Counting Gravel

July 29th --

Woke at 5:30am and quietly walked through camp to the storage shed near our camp here on the Middle Fork John Day River. I have my mountain bike locked up inside the shed so, after exchanging my wool hat for a helmet, I hopped on the bike and headed out on the Forest Service roads. The roads leave directly from the camp and head up/around the mountain that we set at the base of (Vinegar Hill). The peak is some 8,000+ ft elevation but the roads don't go all the way to the top......walking up it is for another day. The top of Vinegar Hill hosts the southern portion of the North Fork John Day Wilderness.

Heaps of secondary and closed off old mining roads are my playground for exploration on my bike . I AM SO GLAD THAT I BROUGHT IT OUT WITH ME FOR THIS TRIP!! From camp, everything is a climb..........good to get the morning blood moving (especially when it's in the upper 30'sF in the morning).

Returned to camp after just an hour's ride because I need to get the crew up and breakfast going by 6:45am.

Most of today was spent on the Oxbow reach of the Warm Spring's Tribal lands. We started collecting data on the bed material of the river channel. We introduced Stephanie and Jessica to gravel counts. This is when samples of the bed material (gravels/sands/cobbles/whatever) are sampled in a systematic grid across a section of the channel (usually on a riffle). This data allows us to do hydraulic calculations about the rivers sediment load and it's capacity to move certain sized/weighted sediment. This can be a some-what tedious task, but it's all kinds of fun to be in the river most of the day.

Stephanie, Pollyanna & Jessica busy with a gravel count.

Soft clouds rolled in about 3pm and gifted us with a handful of warm drops. But, they rolled out just as fast and the sky has been clear since.

Back to base camp at 6:30pm to cook up a delicious meal and get a little chill time.
The sand hill cranes were busy this morning. They must have flown up and down the valley about 3 times making their amazing sounds.
It's now dusk and the coyotes are out and noisy again in the west field. It's a treat to hear them.

A brisk chill is in the air and I expect it to get pretty cold tonight.

ReCAP

20th High School Reunion:
Freak'en interesting. It was far more fun than I had imagined. Not many of us showed up.........but it was good to see a few of the folks that did. There were plenty of people I would have liked to have seen that didn't show.
Overall, I was impressed at how important it really is to have known someone since you were seven..... or even 13. Strange bond that is impossible for me to explain.
AND -- how good it was to have had 20 years between now and high school.

Highlights of this experience: Seeing Randy Standridge whom I have known since I was seven. He lives in the same place he grew up in with his family......just a mile or so from where I grew up. And, Becky Gordon -- my best friend high school. A few years have passed since I have seen her and we slipped right back into ease with each other. She brought her three fantastic children out to the Hill on Saturday morning and we played in the yard and picked berries up at the Rose's garden.

Saturday afternoon Steve and I attended a friend's wedding out on the North Umpqua River. Beautiful people, beautiful place, beautiful reminder of what it is and why it is we seek love.

Sunday: My and Steve's 12 YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!!
Very proud of this and very excited to see what is next for us. I love him


Sunday noon: Steve helped me all morning get ready to head out for 17 days of field work on the Middle Fork John Day.

AND -- here I am. Sitting in the glow of a purple sunset on the Middle Fork John Day River. I hear Granite Boulder creek rushing by; sand hill cranes just broke the silence of dusk as they flew up valley; and two coyotes where just spotted in the west field.
Still amazed that I get wireless internet out here. I am literally sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of a meadow about 200 meters from the Warm Springs log house that has a wireless router. Crazy stuff.

Today, after orienting our two new field workers (Jessica and Stephanie) to the tasks at hand, we headed up-valley to the monitoring project on the Forrest reach river segment. A series of log structures have been placed on/in the floodplain and channel to enhance fish habitat just this week. Actually, they were out there finishing up today with their heavy equipment. We mapped, GPS'ed, photo documented, and recorded each structure.

In the afternoon we had some difficulties with our expensive survey equipment (it wasn't working). Waiting to hear back from the manufacturer on it because the error messages we got were not listed in the manual (always reassuring).

It was a fabulously lovely day with temps in the mid 80s (perfect).
I am well fed and getting sleeping. The temperature is dropping quickly as light fades from shades of soft purple to dark. The stars will take up almost the entire sky out here. If I can, I'll try to get a picture of them (as if!).

It feels good to be sleeping/working/eating/playing outside.

High School Reunion????

Heading to my 20th high school reunion tonight.

Should be interesting!

I'll report back!

Family Re-UNION

Just back to Eugene from a family reunion in Michigan these past 5 days. It was my mom’s side of the family – the Murphy’s – that brought us all together. Since my dad’s family is also from the “mitten” state we had a few members of the Lind clan in attendance as well.

We gathered at Lake George, Michigan where my grandpa and grandma Murphy built a cabin we know as the “Rinky dink.” It’s a tiny little cottage on a wooded lake that, for the past 50 years, has hosted many a family vacation. In my childhood the cottage seemed a quaint little home where we swam, fished off the dock, and played in the yard.

Gab, Griffin, Missy and Pollyanna on the floating dock at Lake George

This time, it was the younger set of kids all doing the same. But, now the lake is lined with cottages and second homes – some built so close together that you could stand between them and touch both at the same time.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, friends, pets, and partners all came together for a several day fest. We celebrated each other’s good company with copias amounts of food, spirits, laughter, song, games, dancing, old pictures, stories, and very little sleep. We are a big close family that came from all around this little floating globe to be around each other.

Some personal one-on-one time was captured with certain family members. But, mostly it was a shared experience of bonding together as a clan. Building that sense of community that is “family” to this big Irish clan. I am reminded of how important our community/family is and how lucky I am to be part of it all. We accept and love each other just as we are……………different, unique, wacky, strong, soft, etc. and we accept our differences – disagreements and all. To know a community where so many incredible people come together is heartening.

Found myself at home

Returned home late last night from my work out in the Middle Fork John Day. I'll be heading back on July 27th.

After taking down camp we visited the "control reaches" we picked for the MFJD. Baseline data will also be taken of the control reaches, just like the reaches that are going to have restoration work done on them. This allows us to better monitor changes at the restoration sites related to restoration projects compared to changes that the entire river may experience (floods, droughts, landslides, etc).

Then, it was time to start the trip back to the west side. It is a long 6+ hour drive from base camp to Eugene.
To break up the drive we made a couple of side stops.

Pollyanna Lind and Pat McDowell with a fantastic view of the Strawberry Mountains.

Petroglyphs near the John Day River

Picture Gorge -- John Day River -- awesome swimming hole!

Meyers Canyon (Ochoco Mountains) -- erosive flash flood arroyo -- the white stratigraphic layer is Mnt Mazama (Crater Lake) eruptive volcanic ash (7,700 years old).

Steve gracefully welcomed me home and I happily fell into his arms. I was so dirty I took a 30 minute shower. 8 days with just river dips to wash away the days dirt.............I love getting dirty, but I also love getting clean.

Today is a day of gear sorting and washing.
Have to start getting ready to go to Michigan (FAMILY REUNION!)

Catching up on the MFJD

The internet was down on Saturday (7/12) and Sunday (7/13) my day wrapped up around 10pm. This will be a long entry to catch up on the last couple of days.

Saturday: July 12 –

Woke up and it was below freezing. Hard thick frost on everything and the water left in the tea kettle on our camp stove had a frozen cap. But it was a beautiful morning. I walked the lower part of Granite Boulder creek to its confluence with the Middle Fork John Day River. The grass and forbs along the creek are healthy and tall because the Tribes fence all cattle out of the water ways on their property. There was such a frost on everything that my shoes were white with tiny ice crystal knocked off the vegetation as I walked through. Watched the sunrise over the valley next to the MFJD……..it was a good morning.

It was a long successful day of field work as well. Pat and I ran through the first set of data collection protocol with the Total Station Survey unit and collected a ton of data in the upper MFJD Tribes land (known as the Forrest Reach). A lot of what this field work stint is about is setting up these protocol and figuring out how to use the Total Station for a portion of the data we need. I have used a lot of survey equipment but this is my first time on the Total Station. Awesome to learn how to use it – it calculates elevation and azimuth for you as you go along taking your points and the data logger attached to it allows you to configure the data so you can download it easily into other mapping software (ie. GIS). It is the most accurate survey system available right now and we are going to be integrating the data into laser elevation imagery of the land surface out here (LiDAR). This will allow us to map the before and then monitor the major and really minor changes to the channel and landscape from the “restoration structures” that are going in.

Pat at the Total Station

Polly with the rod and prism (note my AWESOME rod handling technique)

One person runs the survey unit and one person is in the channel or on the floodplain identifying a slew of features (pools, riffles, boulders, bank full, 08 high water mark, etc). The identifier surveys out the characteristics by holding a survey rod with a prism on top that the Total Station locks to when taking points.

Finished up about 6pm because our battery on the Data Logger ran out. We detoured on our way back to camp and drove up the Forest Service road along Granite Boulder Creek. This took us up the mountain through a beautiful steep draw. The vegetation changed to an amazing diversity of trees and undergrowth that was similar to some of the places I have seen in the high Cascades (vine maple, fir, mountain hemlock, grand fir and columbines). Came to a road crossing where the Forest Service had installed a new fish-passage culvert. It was one of the biggest and best I have seen. The idea is that it doesn’t disturbs channel form (slope, connectivity, and bed) a lot less then the old-fashioned round culverts.

Watched the moon and stars from my hammock after dinner for about an hour and went to bed early (9:30pm).

There is such a temperature swing here – from below freezing to 94F on Sunday.

Sunday: July 13^th

Frosty morning again. Not quite as cold as Saturday though.

Completed our survey protocol out on the Forrest reach today -- yeah.

The restoration structures that are being constructed are what they call “engineered large woody debris.” They are placing trees, root wad pointed upstream slightly and in the stream, in the floodplain. They’ll dig trenches and place a couple of the trees within the floodplain and then cover them back up and place a couple of more on top of that (free floaters). This is suppose to supply the channel with more habitat for the low populations of native spawning Chinook. The salmon are really important to the tribes – culturally and politically. On the Forrest Reach of the MFJD it was grazed heavily, the channel was confined by placed rock in spots, and the trees were removed to increase graze-able land. The tribes have had the property for about 4 years now and they have excluded cattle from the entire reach to help it recover, they have done mixed tree/shrub plantings (last year) and now they are trying to help the channel back into a complex system with a diversity of habitat (scour pools for staging; gravel riffles for spawning; vegetation for shade and downed wood in the stream for cover). The tribes brought in the University of Oregon to be a 3^rd party monitoring arm of the project to determine if the restoration is reaching its goals.

Sunday night we attended a potluck dinner at the home of Brian and Sarah (the property managers for the tribes). They invited up the folks managing The Nature Conservancy land downstream about 8 miles. Along with us and the three graduate students from Oregon State University dong stream temperature research, it was an evening of good company and incredibly tasty food.

Monday: July 14^th

My tent before sunrise (the round tiny orange structures in the background) next to the meadow of wildflowers. I have become quite fond of this meadow.

rolling with the USBR

July 11th -- Woke up to a hard frost this morning. Layer of ice on everything ............ burrrrrrr.
So happy to have had my cozy sleeping bag last night.

Another day out in the Middle Fork John Day River valley. No field work today though.
We spent the morning in a meeting with folks from the US Bureau of Reclamation and the Warm Springs Tribe. We got together to talk about monitoring activities and responsibilities. This was a must since the USBR designed the "restoration projects" that are going in on the tribe's land that we are going to be monitoring. The meeting was good diplomatically.

After the meeting the USBR guys took us on a tour of some of their other engineered restoration downstream from the tribe's land. All in the name of improving salmon habitat. One was a heavy machinery project that rechannelized a segment of a tributary (Boulder Creek) and the other was log jams they installed on the MFJD on the Nature Conservancy Land. Interesting day. If you want my opinion on these projects email me --

After all of that we were back in camp by 5:30pm -- Pat and I walked down the gravel road from our camp to an abandoned homestead. Solid log cabin walls and a barn about to tip over. Very picturesque.

Then we hiked up the steep knoll behind the cabin and enjoyed the view of the valley from the top -- while pasture grasses danced in the wind. IT was a "sound of music" moment.

Flowers from the day (from the TNC meadows)

In Search of Survey references

It was another absolutely beautiful day in the Upper Middle Fork John Day River valley today. Woke up and got out of bed by 5:30am (my usual out here where I wake up with the light of day).
Dawn and Dusk are some of my favorite times of day.
Out in the field -- early morning time is "my time." Today I walked over to Granite Boulder Creek and poked around a bit. It was chilly (wool hat -- thanks to Karen Lind).

The moon is bright and out at dusk now so we have a rowdy chorus of coyotes in the hills next to our camp that sing out the day's light.


Today's flower is this amazing orchid (I think) that grows in total shade just a half meter from the edge of Granite Boulder Creek.

At 6:30am I roust my camp mates and the day begins. My first task was to set up the new GPS unit we have with its antennae to do a series of test logs. I set the unit up over the same spot every couple of days at different times of the day and let it run for 20-60 minutes collecting points from sets of satelites. When I get the data back to the computer lab at school I'll be able to determine expected accuracy of the unit and optimal satelite configurations. Ran a 60 minute test this morning while we got prepped for the day (fed and gear organized).

Today was spent in the upper valley locating US Bureau of Reclamation survey control points. We will be "tying" into them with our survey work. They are stakes hammered flush into the ground with a nail or piece of colored flagging tape tacked to the top. These survey control points were done about two years ago. Needless to say, some were easy to find and others impossible. Even with the coordinates it meant a lot of searching around in armpit tall grass and shrubs or digging along the road side in debris from two years of snow plows.
Best part of this was we walked a good stretch of the river and I started to get familiar with its geomorphic characteristics.
We found enough of the USBR points by midday in the first reach of river we will be working in. The last part of the day was spent setting up our Survey equipment and attempting to set our own backshots...etc. Need more work on this tomorrow. Have to get super comfortable with all the aspects of the Total Station survey equipment and its Data logger so we can fit it to our protocol and goals.

Polly work'en a GPS unit

The close of the day was a dip in the river -- which is actually more creek sized in the upper valley where we were today.Pollyanna Lind getting ready to jump into the Middle Fork John Day River after a hot 90F day.

TOTAL STATION DAY

Yesterday we stayed in camp and set up an "office" in the shade of some tall pines near our tents. Ah......office life can be so rough.

The goal of the day was to figure out our surveying protocol and get familiar with all of the equipment we are going to be using.

WHAT ARE WE DOING OUT HERE? you might ask:
It is our task to take geomorphic base data of section of the Middle Fork John Day River before "restoration" activities are done. Then, we come back in subsequent years after the restoration projects are finished and take data on how the river has changed due to the restoration activities. This is broadening area of work as most of the restoration work done in the US does not have monitoring done to determine if it has been effective. The Warm Springs Tribe is who brought in the University of Oregon to ensure it was done impartially (not done by the folks that designed and installed the restoration projects). We are looking at stream function and form (others are looking at the biological aspects of the system).

The Middle Fork John Day River is a VERY important Chinook Salmon spawning stream. The Fish and Wildlife biologists that stop by in the morning to pick up gear at the storage shed here tell me that there are big ones in the pools just down from the property we are on now. Hope to check them out in the next day or two. Saw juveniles two days ago up by Phipps Spring.

First 24 hours in the Middle Fork John Day

Drove over several mountain passes and along many of Oregon's incredible rivers yesterday to make our way out to the Middle Fork John Day.

The "we" that I am traveling/working with is myself and professor Pat McDowell -- my primary graduate adviser and geomorphologist extraordinare'.

One of the best views of the day was of the Strawberry Mountains.........still holding patches of snow.

Arrived at dusk at our base camp on Warm Springs Tribal land. Boulder Granite Creek runs along the property and lulled me to sleep last night with the song of water falling over rock. One of my favorite songs.
MFJD - view from camp last night.
The moon is waxing..........I am watching her --- and the stars.

Today we organized camp and recon-ed the entire upper portion of the Middle Fork John Day valley. This means we drove up to the upper valley were headwaters springs (Phipps Meadow) bubble up through the earth in roiling pools of sand and CO2 gas bubbles. Then we headed down stream on the available road closest to the river -- the cab of the pick-up a mess of maps, notes, camera, atlases, bottles of water, and our muddy sandals. All the while Pat McD (my professor) is downloading copias amounts of information and history that I attempt to retain while also trying to absorb the landscape (more on the landscape later). Basically getting a "lay of the land."

Crazy -- There is no cell phone service anywhere out here and the nearest country store is 38 miles away. But, I am sitting in a meadow of pasture grasses and wildflowers about 200 meters from a log cabin and I can connect to the internet. Yeh -- the land manager out here has wireless. Pretty amazing! The Middle Fork John Day River is just another few hundred meters down hill from me where it winds itself over cobble/gravel/boulder through a green grassy valley edged by hills and mountains of pine.

A variety of one of my favorite flowers -- the Mariposa Lilly -- grows in the meadow that I have put my tent at the edge of. I just had to share this picture I took this morning.

Sunday and prepping

Woke up late this beautiful Sunday morning (8:00am). Western Oregon is experiencing July: green and fragrant with cold snow melt rivers and candy-cloud filled blue sky.

I find myself already missing the lush glory of Oregon's "west side" as I prep and pack up to head out for what we NWsters call the "east side." The east side refers to the 2/3 of the state on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. Over the last four years I have grown more attached and appreciative of the magnificence that Oregon's east side holds. It is considered a high desert because the elevation of its low valleys is usually somewhere around 3-4,000 ft and it gets much less annual precipitation than the west side because it sets in the rain shadow of the Cascades. This all makes for amazing landscapes -- Incredible open sky; geologically old (relatively) terrain (I can't get enough of this of course); badgers; sage; pine forests; pumice dunes; antelope; jagged naked mountains; high winds; twisting rivers; ect.
I step into the east side with curiosity and awe............Still, this girl's soul is of the green -- mossy rocks and ferns under mammoth trees.

Steve and I had breakfast with our fabulous friend (incredible artist) Todd Simmler.
Check out his stuff!
He is in Eugene showing his work at the annual Art in the Vineyard Festival down by the Willamette River.

The Beginning

THAT IS THE MIDDLE FORK JOHN DAY RIVER -- OREGON


OK -- this is an attempt to get better at electronic communication. Yup............I am starting a Blog. YIKES!!!!

I find myself spending a lot of time doing what I love (studying rivers) but also realize that a lot of people in my life don't really know what that means. Especially my daily activities.

On Monday (July 7th) I begin a project out in Oregon's Northeastern high desert on the Middle Fork John Day River. Apparently there will be no cell phone access there. BUT -- a short walk from my base camp up to a barn is suppose to give us access to wireless internet (we'll see).
We are base camping on Warm Springs Tribal land near the property manager's home and barn -- and they have wireless internet -- usually.

It is my understanding that folks can also communicate with me via this blog.


BY THE WAY -- the track and field Olympic Trials are going on in Eugene right now. It has been fantastic to have so many beautiful athletes from across the country/world here. Steve and I were able to go to some of the finals on Tuesday.......hoping to get over there again this weekend. It is so inspiring to see humans reaching their potential.

Spending the weekend prepping for the week of field work out in the MFJD and hanging with good friends.

paz!