Wednesdays

Here at the USEE office we have our weekly staff meetings on Wednesdays. In some respects, they are your usual, standard, run-of-the-mill staff meetings where we update each other on what projects we are working on, what has been completed since the last staff meeting, what we are intending to do in the upcoming week, and all that staff meeting type jazz. But our staff meetings are also very unique. Part of the ritual of our staff meetings is that we begin (as dictated by the fluorescent pink agenda which must attend every meeting or the meeting just wont be the same) with "Nature Reports."

Every meeting each staff member reports on what we have seen or done out in nature in the past week. We find this to be a very important part of the staff meeting ritual, and no staff meeting is complete without it. Though we spend much of our days sitting at our desks in front of our computers, it is important to recognize and share the times that we are away from the fluorescent lights and out in the fresh air. So every Wednesday we share our nature reports. This Wednesday, however, we did not have a staff meeting because we are all out and about during this busy week. Jason, Andree', and Autumn are off to the NAAEE Conference in Wichita, Kansas. Nancy and I here today, but starting tomorrow I will be at the UEA Conference for the rest of the week and Nancy will be at the Bioneers Conference.

This Wednesday I am going to share my Nature Report with you, reader. Over the weekend I went up past Oakley, Utah, a small town at the base of the north western end of the Uintah Mountains, to my friend's cabin. It was a beautiful weekend where my friends and I sat by the fire, played our guitars, read books, took naps, and ate amazing food. The best part of all this was the hike we took on Sunday morning. It had been snowing all day Saturday and all day Sunday. We went up the road and into pines and aspens and explored the roller-coaster trails that follow the ridge line and down to the cabin. It was cold, and our clothes were soaking with muddy melting snow, but the fire was warm and the tea delicious when we got back.

Later that evening as we were just closing our books and thinking about making dinner, three young mule deer bucks had made their way through the snow and stood staring at us not more than ten feet away. We watched each other through the windows in the shadowy twilight. They kept a watchful eye, nibbled some branches, and bounded away a few moments later. These were the only animals, besides the neighbor's horses that roam the field out front, we saw in the wintry landscape that day. Even the birds were quiet as all creatures adjusted to the the mountain's first storm and the yellow aspen leaves ironically blazing through the evergreens capped in silvery dust.

Photo Credit

Unfortunately, all of the amazing photos I captured this weekend are not on my work computer yet. Photos from my outing will have to be posted another day!