People of the Big River 2026_Lovey's

 6-26-2026 Today, we went to this seed sorting place in Bend, Oregon, where we met Kayla Harriman, who is a National Seed Specialist for the Forest Service. She talked about how the Bend Seed Extractory works after botanists, foresters, tribal organizations, and land managers collect native plant material from the field. Instead of receiving clean seeds, the facility often receives cones, berries, seed heads, grasses, shrubs, flowers, and other plant material. Each collection is carefully labeled with information about where and when it was collected so the seeds can be used in the appropriate restoration projects. Once the material arrives, technicians examine it to determine the best way to remove the seeds. Since every plant species is different, there is no single process that works for every collection. Some seeds are removed by various machines in the facility, and it depends on what kind of seed it is. These machines separate the seeds from leaves, stems, cones, fruit pulp, ...

 6-25-2026 Today we went out to Deshuts National Forest, where we met Marlow Fisher, the district botanist for the Deshute National Forest, for the last 15 years, and manages 200 million acres of forest and the wilderness. Before this, she worked as a firefighter in Cle Elm. She describes Wilderness as having no roads or any kind of machinery. For today, we will be doing a plant survey on the Pumus Moonwart, which is considered federally sensitive and a threatened species. It is kind of like a fern, and is endemic to the Central Oregon area, and is partial to Pumus soil, and there isn't much known about it except it was found in the 1930s by a botanist and didn't gain status until the 90s, and needed to be protected. The population used to be in the 1000s. Not much was known about them, like if they serve some kind of purpose or if it would be ok if they just disappeared, or would the whole ecosystem collapse, it's just kind of there, the only thing they know for sur...

 6-24-2026 Today was an intresting day, we went to the visitors center of the lava lands, and Alex Enna, the partnership project manager, arranged the whole thing, as well as what we'll be doing on Friday. Christine Hughes was the backbone of the information that was given to us before we went up the mountain. She gave us some insight into the land and explained the bigger mountains in one kind of on its own is called Mt. Bachelor, and the ones next to it are his sisters, North, Middle, and South. After that, she asked us if we knew how these mountains are formed, and said that the Cascade Wanda suka plate is getting pushed towards us and is hitting the core of the earth, and the magma from that needs to rise somewhere, and so it decides to go up, and that's how these mountains are formed, and then explained that over 100 and millions of years the plates have moved 25 miles. She also told me some of the geology from the aftermath of everything. The mountain we went up is calle...

6-23-2026 As usual, we woke up, and the same routine for traveling day, and today we are leaving the Mt. Adams Reservation area for the Deschutes National Forest, which will be roughly a 3ish hours, but that isn't so bad considering we'll be going through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, and ending up at the Craine Pairie Campgrounds. Which is near a lake, or more technically, a reservoir, and we'll be here until Saturday. As previously mentioned, the ride was beautiful, and as you cross into Oregon, you can see basalt cliffs, river canyons, and rolling plains. Eventually, the landscape becomes more mountainous again as the trip approaches the Deschutes National Forest. Located near Bend, Oregon, Deschutes National Forest is known for its volcanic scenery, lakes, lava fields, and large ponderosa pine forests. I based this on common sense, driving through it, and what the rest of the trip looked like for us over the next few days.  Before I get...

6-22-2026 Woke up and had the usual morning routine, and then we packed up to go to the reserved area on the reservation and to some beaver analogs with Yakama Nation Wildlife Fisheries, and we had a few people go out there with us. Jeanette Burkhartt, the watershed planner, David Lindley, the habitat coordinator, and Jerard Foley, the habitat biologist. To start our morning at Swamp Creek, we collected dead trees from a fire near the site at Cougar Creek in 2015, which originated from a lightning strike on the south side of Mt. Adams around the Glenwood area. Anyway the dead trees were scattered along the creek and had previously cut and lopped some of the small Douglas fir for the base of the dam, which is kind of like a sponge sort of. Then three other students and I got into the water to collect sediment upstream of the sides of the channel so it could patch up some of the holes and cracks between the wood. While Phabian, Leah, Jessica, and I were doing that, some of the other memb...

 6-21-2026  Yeah, this weekend's posts are going to be fairly short since it's the weekend and all, but it is Father's Day. Anyway, today we woke up and went to a pretty big waterfall by the White Salmon River, and we were just kind of wandering around the area. The falls were beautiful; the water was so clear and blue,  and apparently the area is in the process of being restored to what it was before the dam. I found it kind of funny that they only removed the dam because it didn't do anything really and had no use for it, when there are still a lot of dams that serve no real purpose and obstruct the flow of water and the wildlife that live and depend on the water. Sorry for the little rant, but the area was beautiful, and the little trail was pretty to walk, and I saw a lot of baby native plants that were planted there, like serviceberry, cottonwood, ponderosa pine, etc. It was fun walking that trail and looking at all the native plants. I think that's probably my...

 6-20-2026 It being Saturday, it was a little more chill. We woke up and went on as normal, with some routine, as we had the other day when we had to pack up, with the only difference being the Harris Park Campground. Before our 3-and-a-half-hour drive, we stopped at a Starbucks in Pasco, WA, to get a drink and work on our computers to update our spreadsheet with the data collected from Harris Park and to complete our daily blog; we were there for about 2 hours and left around noonish. I consider myself a coffee drinker, but the raw flavor of coffee is too bitter for me; that's why my coffee drink has to be loaded with some kind of sweetener.  My coffee order at Starbucks is a grande caramel macchiato, if you were wondering at all.  We did a quick stop in Goldendale, WA, to wait for Jessica ( Our Supervisor sort of), and we got a chance to get Dairy Queen. I didn't happen to get a picture of our stop there, but we had to have been there for about 20 min, and I got myself ...

   6-19-2026               Today the day seemed more chill than any other. We didn't do much just went to the Umitilla tribe museum. It was pretty fun; they had so much stuff on display and had a lot of interactive audio stations. I think out of the whole place, my favorite area was this little storytelling room with this fake-looking fireplace thing in the middle to imitate a real one. Now that I am reflecting on my day, I should've taken some notes while I was wandering around the museum. Anyway, that little area was circle-shaped but had projectors across the room, and it was telling us these childlike campfire stories. I only stayed for one, and it talked about a coyote and how it saved all the other animals from this evil force. The story started out with the coyote wanting to see everything in the sky like an eagle, so he would take his eyes and throw them up into the sky, hoping they would stay up there, until one day a bird flew ...

   6-18-2026               For today's blog, we did a lot more than yesterday, and a little more labor-intensive, but before I get ahead of myself. Started the day as normal, and after we were ready, to go to the Hatchery on the Umatilla Reservation. Our tour was given by Emily Meshke, the assistant manager there, with a few appearances from some of the workers: Brian Startzl; his position was Tech 3; Sunhawk Thomas was a temp they just recently hired, and Anthony; I didn't catch his last name or his position. The tour was really informative compared to the hatchery we went to the other day. Emily stated that they built this hatchery in the late 1980s, might have been the 90s, don't quote me. Today, though, most of their buildings are state-of-the-art except for one, and they mentioned that the bathrooms have an odor they can't get rid of. Anyway, Emily started the tour by giving us the history of the hatche...

6-17-2026 For today's blog, we didn't do much so far; it's been more of a chill day. So far, I woke up, got dressed, went through the same dreadful process of packing all my stuff into my bag, and, in retrospect, I could've packed a little less or used a different bag, but nevertheless I digress. Besides packing up all our stuff, our day went on as normal: breakfast and cleanup. Then we finished our soil analysis by measuring canopy density with a densimeter; we used both the old-school version, which is like a little wooden box, and the more high-tech one that was shaped like a gun, but I guess that's America for you. I think I prefer the little box. After all the data were collected for that, we moved on to entering it into a spreadsheet, which took up most of the morning; for the majority of our morning, up until noon, we worked on our computers for the spreadsheet and a poster for our presentation. One little highlight from our stay in Wellpinit was this little ...

On the third day of this big river trip, we started off our morning as usual at 6am and today me and a classmate were in charge of setup, so I felt like I had to get ready pretty quick in order to set up the tables with everything we needed for lunch and breakfast. Breakfast was pretty easy to set up; we only had cereal and oatmeal with a little bit of fruit like blueberries and bananas. For the first half of the day, we drove out to a site where we were learning how to make measurements of the stream bank with this glorified bubble level, and from my understanding of it, the whole project has the goal of increasing the amount of flooding throughout the year from this one stream to so the near by farms wouldn't rely so much on irrigation. Don't quote me on this, though, because unfortunately I forgot my journal so I couldn't take notes. We did this until 12:30-ish, then we came back to camp to have lunch and finish our analysis of the soil we collected yesterday. Basically,...

Well, an update from my last post, which was lacking key details, including us actually traveling to WellPinit for us to get some experience in the field. Today, on the 15th of June, we started off our morning by waking up at 6 a.m., which is not ideal for me considering I'm not a morning person, and I'm not a grouch or anything; I just prefer not to talk to anyone unless I have a coffee. Then we packed our lunches, had breakfast, and got ready for the day. For most of the day, we were working with 3rd- and 5th-graders, making little breaded bracelets with a small salmon charm in the middle. As previously mentioned, we did this for most of the day, but we did get a break at 11:45 for lunch, where we were also given a tour by Anthony, a worker at Spokane Fish Hatchery. He provided a lot of information about the logistics of the hatchery and how it is operated. He gave us a little fun fact that they kind of mark their fish by chopping off their fin on the top of their spine to le...

Hey, this is my new blog site, and I will be going on the Big River trip with Heritage. The packing for it was rough; having to put all my stuff in a backpacking bag was tough.