Work, toil, toil, work

We went out to the Mammoth Lakes area for a project that Jack’s working on about Lodgepole Pine trees.

While in the area we checked on his previously collected seedlings that are now germinating in the research greenhouse (above), and then went in search for new seedlings in a burn site of some kind. In the past ten years there have been several sizable forest fires and searching these sites was our mission.

Eventually we found this burned forest on Glass Mountain and he was a super happy camper.

We were in bear country and had already spotted a rather large coyote, so we were hyper aware of our animal neighbors and that we were likely on that mountain completely alone cooking up some good smellin’ grub in our cast iron skillet. At first we thought the dog would notify us of a bear, but then Jack said, “Ya know, I’ve snuck up on her sleeping and scared her before.” We both looked at the dog and realized that she probably wasn’t going to be that much help.

So, Jack took matters into his own hands. Do you like our tent’s little anti-bear blockade that Jack made from tree debris? Totally cracked me up. WHY we didn’t bring a shotgun still puzzles us both considering that we own several, but rather stupidly, we didn’t. We had bear spray and figured we’d hit the car’s panic button if we heard a bear rustling up our tent.

It’s kind of silly, but I slept better, so who cares?

Good news. We didn’t need either.

But until we found this site (we almost thought the weekend was going to be a bust) we hiked and scoured, and drove and hiked and scoured some more …

… It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Here’s one of the early burn sites that didn’t pan out, but boy, it was a beautiful place to search.

Teresa or Mark: Do you guys have any idea what this little flower is? Sagebrush country, upper montane forest. Reminds me of a little lotus blossom.