End-of-Season Hibernation (and a trip to the Red)

I guess it just comes with the territory of being a young, undereducated individual in the field of natural resources, but it seems like every time the end of a season rolls around you're finishing up one job and scrambling to find another. Most entry-level wildlife jobs are transitory by nature and you go into them knowing that in a couple months you're going to walk away and most likely never see those places or people again. I got a little lucky this year because I double-booked myself; in addition to my full-time job with Parks and Recreation, I did a fall stint as an educator at an environmental camp for 4th and 5th graders. Of course I didn't sleep and consumed as much coffee as a small country, but I figure only two months of it can't do too much long-term damage, and it's nice to have Job #1 still there for you when Job #2 ends.

A good day in pond study class

The last school wrapped up at the end of October and I've re-situated myself back at the park and hunkered down for a long slow winter. Like the red-eared sliders in the pond outside the window, wildlife kids undergo somewhat of a period of dormancy over the winter. Exciting seasonal field jobs are scarce; the best strategy is to find somewhere comfortable to pass the winter and spend your time wistfully paging through the Internet wildlife job boards.

As a last celebratory get-together my lovely camp coworkers and I headed down for a day jaunt to Red River Gorge in the Daniel Boone National Forest. To paraphrase Saturday Night Live's Stefon the tourism correspondent, this place has everything: Poisonous mushrooms, a suspension bridge, a snake venom extraction facility, a haunted railroad tunnel, and a pizza joint that serves rice as a topping. We started with a brief stop-in at the Kentucky Reptile Zoo to get our snake fix:

This absurd and fascinating little guy is a horned viper (Cerastes sp) from North Africa

Bitis gabonica, or Gaboon Viper. According to the interwebs this species has the longest fangs of any viperid--up to 2 inches.

From closer to home, a copperhead showing off his dead-leaf camo. This one is the southern subspecies (Agkistrodon controtrix contortrix) 

The proper way to enter Red River Gorge with style is via the Nada Tunnel. Built for use by a logging railroad during the early 1900s, this one lane, 900-foot tunnel through the mountain is not for the claustrophobic or people who don't like dark places with literal tons of sandstone over their heads. Having gone to school right next to the infamous Moonville Tunnel I have a special affection for haunted railroad tunnels, and the Nada Tunnel has its share of alleged specters and mysterious lights. Tragically, it's a verifiable fact that the construction of the tunnel was not without at least two casualties. One man was killed while trying to thaw frozen dynamite near a campfire; another man was wounded in the blast and a dog apparently died as well. It's hard to know what to say about someone who thaws dynamite out over a fire, but I guess we all have our moments. Some of us are just lucky and live through them.

The Red is full of dramatic rocks.

We were pressed for time and only took a short hike down a connector trail to the junction of the Sheltowee Trace Trail. A suspension bridge spans the Red River at the connection and provides lovely views, as long as you don't mind heights and rotten boards underfoot.

View of the Red River from the Sheltowee Trace suspension bridge

You can sort of see the Sheltowee Trace trail mark on the right hand side of the beam. The trail is named after Daniel Boone, whose name while living with the Shawnee tribe was Sheltowee or Big Turtle.

The Appalachian Trail has been on my bucket list since I was old enough to tie my own bootlaces, but it's hard to come by the time and money to tromp across the country for a whole summer. At around 300 miles the Sheltowee Trace Trail seems much more doable. Maybe next spring I'll crawl out of my den and do a little more wandering around down there.