Hi Everyone, I hope this post finds you all well and enjoying wonderful fall weather in your respective part of the country. There have been some spectacular days here, but many gripes about the lack of vibrancy in the foliage due to the drought. It was still amazing to me to be in a land of deciduous trees for the season.
Life as an intern at National Geographic has been a great ride. I'm working for the research, conservation, and exploration (RCE) division on the bioblitz project. A bioblitz is a 24-hour species inventory of a national park, where scientists and the public join forces to identify as many living organisms as possible. This coming blitz is going to be May 30-31st in Santa Monica Mountains National
Park. If you folks out in CA are looking to brush up on your biodiversity knowledge, check it out! As the golden rectangle is involved, it is going to be a huge event. I've heard rumors of Jack Johnson and other celebs that might make appearances as well. Shhhhh!The "job" part of NGS is ok, but can be quite tedious at times—trolling CA universities and museums to solicit team leaders for the blitz. BUT, just being part of the "society" has it's benefits. I've met some people within the organization who are doing amazing things, including some slide shows from the NGS photographers and a tour of all the different departments (including the image library!) Also, working for the RCE div. has allowed me to see the presentations from all the grantees who receive funding from us, and come back to DC to present their work. Many of the projects have a GIS/GPS aspects associated with them, so it's especially interesting for me to see what is being done research-wise.
I've had to escape the city on the weekends to retain my sanity, and have been rafting on the gauley river in WV (class 5 rapids with a friend-of-a-friend, whose guiding skills were not quite up to par), hiking on Shenandoah NP (another one of those loosey-goosey panoramas of the other 10 NG interns on top of a summit in the park: loosey-goosy panorama), and camping on Assateague national seashore with wild ponies (see photos of ponies-in-the-surf and my tarptent). It has been fun to have a group of 10 other outgoing interns to hang out and travel with--it's made the city transition a whole lot easier.But, it's all gone really fast and I'll be headed back to Colorado on Dec. 14th! Working a 9-5 work week and hanging out with the interns multiple nights during the week has made this period of my life seem to scoot by faster than any I can remember. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, and I hope to see some of you soon when I'm back west of the Mississippi.
Love, "Little" Jamie
