Chapter 4

Feb 5-11

The snow stopped falling and turned into rain. The trees were no longer covered in white. The temperature rose dramatically and steadied at 40 degrees. The ice that concealed the harbor drifted away and melted, and the people of Homer continued doing what they do. To and fro. The birds sang and the otters cracked crab and ate joyfully. The waves lapped. The sun rose and fell. This is not to say that the people were not happy. Quite the opposite in fact. There was much joy to be gleaned from routine. Without routine, you can get lost. As you can also be lost in your routine.

That was my crude attempt at trying a different introduction to these blogs. I will have to get creative and develop new ways of keeping these blogs fun to make and read instead of just jotting down the events that transpired during the week. If you have any ideas, please share them with me.

Anyway, as you can tell from my attempt at a poem, I have a steady routine now. On Monday, I have two classes, global climate change and conservation biology, both of which are 2 and a half hours long. They are taught well, and although long, they don’t become boring.

Tuesday and Wednesday this week were more difficult. I’m finding GIS to have a very steep learning curve, which I am still working on climbing. On Tuesday, I spent the entire day trying to run different analyses, which ultimately failed. It was more frustrating because I was struggling, and I also didn’t feel like I learned anything from those failures. I’m finding out that I won’t want to specialize in GIS, but I hope to eventually become proficient enough to gain some value from the tool. Wednesday continued in the same pattern regarding GIS, however a positive was that I have added another project to my internship. I am now going to be collecting and analyzing water samples at four different locations throughout the city. The goal of collecting these samples is to see the quality of water that is draining into local peatlands and determine if filtering is necessary.

In more exciting news, on Thursday, I had my first meeting for my AWESOME internship this summer. AWESOME is the Andean-Amazonian Watershed Experience: Exploring Sustainability of Mountain Ecosystems in Ecuador. Stay tuned to hear more about the research project I will be doing in Ecuador this summer!

Friday was also exciting. I met with George Matz, a Homer local, who has been conducting a citizen science Shorebird monitoring project for 15 years. He is at the forefront of the Doyon Hotel battle to have the corporation build an ecolodge instead of just a hotel that would negatively affect the nearby Mariner Slough. After the meeting, I uncovered that a missing part of the data is the prey species that these birds sustain themselves on. I hope to provide this data in the coming months and document the species of invertebrates and small mammals that feed the birds.

My weekend was also full of fun activities. Saturday was spent in the pottery studio across from my cabin, working with my Airbnb host, Marie, making mugs. It was a blast. Then the SBB cohort had a Valentine Day party.

The ritual Sunday birding outing has held strong. This time, we went to the house of Lee’s friend, Aaron. He is a professional birder who makes his living from taking people on birding adventures worldwide. We saw many new species, including the red-breasted nuthatch, golden crown sparrow, sharp-shinned hawk, rock sandpiper, red crossbill, ring-necked pheasant, and though not a bird, it was cool to see a short-tailed weasel.

Thank you for reading my blog, and a big thank you to everyone who has supported any of the content I have been sharing. I really enjoy sharing my experience and hope you all enjoy seeing it.