...and through the woods

Do you remember how much field trips rocked when you were a kid? You'd get out of school for a day, and you'd get to go to a totally cool place! The Georgia state capitol building, an airport and the cockpit of a plane, the Space and Rocket Center... Oh yeah. Those were the days.

But for some reason once you pass a certain age, they stop giving you field trips. It's really very tragic. Which is why it's all about being an Ecologist! We still get to go on field trips! I'm all over taking classes with field trips or a field component. I took a decent number as an undergrad. Of course, at Stanford there was really only one place field trips went to. Jasper Ridge. I also spent a summer working there. So yeah, I've been to the Ridge quite a few times. But it was always great. It's beautiful there, and you'd get to get out of the classroom and go outside on a fantastic spring day. (Because all spring days are fantastic in California.)

Now here it is, my first quarter of grad school, and I've already been on a field trip! That's right. Today my plant community ecology class took an all day field trip (and boy, did I have to get up earlier than I'd like. The sun was not yet beaming on Floyd...). We went to the Placer County Big Trees, the northernmost grove of Giant Sequoias, a little east of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada. These sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganticum), by the way, are not in the same genus as the Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). They used to be, but are no longer thought to be so closely related. Oh taxonomy... Always so rife with controversy... ;-)

We didn't really do anything with the sequoias though. This area also contains one of about three remaining old growth forests of any decent size in California. So yeah. Lots of big trees. The goal of the field trip was to learn some plotless sampling methods. So pretty much what we did was wander around in the forest measuring the distances to trees and the diameter of the trees. I also learned how to identify the dominant species of lower montane mixed conifer forests. Pretty fun. The really fun part is going to come soon when we have to analyze all the data on a takehome midterm... groan!

When I got home, my license plates had come in the mail! Oh frabjous day! I'd been starting to wonder if they were ever really going to get here.... Perhaps not so exciting as getting birthday presents in the mail, but hey! It's mail, and it's not bills! I'd tell you what they "say", but then who knows what kind of mischief you could cause... =)