Wiker does stuff

It's been a rough winter for the Bluegrass. A foot and a half of snow and ice in the middle of February effectively closed my entire city for a week. Watching the South's ineffective efforts at grappling with snow was a sad, sad thing. Thankfully it melted soon, flooding the streets until the following week when the temperature again dipped below freezing and turned the entire city into a skating rink. That was followed by another foot of snow. I stood in the ghost town of Krogers, watching a hollow-eyed woman load nine gallons of milk onto her cart, and was silently grateful for growing up in Ohio, a land of diverse and terrible weather. We Ohioans know how to hunker down and survive off saltine crackers and ranch dressing for however long we need to.

But it seems like spring is finally here. The roads are flooded again and there's a pothole like a tiny Lake Erie in front of my house. Whitlow grass, hairy bittercress, and spring beauty tied for first place as the first flower up. Every farm pond is crowded with ducks. The salamanders are on the move, and the spring peepers are singing. I've been making some changes too.

First off, I am an ex-student no longer. I'm now a half-semester into my Bachelor of Science from Eastern Kentucky University. It's been an interesting transition; most of my wildlife credits transferred from my Associate degree, and what I'm mostly lacking now is the general education requirements. So even though I transferred in as a junior, I'm still in freshman classes like Lifetime Wellness 101 (also known as How Not To Make Bad Choices and Eat Only Twizzlers for Dinner Because This is the First Time You've Lived Away From Your Parents). But it's okay--the end goal is to get that degree and from there move on to the next end goal.

Second off, the professor in charge of the aquatic macroinvertebrate lab at Eastern has graciously agreed to let me volunteer to gain some experience in a laboratory setting. The goal for that one is by the end of the semester to be ready to take the taxonomic certification offered through the Society for Freshwater Science. Macroinvertebrates are mostly unfamiliar territory for me, so we'll see how it goes; but it's something to work towards anyway.

Thirdly off, I transferred parks to be closer to school. So now instead of 25 acres, I'm working on 700ish acres of deciduous forest adjacent the Kentucky River. Lots more to explore, and lots more in terms of species diversity.

Fourthly off, I got a job in Pennsylvania for the summer, on a field crew looking at how oil and gas development affects birds. It looks to involve lots of hiking and camping and early mornings and bears, so that's exciting. I've been pretty sedentary in Kentucky for the past year and a half or so and it feels good to be on the move again. Plus, who can complain when your actual job is to look at birds? (And possibly get chased by bears).

After that--well, it would be an exaggeration to say I have a game plan for what's going on next, but I guess that's part of the fun.

A foggy morning in the Kentucky foothills--March 2015