tunnels of gold

I look out my window this sun-dappled Saturday afternoon and I see gold.  Across the street, our neighbor's birch tree's golden leaves shiver in the October breeze.  Three days ago their Norway maple was aflame with yellow fire, but now those leaves carpet the ground beneath.  Our Norway maples are just starting to turn, their leaves a pale golden-green that brightens the view from our western windows.  This week I biked to the university several times through tunnels of burnished bronze, vivid leaves arcing above and scattered below.  Soon all the leaves will have swirled down from their branches, but for a few days yet I'm surrounded by Midas-touched beauty.

Last weekend, Beth and Britta and I ambled up the Rattlesnake, admiring the swathes of paling green and yellow larches and bright cottonwoods scattered amongst the deep green of Ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs.

Last week, Kara and I took a hike up Mount Jumbo just before sunset, and all the grasses were awash in the late-afternoon sunlight.

A lone tree, on the cusp of assuming its fall garb:

I do so love living in a place with seasons.  Ten years ago, when I spent the semester in Egypt, I went straight from summer to winter and completely missed fall.  I found that I needed that time of transition, that jumping straight to winter from summer was disorienting.  There was no time of easing myself from one season to the other.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live near the equator, where the day length is always the same and the only seasonal difference comes in rainy vs. dry.  How would my perceptions of the world be different if the amount of light I got every day was the same throughout the year?  What difference does it make to me to live in a place where high summer brings nearly 16 hours of daylight and deep winter brings only 8 and a half hours? 

In 6th grade my friend Heather and I did a report on Sweden--"Land of the Midnight Sun"--and I remember reading that, before electric lights came along, Swedish farmers needed less sleep during the summer months, when there was much to do and, more importantly, when the nights were short, while in the winter months they slept much more when the nights were longer.  That is, their bodies' rhythms changed according to the amount of daylight.  (Remembering this tidbit makes me want to research this topic further!)  They were influenced by the natural rhythms of the physical world.

Perhaps I'm just looking for an excuse; I am finding it increasingly difficult to drag myself out of bed before the sun rises (today, the sun rose at 8:13, and we still have nearly two months to go before the winter solstice).  This is fine on the weekends, but on days I have to work the situation is less than ideal.  I wonder what would happen if we all got up and went to bed with the sun, no matter what time of year it was.  Would we be happier?  Healthier?  More effective in our work and play?  Would we be more tired in the summer, with less sleep, or would we find ourselves energized by the long, full days?  Would we be more content in the winter, able to curl up in our beds for long, cozy hours?  I wish I could attempt this experiment.  

Speaking of experiments, the results are in on one of our garden attempts this summer.  The question:  Can we grow sweet potatoes in Missoula?  We had an inkling of a possible answer ("Maybe, but you're probably crazy to try!") in the fact that only one company is willing to ship sweet potato slips to Montana.  We planted about 12 sweet potato plants this spring; nine of them went into the ground near the bean fence, and three went into big black pots in our "Row O' Pots."  Greg dug up the results of the ground-planted sweet po's more than a month ago, and found a few orangish roots the size of pencils.  Instead of letting him dig up the potted sweet potatoes at the same time, I convinced him to move the pots into our greenhouse to soak up heat from the fall sunshine and dig the roots up at a later date.  That later date turned out to be this past Wednesday, and this was our result:

Our conclusion:  Oh baby, oh baby, can we grow sweet potatoes in Missoula!  We've already had some in a delectable garden soup (along with other delights such as potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, and tomatoes), and are already looking forward to trying again next year, with even better results.

But for now, the sun is still shining, the leaves are more golden than ever, and it's time for this girl to get herself outdoors.  Au revoir!

why I love my job

My job at the Montana Natural History Center is one I enjoy for many reasons, not least of which is that my duties vary widely and I don't, generally, have a chance to get bored.  Other reasons (in no particular order):

**On a day when I'm running around like a crazy person trying to make sure everything's in order for our fundraiser (coming up later that week), my co-worker Alyssa, who's in charge of Camo the gophersnake, asks me to make sure that Camo has eaten his (dead) mouse for the week, and, if not, to fish it out and put it back in the freezer for next time.  (Thankfully, Camo ate his mouse!)

**I get to answer questions like, "Would MNHC be interested in taking my rock collection/seashells/bird's nest/skull?"

**My parents-in-law collect dead birds for me to put in the MNHC deep freeze, in the hopes that one day they'll be stuffed and put on display or used for a taxidermy workshop.

**I walk in the kitchen one January morning to find a dead great blue heron thawing on the floor, so it can be folded up to fit in the freezer.

**One of our bowls in the kitchen is designated as "Camo's bowl" and is used for defrosting his weekly mouse meal.

**Community members not only bring us rocks and skulls, but occasionally live animals, including chipmunks, birds, and spiders.  The chipmunks and birds we care for as best we can, or send along to more appropriate places, but we currently have 2 (live) black widow spiders in jars with very secure lids.

**I love and support MNHC's mission of educating people about the natural world.

**I get paid to do things like spend hours outside teaching kids about insects, scout local natural areas for field trips or other programs, learn about birds/bugs/skulls/aquatic insects/botany/winter ecology, record Field Notes in the KUFM studio on the UM campus, and, oh yes, once a year I get paid to dress up, spend an evening with amazing people, and watch community members give generously of their resources so that MNHC can keep teaching people about the world around them.

**When searching for materials in our (huge) program storage area, I may come across anything from a stuffed mountain goat to fossils to a walrus skull to ancient books on natural history.

**Every day is casual day.  I dress up sometimes because I like to, not because I have to.

**My co-workers are intelligent, wonderful people, who are first-class nature geeks.  I fit right in!

**My co-workers and I often get distracted by flowers and bird calls, and we always have a field guide near at hand for reference.

**I am always learning something new!

**Greg gets to teach/lead field days at MNHC a few times a year.

**I have learned more about the birds and plants and ecosystem of my place in the two and a half years of working at MNHC than I did in the four years of my graduate program.  Part of that, of course, is due to Greg.  But I have found a new passion in learning not only the names of the plants and animals around me, but in learning how they all fit together in this place I now call home. 

**I get to see firsthand the generosity of people from the Missoula community.  Those with monetary resources give generously.  Those with fewer funds still give a little.  Those with time (even a little bit) give in so many ways.  Right now I have dozens of volunteers who spend 5+ hours per day outdoors, teaching 4th graders about nature.  We've had some pleasant days this month, but many have been cool and rainy, and yet these volunteers layer up, pull on their wool socks and waterproof boots, their gloves and raincoats, and go on out there with energy and good cheer.

**I have gotten to know some of kindest, sweetest, most compassionate people I've ever met. 

**Not only do I get to satisfy the scientist in me, I also, as of now, get to use my writing and editing abilities as well, as the VERY-soon-to-be new editor of the Montana Naturalist magazine.  Exciting!

Even when I'm in the midst of the more busy and stressful times of year (e.g., NOW), I love the work, and, in general, feel energized rather than sapped by the busyness.  Though I admit, I'm looking forward to the winter months and the relative calm they bring.

I am so very grateful to love what I do.  

tomatoes and larches and autumn, oh my!

Tis autumn, which is, at the moment, my favorite season.  I find that my favorite season tends to change depending on which season it is:  my favorite season is whichever season I am currently experiencing.  But autumn holds a special place in my heart.  My birthday is in September; Greg's and my anniversary is in October; I grew up in a family of educators, so autumn was always a time of new things, of starting over.  Now I am married to an educator and I work for an organization that provides educational programs, so the autumn feeling of renewal is part of my life once again. 

Autumn means harvest.

Autumn means change.

Autumn means food preservation.

For the past five weekends, some combination of Greg, Beth, Britta, and I (plus various other friends) has bought and canned tomatoes.  The first weekend we bought 20 pounds of tomatoes and canned 7 quarts.  The second weekend we bought 40 pounds of tomatoes and canned 14 quarts.  The past three weekends we've bought 60 pounds of tomatoes and canned dozens of quarts of crushed tomatoes, numerous pints of salsa, as well as roasting and freezing perhaps two dozen medium-sized freezer bags of tomato sauce.   While canning tomatoes has been our tradition for the past three years, I don't think we've ever canned quite this enthusiastically before.  The first year we canned tomatoes, we were reluctant to use them--"What? Use our beautifully preserved tomatoes for some random dinner?  We can't do THAT!"  Fortunately, we've done enough canning by now that we eagerly use the food we've preserved--which is, after all, the point.  Our goal this fall is to can enough tomatoes to last us for the year, and we may be close.

We have so many cans of tomatoes this year, in fact, that we need more space for them.  I have mentioned in another post that we happen to live in a small house.  We are fortunate enough to have a large, if unfinished, basement, but it's nice to have our canned food a little more handy than that.  A few weeks ago I was headed to our upstairs Hobbit Room when a dazzling notion struck me.  Behind the door to the upstairs, at the end of our little hallway, is a blank wall with about four inches of space between the wall and the door hinges:

My dazzling notion?  To build shelves along that whole back wall to serve as storage space for our canned goods, tea, and other non-perishable food items.  I went to Ace and bought the lumber, and then, while Beth, Britta and I canned in the kitchen, my brilliantly handy husband built these (but very kindly allowed me to fill them):

TA-DA!

Oh, the delightful satisfaction that comes from making effective use of our spaces, even (or especially) those that seem too small to be useful.

This past weekend we also took our annual pilgrimage to see the alpine larches (Larix lyallii) changing color.  We hiked up to Glen Lake, a place we've visited many times before; even so, its beauty felt new and startling.  Perhaps it was the blueness of the sky after several days of rain:

Or the brightness of the changing huckleberry leaves:

Or the ethereal wisps of fireweed fluff, swirling away on the mountain breezes:

Or the striking juxtaposition of burned forest and lush regrowth:

Or the vivid yellow flame of changing larch needles:

Or the purity of the dazzling-white snow, and the way deep greens and bright yellows and greys and browns stood out against it:

Or the sky-deep reflection in the calm waters of the lake:

Or it may have been the combination of all these things.