As I reflect on this field season, I appreciate the variety of people I have had the pleasure of standing in a stream with.
Dave B.
I first met Dave B. at our volunteer training at the start of the field season. Dave is a seasoned veteran of stream monitoring with his experience dating back to the inception of the program in 2011. Even with over a decade of experience, he was eager to attend the training again as someone who was willing to learn and be a resource for others, including myself. A jam-packed season of trips and other activities limited the time Dave spent in the field this year, but luckily, he was able to join me for one sampling session this August.
As we rode off in our Grey Sequioa, Dave and I began to bond over our commonalities such as our heritage and fascination with genealogy but also our differences, most notably, our college basketball rivalry. While insignificant for some, Dave and I were alumna from two of the “blue bloods” of college basketball who had recently faced off in a National Championship. We reminisced on our love for the sport, the icons it produces, and the pride we felt for homes that were over 1,000 miles away. We were able to continue on despite the rivalry and had a successful venture throughout the Madison Valley on South Meadow and Moore Creek.
While I stood in the stream collecting discharge measurements, Dave would share his favorite recipes for trips like ours as well as home-cooked meals, and cocktails to pair them with. Within each recipe, were little stories about the origination behind the recipe, and why they were important to him. The following day, I found myself making a BLT wrap, inspired by Dave and his many journeys.
Lillard Fly Fishing
Every Friday for several weeks, my host site partnered with Lillard Fly Fishing Expeditions to teach their young camp attendees about stream health by volunteering with our monitoring program. This included talking about the importance of citizen science, what their help would mean for the Madison Watershed, and getting out in the streams to collect field data. Each week brought a different group of boys from across the country with a connecting force, the love for fly fishing and respect for our streams. These trips often involved impromptu plant and animal identification ventures, fishing stories that felt like they should be told around a campfire, and gentle arguments about who would get to collect which field parameter (turbidity samples are very popular!).
Jaydn B.
Jaydn joined me for the first time, on one of the longest field days of the season. Each summer my host site holds a synoptic sampling event that collects data on 16 streams in the Madison Watershed. We call it the “Tributary Blitz.” The 16 locations are divided amongst three teams each named after the mountain ranges surrounding the Madison Valley where the streams find their start (Gravelly, Tobacco Root, and Madison). The team I was captaining had the task of sampling five sites in the southernmost portion of the watershed coming from the Gravelly Range. Jadyn is a recent college graduate from Montana State with a passion for bugs, something I don’t necessarily share. While I enjoy looking for and trying to ID macroinvertebrates in the streams, that pretty much sums up the extent of my interest in crawling critters.
As we mucked through swampy streams and outraced a thunderstorm, Jaydn shared about her internship with the Madison Valley Weed Committee’s biocontrol program. She recounted epic floating trips down the Madison River to take streamside weed surveys including one where a warm sunny day turned into a raging lightning storm. She described the feeling of the storm closing in on them as the hair on their arms started to stand up and the static raced through the air. Aside from close calls on the river, Jaydn and I connected over our love for bluegrass that played on the radio as we drove from site to site and our uncertainty about our next steps after our terms ended. With Jaydn’s encouragement, the day after Tributary Blitz, I found myself somewhere unexpected. I joined her in the field to place biocontrol insects on invasive weeds (see the pic for my first time holding Cyphocleonus, aka the spotted knapweed weevil).
Managing our volunteer monitoring program has helped me venture out of my comfort zone and allowed me to find a greater purpose within my work. Every volunteer has a different background and reason that motivates them to join me in the streams from first-timers to people that have been out there from the start. My appreciation for our watershed and citizen science programs grows with each volunteer I get to take out.
