I returned to California in mid-March, after another pedal-to-the-floor cross-country drive—from Brockport to Bishop in less than three days, my route and timing fortunate enough to avoid the worst of late winter’s weather. My only stop along the way (other than for a short sleep in an Illinois motel, and a scenic nap in a Walmart parking lot in eastern Wyoming) was to watch the migrating Sandhill Cranes along the North Platte River, a lovely spectacle that I’d read about, but never seen. Two days after reaching Bishop I was back in the Inyo Mountains, working my way up a heat-soaked alluvial fan and through a bit of “habitat lag” (from cold and soggy western New York to sunny Mojave Desert scrub in less than a week). I wandered among barrel cactus and creosote bush, toward the place where I first found Inyo Mountains salamanders during last fall’s fieldwork—and where in 2009 I first encountered the species. A creature of habit, I suppose (me, but also the salamanders), although the emotions I carried with me in March of 2018 mostly were different from those that accompanied me in early October of 2017. The uncertainty and hesitation that that nagged me at the start of the project were mostly gone, replaced by an eagerness to be back at it, leavened by the confidence that I more or less understood my study system and understood what I needed to do. Although my pack was laden with research equipment and water, my psychic burden was much lighter. Still, I had (and have) my residual worries. Would there be salamanders, and would I find them? How easy would it be for me to master two new skills, along with all of the other tasks that I needed to accomplish: collecting tissue samples for a study of the evolutionary relationships among Inyo Mountains salamander populations, and swabbing salamanders for chytrid fungus, killer of frogs (and potentially salamanders)? And how would I adapt to working alone, in isolated and often challenging terrain? Well. There have been salamanders, and in some places, many of them: seven under one rock (a record), two in a marginal locality where I had been skunked twice before, seventeen at a site where I had never found more than two. And with the help of a local climber, I managed to make it into the canyon where last fall my companions and I were turned back by a rock fall “incident.” And although at first my technique for collecting tissue and chytrid samples were at best inept, I soon learned how to integrate those tasks with everything else that I needed to do, from photographing, weighing, and measuring the length of each salamander, to measuring soil pH and temperature, and estimating plant cover. There is a quiet satisfaction comes from this kind of adaptation, in science as well as most any human endeavor that demands even a basic skill set. Mostly, the salamanders are behaving in predictable ways, similar to what I came to expect during last fall’s fieldwork. Still, I have noticed some differences—more small individuals (young that hatched out late last fall?), fewer gravid females, and occasionally salamanders in drier places, under cover objects relatively far from water or on warmer, south-facing slopes. And one locality, which in past visits produced good numbers of salamanders, seems to have far fewer of them now, most likely due to a recent flash flood that removed much of the vegetation and organic soil that the salamanders prefer. These differences are valuable from a scientific standpoint, for they hint at seasonal patterns—but they also warn me of how blinding it can be to assume too much about the salamanders, based on past experience.
Even so, one of the great pleasures of ecological research and natural history work is that of recognition: of comforting encounters with familiar organisms, in their accustomed places. And even if there are differences of the sort that I describe above—for the world is a variable and constantly changing place, which is one of its seductive joys—there is an underlying constancy present, a sense of continuity in the lives of animals and plants. Life goes on, often in the face of intimidating forces. I even felt some sense of this continuity in the canyon where flash flooding had cleared it of soil, vegetation, and (presumably) most of its salamanders—for I discovered one young salamander there (and where there are young, there must be parents), and trusted that, given enough time and sufficient benign human neglect, the canyon and its salamanders would recover. The salamanders shall endure, just as they have done over the countless millennia, and just as we shall endure, in our own fashion. This notion is something that I have written about before, and I take more than a little solace in this belief. But I know that there is an abstract quality to my insistence on the restorative power of salamanders and their ilk. It’s something I have been thinking about as I write this, because just this morning I learned that a sister of a good friend has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Would the endurance of the natural world be of any comfort to her, and to her friends and family? And how would my beliefs be tested by fire—by my own suffering, or that of a loved one? I have no solid answer these questions, but I know that I will be thinking of them in the weeks ahead, as I probe the canyons of the Inyo Mountains, and the lives of their creatures.
43 Comments
Lisa Hendricks
4/7/2018 03:39:01 pm
I'm glad you are back in a place you love. I'm sorry about your friend's sister. So far, we have been fortunate in this family and haven't had to go through such a loss.
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Dick Hutto
7/21/2018 06:26:17 pm
I’m sure your students will benefit immeasurably from what sounds like an amazing sabbatical! Best, Dick
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Chris Norment
7/23/2018 07:36:32 am
Thanks, Dick. Now that it's almost time to start back up, I am amazed at how quickly the year has passed...
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AuthorI am a professor emeritus of Environmental Science and Ecology at SUNY Brockport. What began in 2017 as a sabbatical blog continues in a haphazard way, as the spirt moves me and time allows. The focus, though, remains the same - the natural world, in all of its complexity and beauty, and our relation to it. Archives
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