A Night Out

Two posts in one week!

HAPPY WORLD VEGETARIAN DAY! This is the first day of Vegetarian Awareness Month. I heart being vegetarian.

As September slipped towards October, I had one last big project to finish, the vegetation surveys I've been working on for the last three weeks. The tedium of measuring tract after tract of grass and sage should not be underestimated. Although the weather has been lovely and the deer and pronghorn out in droves, I was beginning to yearn for the day when I would finish veg surveys.

I'd been progressing nicely, much more quickly than I'd anticipated, but one last hurdle loomed. Nineteen survey points lay in northern Crook county, many less than 10 miles from the Montana/Wyoming state line. With a two- to three-hour drive between the field office and the southernmost survey point, I knew I had only two options: spend five or six days with a five- or six-hour commute to complete only three or four surveys per day, or spend two long days in the field separated by a night's camping. In the end the choice was obvious. I hate driving the same long route day in and day out.

So Monday evening I packed my sleeping bag, two days-worth of food, my camera, and my latest library book (A Naturalist and Other Beasts: Tails from Life in the Field, by the world's most eminent field biologist, George Schaller), and prepared to spend two full days in northern Crook county. Tuesday morning I departed early from the field office, making good time to my first survey point, only two miles from the Montana border.

I spent the remainder of Tuesday (and I mean the remainder) trekking across the plains, traversing private land and state trust land and bits of BLM to 13 different survey locations, dutifully stretching out my 50-meter tape at each one, recording species' percent composition and diversity and measuring the heights of sage brush and various grasses and forbs.

Around 6:00 PM I stopped for dinner, parking the Durango along the banks of the north fork of the Little Missouri River. I was pleased to find a variety of birdlife there, including American pelican, double-crested cormorant, western grebes, the ever-present Canada geese, and, fantastically, a group of around 300 sandhill cranes, taking a brief rest from their southward migration. I was tempted to remain by the river until dark, but knew if I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour the following day I'd need to keep working.

I reluctantly continued on, laying out transect after transect until the sun had set and I could no longer see. I packed up my field gear and drove south to a nearby tract of forested BLM land, trying to park the car in the most inconspicuous place possible. I pulled up under a few ponderosa with intertwining branches, rolled down the windows, folded down the back seats, and unrolled my sleeping bag in the back of the Durango.

It was still fairly early, only around 8:15 PM, so I spent some time stargazing (most of the sky was obscured by the light from the nearly-full moon), then read by headlamp until I was tired enough to sleep. I was tempted to psych myself out, being admittedly nervous about spending a night alone in an area that, although rarely visited, has public access. But I quickly fought down any misgivings, knowing I was safer in the car by myself than I would have been in a tent with another person. It was a warm night, and as a result I slept fitfully, first too hot, then not warm enough. Eventually, however, I awoke to find the sky lightening gradually in the east.

I checked the time on my watch: 5:45 AM. I got up, packed up my bag, raised the seats, and started my work again, taking advantage of the earliest light possible. As I'd completed so much on Tuesday, Wednesday's fieldwork went quickly. Just six transects laid between me and completion of my surveys, and my early start allowed me to finish by 11:30 AM. I was back to the field office by 2:00 PM, and made quick work of my end-of-the-month reports before finally leaving to head home.

I was glad be back to the apartment, but even happier to finally be finished with the repetitive vegetation surveys. And all-in-all, the trip was a success. I completed my fieldwork, the weather was great, the wildlife abundant, the solitude peaceful, and my survival refreshing.

Yesterday afternoon as I returned home it began to rain, and early this morning the rain turned to the season's first snow. The snow continued into the early afternoon, small, wet flakes that refused to stick to the ground. I had planned on grousing today, as I'm taking tomorrow off. But rain and snow makes many of the roads in the national grassland so muddy they become impassable, so I spent the day in the office catching up on data entry. It was a good decision on more than one count. When Dwayne arrived at the office, he reminded me that today marks the first day of open season on pronghorn. He suggested I not go out for several days... evidentally, people around here are just clamboring to go out and kill something right now.