July 2009 Archives

It’s crunch time for the students! A draft paper for the eight week independent study students is due this week. Needless to say, there is some last minute scrambling. Several weeks back I had a student suggest it was a bit too much to be dealing with a class and an independent project simultaneously. I told them to get used to it. As your research career progresses, the number of balls you have to keep in the air only gets larger. Time management is a critical skill for being a research scientist!

I’m always struck by how time moves in the summer. So much happens in the summer that at times it seems like it stretches on forever. Students arrive, make new friends, hike peaks, go to talks, learn how to do research, etc. The days are so full that sometimes it seems like a single day stretches out for a week or longer. But even though the days are really long, summer happens fast. By early August it feels like you’ve been hit with a semi-truck; everybody is wandering around with a dazed look wondering what happened to the summer and trying to figure out how they’ll fit that last peak in before they have to return to classes.

In some ways, it’s just how the ecosystem works. The plants and animals lie dormant under the snow through a long winter. Finally they peek out from the snowpack and then it is a mad race to complete their annual cycle before the frosts arrive in the fall. There’s so much to do and so little time. As much as I like summer, I must admit that I take a deep breath and enjoy walking a bit slower when fall arrives.

It’s the week of people! I didn’t spend much time at the general store this week, but when I was there I kept running into RMBL alumni. It’s great to see people coming back to visit. Just by chance I met two different alumni who are involved in land stewardship; one in Virginia and one in Ohio. They both work for land organizations and manage conservation easements. A summer of science in Gothic is a great experience for lots of different types of careers.

The flip side of having so many people going through Gothic is that the traffic is atrocious. It’s a classic situation of society failing to cope. It’s simpler to let the valley get overrun than it is for the county or federal government to address the situation. Several years ago the county had a group convening to address the situation, but people just don’t like change and it was easier to talk than to act. I’ve wheeled and dealed to get a bus route from CB to Gothic started and to keep it going. The county and town of CB have helped fund it, but the service is just a drop in the bucket.

There is a lot of talk about economic development in the county. It seems obvious that taking a great resource like RMBL and covering it in a layer of dust, and forcing bicyclists to inhale the equivalent of several packs of cigarettes to get to some of the best single track around, is probably not the best strategy for attracting and retaining tourists. But, that is the strategy the county has adopted.

There are some progressive forces in our county, however, and we have some opportunities to get a handle on the situation. I encourage anyone who thinks a backcountry experience should not involve a stream of cars and choking on dust, to contact Gunnison County or the US Forest Service and let them know we can do better. We can work towards change that will make all those returning alumni happy to take a bus to visit the Gothic store.

RMBL has been doing a bunch of outreach events the last several weeks and I’ve had some really interesting questions that have made me think. What can the Lab tell us about climate change? Some of the scientists associated with the Lab are very involved politically—does endorsement of the Lab mean that I endorse their viewpoints? Is the Lab an advocacy group?

I think the decisions we make as a society are based upon a combination of knowledge and values. While knowledge should inform our actions, the decisions we make ultimately reflect our personal values. It is the responsibility of everybody in society, including scientists, to think about how we can improve our world and our community. And I’ve been inspired by the impacts that I’ve seen students and scientists make over the years. At the end of the day, however, the RMBL as an institution is dedicated to its mission. Nothing more and nothing less. We are not an advocacy group and we do not take institutional stands on environmental issues (though we hope the work done here can contribute in meaningful ways to critical issues and are proud when our knowledge informs important decisions).

RMBL is about generating knowledge about the world and training the next generation of field scientists. As we build support for the Lab, we are reaching out to people who believe that knowledge about our world is important. Individuals who support the Lab are not endorsing a particular viewpoint about environmental policy; rather, they are making a statement that knowledge is something that we need more of. It is a statement that one of the best legacies we can leave our children is an understanding of the world they inherit from us.

It is Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s 50th summer at the RMBL. That is a pretty amazing record when you think about it. And the odd thing is that such longevity is not unusual. Ken Armitage was speculating that his string of 43 summers of continuous research is also a record (Paul and Anne missed a couple of summers), though Ward Watt probably has that record in his sites. When you throw in a cohort of scientists who started in the early 70’s (for example scientists Nick Waser, Mary Price, David Inouye, Barb Frase to name a few) you realize that there is over 500 years of collective experience with the ecosystems around Gothic. People initially kept coming backing because of the wonderful community, the collection of engaging scientists, and the beautiful locale. It has helped that the growing season fits nicely into the academic season (you can see much of the interesting biology in between spring and fall classes). And scientists with families wouldn’t keep coming if we didn’t allow kids. Through time, though, such longevity has turned into an important part of the science at the Lab. We live in a changing world; much of that change happens on long timeframes- years, decades, and centuries. The longevity of the scientists will allow us to understand that change and understanding the change is an important part of managing it. RMBL is becoming one of the best understood ecosystems precisely because of the annual migration that brings field scientists to Gothic each summer.
David Inouye mentioned a tourist watching the fourth of July parade saw the students in veratrum skirts and asked if those were really the scientific leaders of tomorrow. Yep, they are. And chances are some of them will be marching in veratrum skirts decades later.

Here comes the 4th of July and all of the associated madness. Up until July 4th it always seems like summer is just starting. Once it has happened, you know summer is here in full force. Organizing the race is a big thing for RMBL staff. I remember when I took the job as Director, it was the part of the job that scared me the most (little did I know what else awaited me). Luckily we’ve got great people organizing the event, so my participation is typically ceremonial; I stand on a bench in front of the Town Hall (usually with my eldest son Cormac) and drop the butterfly net. It’s amazing how quickly Gothic empties out once the runners stream out of the townsite.

We’ve been making a concerted effort to open the Lab up to the larger community. It’s an effort that predates me and the 4^th of July race is one of the better examples of an RMBL-Crested Butte event that goes back 30+ years. We have George Sibley to thank for getting it started. He came up with the idea and organized the race. He told me that after he started the first race, he drove down to Crested Butte and was doing some errands. Before he knew it, runners were approaching the finish line. He quickly bought some flour and made a finish line. In many ways, that sums up Gothic. A bright person had a great idea, figured out how to make it happen, and it just grew into something bigger than anybody would have imagined. Happy fourth of July everybody!