I came home with a fat bag of grass

Ah. It’s not what you think.

No, honestly. I swear.

Part of my field project required me to be able to identify all of the plants in the study area I’d selected. Unfortunately some of the grasses looked so damn similar to one another, I had to bring home samples. No, none of them are smokeable. Well. I’m sure you could try to smoke them, but I can’t guarantee they’ll do anything other than smell like burning fields.

Yesterday’s trek into the field proved to be chock full of lolz as well as horse shit. I’m talking real honest-to-god horse shit here. Something I’m all too familiar with, considering where I grew up. And I normally have no problem with horse shit. Except when it’s 90 degrees outside by 9am and all of said horse shit is baking out in that hot morning sun. Did I mention that said horse shit came from an estimated 200 horses? No? Ah. Yeah. It was wonderful. Hot horse shit. Amazing.

My subsection of watershed that I’d chosen to study is located at the Cowboy Camp area of Bear Creek in Colusa County. Normally it’s a nice peaceful area, with a few vault toilets, a nice hiking/horse trail that runs parallel and then perpendicular to the creek, and just enough shade to be a good stopping point along a hot summer’s drive.

Murphy’s Law loves me to death.

Apparently this is the annual weekend of some huge-assed trail endurance ride event for horse enthusiasts, and oh my god, these people were out en force. There were horse trailers, motor homes, and pickups as far as the eye could see. Temporary paddocks had been set up near most of the trailers, though it appeared that many owners simply tethered their horses to stakes and let them roam a little more freely. That’s my theory anyway, and it would explain why I found horse shit OMG EVERYWHERE.

Had I even thought to check for large events (of which I didn’t think there were any at this place) for this weekend, I would’ve definitely changed plans. By the time we were done with all of the assessment work, it was really too hot to be around such a stench. It made me irritable like you wouldn’t believe. Especially since I’d only had a single cup of coffee and a homemade granola bar for breakfast. Grrrrr.

The highlights of the morning included:

• trespassing onto a section of private land because I needed to get better pictures of the stream channel and ripping my shirt open on the barbed wire fence
• mom falling on her ass in the middle of the creek and being physically unable to get back up, leaving me to rescue her and carry her to the bank
• remembering two hours into the project that there are rattlesnakes in that area…after we’d already spent those two hours tromping through the underbrush and over wobbly rocks
• attempting to pass three horseback riders on our way back up the trail, only to discover that their horses were all socially retarded and completely frightened of us, during which time the riders all made comments meant to admonish us for using the hiking trail (???)
• removing my boonie hat at the end of the morning, only to discover that I’d acquired David Lynch hair.

After all was said and done, we headed back home, stopping at the mini mart at Cache Creek Casino, where we grabbed some nachos and sodas and sat on the patio outside to wolf it all down. At that end of the valley, the temperature wasn’t quite so silly, so it was a pleasant and relaxing ten minutes. I was happy to finally get home, shed my sweat-soaked field togs, and flop down on my bed for a solid nap.

I do wish that more of my classes required me to go out into the field. It feels weird to be discussing  so many things and yet not getting that hands-on experience to go with it. I figure I just need to make my own field opportunities, be it performing minor research projects for the sake of having ideas for grad school, or volunteering for various local organizations such as the Native Plant Society or Audubon. (or even better…the state parks interpretive programs!) Perhaps then I won’t feel so disconnected from where I want to go with all of this.