser as well as why he has such a strong work ethic. I don’t know anyone my age with the kind of hands on (hard ass hell farm work) work ethic, family values, good-hearted kindness (to people he respects) and dedication to science as Tyler (and Elliot). He (they) is (are) certainly one (two) of a kind and I am so grateful to have met him (hims) this semester. At the farm we helped him feed his hoofstock and got to meet his new ram. Who we learned is now finally starting to mate with the sheep. We also got to meet some of his family as well at watch him feed his three dogs. Those three dogs were so well-behaved and eager to be handled that I couldn’t help but kneel down and pet big armfuls of all three of them at once! He has a german shepard, boxer and golden retriever. I only remember the name of the shepard, Babe, because she was a princess and was clearly the matriarch of the trio. 

Things are quickly coming to an end here at SCBI. It’s hard to believe that 4 months could go by so quickly. It’s even harder to believe how close everyone has become to one another. It’s downright unfair to have us all separate so soon, but such is the way of life. Personally, I have been dealing with this moment with a bit of growing anxiety. The whole thing has been amplified with my forcing myself to update my CV and start applying to internships. It’s certainly funny how time, place and people work. So quickly can people attach to one another. So quickly can a certain place be home to so many good moments. I’ve had to deal with moving on many times in my life, I have struggled with it each time. But something that I learned being here this semester (I know this is premature I still have little under a month left) is that we are all part of a ever moving picture. So quickly we are moving across the painted shapes of our earth, from state to state and country to country - we are moving. Be it work, family or school we run into each other for brief moments of time during our lives and then separate again. What I have learned is that, no matter how many times we meet and separate and meet and separate we are always able to hold onto the people that we cannot live without. The world is only so big, the mountains so high and the oceans so vast. To the adventure hearted there is nothing to stop us. When my friends visited me this weekend we took a group picture on top of Longhill that I knew was going to be one of the most important pictures I ever took. Though they lived only an hour away, it represented the power of good friends coming together. In the picture, Longhill represented all of the people that I have met here at SCBI and their collision with my old world. Never before have I been at the edge of such potential as I have been here. Within the next few months I could be anywhere in the world interning. The uncertainty kills me just as my irrational connection to people and places pulls at my heart. But looking at that picture I know that the world isn’t quite so big as I think. I know that if I want to hold onto these people - there isn’t a damn thing that can stop me. 

Here’s to growing, living and loving.

Trek On,

Chris

09/15/13

Week 3 here at SMSC has ended and I feel like I am finally getting a bearing on the pace of things. It’s been overwhelming trying to figure out how to partition my time here simply because there is so much to do. That being said, I still haven’t gone hiking or camping with any of my classmates here. That needs to change. I remember how I would plan a day hike with my friends for weeks in advance and all day at work I would just itch and itch and itch to hit the road and get back out here in the mountains. Now I wake up and barely notice them as I walk to breakfast. Convenience breeds depreciation. On a different note, I am still managing to barely get my school work done and I have fallen behind in running - this must also change. As a last aside, I am trying to make my entries here much more regular. For what purpose I don’t know. As a catalog of my adventures and as a place to put my pictures I suppose. I don’t know exactly how long tumblr will suffice either. Perhaps once I begin truly traveling and living on my own I will invest in a more independent website. But alas, that’s a long ways away from now. More and more I am learning the value of just going with the flow. Not everything needs to be photographed, not everything needs to be shared. Simple really, but believe it or not I have a problem with it. Ok. This past week.

Week 3 wasn’t a very field-heavy week, we went out into the field only once and it was to Blandy Experimental Farm in Boyce, VA to do grassland ecosystem data collection for the Northern Bobwhite Quail. It was an overcast, humid day but something about staring across that flat grassland and trees reminded me of the encroaching fall and how much I was ready for my comfort season. Cold days, hot coffee and hotter fires - I miss them. We were able to fit in an insane amount of activity into this weekend however. Friday night we attended a post-WWI air show complete with vintage planes, cars and lively lindy-hop dance floor. It was something that one simply had to be at. The whole thing took place at Front Royal - Warren County Airport where a full swing band played music to a warehouse full of lively, retirees dressed in full lindy-hop attire. There was a strong presence of respect for our servicemen and there were a fair amount of retirees wearing their old uniforms. What was even more touching was a certain Navy couple who tore up the dance floor. To be honest the experience kind of rekindled an old dream of mine to serve straight out of high school. I didn’t know what branch or what position I wanted to do but I do know that I did, and still do, want to serve my country somehow. There is a deep resonating respect in my heart for the men and women who serve our country. On a lighter note, I was prompted by my classmates to step out of my comfort zone. And by step out of I mean skydive out of my comfort zone. I was pulled a couple times onto the dance floor - one of which the woman singing singled out our entire class out onto the dance floor introducing our school to the crowd and forcing us to dance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many of my classmates be pulled away by so many dapper grandpa’s. The look of terror on their faces were legendary. More and more I am starting to love this eclectic bunch of ruffians I call my classmates.

The next morning a determined handful of us woke up bright and early and volunteered at The Farm at Sunnyside harvesting mint, paw paws and spice bush berries. There’s something special about waking up and getting out into the field. Getting your hands and knees dirty knowing that what you’re doing is helping out another person. Volunteerism, basically. It was an especially cool day so walking through the dense spice bushes as the fresh mountain air blew through its leaves created a peace I didn’t want to wake up from. This farm grows everything organically and once a week will send some of it’s produce to the farmer’s market in DuPont Circle, DC. One of these Sundays I plan to help them out from farm to market. There is so much to learn and experience in life and anyone can be a teacher. And I’ve been trying toembrace every chance I get.

Finally, today we woke up and helped The Friends of the Shenandoah River State Park with their river clean up. We rowed down 3.1 miles of the river picking up trash along the banks wherever we could find it. Many times I simply jumped out of the canoe and walked across the shallow river bed. The water was clear, cold and gentle and it took the all of me to not just lay back and soak my legs. There were a number of rapids and, though they were harmlessly small, they were dangerously easy to get caught on. The mossy rocks at these rapids are so uneven and slippery that it was easy to suddenly slip into a deeper part of the river. There was one point where Danny and I were coasting and as I took in the sounds of the river and his (amazing) voice singing Misty Mountains (yes, from the hobbit) I saw out of the corner of my eye a completely incompetent Laurie trying to pull her canoe free.

As the days go by I think more and more about how I wish this will never end. I remember during my prospective student tour nearly half a year ago, a student in the class we were visiting told us that he wished that he could stay here forever - while I don’t necessarily want to stay here forever, I now understand what he meant. SCBI, and Front Royal for that matter, is an amazing place to learn and live. The Shenandoah Valley already holds a special place in my heart and this small town has definitely changed my perspective on what’s important and what’s not. Good people, early days, simple pleasures and cold beers - that’s all I need. I’m still getting used to these weekly postings and I can promise you the posts will get shorter, less sappier and more informative - just hang in there.

Here’s to living and learning whenever you can.

Chris

It’s been too long since I’ve last written my thoughts here. So much has happened since my last entry. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say its been an “avalanche” of positivity and change. It all started when I packed my life into a 90L duffel, grabbed my pack and my guitar and headed out for the north for my cousin’s wedding. I knew right then and there that I had finally taken the first steps of an exciting adventure. The trip up north through NJ, RI and MA was everything that I could have asked for. I got to see family from all over the world colliding in the humble houses of my New England family. Aunts and Uncles that took care of my brother and I during our stay in France, cousins all the way from Oregon that I only got to see on facetime and Christmas and Cambodian relatives that took us all over Cambodia helping my father find the home he grew up in all collided and it was a surreal moment. The power of a family that stops at nothing comes together is unlike anything else in this world. The house was so crowded that I simply set up camp in the backyard for the whole week. I slept at 10 and woke at 6 to the fresh New England air (yes, it is different) and the sound of wild turkeys (and sprinklers) - it was perfect. The best part of the wedding, hands down, had to be when my cousin and her husband walked out onto the stage to begin their first dance and, instead of having “Ho Hey” played by the DJ, all of my cousins and I ran onto the stage guitar, ukulele and pill bottle filled with golf tees a-blazin’ and sang them the whole song. She was in tears by the first chorus. I don’t mean to be overly sentimental but I think I almost cried playing that guitar haha. After a few delicious Samuel Adams later, a whole lot of dancing and quite a bit of street cred with the cute Boston College white girls, the night drifted away into the misty air. And just like that woke up the next morning at 5am, broke down my tent, packed my car, hugged my family tightly and headed straight for Front Royal, VA.

Just like that I found myself in a small town swallowed by the Blue Ridge Mountains surrounded by the new faces of whom would become some of the best people I’ve ever met (don’t let that get to your heads guys). Those who’ve followed this blog from day one know exactly how hard I’ve been working to get to SMSC and that first night just standing in the middle of my empty dorm I most definitely cried like a little girl. It’s one thing to get an email saying you’ve been accepted to a program but it’s an entirely different thing waking up in the morning, looking across a beautiful campus and seeing the mountains. It’s only been 3 short weeks but I have already been overwhelmed with huge amounts of kindness, learning and adventure. Right off the bat I made a good friend and fellow adventurer named Tyler Robic and hit the AT the morning of our first class. Things pretty much took off after that. There is no short of being in the great outdoors here. The massive campus is gated but so large that it contains its own forest and it’s own pesky population of white-tailed deer. Our day-to-day are a perfect balance of in-class theory/policy and fieldwork and data collection outside in the SMSC campus or on surrounding farms and research centers. There are no words to describe how good it feels to get my hands back in the earth and my mind back in the classroom. For so long I have been yearning to be productive - to have a direction and goal to work towards. The limbo of unemployment and the cutting knife of rejection have made me a humble and grateful man. The people here are good people to say the least. The staff are the kindest, most down to earth professors I’ve ever met. I forget sometimes that I am surrounded my PhD’s and leaders in conservation - they are all so fun and real to talk to. My classmates are from all over the place (OR, CA, MI/NY, VA) and are quite an eclectic mix of people. There is no end, I mean NO END, to the bonding, laughs and adventures we share. I have to admit that even though it’s just week 3 I already kind of miss them all…My knowledge base of ecology and conservation biology is slowly increasing and I am starting to work out parts of my brain that I forgot that I had. I am also making sure to write down all of the street cred that I get from volunteering/ working with the researchers here and I am nursing a beef jerky addiction. Needless to say, there is so much to experience here and this blog will be seeing much more of it before the end of these 4 months.

Finally, I had the opportunity to attempt to hike the Roaring Plains circuit in Davis, WV this past weekend. When they say that West Virginia is the wild and the wonderful they are not kidding. It’s like going back in time every time I suit up and head out there. John Denver was right, life is old there and things take on the air of a simpler yesterday. To put it lightly, the hike was brutal. It opened up with a small field of wild flowers but quickly led to a misty, pine-filled climb along the ridgeline of the mountain. For several hours we climbed upwards across slippery rocks and fairly deep streams - the whole time envisioning the breathtaking plains sprawling in the wind. We eventually reached a fire road that would, in 1 mile, finally put us at the Roaring Plains trail. It was along this calm respite that we realized that we were running low on time and daylight. If my buddy Zach was to get back at home by 2000 we would need to turn around by 1630 latest. Needless to say we began a frantic trail run into the woods. At about 1600 we stopped for lunch and the turn-around. We never made it to the plains but we were 4000ft. up, surrounded my pines and could kind of see the peaks of the Allegheny in the distance - we were satisfied. These were some of my favorite people and I appreciated just being able to get out here. They met up with me 830 that morning outside of Front Royal’s only Target. They drove an hour to get there and the hugs and back slaps were something I really needed. These were guys that, only half a year ago, were complete strangers working with me at REI. Over a couple of hikes and many many fun days at work, they became my good friends. And here we were, Sean holding down the fort at REI, Zach working hard at Enterprise and me going back to school to save the world one tree at a time. It’s cliche but it certainly wasn’t the destination this time but rather the journey and who I made it with. We pretty much ran the rest of the way back home, piled into Zach’s car shirtless, ran over my glasses and blasted Led Zepplin all the way home - it was just as I missed. We will certainly attempt Roaring Plains again in the future, our campaign to press westward won’t stop for anything.

All in all that’s everything that’s been happening lately, in a nutshell and in only 10 photos. Life is strange, that much I know. Sometimes you are drowning in a endless sea of lost hope, and sometimes you are snowboarding down an avalanche of positivity and change. Everyday is an adventure that has just begun and you just need to get yourself out of bed, strap up your boots and make life TAP. 

Here’s to never giving up and trekking on.

Chris

 

I MADE IT INTO THE SMITHSONIAN-MASON SCHOOL OF CONSERVATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is just a semester program but to me it’s life reaching out its hand and giving me another chance. So many hard nights and rejections have come to this…I will make the absolute most out of this. And I will bring a real change to this world!

TREK THE FUCK ON!

Chris

Volunteerism, REI and the SMSC

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     Two weekends ago I did a volunteer shoot for Reston Association’s Habitat Heroes. It was my first time freelancing for an environmental organization and quite frankly, I loved it. I got to meet Reston Association’s Community Outreach Ha Brock, Media Manager Sean Bahrami, and several awesome volunteers. These hard workers were pulling out Garlic Mustard that had overrun a lot of the nature areas’ forest floor. The experience really showed me the value of a community committed to protecting it’s native wildlife. The experience also opened a valuable door into the the Reston Association’s many events. I hope to be working with Sean on many shoots to come. I used to work in Reston and often get onto the W&OD trail from here - I figure I should give back to the beautiful area. To check out some of the shoot here’s my site: 

http://500px.com/christophersophotography/sets/volunteer_work

     Something else that getting involved with the RA showed me was how environmental conservation can take many forms and how interconnected it is. Looking through the huge PDFs of the summer events Sean sent me I quickly realized how many activities and projects Restonians could get involved with. Barely 10 minutes away from me there were watershed cleanups, invase species removals, wildlife education classes and long half day bird watching adventures I had never even heard of! Both far reaching and compact at the same time, determined communities like Reston really offer the chance to make a difference. Conservation can take many forms, not just the big gov’t and NGO orgs I have been applying too, or obscurely located Alaskan coastal bird population surveys. They can be right in your community. I still want to travel far and wide, don’t get me wrong, but I was wrong to overlook the hard workers in my own neighborhood. 

     I got a call back from REI for the group interview! I got the call last week and have been very very excited about it. The company is everything that I could hope to work for. They are a consumer co-op and big environmental steward both locally and holistically. The big picture reason I’d like to work there is to learn about the various equipment as well experience more of the local natural areas. I hope to make good friends and to explore some beautiful places around here. Of course the 50% employee discount has a say in all this too haha. Just today I went to a ‘Hiking Basics’ REI class (not employee training, REI just offers awesome classes) and made sure to walk around the store for 30 minutes before. I’m not working there yet but I am already seeing everything in a different way (and making a wish list). The hiking class was extremely useful, we learned a lot about basic equipment, safety precautions and local mountain geography. Touching again on the interconnectivity of conservation, REI is also participating in this weekend’s Potomac River Watershed Cleanup. Something I took away from the class other than hiking stories though, was again seeing the bigger picture of all of this. This meaning the business of environment. I watched employees walk up and down the back rooms stairs, I watched a man stumble over returned items to get to his buried desk to make a call to HQ about a complaint and I listened to how we are supposed to camp 300’ away from the trail or the rangers will make you move away (it makes the trail look bad). REI is a co-op, yes, but in this day in age it is essentially a business. And even a business focused on selling products for 'human-powered outdoor recreation’ needs money to run. Like REI, environmental conservation in its entirety needs money to work. Parks need to stay healthy and pretty, parks need fees to be pretty, parks need patrons to get fees, parks need to be pretty to get patrons, you camp 300’ away from the trail. I’m not sure where I’m going with this but I’m certain I’ve hit something. The more and more I explore into this field, the more and more I get rejected from jobs, the more and more I just take the leap and get out there with these classes and volunteering, the more I start to see things clearly. I suppose, I’m growing up. 

     Last update, it has just been a sudden rush of progress lately, I finally manned up and completed the application to the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation. It wasn’t easy writing the letter of interest because of how much I wanted to get into the program. Having been thrashed by the job market to the point of depression, this program came out of the darkness like a lightening bolt. If I am able to get into the program and get the scholarship (because I literally have no money) I would be living, breathing, eating environmental training for a whole semester. If there is one thing that being in the job search shark tank has taught me it is the invaluability of experience. These orgs don’t care too much about what fancy coursework you’ve taken, they want to know that you know how to do the specific job they are advertising for with the least amount of training and pay necessary. It’s like pokemon. Say you need to train a pokemon to a competitive lvl 50, you don’t give too much of a damn about the personality or food preferences of the pokemon you find, you will catch the one closest to lvl 50. You will always opt for the most profit with the least amount of investment (this of course not taking into consideration EV training and competitive breeding). As of right now, I am a passionate, dedicated, willing to learn lvl 25 nothing. This semester may be the only chance I have to get a foothold to dive into this field. There are cheaper ways of course, find local opportunities, keep searching, volunteer! I have and they have always let me go. There aren’t many benevolent hearts out there willing to take a chance on 'potential’. The sequester is effectively shoving its hand down many of the departments’ throats and putting a nice freeze on govt hiring and everywhere else frankly doesn’t give a damn.

Things sure have changed from the boy that applied to 5 USAJOBS positions and immediately started packing for adventure.   

I have come to learn and realize a lot of things. Even now my plan is shaky at best. IF I get the job at REI I will have until August to gain experience and savings whereupon I will enter SMSC IF I get accepted and get the scholarship. After that I need to work my ass off to learn everything I can while making as many connections as I can. Best case scenario, I am hired into Smithsonian from within and find myself in a program that I am in love with that will help me get my masters. Worst case scenario, I don’t get the job or get into SMSC and I start from the beginning again while continuing to work at my parents’ store and perhaps working at a Caribou Coffee or something. 

C'est la vie, non?

As I continue to ride this ever changing sea,

Trek On.

Chris