August 10, 2023

Once again, a full week. We had a lot of variety as we went out and did different things with Lys, Reese and Stephen.
On Monday, Anthony, Sabrina and I went out to the coast with Lys to cruise some possible new land. I got to ride out with Lys and work on a section of the stand with her. I was able to get a lot of practice getting heights and I got to hang with Raja (Lys’ dog) all day. Being able to work one-on-one with Lys was also super nice since she is so fast and experienced at cruising.
On Tuesday, I went out again with Lys but this time, Emily and Kathy joined

me as we continued our way through the property. I also got some experience with an increment borer as Lys wanted us to get some of the ages of the trees to make sure they were as old as she thought they were.


Today was Emily’s last day so it was nice that Kathy and I got to work with her one last time. The cruising flew by and we got through a decent amount of plots. On the way back to the office we also got to stop and get some ice cream to celebrate Emily’s last day.

On Wednesday, Kathy, Joseph and I switched over to help Reese. We got to go out to an older stand
and cruise some 80-year-old trees. Kathy and I worked together through one half and Joe got to work with Reese on the other half, while also learning how to flag a stream boundary. Today was a very nice day and it was actually pretty fun to cruise the stand. Kathy and I got back to the truck early and we were able to practice with the increment borer and see how well we can guess the DBH of trees. (Kathy was way better than I was.)
Since I’m not working on Friday, Thursday was my last day this week. Today, we all got to work with Stephen on some stocking surveys. I got to go out with Stephen to the coast and look at a lot of different things. We did a stocking survey on one stand, flagged a line on another, tarped some piles, and got to check on a research plot. I really enjoyed today as it was really nice being able to see multiple different sides of Stephen’s job. The views today were amazing, and the weather was pretty nice.

I’m now down to only three weeks left here. This summer has been an amazing experience and I’m not looking forward to it being all over.
– Caroline Puckett