One Week In

Ah, where do I even begin?!  I've been in Bakersfield for about a week and half now, and am much over due for an update since last weekend.  Nodding donkeys, bubbly tar pools and my very first real weekend!  Things are still going just swimmingly at Nadia's, here with my co-worker/roommate.  Nadia just insists on cooking for us every day - soup, falafels, hummus!  And all the eggs we can eat from the chickens - yay for protein!  Kathleen and I checked out Panorama Park one afternoon last week, and as far as the haze will let you see, there are "nodding donkeys" - these oils rigs that pump the ground of oil 24/7.  K and I have to skirt around the area of Oildale everyday to and from work, which is where all these things are located (for the most part).  Historically, this area was filled with "Okies" who had come from Oklahoma to dig for oil.  Now it is very much an eyesore of a town that is not the safest place to be at night.  But I've heard it's got a nice, old historic downtown, very much preserved, that I'd love to check out some weekend!

"Nodding Donkeys"

Looking out over Oildale from Panorama Park - Kern River in the foreground, and about a million oil wells in the background

In the middle of the week, I headed out to one of my future field sites, Carrizo Plains National Monument, which sits in a valley among the coast range mountains.  On the way there, Denis stopped to show us a real treat, some tar beds!  The liquid tar is pushed to the surface and forms a pool, which eventually spills over and kind of creates a little tar stream until it dries up; very cool!!  I posted the video of it on youtube so it wouldn't slow down my page - watch it here!

So, Carrizo is a very varied landscape, very dry of course, but with many vernal pools and small streams when the rain is sufficient.  The different soil types there can also make the place quite varied and differentiated, plant-wise.  Located here is Soda Lake, a huge dried up lake bed that was very salty and eventually evaporated leaving a desolate, sodium-rich lake bottom.  We were there for the whole day, getting a tour from our mentor Denis.  We identified plenty of great plants and saw some interesting animals too, including a tarantula, a juvenile gopher snake, an assortment of birds, antelope squirrels, and a jackrabbit.  The plants we saw were plentiful, even though there hasn't been much rain!

A beautiful thistle sage

Soda Lake

Baby breed of gopher snake! (when we picked him up to take him off the road, he was so stiff from the cool, windy weather!)

Carrizo Plains, with a vernal pool a little ways in the distance

Towards the end of the week, we went back out to Atwell Island, where we released the burrowing owls before, and Heather, our mentor that's leaving us to take a job in Corvallis, Oregon (JEALOUS!!), gave us a great, more extensive tour of the 8,000-acre property which includes some newly installed wetlands!  Many years ago, this area was actually a lake - Lake Tulare.  And it was the biggest lake west of the Mississippi, until it was completely dammed, diverted and drained for irrigation and agricultural purposes.  The BLM, along with the help of farmers who still own some of the land, are trying to convert it back to natural habitat.  It's hard though, because "natural habitat" is actually a lake bed; so the soil that is there, wants to support aquatic plants, with aquatic soils, but there's no way that we can fill Lake Tulare back up - it's way too expensive and the water wouldn't even be available anyway.  So we are converting what we can, to wetlands.  It provides habitat for species that have relied on this source for decades and is a good effort to putting the land back to what it used to be.  It was great to sap some knowledge off of Heather before she peaced out, and to get a better idea of the area through the tour.  We saw more plants that I am finally starting to remember!.. and more animals.  Lots of birds of prey out here, mostly red-tailed hawks, and super cute horned lizards!!  Oh my gosh they are just the best, and I am going to propose to Scott that we get one until we can have a dog :)  Here's a video of me "returning" one to the wild after holding it for a bit.  We also did some line intercept sampling (you'll have to look it up lol) which I am frustratingly perfectionistic at, but I will get better!!  Err, worse?  Whatever makes me more sane and comfortable with the work I'm doing :)

Some of the reconstructed wetlands

The back side of a horned lizard :)

Then, the weekend!!  My first weekend as a working person in over 8 months!  So what did I do??  Chores and errands of course!  Things that I couldn't do during the week - shopping, laundry all the fun stuff.  But K and I did go to a Sierra Club talk where our co-worker Heather was speaking about Atwell Island which really was fun except for the fact that the senior citizen Sierra Clubbers smelled fresh blood and were all over K and I to make sure that we stayed in touch with them lol  (mini PSA):  It really is sad though to see only elder people at these events - Sierra Club, Native Plant Societies, etc... What will happen when these people step down or retire from the group?  With our youth step up?.. (end PSA)

Anywhoo, this first week wasn't without huge flaws and frustrations at work, they really don't seem to have their stuff together at times and it seems like maybe the've never had interns before...? which leaves me frustrated when I have nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs at work.. we'll see what this week holds though!  I miss Scott terribly, and don't see that changing anytime soon, but am excited that I will be going back to OK for a visit towards the end of May :)

Thanks all, for reading such a long blog, I'll try to update more often so these entries are shorter!  Have a great week!

Love & velvet,

Rach