I Need to Go Home...

..this is what I've been whispering to myself over and over for the last hour.  What started out as my daily evening walk, ended up being just a total breakdown.  I'm still crying as I write this entry.  I just need to go home.  I cry every day.  It just isn't healthy to be this unhappy.  I am frustrated that I cannot put into words what is pouring out of my eyes, frustrated that I cannot explain the pain that sits in my heart and the sadness that fills my half-empty soul.  This experience just is not worth it.  I've tried for months now; I've tried to be patient, tried to be positive, tried to focus on the finish line, and at the end of each day, I am just as discontent and upset.
I have applied for four jobs within the last week; if one of them does not bring me home, I am seriously considering just bringing myself home..  From the outside, a lot of you are probably thinking, why doesn't she just go home then??  Why is she even still there?  If you could see the debt that I have, you would see why, as sad as it sounds, money is the reason that is keeping me here.  If it didn't mean losing a paycheck every two weeks, I would have stayed home when I went to Oklahoma last month.  That is the reason why I am trying to monkey bar my way from one job to another and not just quit this one with nothing else to grab on to.
However, my mental health is more important than any amount of money I owe and I am trying to find the balance between the two.  How unhealthy can I be?  How much debt can I allow to pile up?  How long can I allow myself to be unemployed again before I go crazy?  The state of my health is slowly winning the arm wrestle, and I am trying my best to minimize the the transition.
Like I said, I have four jobs in the queue, and I am giving them until the end of the month to pan out.  If none of them come to fruition, I think I am going to start looking into options to bring myself home.  Thank you so much to all of you who are going through this heart break with me, and to you others who are just sick of hearing of my "heart ache" lol  Much love to you all.

L&V,

Rachel

Please cross your fingers for meeee!! and look at some baby chikkas too!

Hi all, here's what's been happening since last weekend:

Not too much field work went down during this last week of work; went out the Carrizo hoping to collect some bladderpod (Peritoma arborea) and buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium), but neither of them were ready to collect, their seeds were still maturing.  This was the only day I went out in the field; the rest of the week I was studying up and getting my GIS training on, hard core :)  This coming week though, I'll be doing an overnight trip back up in the San Joaquin River Gorge, where the Bioblitz was last month.  There's definitely some good seed up there ready to be collected.  And then on Thursday, Denis is going to take us up to Lamont Meadow for some seed recon. work and to fix some fencing up there.  Lamont Meadow, part of the Back Country Byway, is up in the foothills of the southern Sierras, so I am super excited as to what this will hold.  (Please let it be wetter up there and more lush, please please please...) It's also supposed to be in the low 100's this week - I am not looking forward to the summer in southern California!!!  :-/
In other work aspects, I am still looking for jobs back in Oklahoma, and actually found three to apply for this week!  Hooray!  I am really happy at the productivity I was able to make, and excited at the prospect of getting back home, aaand finding jobs that I would really enjoy, not just a job that I would have to take.  None of them are in Stillwater unfortunately, but they are all within an hour or two which works for me!  Keeping my eyes peeled for more jobs and my fingers crossed that one of these three comes to fruition.  Until then, I've got my nose to the grindstone as always, learning learning learning!  While I'm trying not to get my hopes up, I really am getting anxious to come home and stay home.  It's unbelievable that I only left Scott and Oklahoma a week ago; it already feels like it's been a month.  I'm trying not to think of how much longer I'm here though, since no one has the answer to that.  Just trying to stay positive and stay busy looking for jobs, the former of which is surely only been made possible thanks to the love and motivation of my friends, family and wonderful boyfriend.

And I need to get home so I can be with these girls before they're all grown up!  Can you believe they are just over 5 weeks?!

Ah, they're so cute and almost all feathered out!!  Did I tell you that Scott and I finally named them - Fern, Ivy and Lily :)

Yesterday (Saturday) was my chores/catch-up/errands day, but today I had decided to partake in a Sierra Club field trip to the Tule Elk State Natural Reserve.  It's about a half an hour west of town and consists of a parcel of about 1000 acres, 600 of which are used for the Tule Elk to roam on.  It was nice to get out of the city for a bit and see some good wildlife.  Besides the elk, I saw two coyotes, a jack rabbit and a bunch of burrowing owls.  We listened to the very informative park ranger, Bill, tell us everything about the elk and the Reserve.  The Sierra Club chose this park to visit because it is on the list of 70 state parks scheduled to close this year due to a lacking state budget.  The Reserve at current, is only open three days a week, (Fri-Sun), but is scheduled to close indefinitely starting in July, unless more funding is found.  Bill said they had located a short reprieve of funding, but that it was only temporary, and after that goes dry, if no more funding is found, the elk will be released to open spaces in the area of the state where they are native.  At this point, there will be no protection of these once near-extinct animals from natural predators or unnatural ones, like hunters.  It was a wonderful sight, but the overall tone was seemingly demure as the outing leader, Lorraine talked to everyone about writing to your local senator, and as Mike, a local Sierra Club member, explained to his son, 5-year old Lucas, why the elk might not be here in a little while.  I understand that there are a lot of things that a budget has to include, but it just makes me so incredibly sad that budget choices have to be made between what I think is important and what someone else thinks is important.  Parks, natural spaces and open areas are considered a luxury, a gluttonous expense, when a multi-source-income state can't budget its money appropriately.  Anyway, I won't start soap boxing, don't worry.  Here are some pictures I took out at the Reserve today, enjoy.

Bill, telling us a million great facts about the elk, the area, the people and all of the history

Solar panels that pump water from wells into the sloughs and swales on site.  The Kern River used to run through this area, but was diverted many years ago, so water is now pumped up for the wildlife when needed. 

The females, and 1- and 2-year old calves.  The males are the ones with the horns but are too young yet, to survive on their own

The adult males, running away from us.  They usually stay away from the rest of the herd until mating season.

Until next time.

Love & velvet,

Rach

Stuck (aka Trapped)

I really just want to cry tonight.  I am crying.  I feel as I did when I got here the first time - alone, sad and much like a salmon, fighting an upstream current that won't let me get home.  I feel dejected and discouraged.  I can't write this cover letter to save my life and all I need is a fantastic cover letter to spring me back to where I need to be.  I'm not good at not being productive.  I wrench myself to work harder, do more - even when my emotions are not in the right place to allow me to do so.  My heart and my head don't always work as a team and that is the case tonight.  My heart is lonesome and sad and just wants more than anything to be home.  My head is beating my heart like a race horse to get it into gear and be productive and do work, so that we can get home.  But my heart just doesn't have it in her tonight.  So my head is angry for not being productive and my heart is sad for being so far away from my love..  I just can't win tonight it seems.  Tonight, I am struggling, tonight I am stuck.

The Happiest Place on Earth!

I am in Oklahoma now and couldn't be happier!  I never thought I'd say that lol but when the love of your life is in Oklahoma, you suddenly love Oklahoma too!  I got here last Wednesday, just hours after Scott got the keys to our new house :)  This last week has been spent cleaning out the old place, packing up our stuff for the one mile jaunt east to the new place, and then finally settling in here and unpacking and making minor repairs.  I just loooooove our new house!!  It's a cute 2/1 with a really good size back yard. We have onions and tomatoes so far, and just got three baby chicks!!  So we'll have eggs too in the next 4 or 5 months :)

Our sweet baby chikkas :)

We haven't really gone anywhere crazy/amazing.  We've just been setting up the house which makes me just as happy :)  Fixing little things and setting up our baby chicks' house and watering plants - it's just so ridiculously, unbelievably nice..  I am so happy here; content, peaceful and so happy.. it is so indescribably wonderful, being with Scott again.  When I was here in February, he was suuuuuper busy with classes and getting his research off the ground; but now classes are out and things have calmed down for now with his work.  It's just been really wonderful spending so much time with him.. things are just so perfect that it's hard to believe that I have to go back to Bakersfield in just a few days.. hard to believe but also hard to forget.

Gushing and euphoric with my love, at the OSU Botanic Garden <3

I really, really REALLY do not want to leave.. I am trying not to think about it, but it is just so imminent.  I really feel like I am just in a dream right now and that Bakersfield is reality.  It's just.. yeah, it's just going to be very hard come Saturday.  I've been looking for jobs since I posted about on here last month; I've found some jobs and had an interview or two, but with nothing coming to fruition.  I am trying so hard to find something here, it just seems so very impossible..

.     .     .

Well, here I am Sunday morning, pulled from my dream and plucked back into reality.  If Oklahoma is the happiest place on earth, I am now residing in the opposite.  After a one hour boarding delay, a layover, waiting 2 hours to board my 2-hour shuttle ride to Bakersfield and a taxi ride after that, I made it home a little after 1 a.m. this morning.  Yesterday was just horrible.  I cried myself to sleep Friday night, cried in the shower, cried at the check in counter, as I went through security, while I waited for and boarded the plane..  At least on the plane, the engine was loud enough so no one could hear me crying.  So yeah, long story short, yesterday was hard.  I hated leaving Scott and our new home and our baby chicks..  I know that everyone thinks they have perfection in their relationship, and I'm no different.  And when you find perfection, when you know you've got it, you don't need or want to be anywhere else..  As Harry would say, "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

So anyway, it's Sunday and I've quickly morphed into my go-to character of fighting instead of wallowing, no matter how easy it may be to just do the latter.  Nothing keeps me down for too long, and I am grateful for the continual tenacity that my mind and heart produce, even when I think it's just impossible.  I've hit the ground running again here, continuing to look for jobs and doing my best and learning all I can at work while I'm still here.

As always, thank you all for reading; I hope you're having a beautiful weekend.

Love & velvet,

Rachel

Um, you saw a what? Yeah, I know!!

So, came right off a three day weekend at the Bioblitz and back into work!  My body is like what?? lol anyway, Monday I had a bit of down time in the office, processing things from the weekend and such.  Tuesday, we headed out to a new site called Keyesville Special Recreation Management Area.  This gorgeous but sad parcel is located a little over an hour NE of Bakersfield, up in the Kern River Canyon.  I say 'gorgeous' because it is this really beautiful piece of property right on a pretty rigorous portion of the Kern River.  It is a pretty open space with gorgeous gray pines (Pinus sabiniana), really peaceful, serene and beautiful, but I say ‘sad’ because people have just TRASHED this poor place.  Just trashed it.  There are no fees charged here, and it is unmanned because we don’t have a large enough staff to have someone out here full-time, part-time or even much more than once a week.  It has been over-taken by OHV use (off-road vehicles, quads, dirt bikes, etc.), and people just camp here indefinitely, using it without care.  It really is just the saddest thing to explain.  And this place, while we want it to be multi-use, also needs care and to be kept in tact as it is a historically important archeological site.  Keyesville was one of the first towns to be settled in this area, and there are many mines around here, leading to the settlement, which now act as habitat for birds and bats, and in general are just a great piece of history to have in our possession for public safe-keeping.  So anyway, the OHVs are compacting the soil which basically suffocates and kills trees; they also don’t stay on the trails, but instead just make their own, adding to habitat degradation and flora loss; the campers (most of them, not all) are just carelessly trashing the place, using it for what they need and then tossing what they don’t.

The Kern River

So anyway.. we headed out there on this day to scout for plants and just get acquainted with a new site.  We saw couple species of milkweed, an Ericameria that was ready for harvesting and so we collected from; a species of gooseberry (Ribes) with the most beautiful fruits, in my opinion; a native thistle with just gorgeous flowers; oh, and a bunch of other stuff lol I could list plants forever.  For those of your more interested in the fauna, we also so a few cottontail rabbits – they are pretty common in the area of CA, we see a ton of them at the Carrizo too.

A gorgeous native thistle

The entrance to and old mining cave

This turned out to be a short field day, but a good one.  It was really nice to check out a new parcel of ours and to find more opportunities for seed collecting, since the Carrizo Plain is getting pretty spent.  Speaking of the Carrizo, Kathleen and I spent the next two days, Weds and Thurs, out there grabbing as much seed as we could.  We made an overnight trip of it so we didn’t have the make the long drive twice, and were able to spend more time out in the field this way.  There is a house on the property, an old rancher’s house, that now lends itself to housing those who come out to do work or research on the Carrizo.  While there, I was housed with the intern who works at the visitor’s center; some folks from Berkley who were doing antelope squirrel work and some other SCA interns who were studying blunt nose leopard lizards (federally endangered).  Anyway, finished up on Wednesday with a pretty good loot and then headed in for the night.  I camped outside with just my sleeping bag, next to a cute Western Spadefoot Toad.  The stars were amazing, and the next morning, the birds were quite the alarm clock!  The sunrise was spectacular and added to the beautiful ambience of one of the most peaceful places still in existence in this area.  So anyway, up at 530 am, ready by 6 and out for more collecting before the heat becomes too much.  We finished up around 12 or so, and decided to check out Painted Rock, a local attraction if you will.  This huge rock contains very old petroglyphs from Native Americans who lived on these lands for thousands of years.  This is part of the reason why the Carrizo is a National Monument.  So anyway, we stop at the visitor’s center to say hi to Adam and Jackie, and they tell us to keep an eye out for hawks, a barn owl and of course rattle snakes.  We have our eyes mostly trained to the ground looking for snakes as we make the ¾ mile jaunt to the rock.  So I come up on it and there’s kind of this circular trail around the house-sized rock and I start to make my way around.  The rock is just gorgeous with holes and crevices carved out by the wind and sand mostly.  I’m just coming around the corner and inadvertently startle the gorgeous barn owl out of one of the holes and he flies away around the corner. 

Painted Rock

Pictographs at Painted Rock

Darn, I thought, no picture, but at least I got to see the lovely creature!  Sooo beautiful, white in color and graceful as owls are.. I keep walking around the rock, admiring the nooks and crannies, looking for these darn petroglyphs but honestly being more interested in the plants on the ground.  Still walking and I come upon this ledge, that I can only see part of, from my distance and I’m like, oh cool!  What a neat carving out!  It makes a nice ledge and it – OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT??  I stop breathing as I have come upon a sleeping bobcat.  I literally stop breathing.  I have never in my life seen a creature so magnificent and my brain, my body, my diaphragm; they don’t know what to do.  I become unfrozen enough to capture a hazy photo of him (her?) sleeping and then instantly look around, searching for Kathleen.  I don’t want to leave this spot and finally she comes around the corner and I am motioning like a crazy mime.  By now the bobcat has heard my movements and awoken ( I was wondering how long it would take him.) but has now just raised his head and is looking at us with the littlest of emotions.  Not fearful, not aggressive, not even inquisitive.  If I may speak for the beautiful creature, it seems he was only a bit disturbed by us interrupting his nap, if anything.  I continue to stare in awe, screaming internally and still completely devoid of voluntary movement.  I snap to attention just enough to take several photos, hoping, praying that ONE will turn out decently.  I continue to gaze for a few more moments and then decide to bid him farewell, grateful that he gave me the minutes he did to marinate in his amazing presence.  He continued to stare lazily as I continued on, and I looked back every so often to see if his demeanor had at all changed.  It hadn’t. 
I glanced momentarily and the petroglyphs, already having viewed my treasure, and then floated back to the head of the trail, in utter disbelief.  Not only to have come upon this creature, but to find him in the most vulnerable state, taking a cooling afternoon nap, I can’t explain how much this experience means to me.  I still look at the pictures I took and have to almost convince myself that yes, you saw that, with your own eyes, from a mere 20 feet away.  My heart is racing just from recounting it.  To come upon such beauty in nature, is oh so rare, and moreover, to be able to relish in the moment, to watch it continuously without it attacking or fleeing is even more rare.  This was one of the best days of my life thus far, and I am grateful beyond words to have this experience in my eyes, in my mind and in my heart.  Thank you so much for letting me share it with you.

Love & velvet,

Rachel

You can't spell 'gorgeous' without 'gorge'!!!

Ok!  Updates!  Where, oh where to begin?!
Last weekend was my first ever Bioblitz!!  First, here are some pictures from the trip.  It was a very cool weekend.  We packed up the car with everything we'd need for three days and headed up north for the San Joaquin (pronounced 'wa-keen') River Gorge, about 2 and a half hours north of Bakersfield.   I, Denis and my co-worker Kathleen, left early on Friday morning.  Upon arriving, we set up all our equipment - microscopes, tables, got out all our plant books, viles, etc. and then headed out to do some recon. work, before the others showed up in the evening.   We visited our fellow BLM-ers at the Visitor's Center and then hiked over to where Denis thought there was some Asclepias fascicularis (narrow-leaf milkweed) and ended up finding a bunch of monarch caterpillars chomping away on them.  This little ecosystem was very unique because it was sponsored by a nearby tunnel that leads to the river that is collected here for hydroelectric use.  This tunnel holds very cool, moist air, owing to the ferns and the Mimulus (monkey flower) who both love these conditions.
We spent the rest of the day hiking around, collecting plants to key out and press for the herbarium; collecting butterflies, ants and bugs to be id-ed or photographed or preserved for science collections.  In the evening, I set up my tent but was so used to Bakersfield night-time heat that I didn't pack a blanket or sleeping bag.  So I ended shivering under my rainfly lol After it got down to the low 50s, I decided to head to the car, where, unbeknown to me, the windows were down.. no wonder it wasn't any warmer in that blasted car!!
But anyway, that day, Saturday, the rest of the gang showed up; our photonaturalist, the beetle specialist and a community member who is a part of the Sierra Foothill Conservancy.  The six of us set up traps, collected bugs and flowers, hiked through poison oak looking for new species, for literally the whole day - sun up to sun down.  At night, we strung up a white bed sheet and put a bright light near it to attract more bugs for collection.  It was great!
The gorge was so beautiful and peaceful and serene.. Sunday we were supposed to leave around 10 but ended up staying til about 2 to help sort the collected bug species from the pit traps.  Needless to say, when I got home around 5pm I was pooped!!!  And my body was very confused when the next day wasn't a weekend-day lol All in all though, it was great experience.  I learned a lot of new things and got to see a new BLM parcel that was just so wonderful!  The only bad side was that some scotch broom is creeeeping in on the gorge.. better bet I'll be taking care of that though!!  :)

Entrance to the San Joaquin River Gorge Recreation Management Area

Clarkia dudleyana

A happy girl on the San Joaquin River!

Our photonaturalist, David Hunter, positioning a butterfly for it's photo shoot

Separating bugs and insects, by order, from the pit traps

I'll post more about the other events of last week, but just wanted to get this one finally out the door!!  As always, thanks for reading!

Love & velvet,

Rachel

Another Week of My Life as a Sponge!

Gah!!!!  I feel like I don't have enough receptors to take in all the knowledge that is being given to me lately!!  This a great problem to have, let me tell you :)
So, this week, I got out in the field for two days, which I was really happy about.  On Tuesday, Denis took us out on a new part of the Carrizo, the south end, where we proceeded to spend the whole day looking for potential seed-collecting populations.  Since I finished my training recently for Seeds of Success, Denis really wants to start collecting, that is, if anything decided it could grow with the little quantity of precipitation we've had this season.  Anyway, this scouting consisted of driving and looking for good quantities of plants.  Our populations have to consist of at least 50 plants remember.  So when we saw some potential, we'd stop, hop out and start looking around for good numbers, blooms and seeds.  We would check quantities of seeds per flower or per pod to see what kinds of numbers we were working with and how much we'd need to collect to get to our (at least) 10,000 mark.  If it looked like a good site, we'd GPS the location and then take field notes to later transcribe into our data sheets for each plant, as well as collect and press some samples to preserve as herbarium specimens.  There was nothing that was ready to be collected currently, but there were some plants blooming - Eastwoodia elegans, a Delphinium., Lupinus albifrons, Ericameria. - as well as some grasses getting close to seed - Stipa. and a Bromus.  All in all, a lot of getting in and out of the car lol but also a lot of great future collecting sites!!  AND we found a site of my favorite, thistle sage (Salvia carduacea); it wasn't big enough for an SOS, but I think we'll def. be back to it to collect seed for local use! :)  Our "sights" for the day included a gopher snake, barn owls and our resident pronghorn antelope!!!  It was so awesome because the WHOLE DAY, we had literally been talking about the pronghorn - are they still here, have they moved on, when's the last time you saw them, they're probably gone, etc... and then we're driving down a road and I'm like 'omg, what are those?!'  And sure enough, our pronghorn had come out to show us they were still hanging around!!  It was super, super cool :)

Delphinium! (won't be sure which species it is until it goes to seed)

Lupine! (Lupinus albifrons)

a gopher snake, about 25 seconds before it bit Denis (non-venomous)

"Here we are!!" (Pronghorn antelope)

"And here we go!!"

Then on Thursday I got to go out to another S & G; spent the day tromping around Curtis Mountain, near Visalia, CA, about 1.5 hours N-NE of Bfield.  We left the office in the morn and headed up north, getting there around 10? to our site, which was conveniently placed right next to an orange grove. (No, we did not pick any!)  We were gonna just walk up this mountain (I use this word loosely, mountain; after living in Oregon, my baseline has changed lol).  Anyway, you can see from pics, but it's a steep slope, about 1100 feet high, mostly grassy, but with a lot of rocks and boulders.  Anyway, an adjacent landowner who is permitted to use this parcel for grazing gave us a ride up the mountain so we didn't have to hoof it, awesome!!  We would have been there so much longer, if not for his offer.  So we get to the top, see the cows lazing under the blue oaks, and get to work after being warned to be on high alert for rattle snakes (we didn't see any, boo).  We spent the next four hours meandering all over the front and back side of the mountain, doing our respective botany, wildlife bio, archeology and grazing surveys.  This place was a gold mine for plants in my opinion!  A bit wetter up here obviously for all the plants it held, and being so high up, things were not yet past bloom :)  We saw Calochortus (maraposa lily), Mimulus (monkey flower), Clarkia, Chloragalum (soap plant), 2 species of Lupinus, oh, some Brodiaea - 2 species, and one little gold back fern that was on a moist, shady rock :) a milkweed (in bloom!!), a Scrophularia (that I didn't get a picture of) and much more.  This particular site consisting of 40 acres, is only supposed to have 8 cows on it, but the fencing was not up to par and many more cows were coming in, leading to a site that was much more impacted by grazing that we had hoped :-/

Anyway, after scouring the part of the mountain that contained our parcel, we had to get down!  So we just tucked and rolled!  No, but boy were my legs wobbly after I had finally hiked down to the bottom! Wish I had brought my clinometer to catch the slope on this thing.  So we all managed to make it down to the base and back to our cars, just two of them for seven of us, yay for carpooling!  It was about 2 pm by then; we all piled in and made our drive back to Bakersfield to complete the report for the site.  This site was definitely noticeably impacted by the grazing occurring, most likely due to the quantity that were accessing it, not due to the way the rancher was rotating the animals between grazing sites.  

Our site in the background; oranges in the fore

See why it's called a 'gold back' fern??  :)

The breath-taking Mariposa Lily (Calochortus)

One of the Brodiaea's we saw

A beautiful milkweed!! (Asclepias)

If it ain't a mountain it's agriculture!  Crops as far as you can see.

Today (Friday), I continued to have my mind stuffed with information as Larry, our GIS guy, proceeded to fill me with a 3 hour session of ArcMap9 (a program that makes maps and utilizes points you take out in the field with your GPS).  It was GREAT information, but it just makes me realize how little I know about so many things!  This internship in general has made me realize how very little I know about a variety of topics that I enjoy lol  Seems off right??  It just makes me very grateful for all the knowledge I am gaining, and I am trying to soak it up like a sponge!  (with some success)  Which makes this experience all the more "tugging" - I am so happy and grateful to be getting more out of this internship, but the longer I'm away from Scott, the worse I feel in the hours that I'm not occupied with work... we'll see how things progress.

Thanks so much for reading about my week; next week I have more ArcMap training, and then next Friday-Sunday is my first Bioblitz!  And I'm excited to be visiting Scott and Oklahoma in less than three weeks!!  Yayyy!  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, full of happiness and laughter. 

Love & velvet,

Rachel