A Slow, but Uphill Ride!

Well, I am just finishing up my third week in my temporary position with the Bureau of Land Management, back out west in Bakersfield CA.  It feels like it's been so much longer, but no, I've only been in CA for a little over three weeks.  Ok, so let me catch you up on LAST week!  Last week contained an exciting new feature - we got to go out for an S&G, which is a Standard & Guideline.  Among other uses, BLM manages a lot of their land for grazing purposes, especially out here in the western US.  Private landowners can graze cattle on the land, as long as they have a permit and don't cause harm to, or alter, the land; they also have to own land that is adjacent to ours.  Permits are only reissued or renewed after an S&G has been performed on the grazed land.  So basically a good cross-section of our office goes out to this site and looks for signs of degradation or other reasons why the land should no longer be grazed on.  Typically in attendance are:  an archaeologist (looking for cultural findings that may need protection), a botanist (looking at plant diversity and perseverance), a wildlife biologist (looking for maintained wildlife diversity) and a rangelands person (who is looking at the land's overall condition specific to grazing).
Anyway, so this group, including my mentor Denis and my co-worker Kathleen (the botany group) headed out to one of the prettiest BLM sites, just west of Paso Robles (PR), about 2 hours from Bakersfield and maybe 45 minutes from the coast.  PR is a really pretty town.  The climate is a little different from Bakersfield because it's closer to the coast; they get a lot more moisture than we do.  So, to get a picture of this town, just picture Tuscany, really.  There are vineyards everywhere and rustic-looking, mediterranean homes are placed in between them.  There are of course tons of wineries here, it seems like a really prospering little city.  Anyway, it was a really nice reprieve from the sights of dry, oily Bakersfield lol  Even better was that there were so many oak trees in this area!!  Just picture gorgeous, rolling hills with huge elegant oaks dotted all over them.  And then it was kind of cloudy and a little bit rainy..  The combination of the weather and the trees made it feel just enough like Oregon for me to start daydreaming about it.. Long story short, it was a gorgeous drive over!

So anyway, we meander along these gorgeous uninhabited roads, seeing deer and turkey and beautiful oaks, to an area northwest of PR, near Lake Nacimiento.  We arrived at the owner's property, adjacent to ours.  He's a really nice older guy, and has been grazing his cattle on our land, via permit, for the last 20 years.  We talked to him for a bit and then headed out, walking a short distance over his land to get to ours.  We walked the property for a few hours, looking at great plants, while the others looked for their respective components on the land.  This property was about 40 acres, so pretty small.  We started out in an open grassland, then moved into oak woodland and then eventually crossed a fence and found tons of poison oak along with a gorgeous little stream, that again, reminded me of Oregon.. I loved having to climb over the big rocks and carefully avoid the stream and seeing slugs and being in a canopy that was shaded enough to allow ferns and mosses to grow - this was probably the best part of the day :)

In the end, we determined that this land looked really healthy and that no notable harm was coming from the grazing.  I love that these lands can be multi-use!  It makes me feel like co-existence is possible, even if it is tucked away in places like the coast range foothills of Southern California :)

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, I had to take a 4-hour online Defensive Driving Course which suuuuuucked, but at least I'm done with it!  I finally got my ID badge, and earlier in the week, I went to a going away party for my short-lived mentor Heather, who is moving back to Oregon to take a job with the US Forest Service and to be with her husband, gosh that sounds nice.. 

Switching gears from professional life to personal, I am still missing Scott very much; it has been a very hard adjustment thus far, after only having had a little over a month with him in Oklahoma.  But I'm trying very hard to keep my head up and look for the positives, but.. somedays are just very, very hard.. One day at a time right??

Ok well, I think that's it for last week.  There are a million more pictures from the Paso Robles site, but I didn't want to clog up this page any more than I already did, so I'll try and find a Picasa link for you all or something similar.  And I'll definitely get another post up this week to get us all caught up!  As always, thank you for reading :)

Love & velvet,

Rach