Mountaintop Transformers

November 9th, 2009

“As one of the pioneer forests, the Sierra National Forest gave birth to a variety of fire lookouts in the early 1900’s.”
Sierra Centennial by Gene Rose

“Once there were 8000 fire lookouts across the United States, but now only 2000 remain. Of these, 600 are in active use for fire detection, and 100 of these are staffed by volunteers.”
Forest Fire Lookout Association, www.firelookout.org

Mount Tom Lookout and Communication Site 2009

Music Mountain Lookout and Communication Site 2006

One hundred years ago, the lonely Fire Lookout stood guard, elevated over the horizon, ready to spot the smoke of destruction. But these icons of firefighting are no longer the King of the Mountain. The landscape is giving rise to new modern towers with a different perspective and a contemporary mission: telecommunications.

Today, the old historic fire lookouts are sharing the mountaintops with an extensive technological assemblage of new structures: lattice tower structures, mono-pole towers, solar power systems, back-up generators, grounding systems, propane tanks, access ways, parking areas, low-power two-way radios, remote automated weather stations, internet service providers, snow making apparatus, U.S. Geological Service seismic equipment, storage buildings, broadcast translators, repeaters, cellular phone electronics, fences, gates, cables, conduits, full power FM radio transmitters, and portable toilets.

Music Mountain Lookout and Communication Site 2006

The social landscape laid upon our earthen terrain is shifting. These metaphors of the High Sierra mountians us to ask questions about our changing landscape, the demise of the old and the inception of the new. Is it better, is it bad, is it new, or is it just different? What is happening to us with the decay of our fire lookouts and the rise in electronic sites? What is passing away? What is transforming on our mountaintops?

Mount Tom Lookout and Communication Site 2009

The Crane Valley Crisis

September 26th, 2009

O M G !
The dam is going to break.
Well, not really, but you wouldn’t know it by the staggering array of federal, state and local agency representatives flocking to the Crane Valley Dam.

Over one-hundred years old and still amazing, the Crane Valley project is a unique and rather interesting part of Bass Lake that few have made acquaintance.
I have been to most of the project, but this year I was able to see all the powerhouses and diversions. Here are a few of my views of the project.

Inside the Crane Valley Powerhouse below the dam at Bass Lake.

These facilites haven’t undergone much change. What will change is the dam.


The inspector from FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is given the grand tour of anything and everything.


Old in design and construction, water flows through the project via a series of pipes, penstocks, and ditches.

Oil and water don’t mix. One stop along the tour is to inspect the handling and management of oil within the facilities.
I won’t see many more FERC inspections, but I’m glad I did get to see the old Crane Valley Project this year. I expect it will be generating megawatts and lake recreation for the next 100 years.

Costa Rican Coffee from Community to Cup

August 29th, 2009

Caring for the Land and Serving Coffee – How obvious is that?

“Obviously the obvious isn’t obvious” is one of my favorite sayings because I am so frequently surprised by how many “obvious” things I miss and that is the case with my Earthwatch Expedition Fellowship.

Since I first heard of the Earthwatch opportunity, I wondered “now, why would someone donate money to the Forest Service to have four employees spend a day working on research projects in foreign countries?”

Did they think the Forest Service is too narrow minded and needs to get out and “see the world”?

The FS staff selected for the Earthwatch expedition were not upper management in the WO. We are all on the ground practitioners who are already getting to the field and digging the trenches. The three of us who went on the trip to Costa Rica already had international travel experience and were comfortable and excited about traveling to rural Central America.


Would you send a Baby Boomer Ranger to a foreign country?

Did the philanthropic donor think we were really going to learn practical research and field techniques?

The data we were collecting was really rather basic. The project was finding pre-selected transects, selecting representative individuals, measuring specific parameters in a consistent manner, recording the data for input into the database, and organizing the samples for transport and tracking. Basic field techniques that the FS uses for stream surveys, cultural resource surveys, biological surveys, timber inventory, and just about everyone in the Forest Service has either gathered or touched basic field data.

Maybe they expected the FS staff to contribute to the other participant’s understanding of environmental systems?

The project researchers Natalia and Sebastian had excellent command of the project parameters and were local. They had academic experience and personal experience with the coffee plantations, the community and the associated ecosystems. There was nothing we could really add or suggest to make things go better. The science, the field practices, and the logistics were flawless.

Sebastian (Center) measures coffee plantation organic matter with Earthwatch Expedition participants.

So, during our week of counting coffee berries and working our butts off, I asked my fellow Forest Service co-workers “Why do you think someone donated money for us to participate in an Earthwatch expedition?” Our philanthropic friend’s motive was not obvious, but we did learn a few things.

I learned that in any group, some people do a lot of work, and some people just show up for work. But despite various levels of effort, it is amazing how a group of complete strangers can come together, focus on a task and have a great time getting something done.

I miss hard fieldwork. Work where at the end of the day I stink, I’m filthy dirty and exhausted, but I know where I was, what I did, and why I did it.

But one of the more important items I learned comes connected to my forestry academics. I remember learning about the mass wasting landslides from washed-out timber clear-cuts, monoculture pine disasters and “scientific forestry.” As Foresters we were convinced that we knew how to grow a better tree. Forestry and agriculture now face the same land ethic issues, but I think that foresters were forced to learn their lessons starting about 50 to 100 years ago. Agriculture and consumers are just now facing the high cost of attempted eco-dominance.

What we learned in forestry is now being learned by farmers. It doesn’t pay to fight Mother Nature. Foresters and the Forest Service are learning how to work with the environment, not against the environment. A systems approach is needed and not everything can be cut, molded, planted and grown to perfection. Farmers will need to learn the same.

Organic and Fair Trade considerations are not sappy syrup soaked slogans served up to sell superficial shit at Starbucks. Best that I could tell, Starbucks is putting their money where the corporate mouth is: good farming and land stewardship; good relationships with the growing communities; and good products to the consumers. They decided there are valuable lessons to be learned from around the world. The support of the “Costa Rica Coffee from Community to Cup” expedition is their way of being connected to the environmental decisions each of us makes every day.

I am a true believer. “Caring for the Land and Serving People” is not my job. It is my calling. It is my place in the Universe. It is what I have been struggling with for the last 30 years and will likely carry it for the next thirty.

But, I have been focused on forests, the Forest Service, and the impacts to natural resources of our country’s wild spaces. I understand our Wilderness and wild land issues, but the issues are not just about our open spaces – parks, forests and public lands.

Butterfly on coffee plant.

The natural resource issues sparked by Ansel Adams, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinshot, and our mentors of the environmental movement are just are relevant as ever. But instead of open, wild and natural places, we need to be examining a regular, familiar, otherwise ordinary segment of our lives – being a consumer. Spending money is an environmental decision. Living in a community, any community is an environmental decision. Walking to the Starbucks with my husband, buying a cup of coffee, sitting and reading a newspaper and walking home is an environmental decision. It is a very hard, complex, and overwhelming decision and we are making it whether we like it or not. I am almost uncomfortable with how much our every action is tied to our planet’s resources. I buy a cup of coffee and my four bucks is directly connected to people across the world trying to feed their children.

Tarrazu Cooperative Coffee Farmer with Natalia, Earthwatch Researcher

What I have thought of as a career is no longer a decision made in the office Monday to Friday. It is a powerful decision made every minute of my life. A decision made every minute of every person living on this planet.

And I am reminded that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

It isn’t clear to me how I’m going to apply my Earthwatch experience to my Forest Service projects. But then again, some of the most obvious lessons aren’t always obvious.

I have more of my Earthwatch photographs posted on my photography website www.cynthiawhelan.com and choose the tab labeled “Tarrazu Textures.”

P.S. We drank the most amazing coffees. All were smooth, full of flavor and pure life !
If you want the best quality coffee, direct from the growers you must try Tarrazu Cooperative Coffee.

Bean Counter and Geko Wrangler

August 12th, 2009

Yesterday and today were coffee intensive. In the plantation then off to the coffee shop.

Up early, get the gear and head for the coffee plantation. That’s me writing down our data while my coleagues count the number of nodes, the number of nodes with fruit and (of course) the number of coffee berries. Today we worked in six plots with counting berries on a total of ten plants per plot.

Luckily, it didn’t rain and it was warm, but not hot. Still, after a couple of hours of standing in the “shade” we were getting a bit thin and dopey. Lunch sure tasted great after a day of hard work. We were challenged by the conditions while counting coffee cherries, but whatever we faced is nothing compared to the conditions that the people who pick the beans endure. We were tired, but it could no where compare to people who need to pick beans to feed their families.

We also didn’t need to work after lunch, but rather went into town for a nice cup of coffee love. Awe, capichino.

We have had some great coffee. Acutally drinking coffee in a coffee shop, the way we do in the States, is a rather new experience for the Tico’s. I find it troubling to know that people are growing things that they don’t or can’t afford to enjoy.

I love the people in this group, but there seems to be a preponderance of fear for little crawley things. After dinner I killed some spiders so my roomate can sleep. Later tonight the guys came out to the common area to ask for help in removing a geko from their room. A Geko. I grabbed a glass to catch it, but they thought it was too small, so I got a bowl. It was a cute little guy and I was able to contain him and with the help of a pice of paper I carried it to a nice place in the garden. Hence, today I was a Bean Counter and I’m also Geko Wrangler Extradonaire.

Costa Rica – I Made It!

August 11th, 2009

Live from Costa Rica, It’s Baby Boomer Ranger.

My flight went well and I had a good evening in San Jose. We walked, quite by accident into the red zone, past the Burger King, Cornel Sanders and eventually into the Jazz Festival. I was friendly and got us into the last song of the festival and it was so great to see all the students playing with the guest artist. I bought his CD and had it autographed.

The next morning we got lost trying to find the butterfly museum. Luckily we found a friendly ex-pat at a high end hotel that sent us straight with a good map and directions. We found it. It was small, cute and if it hadn’t started to pour rain, I could have taken some awesome photos.

On our first day, we had a great hike in the rainforest. I could spend a whole day just looking at ferns, and one whole day looking a fungus and one whole day looking at trees. I could spend a lot of days just crawling in the duff looking for crawling things.

Cecilias Cabinas is too cute. Right out of the pages of Sunset Magazine. Tile floors, beautiful potted plants, flowers, green metal roofs and quaint wood beams. We finished early enough that I could take some photos around the cabins.

We’re 206 and Striving for 216!

June 12th, 2009

Today we received a letter from Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell, subject: Best Places to Work Survey.

“The Washington Post’s Federal Diary contained an article entitled “Struggling to Boost Forest Service Morale,” which focuses on results from a recently published survey “Best Places to Work.” The survey was conducted by the Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute fo the Study of Public Policy Implementation. It rated federal agencies based on responses form 212,000 federal employee responses to questions about the work place, including training, employee empowerment, leadership , and matching skills to the agency mission. The Forest Service was ranked 206 our of 216 agencies surveyed. The Post article included comments from Congressional leaders, employees unions’ officials and Associate Chief Hank Kashdan’s testimony in an April congressional hearing.”

I love this place, but dang, have we got the bureaucratic “B S” or what?
Take this as an example of what we have to go through. I’ve been trying to complete all the approvals and requirements to go on the Earthwatch Fellowship trip. I received the announcement through official Forest Service channels and it all appears to be Forest Service supported and sanctioned, but you would never know it by the amount of paperwork that must be done!

I can’t sneeze without having to fill out, turn in, and get a form signed. I will spend more time completing forms for this trip than time I will spend in the airport.

What does it take to get out of here?

Acceptance Form
FS 6500-1 signed by my supervisor and the Regional Forester
AD-1101 signed by the Ethics Advisor
Liabiltiy Release
Health Form-Medical Release signed by my Doctor
Travel Authorization on www.govtrip.com (five screens worth of forms)
Personal Passport
SF-53
Two new Passport photos
DS-82 signed and dated
and now we were told, days before our trip that we need a Collection Agreement that has a whole set of five or more forms of its own!

What’s a Baby Boomer Ranger to do?

And the form said everybody must tell where you’re from and where you have been.
So I pulled out a pen and I scratched out a line – “I’m here, I think, and I am!”
And if you were here, I’d tell you to your face
Who are you to question my place?

Forms, forms, everywhere a form!
Blocking out my life by fillin’ in the line.
Do this, don’t do that, must I fill out that form?

And the form said that everybody must be approved.
So I pressed all the keys and checked all the blocks and did what I needed to do.
Hey, what does it cost to type up this crap and who really gives a damn?
If the people who pay, knew what I had to do, they’d bag even worse on you!

Forms, forms, everywhere a form!
Blocking out my life by fillin’ in the line.
Do this, don’t do that, did you fill out this form?

And the form said you gotta have this paper signed by Near and by A-far.
So many pages, to trace all the places, to approve where I want to go,
Did I know them, did they pay me, and what do they need to see?
Password, code word, sign on the line, attach a FS-53!
What is it, and who am I, and which is it gonna be?

Forms, forms, everywhere a form!
Blocking out my life by fillin’ in the line.
Do this, don’t do that, do I need this form?

And the form said we love you and we want you, come and be with us!
So made a copy, and scanned it too, and printed it for number three.
But the paper I made, and the promises they gave were only killing a tree.
The real life stuff, is not the stuff that’s on this form about me.
I’m just fine, and I blogged this line to show that I am free!

Forms, forms, everywhere a form!
Blocking out my life by fillin’ in the line.
Do this, don’t do that, I don’t need your form!
Do this, don’t do that, I don’t need any form!

(Special thanks to the Five Man Electrical Band for their song “Signs”.)

The Forest Service is ranked 206 of 216.
I love this place, but I wonder who would sign a survey form that would approve of the Forest Service moving up the federal agency morale list?
Not this Baby Boomer Ranger.

“Caring for the Land and Serving Coffee”

May 3rd, 2009

Now I have a project I can really blog about! This Baby Boomer Ranger is going on an Earthwatch Expedition to Costa Rica.

Check this out. I’m going to be an international volunteer.

My journey started about four years ago, while enjoying my Saturday morning grande non-fat latte. Next to the recycled paper napkins and cinnamon shakers, I saw a brochure for a contest. Starbucks Coffee would to send a lucky winner on an Earthwatch Expedition to work as a volunteer living and doing research on a coffee plantation. I took the brochure, checked it out on the web, and it was much more than I thought.

I had an epiphany.

I had a dream of a volunteer and partnership program on the Sierra National Forest. People from all around the country, all around the world, would come to the Sierra National Forest and work with biologists, hydrologists, botanists in gathering data, protecting our national natural resources, and participating in a democratic public land management process. I called it my “Out of the Box Partnership Project.”

One part of my wild vision was having a chance to further develop my personal perspective and experience by participating in an Earthwatch Institute expedition. I blogged about it way back in July of 2005 in “Cultivate the Doers”

Since then, a lot of things on the Sierra changed. My job changed, but my interest in partnerships, travel, and international work experiences remains strong.

Responding to an email forwarded to me from my college roommate, I applied for an Earthwatch Institute Fellowship. Due to the generosity of a philanthropic environmentalist, four Forest Service employees will be able to participate in an international experience, living and working beside researchers and volunteers.

The Earthwatch Institute Mission:
“Earthwatch engages people worldwide in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment.

We believe that achieving a sustainable future requires objective scientific data from the field – and that the scientific process must engage the general public if it is to change the the world. To that end, we involve people from all walks of life directly in global field research.”

How cool is that? I really like that part about science and changing the world. I’m going to see if it is as cool as it sounds.

Throughout my career, I have enjoyed many challenges with the diverse ecosystems of California. Now that I have projects from the top of the state to the bottom, I am looking to taking another step in expanding my personal professional experience. Participating in an Earthwatch Expedition will allow me a chance to explore other environmental work opportunities. I hope that this project will give me a new set of ecosystem stories, a new set of global conservation considerations, and international work exposure. I am looking to increase my environmental awareness and bring that insight to the people and projects I am leading.

On my spring 2009 trip to Central America, I got my feet wet and I’m ready to go again.

I’ve got my Smokey the Bear baseball cap and my tropical weight field clothes sprayed with deet. My camera battery is charged, my typhoid shots are up to date, and my boots are broken in. Even my fear of www.govtrip.com won’t stop me.

I’m leaving August 9 and returning on August 18, 2009. Please check back as I blog about my trip preparations along the way, my thoughts, my fears, and my occasional panic attacks. I’ll be blogging up until the trip, and if all goes well, I’ll be blogging from Costa Rica while I am there.

Caring for the land and serving coffee. What in the world does growing coffee have in common with the management of national forest lands?
Hell if I know, but let’s give it a try and find out.

This year, Earthwatch. Next year…who knows where this Baby Boomer Ranger will go?

I’m going to dare to dream — and blog about it!

Adaptive Management Services

April 27th, 2009

February and March really threw me for a loop. I’m not accustomed to taking back blogs or not blogging about a big project. But, I’m ready to blog for April before this month is gone too. Time flies while you’re having fun!

My big event this month was the annual gathering of the AMSETers. We met in the Land of the Megawatts aka. Santa Clarita, California.
(Check out those 500 kV towers! You can feel the megawatts.)

We had a very good attendance for a unit meeting. All but four permanent team members were present. AMSET added two new permanent memebers since the last team meeting, one of which is me, and our new to the team Wildlife Biologist detailer made the meeting as well. Although Jo Ann, our Enterprise Team Leader, did not attend because she is still on sabbatical, she did conference call in for a brief update on how she is doing.

“I love working with adults!” I said to myself more than once during our meeting.

We had an agenda and we moved through it like we wanted to get something done. Like grown-up adults.

All in only one day we discussed:
The roles of the team leader and team members,
The possiblity of changing our name to Adaptive Management Services, instead of AMSET,
Changing or improving the appearance of our logo,
Defining or re-defining our team mission,
Assessing and defining our workload (need more work or overtaxed already?)
Reviewing and changing our organization charts,
Reviewing the discussing how we could improve our marketing,
Discussing what will our future look like?

And we took a group photo. Say “Cheese” for the camera!

AMSET is really three self directed teams: the Science Section, the Business Section and I’m in the Planning Section.

The Science Section people all like to run out in front of fires, throw equipment into plots and watch the flames. Then after everything is all charred and ashy, they gather up their data and compare the predicted fire behavior to the actual. Real fire data.

The Business Section does a lot of stuff no one likes to do, and hopes to never have to do. I’m glad they’re around because they help all of us in the Forest Service get resource management work done. They have the guts to face things like purchasing, hiring, and dealing with the dreaded ASC (Albuquerque Service Center.)

The Planning Section was originally set up as “cash cows” for the Science Section. It seems that everyone hates doing NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) analysis and are willing to pay big bucks to get it done – by someone else! That’s us, the mercenary, work for pay: “Caring-for-the-Land-and-I’ll-Get-Your-Project-Done-for-a-Fee Planners.” The sick part is we really like our jobs. Well, maybe not exactly … at least I really like project planning.

The best part was meeting everyone on my Enterprise Team.

We didn’t sit and talk about when we would begin to talk about our organization. We didn’t study our workloads and pontificate on possible trends and analyze staffing alternatives until the cows came home. We didn’t decide to put off to tomorrow what we knew we wanted to do today. We didn’t whine about declining budgets and downsizing. We didn’t complain about when to turn in reports and targets. We didn’t dance around last year’s deficit and wring our hands over cries of cutting the budget.

We were honest and direct, and said what we wanted then moved on to the next item. The first ground rule up front was that no one was to have hurt feelings about what was said at the meeting.

Ah, how refreshing! Our organizational planning is done for now. I’m off to work my billable hours. There are projects to be planned!

February Blog

February 28th, 2009

Blog redacted upon request.

See me if you have any questions.
/Cindy

I’m a Roaming iRanger

January 12th, 2009

In the memoirs of Forest Service lore, there are tales of Rangers jumping on their horse and riding for days, fixing trails, looking for forest fires and literally spitting and whittling with ranchers and loggers. We are told romantic tales of leaving their wife behind in the little cabin in the forest for long days of campfires, cans of beans, cowboy poetry and sleeping on the ground under the stars. An early Forest Service forester’s duty was riding the trail alone with his horse and a shovel to stop the flames of an occasional lightening fire. “Home, home on the range!”

But, where does Baby Boomer Ranger roam?

I very much wanted to attend the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco to see the latest in Apple computers, software and accessories. But, I also had commitments to two of my projects. Every Tuesday, I have a project status update conference call with the Shasta- Trinity National Forest, and every Wednesday, I have a conference call with the Bureau of Land Management, the City of Los Angels Department of Water and Power, and their project contractor.

What’s a Baby Boomer Ranger to do?
Answer: Do it all!

In the middle of computer software vendors and demonstrations of iLife, iPhones, and iMacs, I stepped aside and did my Baby Boomer Ranger work. I made my conference calls. I do not think that the others on the calls knew where I was, and it really didn’t matter. I was there with them, doing my job “Caring for the Land and Serving People.” My office was temporarily situated in Moscone Center. After doing my public servant duty, I was alone with no horse, but I did have my cell phone, my digital camera and my iTouch.


My temporary office at MacWorld

From the convention, I should mention one amazing item I learned about at MacWorld. There are now digital cameras that automatically ‘geotag’ photos. The camera has a GPS unit build-in, and when you take a photo, it adds the location to the photo’s metadata. After you download your photo, you can call up a Google map that displays digital pins at the locations where you took your photos. I thought, “Now that is what a Baby Boomer Ranger needs, photos that remember the locations of where you were!”


Me and my iTouch at MacWorld

This week, I grabbed my Google map and my cell phone, threw my dress clothes in my overnight bag, and put my laptop computer in its Samsonite wheelie briefcase. I’m in downtown Los Angeles for a face-to-face meeting on the Barren Ridge Transmission Line Project. Surrounded by high-rise office buildings, I’ll figuratively ’spit and whittle’ on how to protect the natural resources on the Angeles National Forest and provide renewable energy to the City of Los Angeles. Again, no horse, no shovel, and if I see any flames, I’ll be running in the opposite direction!


Sunrise in the City of Los Angeles, Central Library and the Bonaventure Hotel

When traveling for work, I like to drive the Forest Service hybrid (if it is available) and I enjoy Subway sandwiches and an occasional In-and-Out burger. Sometimes, I’ll partake in a glass of merlot and dinner at a restaurant draped in white linen tablecloths. If can stay awake in the evening, I’ll spend a few minutes blogging or surfing the World Wide Web. My computer, my digital camera and my cell phone are always with me and I call my husband every day I am away.

Last week, I was in the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco, and this week I am in downtown Los Angeles next to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Disney Concert Hall. When I get back to my office in Clovis, I’ll plug in my cell phone, and set up my computer. I need to call the Shasta-T again, as well as the Lassen, the Tahoe, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona, and the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon.

Where is a Baby Boomer Ranger’s duty?
Anywhere she can get cell phone coverage.


Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California