Hermosa

In honor of the group of students who just returned from the New Mexico portion of Furman University's Wild Semester, I have edited and reposted this piece I wrote during my experience living for twelve weeks in the ghost town of Hermosa.


Idyllic. That is what comes to mind every time I think about my temporary home in Hermosa, New Mexico. We wake up with the sun every day, early in the morning, which isn't actually anything as bad as I might have expected. In fact, its quite nice. No, more than that, its freaking awesome to wake up each morning and see the clouds painted yellow and purple by the rising sun, to see the tops of far off mountains glowing a faint red as the light hits them, before I can even catch a glimpse of the sun over the eastern mountains. I love being able to walk out onto the back porch and look out across our backyard and see mountains ringed around me, surrounding me, dominating the landscape on every side, sharp peaks and flat topped ridges and rounded domes jutting into the sky, punctuating the horizon. I love looking out the dining room window and seeing horses and mules nonchalantly wandering by, their owners having let them roam and graze wherever they please. Fortunately for us, wherever they please just happens to be ten feet away from where we eat dinner.
          I love the routine, the simplicity of life at Hermosa. We cook our own food, clean our dishes, and have class.  Every day we learn more about the animals and plants that inhabit the land around us, the global patterns that create climate variation between deserts and grasslands and deciduous forests, and the history of America's efforts (or lack thereof) in the field of conservation. We become acquainted with the general skull shapes of different mammalian families, and we gain hands on experience in loading up pack mules for long hikes.  We catch a variety of rodents and get a taste of taxidermy when we learn how to make museum specimens.  And when we are not doing those things, we are free to wander wherever we wish, whenever we feel like it.

          We can explore the mountains and cliffs around Hermosa to our hearts content, combining a childlike curiosity and sense of adventure with a biologist's knowledge and yearning to learn more and understand more about the natural world. I love being able to look up at the sky at night and see thousands of stars twinkling merrily above me, as if they are laughing at some private cosmic joke I could never possibly understand. I love looking up and for the first time truly being able to see the milky way, not just as a faint, cloudy smudge in the sky but as thousands of stars squeezed into a clear shimmering belt across the deep blue midnight sky, stretching from one horizon to the other. I love walking outside on night with a full moon and seeing the moon-shadows of the trees dark against the mountains, which seem to glow softly in the moonlight. I love watching storm clouds roll in over the western mountains, dark and ominous, growing larger and larger as they loom closer to Hermosa. Occasionally the clouds will let forth a torrent of water, but these downpours usually only last for a brief 15 minutes. At other times the clouds may only allow a sprinkling of rain, and yet this light shower may last for an hour or more. And still other days the rains may never come, and the ominous clouds pass by overhead without so much as a drop to soothe the parched and sandy earth.

          I love the sounds of banjo and guitar and mandolin and violin and enthusiastic singing that can be heard at all hours of the day, the music echoing throughout Hermosa and the hills surrounding it. I love the loud discordant clanging of the triangle that signals that the meals are ready, and the cheerfulness and contentment of the people who all sit down together to eat. I love being able to relax in hammocks with friends, talking and singing as the sun silently disappears behind the mountains, the full bright colors of the day changing to the red, orange, and yellow of sunset before fading to black, gray, and white like a photograph fading before your eyes. I love sitting around a big campfire, listening to and reading the essays of Aldo Leopold, his words coming alive in your mind, painting beautiful and detailed portraits of life as it once was, and perhaps in some ways as it still should be. In short, I love life at Hermosa, and I am so thankful that I got the opportunity to come here and have this experience, and I am continually in awe of the wonders of God's creation.

A Summer of Research: Jesse's Project

You wake up between 5 and 5:30 in the morning, get dressed in some clothes that you don’t particularly care about, have a quick breakfast, and are on the road by 6 to start the day.  After a drive to the edge of the city you arrive at a patch of pine trees either in a forest, a park, or even on the side of the highway.  You want to get there as close to sunrise as you can, so that you will be able to hear the most bird songs and therefore be able to identify each species of bird.  After 10 minutes you move on to another patch of pine trees and repeat.  By 10:00 you have visited six or more of your research sites.

At this point it’s time to start your vegetation surveys.  You record key measures of the vegetation at each sampling site, to better distinguish each spot’s capacity to benefit biodiversity.  This will require a lot of walking and crawling through thick underbrush, brambles, and marshland, but just ignore the oppressive heat and humidity and deal with the ticks, chiggers and mosquitoes later on.  After you've filled out five pages of notes on the surrounding trees, shrubs, and ground cover, you can move on to another site and continue your vegetation surveys.

Why would someone willingly subject themselves to this, you ask? Well, for science, of course!  And there are certainly some perks to the job that offset the blood sucking parasites.  If you’re lucky, you might get to catch a glimpse of Red-tailed Hawks as they plummet out of the trees to catch a small scurrying mammal for lunch.  And occasionally your research takes you into the mountains, where you can stand on top of Bald Rock and look out for miles over the misty foothills of the Appalachians, or to nearby Paris Mountain, where you could take a lunch break and have a quiet picnic by the lake.  

        The schedule which I described above was part of the research done this past summer by senior Jesse Wood, in collaboration with professor Dr. John Quinn. The goal of Jesse’s study was to evaluate the effects of local and landscape features on the distribution of Brown-headed Nuthatches in pine tree patches throughout the Upstate.  The Brown-headed nuthatch is a small brown and white songbird found throughout the Southeastern US, and Jesse needed to be able to identify that species and other common birds of the upstate by both sight and sound.  She practiced recognizing Nuthatch calls and other birdsong for several weeks before going out into the field to put her skills to the test.  Now, when she takes a walk, she can distinguishing between mockingbirds, cardinals, wrens, and others simply by their vocalizations.

The vegetation data came into play as Jesse determined how the pine patches differ from one another.  For example, if one stand of pine trees is in between two heavily trafficked roads while another is in the middle of an isolated deciduous forest, then there is likely to be some difference in the distribution of birds at those two sites.  Similarly, a pine stand that is in a relatively open area, such as the Furman golf course, might show a different distribution from a pine stand tucked among a heavily wooded swamp.

Of course, you may be wondering “what importance does this research have to people who aren’t interested in birds?” and that's fair. One answer I can offer hinges upon the fact that the Brown-headed Nuthatch is what is known as an umbrella species.  This means that the presence of Nuthatches in a particular habitat indicates that the habitat is suitable for many other species of birds.  Therefore, where we find Brown-headed Nuthatches, we can infer that species such as the Eastern Wood-Pewee and the near-threatened Red Headed Woodpecker are capable of thriving in the same type of habitat. In this case, that means the pine forests of the southeast, habitat that is declining in the state of South Carolina.  And not only is this information relevant for bird enthusiasts, but it can be relevant for business or development.  For example, an ecologically minded person might make a different development decision regarding the destruction of an older pine stand if he knew the environmental implications and the number of species that would be affected.  This type of thought process, where decisions are made based on an understanding of all the possible implications of those decisions, is one of the goals of conservation biology, and one of the reasons research like this is so important.

A Summer of Research: Intro

Imagine if your summer days were spent snorkeling in the warm waters of Bermuda, researching the corals that you collected from the reefs during your morning swims.  Or what if instead you walked into work every morning and were greeted by howling apes, roaring lions, cackling hyenas, squeaking monkeys and chirping birds from across the globe?  Or perhaps you’d prefer to set snares for cougars, spending your summer traveling the mountainous deserts and forests of New Mexico in search of the elusive big cats?  Every summer Furman University biology students become involved in research projects and internships throughout the country and abroad.  Students’ experiences have been as varied as working with sea turtles in Myrtle Beach, learning about sustainable agriculture in Guatemala, studying plants gathered in Puerto Rico, doing research on corals in Bermuda, studying pumas in New Mexico, and working with gorillas and small mammals in Columbia, South Carolina.  However, in addition to these types of experiences away from campus, there are many research opportunities at Furman every summer.  Students join professors in their specific academic pursuits by becoming involved either through lab work or through field work.  Students this past summer were able to perform such wide ranging tasks as measuring dragonfly populations around the Furman Lake, isolating genes from bullfrog brain tissue, studying diseases using yeast, measuring the water quality and fish biodiversity of streams near Furman’s campus, conducting immunological research on T-cells by experimenting with the activation process of the cells, refining techniques to measure the velocity of blood cells within a vessel, and implementing kudzu management strategies.  The number and variety of projects and internships with which Furman biology majors are involved are testaments to the ingenuity, creativity, and collaborative efforts of both the students and the teachers.

One area of research which I was a member of was the research projects being overseen by Dr. John Quinn, three of which were only begun this past summer.  Dr. Quinn came to Furman from the University of Nebraska Lincoln in 2012, bringing a long list of research topics for which he only needs interested students.  This summer there were four research projects being carried out by Furman students working with Dr. Quinn.  Two of the projects focused on the Brown-headed Nuthatch and other bird species of Upstate SC, one of the projects involved looking at videos taken in Nebraska of the Bell’s Vireo, a small songbird of the southeast and central US, while the fourth project consisted of collecting samples of insects from urban gardens along the Swamp Rabbit Trail from Traveler’s Rest to Greenville, SC.    

Of course, the question behind all of these research projects is “Why?”  Why is the research that these students are doing of any real importance beyond making a good grade?  Why should anyone other than the students and their academic peers care about this research?  The question is a reasonable one, and similar “why” questions are often posed to researchers in all branches of science.  The simple answer would be that the acquisition of knowledge for knowledge sake is enough to justify research such as the projects described above.  Knowing more about the world we live in and share with the plants and animals about us is always beneficial, especially when we have the ability to affect massive change in our habitat as we do.  But that’s an easy answer.  

A more specific explanation of the importance of the research I have mentioned here has to do with the fact that everything in the natural world is interdependent. Increasing our knowledge of even one species can lead us to a greater understanding of our interaction with the world around us, which can allow for our leaders and the public at large to make informed decisions that can improve the quality of life on this planet.  Knowing how the insect populations in Greenville may affect the birds that predate them, how those birds utilize their habitat, and how that land is used by the people who own and manage it allows us to catch a glimpse of how we might use that land for the benefit of all:  ourselves, the birds, and even the insects. Perhaps each new fragment of knowledge will only lead to one small change, and perhaps only a few people will care about the findings of researchers, but that is enough.  If every new discovery will inspire just one person to leave a positive impact upon this world, then we should never stop searching for that inspiration.