On the Banks of the Red River (Laura Ingalls Wilder Summer)

 “I knew there would be rivers to cross and hills to climb, and I was glad, for this is a fair land and I rejoiced that I would see it.”-- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie opening narration

I spent my third field season with the U$DA in North Dakota. It was a summer of prairies, insects, and sunflowers, with walks along the Red River every evening.

The U$DA has money. (Or at least they did before the current administration.) I made known my interest in pollinator field work in North Dakota, and our partners at the U$DA made it happen. Free housing and a decent stipend at the drop of a hat-- amazing. (Don't tell Elon.) If I had been on my own for that funding, I would have been applying to at least 20 grants and scholarships and probably would have been rejected from most. I probably would have had to lose money to participate in field work in the Great Plains. But the U$DA in Fargo invests in young people, and they made it happen.

Funding-wise, the plan was to throw me in with the group of REU students (research experience for undergrads) in the insect metabolism labs. I would be housed with them in the dorms and invited to all their scheduled events. It was a little odd at times learning alongside mostly college freshmen and sophomores at 24 years--  I felt like Buddy the Elf as a grown man in a classroom of little elves. 

My thesis advisor worked in the sunflower unit there. He had Grace, a postdoc, working for him. Grace is the smallest adult person I have ever seen out doing fieldwork, but she is so full of insect knowledge and I have no idea where she is storing it all. I lost her in the tallgrass prairies and sunflower fields some days; I would always find her bent down examining some bug to show me.

Assassin Bug

Grace showing me a lacewing egg

Our projects that summer were twofold: collaborate with tallgrass prairie folks east in Minnesota, and study whether bees prefer different kinds of sunflower. Sunflowers bloom in early-mid August, when most people are heading back to school, which is why the sunflower unit never has true REU students. (There's nothing sunflower-related for them to do until the very end, which is when traditional REUs are analyzing data and making summary presentations.) So I would be in the prairies most of the summer until sunflowers were ready.

Learning to identify pollinators: these are all flies

"How's that rut you're wearing in the road between here and Kensington?" My advisor asked every other week. The tallgrass prairie research was over an hour and a half away from headquarters, so we spent three hours a day on the road for most of the summer.

We did field work with people studying Echinacea angustifolia, a native prairie coneflower. We collected nectar with tiny glass straws and pollen by scraping it into little tubes or collecting whole florets. I lived with my pants tucked into my socks to avoid ticks.

Collecting nectar with microcaps

Plucking florets (the reproductive part of the flower holding pollen)

We weeded sunflower plots every week in preparation for August. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder, shifting between agriculture and prairie frolicking.

Sunflower sprouts

I saw my thesis study species for the first time in the wild, Melissodes (long-horned bees).

Male bees don't sting

When we weren't out in the field, I worked on teaching myself RStudio to analyze my thesis data.

In my free time, I drew and went on long evening walks along the Red River. It amused me to announce after dinner that I was walking to Minnesota. I also hung out with the undergrads I lived with quite a bit. A small group of us took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in Mountain Time and the farthest west I had ever been. I saw bison, prairie dogs, and a lazuli bunting for the first time. And I understand why they call the northwest Big Sky Country.

My first time trying sushi (yes, in the farthest place from the ocean in the continental US)

We slipped and slid down the canyon after a rain

Note the bison near the bottom right

Lazuli Bunting (new lifer)

We stopped at a dinosaur museum in the town where our hotel was

Saw some sculptures along the Enchanted Highway

World's largest bison statue

We also went camping in the Sheyenne National Grasslands. Some of the entomology staff showed us how to sweep net and do a light survey after dark.

I will miss these young scientists, and I look forward to watching their lives in pictures on Instagram. Working in conservation is just collecting friends in different states like Infinity Stones.

My housing with the undergrads ended a week before my sunflower work with Grace was done-- start of the new semester in the dorms and all that-- so I lived with Grace for a week in August. I fell in love with her cat, Garcia.

The Blue Angels flying over my dorm-- I saw them twice on this trip (against my will)

Fargo Farmer's Market

Oh, and I still can't get over how flat things are in the Great Plains. The prairies were lovely, and the badlands held a kind of beauty I didn't know existed, but I was happy to return to my mountains.

And just like that, I was back in West Virginia for semester two of grad school.