Empowerment

The task of living outdoors in a national wilderness setting provides many opportunities for empowerment. I found two definitions online that I found accurately reflected my understanding of empowerment. 1) Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individuals and communities. 2) Acting with confidence.

Today was a perfect example of this new "wilderness empowerment." Over breakfast, I mentioned casually that I would like to learn how to cut wood thinking it would be a task I would complete in the time frame of a few years to never. My fellow grad student happily announced that he was just about to go chop wood and would I like to join him. I spent the morning bucking (cutting) and limbing trees using, not only hand saws and files, but a twenty pound, gas-powered power chain saw. There is a certain amount of adrenaline that courses through the body as you lift a chain saw and begin tackling a downed tree. A certain feeling of empowerment.

Living in this new environment breeds a certain "can do" attitude which is not only invigorating but liberating as well. Learning how to handle bear spray, embracing the experience of removing mice from traps, navigating the national park are all new, exciting, and empowering. Tomorrow I will try my hand at splitting wood and we will set up our workshop to begin building a bench with our newly chopped wood. Pictures to come...

New knowledge

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On Monday, I began my two-week Community Ecology class. Throughout this course, we are learning about and researching the four different communities in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem - sage brush, aspen, conifer, and riparian.

The goal of this course is to help us understand that nothing in nature exists in isolation. For example, a bird called Clark's Nutcracker is the reason why we have white bark pines. Clark's Nutcracker relies on the pine's seeds as a source of food and disperses them throughout the forest. Without the Nutcracker, the white bark pine would not have a reliable way of spreading its seeds. Another example is the beaver. Beavers create dams in riparian (water shed) areas. These dams create water holes which attract fish, insects, moose, birds, and plants that would otherwise not have lived in the area.

The idea of connections is important, not only to understand the environment, but in education as well. Teton Science Schools focuses on students connections through event mapping, e-stations, and essential questions.

One of the assessments in our community ecology class is an event map. I have decided to create my map out of tissue paper. Using this medium, I will have to represent each of the four communities we study and explore ways in which they are connected. Exploration stations, "e-stations," is an activity students participate each morning and afternoon when they come to Teton Science Schools for programming. Students are given a notebook and spend time traveling from one station to another investigating different aspects of the natural world. For example, one e-station might be two skulls - an elk skull and a mountain lion skull. Students are asked probing questions in order to connect similar and different aspects of each skull. The next station might have a speciman of a bird and a pine cone. Students are asked to explain the connection between these two natural species. Lastly, Teton Science Schools use themes to connect the events of the day. These themes are often presented as questions - students are asked to analyze these questions in different ways depending on the topic being studied.

Throughout this week, the graduate students made their own connections in class through questions, exploration, and research. The pictures above show us collecting data about the health of Ditch Creek. We are testing water temperature, velocity, the amount of dissolved oxygen and pH, collecting sample macroinvertebrates, and observing the turbidity of the water. Connecting curriculum with the goal of creating understanding is like putting a puzzle together - you begin with a hundred little pieces that eventually fit together.

Fall in the Tetons

A mule deer outside my cabin one early morning.


Aspen grove near campus.

It seems to have happened overnight but it is fall in the Tetons. Besides the cool weather, moose sightings, and elk bugling, the aspens have begun to change color. Although I miss the reds and oranges of the oak and maple trees on the east coast, the aspens put on a good show. Their leaves have turned a golden color that is simply breathtaking in the sunlight. The cottonwoods have also begun to turn and look like torches - the top half of their leaves are amber and gold while the bottom leaves are clinging to their summer green.

In the coming weeks the weather will be quite variable starting out in the low 20s in the morning and climbing to 60 degrees by mid-afternoon. Quite soon the greens and yellows will turn to snowy white.

News from school

These pictures are of the controlled burn in Bridger-Teton National Forest. In order to start these fires, the parks department send helicopters over the forest and release ping-pong balls filled with chemicals that will ignite. The balls are pictured above.

This was a demonstration of how the balls worked in a small-scale, controlled environment. The demonstration showed the opening of lodge pole pine cones.

The first part of this week was spent in the field with 5th graders from Jackson. They learned about the different vegetation communities, played games, and spent a research day comparing the tracks and scat in aspen versus riparian areas. Today, the graduate students switched gears.

A few weeks ago we were presented with options for different teaching tracks. I chose the outreach track meaning I will be traveling to different schools around Wa yoming bringing Teton Science Schools' education philosophy to the classroom.

During the first two weeks of my track, I will be a field educator for a group of 8th graders who are coming to Jackson to discuss nature deficit disorder. After years of adults debating the issue of student inactivity, Teton Science Schools has invited 100 students to discuss their views on outdoor education, its importance, and how best to incorporate it into school curriculum. As a field instructor, I will be facilitating discussions, bringing students into Teton National Park, organizing projects, and listening to student perspectives.

During my second two-week block, I will be teaching fire ecology to students in Big Piney and Afton. In preparation for this teaching block, we will be visiting burn sites in both locations in order to set up research projects and place-based learning experiences. Today a ranger from the Department of Fire Communication and Education gave us a brief history of fire ecology; the benefits, ecological necessity, and public impressions of natural fires. We then went to a site where a controlled burn was taking place in order to restore habitats for big-horned sheep and vegetation for elk. We learned about how different federal and state agencies worked together to plan, organize, and complete prescribed burns. The burn site covered a total of 2,700 acres and helicopters were flying overhead with blowtorches to increase the fire intensity.

The ideas and reasons behind fire ecology are quite interesting. For example, lodge pole pines produce serotinous cones. Serotinous cones are covered with a resin that must be melted for the cone to open and release its seeds. Without fire, these trees have a difficult time reproducing. In the coming weeks we will be having conversations with people from the parks department and fire ecologists to explore this issue that is often misconceived by students and adults. We hope to come up with a curriculum that will combine place, science, and history.

Oh deer...

One of the best parts about living in a national park is the wildlife you see on a daily basis. Of course we get the typical chipmunk, squirrel, and insect sightings, but we are also treated to a variety of animals that simply do not appear on the east coast.

On Thursday night, as I was reading in bed, I was disturbed by a great commotion coming from outside my cabin. It was a combination of growling, munching, and scratching and of course I automatically thought that my mice had mutated and become one-hundred times their original size.

Then I heard doors open from graduate cabins around me and as we peaked our heads out of our doors we realized that we were being visited by four enormous buffalo. Our interest did not seem to disturb them, however, seeing a bison ten feet from your bed is quite impressive.

The next morning, on my walk to the bathroom, I was pleased to see three mule deer grazing on the plants around the graduate circle. They were beautiful and the buck had a full set of antlers on his head. After a while they loped into the woods. In the next few weeks, as winter blows into the Tetons we will be visited by moose, elk, and wolves who come down through Jackson for their winter migrations.

Lastly, I have the animals who come and visit me in my cabin. For the past few days my mice problem has abated and I was relieved to get a few good nights of rest in my own bed. Last night, I heard the familiar scratching and gnawing coming from my loft. Intending to capture and kill the mouse that was making the racket I boldly headed up the steps only to find two bats having their nightly meal. They had made my loft their home and were nestled in a corner enjoying the warmth. I calmly walked down the steps, so as not to disturb them, and then not so calmly ran to Jamie's cabin where we proceeded to look up bat removal techniques. In the end, I slept in Jamie's cabin and the bats slept in mine.

Having had a few hours to reflect upon the bats I have decided that in the hierarchy of "animal pests" bats are no so bad. As long as they stay in the loft and eat my mice and insect visitors, we are going to have a wonderful year together.

New projects

Having successfully returned from the backpacking trip, the grad students have been assigned new projects and given different challenges for the next few weeks.

Yesterday, we were introduced to the nature phenology project. Essentially, the graduate students were asked to pick a part of nature that can be observed and that changes with the seasons. We are to record the changes to that natural specie or area over the next nine months in a variety of forms including: photography, poetry, drawings, sound maps, essays, watercolor, etc. In May, we will present our findings at an open house evening.

Some of the projects grad students are tackling include: snow pack change through winter, the changing sounds of Ditch Creek, and weather variations. I have decided to combine science and social science for my phenology project. I will focus on nourishment and the ways in which plants, animals, and humans nourish themselves. I will do additional research on the psychology, economics, and seasonality of food.

For my study, I have found a circle of four Douglas Fir Trees on campus where there seems to be quite a bit of natural activity. I will be visiting that spot twice a week for nine months to record the species in that area and do research about food gathering and storing activities in that area. I also hope to include the greater Jackson community in my research by interviewing local chefs, restaurant critics, and families throughout the year to record how their diet and form of nourishment changes throughout the seasons. Lastly, I intend to do some internal searching and explore how nature nourishes me. Over the next few days I will be designing guidelines and a rubric to help direct my research.

Lastly, we have begun observing our faculty members teach residential groups that come to campus. Right now we have a group of fifty Wyoming fifth graders who bounded off the bus today eager to begin a week of nature exploration. It is great to take a backseat and observe the faculty engage these kids in such innovative ways.

Victor - my newest love

As it turns out, leaving my cabin for a week meant surrendering ground to the mice who seem to think that my home, is their home. Although it might not seem too troublesome, hearing mice gnaw, nibble, scramble, scratch, and scurry all night it enough to drive a person mad. As I am not the only one to experience this problem on campus, a group of graduate students declared our cabins a war zone with the enemies being, none other than, our five-inch roommates, the mice.

After spraying, scrubbing, and washing our cabins, we introduced our secret weapon: Victor. As pictured above, Victor is a small contraption the will certainly make the mice think twice before they attempt to scurry along the floor (or across our beds.) As a mousetrap it is small, quick and effective (I did extensive research on mousetraps prior to Victor's arrival.)

So now I have ten Victor's along the walls of my cabin just waiting for the first mouse to make his appearance. With Victor's help, I am hoping to have Rolling Thunder a mouse-free zone in a few short weeks. In the meantime, I intend to invest in some durable ear plugs!

Four types of fun in the Tetons

As part of our introduction to the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, the graduate students at Teton Science School spent a week hiking 35 miles of the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park. We began our journey on an auspicious note in Death Canyon, hiked to Alaska Basin, up Hurricane Pass and into Paintbrush Canyon. Throughout the trip students were required to teach lesson out in the field. We learned about glaciers, Clark's Nutcracker, Pine Beetles, the history of climbing, Climate Change, Pikas, and Native American history. Along the trail, we stopped to study plants, trees, and the many animals we saw (moose, pikas, marmots, grouse, and foxes).

Although the hikes were challenging, our group established a rating system which ensured that we were having fun at all times. This system is based on four types of fun.

Type One Fun: You are enjoying the activity of the moment. I experienced type one fun for most of the trip expecially when hiking along the beautiful pine trails with the grand canyons rising on either side.

Type Two Fun: You are not too happy during the activity but know that you will be proud once you have finished. This was best exemplified for me during our second day hiking up to Alaska Basin. At 10,000 feet, the air is thin and breathing becomes difficult as you ascent 1,000 vertical feet. With a fifty pound pack it took some positive thinking to motivate myself to the top of the pass. However, once we had made it to the basin, with its large granite slabs of rock and pristine lake, I was quite happy with my effort.

Type Three Fun: Your fun is derived from someone else's misfortune. For example, the girls in my tent group decided that we would bring one four-person tent for five people (rather than two three-person tents) in order to lighten our load. As fortune would have it, not only were we quite "cozy" in our tent but the pole tended to malfunction at inopportune moments. One evening, at 3:00 in the morning, the tent collapsed on us. After some minutes of scrambling and confusion, we were able to re-establish order. The following morning when we told our story to the boys (who had a perfectly functional tent) they laughed at our plight. Hence, type three fun.

Type Four Fun: You are simply not having any fun at all. In fact, you are pretty miserable. I did not experience much type four fun on this backbacking trip but came close when a Gold-Banded squirrel pummeled us with sap infused pine cones as we tried to enter our tent.

Throughout our trip the landscape was magnificent and varied from forest riparian to stark mountain passes. We had beautiful weather with cold nights and sunny days. My group cooked together, joked together, and got to know each other a little better. For the most part, it was type one fun all around.