Thornock Happenings 2016: A Botanist for a Week

Monday through Friday of last week I was in southern California on a plant collection trip with my botany professor (Dr. Johnson) from this last semester, another professor (also Dr. Johnson, but we called him Robert), and two other girls in my major. It was a fun trip. We left early Monday morning drove pretty much all day. We got a taste of "roadside botany", as the Dr. Johnsons pointed out plants and told us about them as we zipped by at 60 miles an hour. We pulled out some bagels, yogurt, and fruit for lunch during one of our stops for gas. At some point we stopped by the Joshua trees in California to collect some plants. Then we finished our drive and ended up at a motel near Bakersville, CA for the night. We had turkey sandwiches and some fruit for dinner, and I called Spencer before getting ready for bed. We had early mornings all week. so we could get on the road.

Tuesday was my birthday and our first big collection day. We went to some places where the species we were looking for had been collected in the past. When botanists go on collection trips they will collect what they are looking for, and whatever else they find interesting in the area. When they get back from their trip, they identify each plant, mount in on a paper, and file it away with the date and location. All of that information is put into a database. We were looking for Gilia capitata, so Dr. Johnson looked up a bunch of locations where other people had found it in the past. Anyway, southern California has had a very dry spring, so at first all we could find were dead, dried up plants, but we saved the seeds from those. When we finally did get to a place with some mostly living ones, I was the one to spot it first! I felt like a pro. It was pretty exciting, but then Dr. Johnson came around the corner and had also found some. That became a common theme on this trip. :-) We pressed the plants that we found and moved onto the next location. That evening when we stopped for the night Dr. Johnson took us all out to eat at Denny's to celebrate my birthday. We even bought some ice cream from a little grocery store. It was really nice of them. I got a lot of calls and texts on my birthday, and that was really nice. I was a little sad to not be home with Spencer for it. We got to talk for a while that night at least.

Wednesday was a lot like Tuesday. Drive through the twisty mountain roads, stop to tromp around looking for "interesting" plants and Gilia capitata, get back into the care and repeat. I almost never got carsick, but all those twisty roads were rough on me. I put my head down on my pillow and closed my eyes every time we got back into the car to keep from feeling nauseated. Tuesday was similar, but I didn't have as hard of a time with car sickness. Emily and Annelise did though. We stopped somewhere for the night. To be totally honest, I usually had no clue where we were. Sometimes we'd drive for 20 minutes between sites, sometimes 2 hours.

On Thursday we made our way up to Lake Tahoe. The scenery of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is absolutely stunning, and we stopped at a couple really cool places to wander around and explore. I was feeling really ready to be home. I was ready to be done collecting plants and to be back with Spencer. It seemed like every time I found something to show Dr. Johnson or Robert, one of them had already found it or it wasn't actually "special". Sometimes I think they told me it was just to make me feel better. I was feeling a little down because I knew that we'd be getting home on Friday, but Spencer would already be gone for the weekend to Las Vegas for the MCAT. We stopped in Reno that night.

On Friday we just drove home. We stopped for lunch and did one final collection at that spot for fun. I was anxious to get home, even though I knew Spencer would be gone already. Seriously, I missed him so much. I texted him in the morning to ask him what time he and Ben were going to leave for Las Vegas. When I got his text saying they were leaving around 1:30, I cried a little. I knew he would be gone before I got back, but it still made me sad. Maybe I was being a big baby about it, but we hadn't been apart for that long since before we were married! I missed him a lot.

Overall the trip was fun. I got a little homesick, but it was a great experience to have. I know for sure that I don't want to be a botanist, and that's okay. haha. It was fun to get to know Annelise and Emily better, and we all got a good review of our plant classification class. It was fun to use all those things I studied during the semester to try to identify some of the plants we found. I think we'll be having some classes together this fall, and Annelise and I will be doing our student teaching during the same semester. I think my career in botany is over, but I also think it would be fun to make a little flower press to use with the kiddos at the family vacation. We can go find some wildflowers and dandelions to press and use to decorate something.