5.4.09

Thousands of concentric rings spring outward followed by thousands more. As the raindrops hit the river, they create perfect expanding circular waves crashing into one another as they are carried downstream and out of sight. The dull light dances on the river as the rain changes the surface of the water in every direction. Standing still allows you to see every falling drop and its tiny, beautiful effect on the river as its countless brethren is joined.

Today was not bad; it didn't really seem like I did much real work... So, that was cool. First thing, I got to go out (on my own!) and check the connectivity of Palmer Creek (see "4.20.09"). Unfortunately, due to some poor directions from Ian, after checking the connectivity, I couldn't find the stream gauge so that we could correlate the amount of connectivity or no connectivity to how high the stream was. I am a failure at my first solo task. Boo me. When I get back to the office, after walking a certain stretch of stream three times, Ian's other intern, Helena, has arrived which stirs up a certain level of excitement and commotion. She seems nice enough. Later, Ian takes us along on a "show-and-tell" with a woman from the Community Justice organization to elaborate on some jobs he's laying her crew of no good do-gooders out on. I had seen pretty much everything already, but it was all new to Helena and it was still nice to be away from the ranger station. On the way back, Ian showed us all the Palmer Creek gauge so I would know exactly where it was. It wasn't where he had originally directed me to, but I still felt sheepish because it was close.

It rained all day so later Helena and I went to check the level of Palmer Creek again with hopes that we could see at exactly what level the stream reaches full connectivity. It still wasn't connected, but it was close. When we returned, Ian gave us a PowerPoint presentation that he has been promising me since I got here. It was mostly about the fisheries biology division of the Forest Service.