People of the Big River 2026 - Judy Bergevin

 Today we woke up early to get out on the field to do our activity for the day, count some Pumice Moonwort and collect data to show where they're popping up at. We all packed into our cars and actually got to leave the tiniest bit early, when we got up we all got lunches and everything ready because we were going out to a very long day with no bathrooms, no Wi-Fi and barely any service, and nothing really in sight. As soon as we got there we got to talk to Marlo Fisher and she told us about how she is a District Botanist and that she doesn't get to do this to often but we would be surveying for Pumice Moonwort and how many would be out there because they have points on the maps that they have checked but there are a few areas that they didn't survey and we could put new points on their map where we would find these plants at.  At first we started by spacing out by the road and walking West first and we had to stay a certain distance away from each other, then if we found an...

Today we woke up and got ready as per usual and we got ready to, as Jessica said, “be tourists”. We all had to hurry a bit to make lunches and grab something to eat really quick because we wanted to leave early to make sure we got there to listen to Christine give us her quick lesson and so we could have enough time to tour the museum ourselves before we took a bus ride to the top of the cinder cone we would talk about. We left here early and we went to the Lava Lands visitor center to meet with Alex Enna, before we really walked around or anything we sat to listen to Alex tell us about himself. He said he is a Partnership Manager and that he kind of oversees the burning, thinning, and other things for the fire management I think and that he has 50,000 hours of volunteer work. He’s done trail management; he was a firefighter for 20 years before trail management he did the fuels program. Then we met Christine Hughes, who has been a ranger for about two months at the Deschutes National...

 Today I woke up a little later than I wanted to, I wanted to wake up earlier than we needed to just so I could go enjoy the water before we left but we needed to pack up get ready and take soil samples before we left, so we all woke up about 6:30 ish, I got up to change and start packing but I did a little of packing then I went out to get the stuff out for breakfast and to make lunches. After I got some of my stuff together and set everything on the table I packed the last of everything and we tried to eat breakfast but then we got hurried to make lunches so we could go sample, and we did get everything together and went to sample a little down the path where we wanted to swim at. We got everything done at about 8am, then we finished packing things onto the truck and we got onto the cars and headed out for the gas station one more time before we left. We got to the station and we waited but Jessica headed out for Hood River where we would be gassing up and heading to Warm Sprin...

 Today I slept in a little longer even though I didn't think I was going to, but time goes on. We had what felt like a very slow morning even though I slept in. We kind of took a bit of time to eat our cereal and get our lunches ready before we had to head out to the gas station again. We left a little early after cleaning everything up to use the wifi here at the gas station. We met up with Jeanette Burkhart, David Lindley, and Gerard Foley to go into the closed area for the Yakama Nation and go start putting up man made beaver dams and help restore this stream to get beavers to come back to the area. Where we parked we could see this tree that was dead and burnt and they told us that the Cougar Creek fire ran through there and that it was started by a lightning strike near here at Glenwood then it made its way to the meadows there. After we got to the site we sat and did introductions, Jeanette said she is the Watershed planner then David Lindley said he is the Habitat Coordinato...

 Today I woke up earlier than I needed to but unintentionally. I woke up at 6am but I saw this big spider in our tent because we left the door just the littlest bit open and it got in, I hate spiders so I wasn't trying to do anything and it is Sunday so I can't kill it. I tried to lead it out the little spot it came in but it wouldn't go then it fell on my bed and I was trying to at least pick it up with a shoe but it crawled under the pants I had in the corner on my side, so I wasn't trying to look for it and I just decided to get out and go bathroom since that's why I was staying awake. After I went bathroom I wasn't going back in there so I went and sat on the log closest to us and chilled for a bit but I wanted something to lean back on so I went and grabbed a chair and talked to Creator for a while. When everyone started to wake up I went back over there and saw if anyone needed help and we kind of breezed through putting everything out and Monet made a hot...

 Today we had to drop off Juan, one of our mentors on this trip which was very sad because he was genuinely cool but we did pick up a new mentor Salvador. We went to Starbucks in Pasco but Juan and the guys had to go before us, so me, Lovey, Leah, and Phabian stayed behind and packed our stuff but also all the communal chairs and the breakfast stuff, which seemed kind of easy but then we had to pack stuff onto the truck and play a little Tetris. It felt like a long day but to be fair I kind of chugged the coffee that was left in the French press because obviously I couldn't let it go to waste so I was wired for a really long ride to Pasco, but we did play some jams so it wasn't to bad and I did keep Monet awake the whole way over. We went to Starbucks to update our data and to post blogs so I'm mostly caught up besides some blank spaces in my data, but the day went on without it. We drove all the way to Toppenish to fill up on gas before we took off towards Glenwood, we had...