The Long Drive Home
Post by Clemson Prairie Ecology Fellow Annie CarewI returned to North Carolina from Montana only ten days ago; tomorrow, I load up my car and drive down to Clemson. Since coming home, I’ve had some time to reflect on all that I’ve done this summer, and frankly I am amazed at where I’ve been and what I’ve done.
At the beginning of the summer, I drove all the way across the country in my tiny Toyota Corolla—and at the end of the summer, I drove all the way back. I saw the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills, the Garden of the Gods, the Ozarks, Kansas wind farms, and, of course, the Smoky Mountains. For almost three months I lived forty-five minutes from the nearest town in a house with people I didn’t know before this summer. I rode horseback, rounded up cattle, fixed fences, made jam, and used a chainsaw. I saw iconic American species in their native habitats, including bison, elk, burrowing owls, prairie dogs, and bears. My work schedule and tasks were largely of my own choosing, and it was only the group’s self-discipline that allowed us to get anything done. And we got a lot done. We finished clearing all of our pine tree plots, sorted and weighed 150 sample bags of grass, and mapped noxious weeds in an entire cattle pasture. In addition to our work, we visited the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Reserve, the American Prairie Reserve, and the studio of artist Loren Entz. We were allowed to tour the Midland Bull Test facilities and the aboveground facilities at Signal Peak Energy. Besides all of this, Billings, Montana, is a unique and interesting city.
This fellowship has been an amazing, unequaled experience. I have learned a lot about living independently, adjusting to changes, working peacefully with others, splinters, and how high-level research projects operate on the ground. I am now capable of designing and executing a study, with only minimal help from someone more qualified than myself. I have to say, it’s an amazing feeling to look back on the summer and know that I helped write the studies that I executed. And we’re not even finished yet; this fall, we will be busy compiling and analyzing the data that we have gathered. Next summer’s interns will continue our work and quantify the results of our study. We helped to start up a program that I feel confident will be an amazing experience for Clemson students for years to come.
Thanks to this fellowship, I have a clearer vision of my future as a conservation biologist. Montana and the American West are beautifully rugged, and the mountains are imposing and magnificent, but being away from the South has helped me realize that the Carolinas are where I want to be. I missed the verdant greenery and the rolling hollers of the Appalachians; to me these mountains are friendlier than the mountains out West. I applied for this fellowship to give myself a better idea of what kind of research I want to do in the future. Prior to this, I have only ever worked in wetlands, and I wondered if I only liked wetlands because they were familiar. After this summer, I feel confident that my true passion lies in the wetlands.
I am forever grateful to Dr. David Jachowski for organizing this program and giving me the opportunity to take part; I am grateful to Goz and Pat Segars for allowing us to use their house, providing the work, funding this research fellowship, and for caring enough about Clemson and its students to provide for us in this way; I am grateful to Terry and LaVonne Frost for their day-to-day support, hard work, and good humor; and, of course, I am deeply grateful to Clemson University. The relationships and opportunities that I have found through this university have been indescribably important to me, and I will remember this summer for the rest of my life.
