Field Notes

Great Balls of Dung, and Other Surprises

2019-11-26T19:00:00+00:00

When Augusto showed me the kumquat-sized ball of dried manure, I gave a gasp of delight much like the one I make when someone hands me a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. I took it from him and rolled it around in my palm to better appreciate a masterful example of excremental architecture. This little poop souvenir was exactly what I had come here for.

No, I wasn’t in this far southern region of Brazil to study dung beetles, nor anything remotely like them. But what I really meant was that this humble insect was the perfect embodiment of the theme behind my PhD dissertation: that the component parts of diverse, multi-faceted ecosystems tend to interact in fascinating, sometimes beneficial, and often unexpected ways.

As Augusto explained to me that day, the dung beetle plays a special and often overlooked role in grazed pastures: it takes the nitrogen and carbon in cow dung from the soil surface and redistributes it to deeper soil layers, all while creating networks of tiny tunnels that aerate the soil and facilitate water infiltration. Because cattle are the ones kindly providing the manure the beetles eat, the beetles go where cattle go. Across six months at fazenda Espinilho, I immersed myself in the delightfully complex world of integrated crop-livestock systems. Espinilho is the site of a long-term experiment on these diversified agricultural production systems managed by the Grazing Ecology Research Group at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, where Augusto was earning his Master’s degree, collaborators of the Gaudin Agroecology Lab at UC Davis. For 17+ years the experiment has tracked soil health, crop production, and animal and forage production in an annual rotation of summer soybeans with winter rye/oat pastures grazed by beef steers.

The fazenda is unique because it demonstrates a kind of de-specialization of agriculture not seen at that scale in many places outside of Brazil. Specialization in agriculture refers to the gradual winnowing of the number of commodities produced by an agricultural enterprise to just one, visible in modern landscapes of heavily intensive crop production – miles and miles of corn and soybeans – in some consolidated areas and intensive livestock production – concentrated feeding operations and large-scale dairies, for example – in others. While this evolution of our production systems has resulted in unprecedented gains in productivity, the costs to the environment and the resilience of agriculture have been huge.

And specialization is not only a characteristic of intensive systems, but also of extensive systems such as livestock grazing, which require much more land area for the production of relatively few tons of beef. In the 1980s, in response to massive conversion of native Cerrado, Pampa, and Amazon habitats to monocultures of soybean and extensive pasture systems, the Brazilian government began promoting the style of crop-livestock integration practiced at fazenda Espinilho. In Rio Grande do Sul state, the initiative largely took the form of cover crop grazing by beef cattle in no-till soybean systems.

The author (left) and Grazing Ecology Research Group graduate student Jonatas Silva stand among the robust soybean crop at the Espinilho site in March, 2017. Southern Brazil is home to vast landscapes of specialized soybean production, but here it is combined with winter livestock grazing to get more than one use out of the same unit of land. Photo: P. Nunes.

Farmers in southern Brazil often sow winter rye cover crops to prevent soil erosion and supply the residue cover needed to suppress weeds for no-till management. Those cover crops represent a vast unexploited resource – why not use them for animal forage at a time of year when high-quality grazing can be hard to find? Theoretically, doing so would double the number of agricultural commodities produced on a unit of land while relieving pressure for expansion of pastureland into sensitive native ecosystems.

As an ecologist, decreasing habitat conservation and increasing land-use efficiency are not the only reasons this system is exciting to me. Grazing animals on land that was before exclusively dedicated to a single crop is the ecosystem equivalent of adding a whole new trophic level to an otherwise species-impoverished context. That extra layer of diversity caters to the kind of things we ecologist love to talk about: interactions, feedbacks, synergisms, resilience, food webs, and other ecological fundamentals that are all at least partly contingent on the presence of biological diversity. Adding a new trophic level adds a new agent of change, new sources and new pathways for fluxes of energy and nutrients. In other words, where there is diversity, there is the possibility of being surprised.

Now, back to those dung beetles. These critters are one such example of the unexpected interactions that make diversified systems tick. Their presence in the areas where cattle graze creates changes in the soil environment that carry over from pasture to cropping season. When the farmer applies lime to the fields to correct for high acidity, for example, the beetles’ crafty little storage tunnels allow the corrective lime to percolate deeper into the soil profile. For this reason, areas that had been grazed prior to soybean planting have more favorable soil chemistry during the soybean season compared to areas that had been planted to cover crops but left ungrazed. The “biopores,” as they are also known, also allow for better water infiltration and better root penetration into deeper layers of the soil, which might help soybeans in grazed areas tolerate hot or dry weather better than soybeans in ungrazed areas.

There are many other interactions in integrated systems that impact ecosystem functions ranging from water and nutrient cycling to social and environmental services. During my summer at fazenda Espinilho, for example, I found that winter cover crop grazing uses up more soil water than when cover crops are left ungrazed, a deficit that carries over into the summer soybean season. This happens because cattle are constantly taking bites out of the grass, which responds by remobilizing stored energy resources to grow new shoots and replace dying root tissue. A single clump of ryegrass might have to repeat this process multiple times over the course of the winter, all the while photosynthesizing and transpiring tirelessly to try to reach maturity. The ungrazed cover crop, on the other hand, grows to its max height in the span of a few weeks, sets seed, and dies well before the grazed plants do – using considerably less water in the process.

Sampling soil for water content analysis just after soybean emergence at the Espinilho experimental site. The dried residue is material left over from the winter grazing season, which remains on the soil surface to facilitate no-till management. The red Oxisol soil of southern Brazil are clearly identifiable from this sample. Photo: C. Peterson.

The plot twist is that this apparent disadvantage of the diversified system actually has no impact on crop productivity. Soybeans in the grazed areas have consistently produced just as much grain – and sometimes more – as soybeans in the ungrazed areas. Could this be the product of further interactions from grazing that make soil water more available to crops, even if there is less total water in the soil? This is just one of a flood of other questions I could ask about this system. And, like the dung beetle, one of the many ways in which it continues to surprise me.

Red Dirt Diary #6

2019-01-14T20:00:00+00:00

A Multidão

Apart from Ester, José, Tiago, and Sombra, there is no lack for other characters here at the fazenda. Caio is one of them. He is a young, slick-faced, nut-brown ranch hand, one of those men that would be paunchy if he led a city life but is instead lean and powerful from a job that requires constant exercise. He usually wears one of a series of soccer jerseys paired with typical gaucho bombacha pants, a knife at his hip. He is equipped with the cleverest tongue of all the ranch hands.

“I’m so stressed,” he says.

“Really, Caio? Why?”

“No! Well, I mean, that’s what everyone else always says. I’m so stressed, they always say. I don’t know what they mean, but hey, I don’t want to be left out now do I?”

It’s true: I can’t think of a person less afflicted by modern-day anxieties. He is not ambitious, and all the happier for it, content to be the next in line for head ranch hand, content to spend the day in the saddle and not worry about anything else. I can’t find much to criticize in his approach to life.

Tio Breno is another. He used to be a hand here as well, but then became too old to work. With no family to care for him, Fernando (the fazendeiro, the owner of all this vast territory) told him he could keep his room in the dormitory. He is so small and wizened I can’t even estimate his age, cloaked as he is in a big cotton beanie and sweaters that are too large for him. He speaks mostly in gruff, one-word sentences that I often struggle to understand. But we manage to communicate in a strange exchange of gestures and yes-or-no answers to my hesitant questions.

On weekends when Gabriela the cook or César the handyman aren’t around to bring him his meals, the task falls to me. “Boa noite, Tio Breno,” I’ll call as I enter the barn. “Pronto para jantar?” Are you ready for your dinner? Grumbles and indistinct noises as Tio Breno rises from his bed, then chases the kittens away from his spot at the table.

“Do you want me to bring you anything else, Tio Breno? Some more water?”

“Não, obrigado,” I manage to make out. No thanks.

“Here you are then, don’t forget your medicines.”

“’Brigado, ‘brigado.” Thanks, thanks.

Tio Breno doesn’t take breakfast, but when I arrive with his morning pills his bright red thermos is set out on the table, waiting for me. No breakfast, only mate to drink while sitting under the shade tree. From there he watches the day pass by. Listens to the gauchos talk and joke when they come to rest after lunch. Watches them practice with their lassos in the pens next to the barn. Laughs gravely at the antics of the smaller dogs that stay home at the barn rather than going out to work with the gauchos like the big dogs.

“Shall I fill your thermos for you, Tio Breno?”

“Yes please, hot water. Don’t let it boil.”

“No, Tio Breno. I won’t. I’ll be right back.”

He makes his way, somehow, excruciatingly slowly, to his post under the tree, bracing one leg with a handmade crutch that looks too tall for him. Wearing Havaiana flip flops, like any good Brazilian.

Leonides is the head ranch hand. I know it’s him coming before I see him, as he elects always to wear a set of noisy spurs on days when he is in the saddle. Leonides has several claims to infamy. The first comes from the time when a car ran over one of the ranch dogs. The poor creature was thrashing in pain and obviously about to die. Leonides leapt from his horse, snatched his knife from the sheath at his hip, took two big strides towards the animal and promptly, coolly, cut its throat. Same as he would do for a pig or a steer on its way to the kitchen, I imagine. It was a dreadfully brutal sort of mercy, but merciful it was, nonetheless. Legend has it that this same dog later turned up at the fazenda looking good as new, which earned her the morbid nickname “Morte” – a benevolent incarnation of Death. No doubt it was merely a similar-looking dog, or even a relative of the first, but things have a way of becoming larger than life in this setting.

The second claim comes from Leonides’s reputation as a womanizer, a fact which has kept hunger for gossip on the fazenda satisfied for some time. Word around the dormitory is that Leonides’s former wife was driven crazy after learning of his affair with a much younger woman, a girl really, whom he apparently met and courted on the internet. Eyes widen, heads shake slowly, tongues cluck softly at this detail. Sofia began neglecting her duties as ranch cook. Started behaving erratically. Started torturing the animals and even killed one of the dogs with a shovel. This last act broke the camel’s back, as they say, causing Fernando to relieve Sofia of her duties and banish Leonides from the small ranch house that is usually reserved for the head ranch hand and his family. The dog was a favorite of many of the hands, after all. Such things couldn’t be tolerated.

Then there is Arthur, my friend and helpmeet. He is the person I most count on to make my project work. He knows the history of the experiment, has good relations with all the fazenda staff, is strong and never complains about early hours, heavy lifting, dreary food, or lousy weather. He does complain when one of the ranch dogs eats the top half of his good work boot, but he does so with righteous sarcasm. He shuttles my other helpers back and forth to the bus station. He cooks chicken and rice for us on the weekends. He looks for supplies and equipment that I need from the city and brings them to me the next time he comes to the fazenda. He is also smart, and the work passes faster when we work together. He has innumerable stories, sharp English that can catch my jokes and a good reference base in American pop culture (has watched every episode of Friends, he says, something we have in common). A passing singing voice and an unending knowledge of insect taxonomy complete his list of virtues. His favorite bug is the lacewing, and he has a lacewing tattoo on his calf to prove it.

It has been a good exercise for me, this project, in asking for help. Apart from Arthur’s regular assistance, I have also begged a week or more of time from Alejo, Natascha, Eduardo, Vinicius, João, Bárbara, Giovanna, and Natália. Andre makes phone calls for me when I’m worried I won’t understand something important, and is constantly thinking of ways to make my work more efficient. Professor Hugo of Agrometeorology lent me the pressure bomb, and Ana from the Soil Science department lent me a sampling shovel.

The populace of the small towns and cities surrounding the fazenda – Ijuí, Jóia, Augusto Pestana, Santiago, none less than 2 hour’s drive away – is replete with kind souls of the sort not found outside of very rural areas. Because not more than a week would pass before some part of my extensive equipment would break that couldn’t be fixed with tape or a screwdriver, I visited these towns regularly.

In Ijuí, the venerable Seu Valter fixed my pressure regulator in his backyard refrigerator repair shop while his son served me tereré (iced mate with sweet lime juice), and then declined to charge me. Bruno, a very German-looking fellow with bright blue eyes who works for the gas company, swapped out my empty nitrogen tank for me after work hours. Carlos Renner and his son-in-law, Rafael, let me store the tank in the warehouse at their hydraulics shop in Ijuí. They chatted pleasantly with what must have been an exotic visitor for them, an American girl, all the way out here. “Come back any time,” Carlos shouted after my receding truck. “Call us if you ever need any help in Ijuí.” Jaír, another German-looking fellow with blue eyes but who works at Fritz Batteries, showed me where to find a welder in Augusto Pestana to repair the lid of the pressure bomb, and afterwards Mrs. Fritz and her family invited me to lunch in their kitchen above the shop. I surprised them by accepting and showing up an hour later to share their meal of sausage, rice, and pineapple juice. Drove back to the fazenda, windows down, singing along enthusiastically to my out-of-place American music and feeling like the world was good.

Red Dirt Diary #5

2019-01-10T20:00:00+00:00

Caio

Today Caio and I made a joke. All the ranch hands and I were seated at lunch, munching away at yet another plateful of fatty pork. We have enjoyed so much pork this week – it seems to be all that’s in the freezer at the moment – that it has provoked sarcastic comments among the hands about turning into pigs and complaints about the effect on their waistlines. Marcelo makes pointed oinking noises every time he sits down to eat.

“Do you pay your helpers well, to go out and mess with that equipment?” Caio asked, rubbing two fingers and a thumb together in the international sign for moolah.

“No, very badly. I don’t pay them at all.”

“Oh, well, I could still help you know. But I only work from 9-5 and not after lunch.”

“We work before breakfast and after lunch. Also, you can’t run far enough to be very much help, you’re out of shape. I make my helpers run to go get my samples.”

“No no no, I run a lot. You know I live in Tupã, it’s 40 km from here, I run back and forth there every day. Eighty kilometers. I run so much.”

Another gaucho chips in, “Yeah, but he does it on a motorcycle.”

A round of laughter overtakes the meal room, with a few echoes of the punchline here and there. “Heh heh, he does it on a moto…”

As we putt putt out of the gate for our afternoon sampling session, Caio is seated in his usual after-lunch spot in the shade of a big oak next to the barn, drinking mate with the other gauchos. I wave and say, “Ready to go?” pointing out his spot in the back of the truck. “Nope, I’m good,” gesturing at the cuia full of hot mate.

Small exchanges like this please me to no end. I look around at the rickety fazenda buildings, the rusty windmill, the yard full of horses and muddy sheep. Who knew that I would ever have a place here, hours away from anything, deep in the interior of this weird southern state of Brazil? That people here would know my name and makes jokes with me at lunch, ask me how my walk to the creek was last evening, and make room for me at the table? A bunch of gauchos sporting bombachas and flat-rimmed felt hats, accepting this rather eccentric foreign lady as their neighbor?

Stranger things have happened I suppose.

Red Dirt Diary #4

2018-08-13T20:00:00+00:00

Gaucho Science

The morning mist is thick and low on the ground. I’m guessing relative humidity of 100%. Vapor pressure deficit 0 kPa. Transpiration 0 mm/s. I can’t even see Pedro and Jonatas as they put together a tripod on the far end of the field. I can only hear the clunks and clangs of the aluminum pipes as they slide into the iron tripod joint.

The higher note of the hammer sings as it strikes the stakes, pulling the guy lines firm. One by one the long masts holding the sensor heads pop into view, until finally all six poke lamely into the heavy atmosphere above the soybean canopy. So much metaphor potential it’s almost too easy.

I am in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, the country’s southernmost state and home of the Gauchos, those quintessential South American cowboys. Espinilho Ranch, some 8 hours’ drive from the state capital of Porto Alegre, produces thousands of hectares of beef cattle and soybeans and is my field site for the Brazilian summer. I have been here since October, foolishly trying to do plant physiology while counting on the cooperation of the weather. The tripods and the adorable little sensors attached to them are all part of my clever (again, read: foolish) plan to track vegetation indices throughout the day, looking for signs of stress in the crop when the weather heats up.

Back at my bunk at ranch headquarters, the morning’s data collection finished, I tear through my book and check social media and the New York Times obsessively. Every few minutes a pause to survey the sky and the gathering clouds while prowling around the farm yard. Current events have me preoccupied, to say the least; in the time it has taken for the soybeans to grow from seedlings to knee-high plants, my future as a young, optimistic scientist has grown considerably murkier. I’m a government-funded researcher, but the government cares not for my work.

Frigging rain. What direction is the wind blowing? Will we even be able to go to the field this afternoon? Of course, we have to go, there are soil samples to collect from today and yesterday. We go. I send Pedro and Jonathas off with the shovel, while I head to a distant field with the sampling rings, a hammer, and a smaller trowel. The day’s work has an extra interest to it due to Paulo’s promised visit later in the afternoon, such a rare occurrence that I am anxious to demonstrate the slickness of my operation. Paulo, something of a demi-god in the world of Brazilian animal and crop science, has spearheaded a great deal of research on crop-livestock integration, and I’m here at his invitation.

He arrives at just the moment when I’m thrashing around in the soybeans trying to hammer my sampling rings into the ground. Sweaty and with mud all the way up my arms. Hat askew, hair flying around because my cheap sunglasses have rubber bits on the ear pieces that stick to my hair and pull strands out of my pony tail every time I take them off. Looking every bit like a slick operation. Then the storm clouds that I have been watching warily for the past hour decide to make their entrance, and within five minutes of Paulo’s arrival conditions have deteriorated drastically. I suddenly begin to fear for our safety and the safety of my precious sensors, exposed as they are in this open field, inescapably attached to very tall and very metallic tripods. Minor chaos commences.

Pedro, Jonatas and I scramble to pull the sensor rigs from the tripod bases, jumbling strings, wires, and protective covers together, rushing to throw old raincoats over the more sensitive equipment in the truck bed as the rain begins pelting down, all while Paulo and his two traveling companions stand watching bemusedly, trying to stay out of the way and getting soaked to their proverbial boxer shorts in the process. The equipment stowed as well as possible, I manage to direct a shrug and a wry grin in Paulo’s direction. He hides a giggle behind his dripping mustache, seeming to enjoy the show immensely.

For all its size and dominance in sectors like agriculture, Brazil spends only 1.4% of its GDP on research and development, putting it well below the global average of 2.1%. Things had been gradually improving for science in recent years, until the economic crisis of 2013 sent research funding straight back to the bottom of the government’s agenda. The state of Rio Grande do Sul recently dropped its agricultural research program, FEPAGRO – just, dropped it, along with its zoobotanical and science and technology programs – leaving its scientists scrambling to find replacement positions in industry or academia. Newly minted PhDs are obliged to look outside the country for employment, resulting in an exodus of Brazil’s most highly educated human resources. Even one of Brazil’s best-funded universities, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, has professors in limbo waiting for promised grant money to arrive, and a supercomputer that’s not running for want of a simple repair.

Back at ranch headquarters again, huddling in the meal room. The drips from our wet clothes becoming puddles under the wooden benches. Jonatas prepares mate for everyone, and for once I’m grateful for the bitter, hot beverage. Paulo reveals he has brought a present: a grape cuca, pound cake frosted with sugary fruit, a great favorite of Rio Grandenses. I offer the tin full of wild passion fruits that I found down by the creek the day before. Brief skepticism, then delight as they find the tiny fruits to be sweet and refreshing. In any case, there are few treats to be found at Espinilho, and we munch happily on cake and passion fruit while taking sips of steaming mate.

In the intervening weeks I have asked my Brazilian friends, how do you do it? How do you keep writing papers, collecting data, with an institutional environment that regards research – and especially agricultural research – as a non-priority? Their reliable answer is to look elsewhere. To not rely on the government, and to rely instead on connections and collaborations, on the private sector, on a broad national and international network, on people rather than institutions. I have since begun to suspect that one of Paulo’s top strategies for keeping the machines oiled is to simply say “yes” twice as often as he says “no”. He regards research not as mere work, but as a mission, a way of life, and a duty to his students. “Good research doesn’t always require expensive equipment or facilities,” he says. “Just brains, and willingness.”

I am not alone in wondering where things are headed. My future as an ecologist may seem up for grabs, but my Brazilian friends face similar, perhaps even graver, difficulties. Still, they produce science. They invite me to exchange ideas and work in their fields, they lend their time, their hands, and their data to help me towards our mutual benefit. Nothing went at all as I had hoped today – quite the contrary. But we sit together, we share food and drink, we speak not a word of politics, and their solid presence makes me feel more secure.

A scientific community that faces outward, not inward, and that holds generosity and trust in the highest regard, thrives independent of transient policy environments. We are not the first nor the only ones to have our research disrupted by capricious rainclouds, and any case, uncertainty does not preclude action. We can meet it with creativity and persistence, continuing to build bridges with what bricks we have. After all, Gaucho scientists have been doing it for years.

Read the original article in The Aggie Brickyard Winter 2017 issue

Progress and Preservation in Abbey’s Country

2018-08-07T20:00:00+00:00

It was sentimental to bring along Ed, I suppose. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that someone had thought, “I’m going to the canyonlands – better read Desert Solitaire.” No different than, “I’m in Alaska – better grab my Jack London,” or, “Trip to Yosemite – bring out the John Muir.”

I had first read Abbey as a bookish high school innocent, having picked it up by chance and subsequently been taken aback by the hot-headed disdain for authority, the pugnacious contrarianism dripping from its pages. But there must have been some other reason I had kept that creased and shabby paperback with me for years after, though college, through multiple moves and downscalings. Call it a vague emotional attachment that had caused me to tuck it in a box in the back of my Honda with only my most prized volumes as I drove across the country to start graduate school. I remembered now, when a brief hiatus from my PhD studies allowed me the opportunity for the first time to visit, book in hand, the land that Abbey had evoked for me those years ago. His passion – that was it – his wild contradictions, his descriptive mastery, his ebullient scorn and love for mankind, the way he relished a common wildflower as much as a chunk of quartzite as much as a charismatic catamount. He did not disappoint in the re-reading.

A giant cottonwood marked our basecamp in a sandy wash on the upper Escalante. Nights were still long at this time of year, and chilly enough to make us wish we could build a campfire. Our butane backpacker stoves were poor substitute, and the moon was almost full, anyway – too bright for the stargazing that would have otherwise occupied us. Instead, the three of us passed the time before bed cramped awkwardly in my two-person tent, passing around a flask of whiskey and slab of chocolate. We would start with a game or two of cards, cursing amiably and tossing around practiced insults, before ultimately tiring and settling in for a reading. Each of us would take a turn at the helm, gripping the cheap reprint between chapped fingers and maneuvering the pages so they could be read in the light of the lantern that swung rhythmically from the fly of the tent. Would stretch the kinks from our back, rearrange our legs, clear our throat with a douse of whiskey, and begin.

“The clouds have disappeared, the sun is still beyond the rim. Under a wine-dark sky I walk through light reflected and re-reflected from the walls and floor of the canyon, a radiant golden light that glows on rock and stream, sand and leaf in varied hues of amber, honey, whiskey – the light that never was is here, now, in the storm-sculptured gorge of the Escalante…If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams.”

In reading aloud, we heard Abbey’s bitterness, often his loneliness, but also his wonder at the smallest thing, his zeal for beauty and purity. In reading together, we carried with us shared jokes and storylines that narrated our daily adventures – the sight of an ordinary ant hill provoking memories of a humorous incident in last night’s chapter, or an unfamiliar species suddenly resolving itself in light of one of Abbey’s monologues on natural history. This must be Ephedra, this must be cliffrose, that must be a canyon wren singing. Most of all, we heard his joy in solitude.

“Within this vast perimeter, in the middle ground and foreground of the picture, a rather personal demesne, are the 33,000 acres of Arches National Monument of which I am now sole inhabitant, usufructuary, observer and custodian…Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not — at least there’s nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me.”

We, like Abbey, thought ourselves lucky to be alone. We had gone to considerable effort to find ourselves so, after all. On the drive from our quaint California university town to the Utah desert, we camped once in an unnamed Joshua Tree forest outside of Death Valley National Park. Miles away from anything, we fell into grateful possession of a sheltered ditch in which to pitch our tents and eagerly absorbed a very exclusive sunset. In Death Valley proper, we dutifully followed the herds to the most important sights and spent the day jostling with teenagers on Badwater Basin, gleefully kicking over cairns and photo-bombing selfies in Golden Canyon. But when it came time to lay down our heads for the night we pointed our intrepid Honda down a pitted gravel track on the unrenowned back side of the park. Here we pulled to side of the road and slept surrounded by creosote bush and rabbit warrens, one distant camper van housing a kindred spirit a few hundred yards away, and nothing else.

The next day we planned to visit Zion National Park, but abruptly changed our minds when we saw the line of cars snaking out of the visitors’ entrance, as bad as any L.A. pileup. Instead we cruised on to Bryce Canyon, where we goggled appreciatively at the hoodoos and doodads for a few hours before sidling up to a convenient little patch of washed out ground up a side road outside of town where we could camp for free in another ditch. When we arrived in Escalante the next day, we scrapped our entire itinerary after learning that Coyote Gulch, too, had been beset upon by the hordes. We chose an equally intriguing but much less celebrated canyon for our backcountry jaunt, and it was for that reason that we found ourselves that night in all our glory pitched under the cottonwood tree, having passed a grand total of three other hikers the entire day.

All this seems like a lot of trouble simply to avoid the sight of other bipeds in fanny packs, but for us it was vital to our enjoyment of the surroundings. Much as Abbey did, we craved solitude, a nearness to place obtainable only by dragging tired, sore feet over it, being discomfited by it, occasionally frightened by it, and mostly in awe of it all the time. The discomforts endured for the sake of an uninhibited (uninhabited?) view of nature seem comical and not a little exaggerated, but the fact that we had to go to such lengths to enjoy the parks in the way we prefer speaks to a larger debate: to preserve, or progress? Abbey, it may be remembered, had an extensive record of beefs and travails with progress and development – the culprit, as he saw it, for the loss of true wilderness.

“Arches National Monument has been developed. The Master Plan has been fulfilled. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the “visitation,” as they call it, mounts ever upward.”

That was in the 1950s. The updated visitation stats on Arches (now a national park) are at 1.8 million people a year. Zion, though miniscule in area compared to most other National Parks, is at 4.5 million. A local business owner in the town of Escalante told us that visitation to the Grand Staircase National Monument in the 2018 season had shot up to more than 30 times the 2017 rate. To add salt to the wound, it’s now a scientific fact that virtually nowhere in the continental U.S. is more than five miles from a road (see Project Remote). We backcountry purists are more and more having to earn our solitude with equal parts determined walking and sheer cussedness.

These robust attendance rates engender a whirlwind of contradictory feelings. There is worry that woefully understaffed and underfunded parks won’t be able to keep up with the infrastructure, maintenance, and logistical challenges created by so many visitors. There is a touch of smugness; just as our government starts taking liberties with public lands, gutting National Monuments and opening parks to exploitation by mining and oil interests, people show up in record numbers to remind legislators just who those lands belong to. The self-righteous, dirtbag backpacker part of me wants all these people to piss off back to southern California, and take their shiny BMWs with them. The less selfish part of me is unequivocally glad for the mob. My troubles to reconcile my opinions on the matter stem from the mutual exclusivity of a park that is well-visited and one that is also pristine. I want public lands to be used and enjoyed by all, forever – that is their mandate, after all. But I also want the integrity of wildlands to remain intact, to cater to that precious commodity: solitude.

There are two halves to that particular game of football. The first is the restoration of park lands to their position as true public spaces, contrary to trends of increasing privatization of park operations and personnel. As classic examples of a market failure at work, it is the job of our public offices to step in and ensure that parks serve their purpose and their people. If the federal budget is any indication, the attention and priorities of our public offices lie quite noticeably elsewhere. That is our loss. If I were to be more forthright, more Abbey-esque, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it a misappropriation of government funds, or the equivalent of a giant middle finger from our representatives in office.

The second half is somewhat subtler. It will be slower in coming, and without considerable effort and patience may not come at all, for it involves cultural change. I recognize the danger in sentiments that cast judgement for a particular way of enjoying open spaces; there is no better or right-er way of doing so. But I struggle to accept that my parks won’t be as pristine as I would like, that I won’t always have them to myself, and that they may be more roads and signposts than I ever cared to see if they are to remain truly accessible to all those who would wish to enjoy them. Yes, even if they wish to enjoy them from the backseat of an air-conditioned vehicle or from the comfort of a luxury lodge.

Ultimately, the task is to be strategic about the way we use our parks – how and where we develop, whether to limit visitation and to how much, how to educate visitors and make it easy for them to make the least possible impact while still enjoying the parks in the way they like. I am not the first to come to this conclusion, of course, and despite limited financial resources many parks in our country are forging ahead with striking the balance between progress and preservation.

Not everyone will get why we Abbey types want to camp in ditches, why we delight in eating globs of reconstituted vegetable protein, why we go out of our way to be as far away from anyone else as possible. That’s fine. We won’t be seeing you. There are still – and hopefully, always will be – forgotten places, out-of-the way places, solitary places, for those that know where to find them and are willing to get their boots wet.

To the rest, your presence here well outside your usual habitat attests that you value this land as much as I do, even if not in the same way. You could have vacationed anywhere, but you are here. In a desert, in a canyon, in a forest, on a mountain. That makes acceptance easier. For those of us that make it this far, may we use without misusing, may we progress without regressing, may we recreate without desecrating, and most of all, may we unpeel our eyeballs once in a while. May we get out and walk.

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. New York: McGraw Hill, 1968.

Hotel Wherever

2018-01-03T20:00:00+00:00

The perks of ditching the key card

I’ve had enough of hotels in this short lifetime. One weekend after another traveling to college soccer games, academic conferences, family vacations - all of them came along with a hotel key and a room, each one identical to all the others.

Hotel chains, I assume, offer the same comfort and consistency that restaurant chains do. A customer can visit one in Omaha, NE and expect the exact same thing they got at the branch in Charleston, SC. Reassuring, I suppose. But when in Rome, I, for one, would like to know without a doubt that I’m in Rome. The texture of a place, it’s uniqueness, it’s odors and sensations are not to be found in the bottled environment of a hotel room. How are we to know where we are if every place looks exactly like the last?

In September 2014, I traveled from my family home in central Florida across the country to Davis, California, to begin my graduate studies. Anything that would fit in the back of my Honda CR-V came with me. Anything that did not was sold, donated, or left behind (with the important exception of my 4-string banjo and mandolin, which were lovingly packed and shipped to meet me upon arrival).

Along the way, I made a resolution: complete the 10-day road trip without once booking into a hotel. That meant a lot of camping in little-known state parks and public forest lands. It also meant an excuse to reconnect with friends and family scattered across the U.S., and to appreciate the hospitality of all-but-strangers along my route.

Savannah, GA

Only a few hours drive from my family home in Florida, Savannah had long called to me for its air of history and mystery. I spent the afternoon walking a zigzag through every block in downtown before driving to Washington, D.C., to pick up an old college friend and spend the night at her cousins’. A mini-reunion ensued the next day, when we drove halfway across Virginia to Blacksburg, the home town of another college friend. Our trio of former roommates and/or teammates sat in rocking chairs on front porches and yarned our way through several years of unshared history, forked roads merging again.

Versailles, KY

I then drove through West Virginia to the town of Versailles, outside of Lexington, Kentucky. My dad has a veterinary practice back home, and his first business partner had moved here years ago with his family. My parents count them among their oldest friends, having raised their children alongside my brothers and I. They had a small cattle farm and cut flower business in Versailles and I had visited them once with my mother what seemed like ages ago. They hosted me for two nights in their 19th century farmhouse, regaling me with family memories, toting me along on the day’s farm operations, and sending me off with a wave and jar of freshly canned tomato salsa from their garden.

Birdseye, IN

The proliferation of hotels and chain restaurants is a symptom of the homogenization of the countryside. My quest to avoid them took me to some unexpected corners. After several hours of driving through Midwest corn country and with the rumblings of hunger in my belly, I took a random interstate exit and ended up in Birdseye, an Indiana town so small it barely warrants a point on the map. It was Sunday, and the local burger joint and ice cream shop were closed. A flaking, red and white hand-painted sign informed me, “Rabbits 4 sale.” A deli tucked away in the back of an ancient hardware store supplied me with a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and a bag of potato chips, which at the time seemed like the most decadent meal I had ever been served.

In St. Louis, MO, I spent the night at the home of a friend’s parents. Grabbed a frozen custard with her mom, pizza with her brother. Lolled in the pool. Eating cereal the next morning in their kitchen, surrogate mom quizzed me on my plans for lodging that night. Upon learning that I had none, she pulled from the crammed shelf above the toaster a bound booklet containing the names and addresses of the multitude of cousins and relatives that make up my friend’s very large and very Italian family. She ran her finger down the list and stopped at an entry. “Is Lawrence, Kansas, much out of your way? We have family there who could put you up for the night. Let me give them a call.”

Broken Bow, NE

Lawrence was more than I had ever expected from a little Kansas town. The hip and bustling downtown led me to a fine brewery. Bookshops and music stores, historic buildings, and restaurants brightened my glance with their cheerful storefronts. My hosts, strangers to me, soon became less so, and our conversation grew more animated as the afternoon wore on and common interests were discovered. I realized that I had spoken to one of the couple before, on a recommendation from the same St. Louis friend, as someone who knew musical instruments. In a phone conversation, this man had pointed me to an instrument shop in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I ultimately purchased the same beautiful, magical, 4-string banjo that was on its way from Florida to California at that very moment. My hosts had been more than willing to offer me their guest room, they said, because many strangers had done the same for them in their errant pasts. I recognized this statement as a wink; if I wanted to thank them, the best way was to pay it forward.

From Kansas I cut north through Nebraska, aiming for Wyoming. I only chose to go that way because it was sandhill country. Every year just north of my Florida home, migratory Sandhill Cranes arrived at the prairie. Their piercing calls were always audible on misty mornings in fall, just as the weather was turning cool. This broad, open country in Nebraska was one of their most notable rest stops. They wouldn’t be here at this time of year, but nevertheless, I drove slowly through the glorious sunlit countryside and treasured the kinship of my fellow cross-continental travelers. I camped on national forest land just outside of Broken Bow, and moved on early the next day.

Alliance, NE

A friend from home learned I was in Nebraska and shot me a text, “You have to go see Carhenge!” It was just the sort of wacky thing that he would know about. I never would have known it was there, would never have visited it otherwise, but what excuse did I have for missing it?

As its name suggested, Carhenge turned out to be an intricate, close-to-scale replica of the famed Stonehenge of Salisbury Plains made entirely of rusty and graffitied defunct vehicles. A testament to human whimsy, it stood proudly atop the plains of Alliance, arranged with a cryptic purpose known only to those that put it there. After paying my respects, I crunched across the gravel parking lot to my own vehicle, which mercifully still rested atop all four wheels.

Casper, WY

My dad hadn’t spoken to Bill Allemand since he was a teenager. His father (my grandfather), Doc, and Bill had been hunting buddies since before he’d been born. When he was in highschool, Dad drove to the Allemand Ranch from Washington, Iowa, some summers to help with the cattle branding. When he called the Allemands out of the blue to tell them I was passing through Casper, sure enough, they remembered Doc and his son. I was ushered into their home like the heiress to the throne. The Allemands gave me the royal tour of Casper’s dinosaur bones, oil rigs, and uranium boxes. They drove me to the ranch, where they said proudly that it was a good 10 miles from the mailbox to the house, and gave me a further tour of their son-in-law’s impressive trophy head collection. Finally, I was given the keys to an ATV and escorted to Doc and Bill’s old deer hunt campsite. I was left there with my tent and the ATV, and cheerfully told to stay as long as I like.

Reassuring, I thought, that the Allemands didn’t find it odd that I should want to camp there when there was a warm bed in Casper at my disposal. Reassuring that they didn’t think I would mind the snakes and the solitude and the sound of the coyotes barking at dusk. I didn’t. It was empty, but not lonely, and beautiful in excess. I hiked the ridges and hollows and clambered over the boulders and through the pine woods where I imagined my grandfather might have seen a buck on a cold fall morning. I pulled out Doc’s old hunting knife, which I have kept in my hiking pack for years, and prepared my evening meal. It is funny how the world spirals in on itself, sometimes.

From Casper I cut south through the panhandle of Utah, camping again in the crisp, damp mountain forests outside of Salt Lake City. I woke early for the long drive ahead, stopping at an eccentric coffee shop in Fillmore for coffee and breakfast before pointing my nose towards Highway 50 and the straight shot through the desert.

The Loneliest Road

I chose the Highway 50 route over the slightly more direct and faster Highway 80 precisely because it was less direct and slower. I learned that Highway 50 is called “The Loneliest Road,” for reasons not too difficult to fathom. It seemed the most appropriate route for its loneliness; I yearned for a breath, a pause, to assimilate my journey and prepare to flip the switch on the next part of my life. A long stretch of emptiness was exactly what I needed.

Davis, CA

I crossed the threshold - the Sierra Nevadas - and arrived in California just in time for pumpkin season.

Admittedly, there are many easier ways I could have driven across the U.S. But my slightly meandering and often indeterminate route led to a few things that a pre-fabricated journey, hopscotching from hotel to hotel and gas station to gas station, would never have brought. A college reunion, for one. Several pristine, cloudless, star-strewn nights for another. Re-forged connections with friends and family from Washington, D.C. to Wyoming. A number of unplanned itinerary stops, resulting in such gifts as a Henge made from Cars. Places that were once points on a map, now associated with a cup of perfect coffee or a friendly front door. For the cost of a few extra miles out of my way I learned the texture and uniqueness of a vast expanse of my country.

I’ve left my key card at reception, and I won’t be needing it back.

In Defense of Non-Defense

2017-09-03T20:00:00+00:00

Read the original op-ed in the Ocala Star Banner

In her classic Central Florida book, “Cross Creek,” Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is delighted one day to accept an invitation to a “pound party” at the Thompsons. But upon her arrival, Marjorie finds that instead of each neighbor bringing a pound of this and a pound of that to contribute to the festivities, she is the sole guest and the sole profferer of a large and sticky cake to be divided among herself and the hungry Thompson brood. The invitation was a trick, albeit a harmless one, invoking the gullibility of a newcomer to the Creek.

Like a pound party, governments work better when everybody chips in.

Our elected representatives will soon vote on the federal budget for fiscal year 2018, and the non-defense funding that supports these entities is on the chopping block. More than $54 billion of it, to be exact, with deeper cuts to follow in coming years.

Defense funding is important and keeps us safe. It is as important as Marjorie’s cake was to the Thompsons. However, non-defense funding for things such as science and education is just as important, and the party is simply not as good without it.

Growing up on my family’s Ocala farm, I spent my play time cramming the pages of a wide-ruled notebook with sketches of sticks, pressed flower specimens and detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of our little oak hammock. What was once play is now my job. I am in the process of becoming a real scientist, though now I study agriculture and the interactions among soil, plants, water and the atmosphere that make growing food possible. My paycheck comes from a (federal) National Science Foundation program for graduate students in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, or STEM, fields.

I am very aware that my budding career has been made possible by federal non-defense spending, and I am supremely grateful for it. Indeed, government funds often represent the bulk of universities’ research budgets, and the returns to the local economy from this spending go well beyond the financing of individual researchers such as myself.

Our own next-door neighbor, the University of Florida, reported some $451 million of research funding from federal sources in the past fiscal year, principally from the National Institutes for Health, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. UF claims that, in return, private companies licensing products from UF-developed technologies funneled nearly $2.3 billion into the Florida economy. Add that to the avoidance of losses from pests and diseases in tomatoes, avocados, citrus and other important crops in our agricultural sector thanks to agrichemical manufacturing and advancements in pathology and entomology research, as well as the significant contributions to public health from UF medical research facilities, and you have quite a return on investment.

Development of future STEM professionals does not fund itself. Nor do local law enforcement improvements, infrastructure support, anti-poverty measures, national parks and recreation areas, or emergency response to wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters to which our Central Florida home is prone.

I think we can agree that these investments make our community more vibrant, successful, safe and enjoyable — a worthy objective for our contributions to the government pound party.

Every time I think of the fact that the little girl who was fascinated by the flowers and mosses in her back yard was lucky enough to grow up to be a scientist, I am grateful for federal non-defense spending. Every time I remember adventuring in the Ocala National Forest, or swimming in the crystalline waters of Juniper Springs, I am grateful for federal non-defense spending. I am sure that the many Ocalans who enjoy fishing, hunting, riding ATVs, hiking and camping in our beautiful forest feel the same way.

This month, our congressmen will make decisive votes on the federal budget, including non-defense spending, for the coming year. Let’s make sure Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson and Reps. Ted Yoho and Daniel Webster hear from Ocalans that these are important investments that lay the foundations for a healthier, more prosperous America today and long into the future.

Red Dirt Diary #3

2017-01-23T20:00:00+00:00

Sombra

On the day that Ike died, I tried unsuccessfully to hide my dejection from the other folks on the fazenda. My faithful blue merle, the first dog that was ever mine, had died of old age on my parents’ farm while I was off in this remote corner of Brazil.

I felt silly for being sad about it. The daughter of a veterinarian, the devoted reader of James Herriot – I should be used to the idea of a beloved pet dying. “Faz parte,” the people around here say. “That’s all a part of it.” But I felt sharply the loss of my old friend, and Gabriela the cook noticed.

She heated water for me to make coffee as I tried to keep my composure. She called me over to the bergamot tree to eat some of the late-season fruits and talk leisurely in the shade. And she told Ester about it on her way home, as I later found out.

Ester is one of the many characters that make up life at the fazenda. She and her family live just off the road that leads to the university’s experiment, a fact which has led them to become great friends of the project. Students stop there after a hard afternoon working in the sun for a glass of cold water or maybe fresh strawberry juice. If we are passing late in the afternoon we sometimes pause to drink mate with them, and end up chatting until the sun goes down. Sometimes I join Ester for her evening walk. Sometimes on the weekends we sit in the shade and watch as José, Ester’s husband, and Tiago, her son, engage the neighbors in a friendly game of Bocce Ball. When something goes wrong – a truck breaks downs, someone cuts a finger – Ester’s house is the first place we go to look for help.

When I got to Ester’s house that day, she was ready with juice and my favorite sweet peanut cakes, the closest thing that I get to peanut butter down here. It was Friday evening, the ranch hands and the cook had gone home, and I was looking for a little companionship.

“You know my old dog that I told you about, Ester? He died today.”

“I know my dear, Gabriela told me. I’m sorry to hear that. But you know, I was thinking,” she gestured to Sombra, the black lab with the mania for chasing rocks.

“She’s Tiago’s dog, but how about when you’re here, she’s yours? Then Tiago can have her back when you go home.”

José giggled and winked at me. Ester smiled slyly. It was a thinly veiled joke, as everyone knew that Sombra could be tiresome with her constant begging to play fetch. Sure, why don’t you take her off our hands? But, joke or not, I had a soft spot for Sombra and Ester knew it. It was, I thought, the sweetest gesture anyone had made for me in a long time.

Every time I pull up to Ester’s house in my dirty white truck, Sombra and her partner in crime, Ticaba, run around the corner of the house to greet me, tongues lolling. Clunk goes the precious rock deposited carefully on the bed of the truck.

“Sombra!” I call. “You’re mine now, did you know that? You’re mine!” I toss the slobbery rock down the dirt road and wait for her to bring it back.

Red Dirt Diary #2

2017-01-15T20:00:00+00:00

Atardecer

Finally, the wind started to blow. It probably meant rain, which of course, was not so great for my experiment. But it also meant that the insupportable humidity was blown away and the temperature finally dropped. I could move again. I rolled down the window and stuck my face out like a happy puppy as we trundled down the pot-holed road to the experiment.

This is the easiest part of the day. No tight time frames, no sun, no digging. Just go grab tripods. Take them apart, bind up the cords, and put the protective covers on the sensors. Organize it all in the back of the pickup. And watch the glorious landscape change colors as the sun goes down. Every evening in Tupã is glorious, and always just a little bit different. Today the incoming rain clouds lend a romantic gloom, the clouds seeming as though painted on the low horizon.

Alex, one of the ranch hands, passes by on his motorcycle heading for home. I know it’s him from the dreadful noise that his motorbike makes, like it’s about to blow a piston at any moment. He lets off a long honk from his horn and salutes us, and I give him a big-armed wave back. Later, Tiago and José drive by in their white pickup with the mud tires. Another honk and a cheerful wave. People are so nice here. I feel warmed by the fact that they know me, are friendly towards me, are even there to help me when my truck battery starts acting up and I don’t know what to do about it. I hum a little tune as I set off to collect the next tripod.

The dogs have arrived. They probably came following Tiago’s truck. They are by far the three happiest dogs in the district. Being so, they believe that everyone on earth is there to play with them. They recognize us and come charging through the soybeans, unapologetically steamrolling plants as they frolic around investigating scents and generally seeing what’s up. Sombra, the sleek black lab, has found a rock – her favorite game. “Not now, Sombra…” but she drops the rock right on your toes, not about to be rebuffed. I throw it as far as I can to give myself some space to wrap up the next set of sensor cords. The next time she creeps up from behind me. I see the rock before I see her, rolling up next to my boot and coming to an expectant stop. “Sombra, you are incorrigible.” Henrique, my assistant, is enchanted by her. He laughs and throws the rock again and again, Sombra never tiring.

Arthur and Eduardo arrive just as we get back. Right on time, I tell them - to miss the work, that is. We make dinner, a pretty passable pasta with meat sauce. I bring old Tío Breno his plate and medicines. We polish off the pasta and throw the rest to the pack of ranch mutts waiting expectantly at the door. Tonight, I finally sleep well.

Red Dirt Diary #1

2017-01-12T20:00:00+00:00

Cardiales

When you spend enough time at Tupã, everything you own begins to take on the particular tone of ochre that characterizes the region’s iron-rich soil. Your clothes become stained and will likely never revert to their original color. Your shower water runs red with the clay and silt lodged in every wrinkle in your skin. Even the sheep look as though they belong to an odd, local breed, their wool tinted red and their knees, like a toddler’s, permanently dirtied.

I wish I had the gift of some writers who carry whole worlds in their imagination. So flush are they with creation that characters, lands, and languages spring as if unbidden from the edge of their conscious mind. I am merely a recorder. I write what I see when I find something beautiful. I take down conversations and events when they charm me. When they illuminate me, when they tell me something about the world. Or when they strike me as palpably real. When they exemplify goodness, or sadness, or the way things are. I will always be a naturalist, I suppose: collecting things and finding the right name for them. What follows are my records - field notes, if you will - from my summer in Tupã.

Cardiales

I’m still tired from end-of-year travel and the exhausting 10-hour drive to the fazenda. But it was up at 4:30 this morning and out to the experiment. As inevitably happens on the first day of field work, a series of mishaps followed. We couldn’t find one of the stakes that marks where to set up the tripods. And the leaves were so wet with dew that we had to forget about doing water stress measurements on the leaves and come back later. And then the truck didn’t start and we had to walk back to the fazenda for help only to find out that it was only the contact on the battery that had jiggled loose. Oh, and by now it was 11:00 in the afternoon and I still hadn’t eaten breakfast or brushed my teeth. And then the afternoon was so hot, but we went out and dug holes and took more measurements on the soybeans. I at least had a chance to take a long nap in my hammock, or just long enough before we went out again to collect the tripods and sensors for the night.

Sometimes this work seems so hard. I doubt myself more often than not. I wonder if I’m just killing myself to collect crappy data that won’t even be useable in the end. Times like this when I wish I had someone telling me what to do. Being in charge is hard.

But today I saw a cardial, a cardinal. Like the red birds I showed you on our hike in the prairie, but smaller, like a little jewel. Only the crest was red, and the belly was white and the rest of the body an ashy blue. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it. And driving back from the experiment in the evening the moon was so big it seemed impossible, as yellow as a Texas grapefruit, sitting on the horizon like a placid, fat Buddha. Looking back only a minute later it was already smaller and insignificant. And there was a dog in the trashcan, sleeping like a baby on the crushed aluminum cans and banana peels. He had jumped in to find some food and then got stuck there, I guess. When he heard me approach he tried to get out again, and I tipped the can over to help him. He made me laugh, the shameless fellow.

Such things never happen when I’m in my office. Or when I’m in the city. Or when I’m in the lab. Maybe that’s why I get bored with those things so quickly. Maybe I’m pretty lucky, after all.

Field Notes

Great Balls of Dung, and Other Surprises

Read more about soybean-beef cover crop grazing systems in these publications stemming from my PhD dissertation:

Red Dirt Diary #6

A Multidão

Red Dirt Diary #5

Caio

Red Dirt Diary #4

Gaucho Science

Progress and Preservation in Abbey’s Country

Hotel Wherever

The perks of ditching the key card

Savannah, GA

Versailles, KY

Birdseye, IN

Broken Bow, NE

Alliance, NE

Casper, WY

The Loneliest Road

Davis, CA

In Defense of Non-Defense

Red Dirt Diary #3

Sombra

Red Dirt Diary #2

Atardecer

Red Dirt Diary #1

Cardiales

Cardiales