My blog is now Hopecology!

Dear readers: Thank you so much for following this blog since 2017.

I’ve migrated my current writings over to my Substack newsletter, Hopecology, where I publish posts every other Wednesday.

To learn more about why I started Hopecology and what you can expect to find there, check out the first post in the series—the Hopecology Explainer.

A supportive community is growing over on Substack—I hope you’ll join us! You can use the button below to subscribe.

The Hopecology Explainer

As the only ecologist some people know, I'm often asked about ecoanxiety, ecological catastrophe, and how to cope. After 20 years working in the trenches of the biodiversity crisis, I've had to pull myself out of despair a lot.

I found myself wondering how I continue to dip into despair and back again, why I don't quit, and whether it could help others. Ecologists can have a lot to contribute to the conversation about how to cope with ecological despair; after all, facing the crisis is part of many of our daily jobs.

The main thing that has helped me cope is a connection to nature itself; it brings me back to present-day reality every single time when the doom closes in, giving me the courage to continue for another day.

Introducing my new Substack, Hopecology: an exploration of hope amidst the ecological crisis. I can't promise hope here, because that's an inside job, but I invite those interested to join in the conversation. The Hopecology Explainer is the first post, also provided below. I’d love to hear what you think. Please consider joining the conversation on Substack.

Start Here: The Hopecology Explainer

The ongoing environmental catastrophe leads many to despair, but hopelessness precludes the attitudes that can lead to meaningful, changemaking action. Hopecology is a study in looking unflinchingly at the stark realities of the present, while also returning focus to the natural world that will literally save us, if we are to have any hope at all.

First, definitions.

Hope + Ecology = Hopecology.

According to the Internet on this date, the word “hopecology” does not yet exist. The search engine asks me if instead I mean hip hop ecology, which is great because now I’ve learned what that is and I’m glad I live in a world where it exists.

Literally the study of the place we call home (from the Greek Oikos, meaning “household”), the discipline of Ecology focuses on the natural world and the relationships within and between the disparate parts we have broken it down into: animals, plants, fungi, minerals, processes (such as the water cycle).

The Merriam-Webster definition of “nature” includes “the external world and its entirety,” meaning: NOT US. Paradoxically, recovering our inherent connection to nature is precisely what is going to assist us in dealing with the desperate state of planetary affairs we currently find ourselves in.

Though the term “ecology” is now more broadly used to refer to relationships between any number of things (for example, “information ecology”), this trend signifies a hopeful cultural evolution toward a focus on relationships, whether nature-based or not.

What’s more, the broader definition is useful here, because Hopecology will discuss relationships (to ourselves, to each other, to new or old ideas), but not necessarily always from the perspective of the discipline of Ecology.

Who is writing this

I am Andrea Joy Adams, a conservation ecologist and writer. I research solutions to the biodiversity crisis—the rapid rate of species disappearing. I’ve been working on the front lines of biodiversity decline for over twenty years. I study one of the most threatened groups of species on the planet. I am no stranger to despair.

Working in the crisis discipline that is conservation biology, it has been my job to unearth just how bad we are mucking up the planet and try to figure out ways to slow down the stolid march of biodiversity decline.

Fortunately, many others seem to be waking up to these harsh realities, too, creating an unexpected shift in my role as a scientist. I went from collecting data in order to be able to say,

“Look! Over here! These things are really, really bad and it is totally our fault and it’s time to fix it! HELP!”

…to nowadays finding myself saying,

“Hey, WAIT! Well, no…it’s not quite as bad as you describe, but it could be. And yes, these problems are real…but there is still time to make a difference. No…you don’t have to throw in the towel! I know it’s hard! Don’t give in to despair!”

I thought I was the only one who felt this way, until I came across a climate scientist’s tweet expressing much the same sentiment. (The TLDR version is that detractors of this statement argued, loudly, for hopelessness, saying, “But the situation IS hopeless!” This attachment to suffering is a post for another day.)

For the past twenty years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to live with the gravity of what we’re dealing with. But many others have been forced to come to terms with it just in the last few years.

Even ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote about the lonely weight of distressing ecological knowledge nearly 75 years ago:

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

So, if you’re new to the party, WELCOME!

Also, I’m sorry for your loss.

Fortunately, there are all kinds of resources for dealing with ecoanxiety and despair. What I see missing from many of these resources, however, are antidotes to what caused the problem in the first place. Solutions to ecoanxiety and its resulting despair are primarily focused on how to address it as the mental health crisis that it indeed is. This is great because mental health is paramount and foundational. But we can’t stop there.

Why I started Hopecology

I think a lot about hope: why we lose it, how we regain it, and its ebbs and flows that cycle through us. I started Hopecology because I’m living the question of how to stave off persistent despair in a perennially, epically, terrifyingly changing world, and I know I’m not alone.

Ecologists are not nearly as common as real estate agents in the general population, so I am often approached for my expertise on subjects related to nature and the environment by strangers and acquaintances alike. The questions have evolved over time but all have a common thread of despair or confusion:

2020: “I heard the pandemic ended climate change. Is that true?”

2021: “What can I do that will make a difference? Nothing seems like enough.”

2022: “Why would I care about wildlife? What is it doing for me?”

2023: “I really want to talk to you more about what’s happening with the wildlife on our beaches. It’s just tragic.”

Understandably, people want me to help them feel better, whether through recommendations about what they can do to help, to reassure them that everything isn’t as bad as it seems, or to tell them whom to blame. They want to know that there is something—anything—they can do to help themselves and the planet, even if it means just aiming their anger and frustration in a specific direction.

I’m familiar with these sentiments. I’m also no stranger to the fallacy that I can buy my way out of the problem (by the way, if this worked, the planet would be squeaky clean and forever healed).

Somehow, I have (so far) managed to find my way out of each dip of despair—not through empty platitudes or false hope; but through the direct experience of nature itself.

The truth is this: we do not know what the future holds. The false propaganda of despair is that it operates on the assumption that we do. We can have hope because we literally do not know what will happen next, and that is a good thing. As historian Howard Zinn wrote,

“I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played.”

In the meantime, we can look to the nature all around us, where our feet are, take a deep breath, and do what is right in front of us today. Some days that will be as simple as looking squarely at the hand we are dealt. This takes an act of courage.

What Hopecology is not

I’m not going to tell you that things aren’t bad, that climate change isn’t real, that it’s not our fault, or that nothing can be done about it—because none of these are true.

I’m also not going to tell you which products to buy, whether or not to go solar, or whom to blame (okay, I may tell you whom to blame sometimes).

And I’m most definitely not going to try to instill false hope that everything will be okay. Because we don’t have evidence that it will. Yet herein lies the rub: we don’t have evidence that it definitely won’t either. One thing that will ensure it won’t? Giving in to our despair.

As Aldo Leopold wrote to a friend,

“That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”

I can’t promise you that you will find hope here. The journey to finding hope is as unique to the individual as a fingerprint—it’s an inside job anyway. But I do invite you to explore the topic in this community.

What Hopecology Is

I’ve noticed that, often, a sense of hopelessness about the environmental crisis comes from misunderstandings about the natural world. Therefore, an aim of Hopecology is to be simultaneously exploratory and educational.

The scientist in me appreciates the elegant simplicity of breaking down nature into patterns and processes to help us better understand our planet and what we’re doing to it. The rest of me sees a need for more: science provides us with information, but it’s up to us to decide what we do with that information and what it means. Science is great at taking us down the rabbit hole, interrogating deeper and deeper questions into the mysteries of the universe. There are, however, some mysteries that science just can’t answer.

Like its portmanteau name, Hopecology wades into the estuaries where science and the mystery mix. It’s a risky business, because the line between pseudoscience (i.e., the result of combining scientific-based information with wishful thinking) and pushing the interdisciplinary edges of knowledge and understanding can get a bit murky. But that’s what makes it interesting.

Posts will blend perspectives on academia, relating to the natural world, travel, conservation, research, ecology, philosophy, hope, and antidotes to despair (not all at once!) every other Wednesday. I don’t shy away from asking hard questions, even if it means being critical of culture, especially academic culture. Occasional, more personal posts delving into tough topics, such as mental health, will be for paying subscribers only.

It’s breaking out of misleading assumptions about the ways in which we try to understand the world that will help us get to the territory where hope can be found. I hope you’ll join me.

The broader audience

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of how to reach broader audiences to see what non-ecologists think about frogs.

With all of the books one could read in the world, what would inspire someone to pick up a book with “frogs” or “amphibians” in the title?

Call it market research, if you will: what makes people wonder about frogs, if at all? What do they find interesting, abhorrent, uninteresting? What would make someone who knows next to nothing about frogs want to pick up a book about frogs? Or read an article or watch a video or listen to a podcast about frogs?

I get my ideas for blog posts when I’m out doing interesting things—field work, long hikes, travel, conferences, road trips, or some kind of significant life event. Sometimes, blog ideas will wake me up in the middle of the night and I can only get back to sleep after I’ve written them down.

This happened recently when I was about to have a new peer-reviewed paper come out in a scientific journal. Instead of sleeping, words started streaming through my mind about how I would explain the research to someone who wasn’t an ecologist. So I had to get out of bed, pad down the cold hallway, pick up my even colder laptop, pry it open, and start pattering it out on the keyboard. When I was finished—oddly there is always a clear ending in these events—I went back to sleep and figured I would put it up on my blog someday soon when the paper came out.

But the next day, I decided I liked the piece enough to share it with a bigger audience. But where? What kind of outlet would want to publish such a thing? Then, serendipitously, I came across The Conversation. I registered on the site and submitted a pitch. Soon after, I got a response from an editor. I sent them my piece, largely unedited, figuring they would either love it or hate it.

I actually love the editing and revising processes—under most circumstances.

It turns out they were pretty big fans. And in contrast to the academic peer review process, working with the editors was an absolute delight. They found ways to make the language more concise yet informative.

The day after the paper published, my article in The Conversation went live. There was a whirlwind of internet activity around it. The Conversation allows other news sites to fully copy their content. It was picked up by 38 other news outlets, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Yahoo News, Phys.org, and Popular Science.

I held my breath and waited for the onslaught of troll activity in the comments. None came. I went to a few of the other news outlets. There were a couple of comments on Yahoo that were to be expected—something along the lines of the ridiculousness of bothering to vaccinate frogs. There will always be people who can’t quite get there.

This reminded me of the lament I’ve heard from some of my colleagues: “How do we convince people that nature is important, to see things the way we do?”

I generally cringe at these types of questions. You can’t make someone suddenly care about something they don’t even have a frame of reference for. The seeds for respect and reverence for nature are planted in childhood, maybe even in the womb.  

A classic midwestern image in autumn.

My parents were not the back-to-the-land type by any stretch of the imagination, but they knew the birds and trees and plants and flowers and taught me all of them. Natural history was a constant presence in our lives, even if only experienced from our primarily suburban vantage point.

The bloom of the magnolia tree and the arrival of the American Robins coincided in spring. The first maple leaves turned just as school was about to start in late August. My relatives taught me how to harvest and eat rhubarb without dying. Nature was woven into the fabric of our lives. It was just the way we lived.

I don’t know how to get people to care about frogs; honestly, I’m not sure that getting anyone to do anything is really the way to save the planet anyway. Like most, I am likely to run the other way if someone starts trying to impose their values on me. That is why a lot of well-intentioned environmental activism simply doesn’t work: it’s based in fear and moralizing. Telling someone that they are a bad person for driving an SUV or eating a hamburger is not going to win any sympathizers for the cause. (Side note: for some hope on how to communicate effectively about climate change, check out Katherine Hayhoe’s book, Saving Us).

Especially since 2020, there seems to be an endless stream of offerings around finding one’s purpose in life, as if purpose is an elusive creature we need to stalk and capture so we can finally be happy once and for all; as if it isn’t sitting right beneath our noses, in that place we can hear only when there is stillness and quiet. It makes sense: the stillness created by the pandemic left many taking an honest inventory of our lives’ stock-in-trade. Many didn’t like what they found. Others found they only needed some tweaks here and there. Still others entered complete life overhauls.

We all have our own reference frames and our own values. No one is going to convince me that concrete is good for wildlife any more than I am going to convince someone who has never given frogs a second thought that frogs are important and worthwhile to study and think and wonder about.

I am exquisitely curious, though, about where we can meet in the middle—somewhere between their Manolos on concrete and my wader boots in the mud. There are real places where this happens—Yosemite Valley, for example—where, fittingly, the research I published in the paper was conducted.

Iconic Yosemite Valley meadow—daytime edition.

After dark, I would be under a pedestrian bridge in an iconic meadow searching for frogs by the light of my headlamp while visitors walked on the pavement above me, oblivious to the science being conducted beneath their feet. Never before had I been somewhere so wild and yet so urban in exactly the same place at exactly the same time.

At first I was weirded out by it because it was so unusual, but later I came to appreciate it as part of Yosemite Valley’s magnificence: that it can hold all of us, literally side by side, even with our vastly different vantage points.

Recently, a friend gave me a hilarious book of postcards, Subpar National Parks, each with an iconic image of a national park on it, accompanied with an actual negative review of that park. Yosemite’s was—mind you this was a real review—

“Trees block view, and there are too many gray rocks.”

So perhaps not everyone can get with the grandeur of one of the world’s most stunning landscapes. Here it should be noted that the park does conduct “viewshed management”: the practice of cutting down trees that get in the way of some of the most iconic vistas.

Yosemite Valley view.

At Yosemite Valley, some people experience beauty and awe at the natural world to a profound depth that they never have before. On my way to work each day, I loved to drive through the first viewing area once you arrive in the Valley. My eyes would sometimes well up in sympathetic joy as I caught glimpses of people’s faces when they looked up at the scenery. Few are not in awe of what is seen at that spot, especially for the first time.

This is what we have in common: there is something innate in us that can see beauty and experience awe simply at the witnessing of nature’s grandeur. I see it when I look directly into the golden iris of a foothill yellow-legged frog’s eye. Others see it in the first glimpse of their newborn’s face; many of us experience it when we enter Yosemite Valley for the first time.

Frogs, babies, rocks—whatever wakes us up and brings us back to life is what we need more of in our own personal viewshed, because that is what purpose is made of. For me, that’s getting to spend time in nature, both for work and play. It’s also writing, which is why I want to keep tinkering with translating and communicating my work for broader audiences. Perhaps someone read the Conversation article, got curious about frogs, and learned a few things. Perhaps someone got angry and decided to make a change in their life.

One of the best comments I ever received on a blog post was the following:

“I admit I get my nature journeys only from your too infrequent writings! But each time you bring me closer to the idea of life, the quiet of life, the intention of life. You painted a beautiful picture for me today with words, and enhanced it with your gorgeous pictures. I thank you for taking the journeys for me, and returning them to all of us.”

I am fortunate to have real people read my blog posts and comment on them so openly and honestly. I realized that this is reaching a non-ecologist: someone who admits they would not experience nature any other way than through my writing. I don’t have to convince them to like frogs. Just by doing what I enjoy, I made someone’s life a little better, even if for only a moment.

My experiment communicating to broader audiences continues. I was recently interviewed for, and quoted in, a Washington Post article about emerging research on amphibians in Africa. I found myself delving into deep philosophical questions with the patient journalist through the lens of amphibian research. I love these types of conversations because they help me better understand what makes non-ecologists tick; what they think about frogs, and their place in the world; and how I might be able to show them surprising new information and perspectives.

Foothill yellow-legged frog.

I have more essays in the queue that would normally appear on the blog but for which I’ve found some potential, broader-audience homes. It’s fun to work with editors this way, and it is lightyears more fun than the peer review process. If I can’t find a home for something, I’ll post it to the blog. So there are likely to be fewer blog posts overall than usual. But I’ll share what is published in other places on social media.

The Conversation piece was a great start in this experiment, and I’m glad the process turned out so well. In the future, I may not be so lucky with the minimal trolling: but that may be a good thing. If I’m stirring up conversation, even ire, about a subject, then one goal is being met: people are talking and thinking about frogs, even if they loathe the idea of what is being said about them. Whether those who disagree with my perspective like it or not, frogs are here—for now, and they have a lot to teach us in the meantime.

Sonic booms above, tiny wildflowers below

I wasn’t going to write about the most recent trip to the desert. With all that is going on in the world, isn’t it self-indulgent and tone deaf to share about another glorious nature jaunt? But when I got home, I saw this on social media, and it changed my mind:

It made me realize that bringing to light what remains right in the world, however big or small, is an act of peace.

 So peace it is.

Black Mountain Wilderness

 Last spring, as I hauled my tired bones out of my tent after a too-short night’s sleep, I told my colleague, “Welp, I’m earning my winter rest.” I remind myself of this a lot during the sometimes-exhausting field season. I love living my life seasonally: my actions in sync with the weather and the swivel-tilt of the earth. In spring and summer, when the work days are long and the rest minimal, though my body is tired, I have a wellspring of internal energy that propels me and surpasses logic. I used to refer to this phenomenon by saying, “I’m solar-powered,” as the long sunny days seemed to feed me beyond anything I ate.

Big Sur, April 2021: Body exhausted, the rest of me high on fieldwork and freedom.

 When I’m in the thick of the field season, it’s as if there is a separate engine driving me, one that exists outside the usual caloric bank. But I know in the midst of it that I’m drawing it down; and that eventually I will need to pay it back, fill the reserves. And that part is much harder, because it requires deep stillness and rest in winter, something that is very difficult to carve out when all the things I shelve during the field season (peer reviews, writing, data analysis, reporting, reading the literature, and enjoying the rest of my non-fieldwork life) beckon.

Hometown hike in winter.

 Last November I kicked off winter resting season with another trip to the desert—a much-needed unplugging from the frantic scramble to ‘get it all done’ before the holidays. What I remembered in the wide open spaces and bottomless silence is that it never all gets done before the holidays; or after, for that matter. ‘It all’ is never finished, just a continual stream on the conveyor belt of to-dos. So these two trips to the desert have bookended the winter rest intention this year: one to kick it off in autumn, and one deep inhalation to bring it to a close at the spring equinox.

The bliss of morning coffee (and camping hair). #camperlife

 We are in a groove of exploring the many designated wilderness areas in the Mojave Desert: areas that are formally closed to motorized vehicles and development of any kind. This time, we chose the Black Mountain Wilderness. South of Death Valley and immersed in a sea of surrounding military bases, it was spacious, peaceful, and quiet.

 The deep silence was occasionally broken by the practice flights of the jets overhead, and I had only a few small heart attacks when they broke the sound barrier.  I asked aloud, “Aren’t they not supposed to do that?” and the reply was, “It depends on how you define ‘supposed to’.” And it’s true: when you make the rules, what, really, are the rules?

 Martial law aside, I actually have a lot of respect for the Department of Defense (DOD) from a conservation perspective. As an extensive public lands holder, DOD has become one of the largest de facto conservation lands managers in the federal government. While conservation isn’t specifically part of their mission (in contrast to, say, the National Park Service), they actually do a considerable amount of work to conserve native species.

 Simply by setting lands aside for security and training purposes, and barring them from disturbance or public access, DOD has found itself in the stewardship of a large number of endangered species—and many who have lost their habitat anywhere outside DOD lands. A few of many examples: Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA, home to the Vandenberg monkeyflower and an extremely rare, newly described species of salamander;  the Golden-cheeked warblers of Fort Hood, TX; and the San Clemente loggerhead shrike on San Clemente Island Naval Auxiliary, CA.

 Section 7 of the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires federal agencies to do all they can to conserve listed species whenever possible. Unfortunately, many agencies minimize or choose to ignore this mandate. By contrast, DOD largely takes its responsibilities under the ESA very seriously, and even takes proactive measures to conserve listed species in their charge.

 The wilderness areas in the Mojave are an example of how defense objectives and conservation objectives coalesce. All of the wilderness areas we visit are in close proximity to some military lands. Wilderness is a special designation (from the 1964 Wilderness Act) that closes areas to automated vehicles and other activities that are hard on the land. By designating areas (mostly managed by the Bureau of Land Management) near military bases as wilderness, it not only conserves species and habitat, but reduces the number of onlookers poking around in the vicinity—you know, fewer things/people/objects/activities to keep an eye on. This results in a win-win: national security and conservation in one.

We drove the rutted roads past where anyone in their right mind would take a toy hauler. We found a place to park the truck and camp that had been disturbed but not trashed, and just outside the wilderness boundary so we could explore in the wilderness on foot every day. Because there were no designated trails, we walked up washes. We found tiny wildflowers, desert tortoise shells, and shotgun shells: remnants from before the wilderness was designated in the 1990s.

Remnants of an endangered desert tortoise.

A few days in, after my nervous system finally let go of stress mode, I became less task-oriented and more landscape-oriented. There was so much to see, to explore, to take in—without even moving. When we were moving, we found an astonishing number of mylar balloons tangled in the desert scrub to add to the growing database. But we also found petroglyphs, and the tiniest stirrings of the desert awakening from winter: fresh sprouts on the creosote, and flowers so small you’d miss them if you didn’t stop and stare at the ground for awhile. We did miss the carpets of color by a week or two, but in exchange we got to experience the place in near-solitude. 

The final morning of our visit, as I lay on the ground taking in the last rays of the morning sun, I rolled over on my side, not wanting to leave. The jets had quieted. Maybe the pilots were on their way back to the galley for lunch. Tiny yellow poppies were growing next to my mat at eye level, an infinitesimal sequoia towering over boulders of quartz not much larger than sand. The sky and mountains and outstretched desert behind were a universe of possibility that I only needed to refocus to see. And there it was: everything I prepared and scouted and walked and sat and explored and drove all that way to learn. At that tiniest level, in that exact moment, everything was OK. The flower would soon wilt and die in the desert sun, because that is life. But in that tiny slice of time, all was well. The tinier the slices of time and space, the easier it is to see what is still right in the world.

The Rishikesh Autorickshaw Ride

Have you ever come across a photo from your past and not been able to take your eyes off of it? I recently found a mesmerizing image from eight years ago. I am sitting in an autorickshaw in Rishikesh, India, between two fellow travelers. I remember the exact moment it was taken, and the unfettered joy I felt.

Maybe it was the shirodhara treatment I’d had. Or the handful of unlabeled over-the-counter antibiotics I’d taken a friend’s word for the night before. Or the overwhelming refreshment of Rishikesh, where the streets are clean and the Ganges headwaters run with the clear ice blue of glacier melt. (We did get chased down the street by monkeys, but that may have added to the invigoration—the adrenaline rush of the pursuit followed by the relief of escape).

The rickshaw wasn’t taking us anywhere particularly special, I think; just to get the best lassi in the world (and it was). After floating on the Ganges past the ghats in Varanasi, sitting under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, and marveling at the stunning mosaics of semi-precious stones in the Taj Mahal (the architecture was lovely, but I just kept staring at the walls!), the trip was winding down. The sightseeing was over; it was time to just be, to rest, to let it all soak in before the transition to the long journey home—a vast geographic and experiential distance.

I have always loved the thrill of travel—the joy of being on the move, every single experience something new. In India, every blink of the eye, every inhale, every sound presented a different perspective from anything that I’d known before, and it brought me completely alive. Despite the harsh realities of life all around me, I had many moments of profound joy and wonder. Staring at the rickshaw photo, I started to feel melancholy, wondering, where is that kind of ecstatic joy in my life today?

The week before the photo was taken, had a profound experience in Varanasi: in a temple, I was suddenly overcome with intense emotion. Bells started ringing in all directions, someone started playing a drum set, and without warning I broke open, weeping uncontrollably. People stared, not in confusion, but with a curious understanding. As if this type of thing happens there all the time. Afterward I felt cleansed and clear, from the inside out. For the next few days, I walked a little more softly, worried a little less, judged a little less, gorged myself on the delicious food a little less.

Hedonist that I am, I’m tempted to think I just need to repeat that trip, go back to India, get myself another healing. Aside from the sadly greedy, grasping nature of the urge, I also know that it probably won’t work. I don’t think we can have these things when we seek them, want them, expect them. It is in the not-seeking that these experiences can take us by surprise, and in the surprising give us the change we need. Just like earthquakes: they never, ever happen when I am thinking about them.

Also, I am wrong—there have been countless moments of joy and adventure in my life since my trip to India eight years ago; there just isn’t anyone there taking my photo to record it. Field work in the High Sierra, the Big Sur Coast, and everywhere in between; camping under the Milky Way in the vast desert; the magic of living in Yosemite Valley in all four seasons; the nervous system-soothing tropical ocean breezes in Mexico: all places where I have taken several moments to stop and think, “what did I do to deserve this amazing life?” Alongside every single one of these memories are also recollections of the accompanying trials: the poison oak rashes, the muscle cramps, the cactus spines, the trenchfoot, the hapless visitors, the sunburn. This bitterness is what makes the moments of joy possible.

When I came across the Rishikesh rickshaw photo, I couldn’t stop staring into the eyes of my eight-years-younger self. The still image is full of movement. The people next to me are slightly blurry. But there I am in the middle, the bindi on my forehead the centerpiece. My smile of the rare, genuine sort. My eyes clear blue as glacial ice. In that instant, I am fully awake, aware, alive, and present in what is.

I may have looked just as joyful if you had taken a picture of me last summer as I was driving on a solo roadtrip across the Utah desert, singing to Dolly Parton with electricity in my veins and not a care in the world—no illicit substances required. The day before, I had just wrapped up a short but intense field season, and left the heat, the wildfire smoke, and the group dynamics behind for six weeks. Part of the elation was being relieved of the job that I love for a break to see family and friends, and spend some time alone with my thoughts and whatever the open road brought next.

In India, I simply showed up for whatever happened, because I knew I needed to surrender all expectations of comfort and time to travel with sanity. I got pure, unfettered joy as my reward. Today, leveling up this skill will require mustering this attitude while sitting at a computer screen, staring down the barrel of a dank peer review. I’m at my desk, thinking I know exactly what will happen next, how it will play out, but I really and truly don’t.

Travel is wonderful, but what I’ve learned from the joys of travel and adventure is that it’s the mindset of a willingness to be surprised that makes the joy possible. So, even in these long desk days, what if I saw each day as a new adventure, with new eyes, believing that whatever came my way would be a marvel, even if it was unpleasant, because I am alive and each breath is a gift? This time of year, I trade poison oak for peer reviews, sunburn for seasonal affective disorder, sore muscles for restlessness. But life can still be an adventure, even if I don’t leave home.

The Rishikesh autorickshaw ride, February 2014.

Desert Reset

Our annual fall journey to the Mojave Desert has transformed into a kind of pilgrimage. As our careers and responsibilities expand and intensify, the world’s demands on our time have increased; and with it, the need to remove ourselves from it for several days. We always go somewhere that cell service cannot be found; somewhere that we are unlikely to encounter other humans; somewhere with abundant space and sky and not much else. It is in this expansiveness and unplugging that we feel we can finally and deeply rest.

In November, the intense desert heat has waned, and we settle into comfortably warm days and cool nights conducive to deep sleep. This year, we left on the heels of yet another heatwave driven by the east winds, somewhat doubtful that the temperatures would diminish to our comfort level. But when we arrived on the vast Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands south of Death Valley National Park, we were pleasantly surprised.

We had a general area targeted, but otherwise no plans for where to go. This is the beauty of the vast public lands that allow open camping in the West: drive any one of thousands of dirt roads in some direction, find a spot that suits, and camp.

Turning off of Highway 395 on a warm Monday afternoon, we found ourselves on a well-maintained but sandy road. As we drove eastward, spurs—labeled with tidy alphanumeric markers—branched off in all directions. There was a designated wilderness area we had hoped to camp outside of and hike into, so we found the roads that seemed like they would get us there. Eventually, we turned north, and soon the going was slow as we crept with our fully loaded truck-bed camper over the deep ruts. We stopped at most intersections as we approached the wilderness area, looking for places to camp. Some large campground areas were present but uninviting—strewn with broken glass and trash, presided over by a few opportunistic ravens, the weekender ATV folks having recently departed, leaving their more-than-a-trace behind them.

Eventually, we made it to the wilderness boundary. A newly-constructed, high-quality wire fence demarcated the perimeter as far as the eye could see in either direction. Occasionally, a break in the exclosure produced a low square set of bars that could be stepped over, but not driven over: an attempt to keep ATVs out, with some—but not perfect—success. The telltale single tracks of dirt bikes were present on the wilderness side, but had not worn the delicate desert soil into a powdery sand the way the tire tracks had on the roads outside of the fenced area. I wondered how old these single stripes through the desert were, how long they had been there. It takes the desert a long time to recover from even the slightest disturbance.

We continued along the perimeter for a while until we came to an intersection: a large, flat area littered with some broken glass and some older, rusted mining-era refuse. Typically, waste left behind that is more than 50 years old constitutes an artifact and can no longer be removed from the site as trash. Someone had clearly cleaned up the site because there was no trash other than the broken glass and the rusty old metal cans and mining paraphernalia. This was surprising: remote outposts like this tend to be abused, but someone with a conscience had recently visited. Either the regular campers out this way are more conscientious than we give the ATV crowd (of which we are technically a part?) credit for, or we had recently arrived on the heels of an organized effort to clean up the site. It was cause for celebration as well as a shift in perspective (and judgment), and a commitment to leaving the place better than we had found it too.

On our walk into the wilderness the next day, we kept coming upon what we thought at a distance were shiny pieces of mining trash that turned out to be Mylar balloons. The novelty of such a thing has worn off: I have found this air trash in the most remote places I’ve ever been, and can now nearly count on it. Walking up to one, we would guess what was on it: most donned faded Disney characters with HAPPY BIRTHDAY on them; others proudly proclaimed, IT’S A GIRL! Once again, human celebrations turned into an ecological menace, if not outright disaster.

It was astonishing how many balloons were in the small area we covered that day. This inspired a new project: I mark the location of every Mylar balloon I come across in a wild area (I’m not pulling over on the freeway to do this). Likely someone else has already started such a project; perhaps my data could someday contribute to theirs. Now, picking up the Mylar balloons and marking their spot is my small contribution to collecting data and remedying the problem.

There was so much room to wander in the desert, it was often difficult to choose which direction to go. The day I started the Mylar balloon project, we started gradually ascending a large alluvial fan, where we discovered USGS markers, mining pits, and a curious abundance of dragonflies. I recalled a recent, harrowing frog survey with my colleague Sarah, a 30-year veteran ecologist of California streams. This past drought-stricken year, we were searching for water in which to conduct frog surveys. As we bush whacked our way into what should have been the stream corridor, she exclaimed, “Look! A dragonfly! There has to be water around here somewhere,” plunging herself deeper into the thick, tick-infested (we would come to find out later) underbrush, with me trailing behind her. We didn’t find water in that streambed, but it was about a half mile away in another stream.

In the desert, the mounting frequency with which we observed dragonflies was puzzling. There was definitely no water to be found anywhere nearby. A spring would have given itself away by a depression or at least a change from brown to green vegetation on the landscape. But we saw nothing. Perhaps the dragonflies were visiting the alluvial fans and flats of the desert valleys to forage before returning to the springs in the mountains. The dragonflies were always landing on the tips of the creosote branches: the places where the single autumn rain that has arrived thus far encouraged the tiniest bit of growth. Maybe these tips have little insects on them that they like to eat; or a drop of moisture to drink.

We observed surprisingly little wildlife. Though this area is home to the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel, we observed no tracks and little movement; not even lizards. It seemed odd. Flocks of horned larks flitted through the creosote and took dust baths at our campsite. Tiny flies kept drowning themselves in the cup of coffee placed at the corner of my yoga mat in the morning. Occasionally I thought I saw a raptor soaring overhead, only to be disappointed when the sound betrayed that it was just another jet returning to Edwards Air Force Base. Though the roar of the jet engines parting the desert silence was more frequent than we would have liked, it was a small price to pay for the quiet in between.

The valley hike on our last day led us into an area with Joshua trees. We marveled at each one of these large, magnificent monocots that are quickly becoming the last of their kind due to climate change. We stopped to take photos of the quirky, spindly, tallest ones. Later, after rounding a bend and dropping into a narrow valley, there it stood: the most perfect, tree-like Joshua tree I had ever seen. Its branches were numerous and short. Its trunk was stout, reminding me of an old, stalwart oak. We approached it, noticing that despite the parched desert in every direction, there was a carpet of tiny green sprouts on the ground all around the north side. I walked up to the trunk to get a better look at the alligator skin-like pattern in the cavernous bark.

I took one step closer, and a large bird flushed from the branches. As it flew away, I could tell from its silhouette that it was some kind of owl: long, sleek, with a wide head and rounded wings. I felt badly that we had disturbed its daytime roost, hoping it would bank and return, but it flew on into the desert and kept on flying, out of sight.

Taking a few steps back, I circumnavigated the tree to admire it from more angles. Then, Chris shout-whispered, “C’mere! Look!!” Through a porthole in the branches, perfectly framed by the blade-like leaves, was a long-eared owl, head tufts erect, eyes peering just as surprised and curiously back at us, perfectly still. As it held steady, the strong up-valley wind blew some of the feathers on its breast upward, the tiny movements giving it away. We stared agape and took photos for a while, then decided to move on so that its partner or parent—which likely flushed in order to get us to chase it and not seek the owl left behind in the tree—could return.

Perhaps, just like us, the owls had seen something special about that particular Joshua tree—for them, it was likely the dense cover it provided from predators, and shelter from the wind; for us, it was the unique shape and branching structure, looking like an oak tree, reminding us of home.

After a few days, the owl moment and the length of time with no computers, phones, email, or screens of any kind had allowed the quiet of the desert to seep into us. The stream of songs stopped playing in my head. The emails I couldn’t get to before I left were forgotten. The pressing urgency of everything had disappeared. Space, silence, and time to reset, recalibrate, and remember what lies underneath our commitment to everything that demands our attention is often all we need replenish the energy required to carry on.

We sat at our campsite overlooking a broad, spacious valley and took in the desert sunset as the full moon rose over the hills behind us. When night fell, the strangest view emerged across the valley: an entire hillslope was flashing red off and on, like a neon sign that stretched for miles. I knew instantly what it was, though it was hard to believe. Thousands of tiny red lights on thousands of enormous wind turbines blinked in unison. We could escape cell coverage and other people for a few days, but we could not escape the ever-present encroachments of the modern world on nature, even at night. Especially at night.

On the final morning at our remote desert outpost, I lay on the ground, listening to the sound of the wind threading the creosote branches. The flies continued to drown themselves in my coffee, despite the lid. The dogs lifted their noses to the breeze lazily, sensing creatures we lacked the instrumentation to notice. This was also a vacation for them—with longer walks and nothing to bark at for days, no UPS delivery driver, no dogs with their jangling collars being walked down our street. All four of us breathed in the last precious moments of peace before packing up to return to our busy lives. We made the journey back slowly and intentionally, with the fresh eyes of calm. Though we have to leave the solitude of the desert behind, the feeling of spaciousness—the sense of what is really important—can be brought home.

The road trip of imperfection: Fishlake National Forest, Utah

I arrive at sunset, and set out to stretch my legs after the 10-hour drive from Yosemite. Recently warming up to established public campgrounds, I set up camp among the small gravel pads, picnic tables, and campfire rings tucked between young aspen. I grab my binoculars and cross the road to walk by the lakeshore, where a woman and her grandson are fishing. Since getting vaccinated, I am more apt to strike up conversations with strangers, a new hobby in celebration of the common, everyday humanity I’d taken for granted in the before times.

“Catching anything?” I ask.

“Not yet,” they reply.

The surface of the water is tranquil. Distant fishing boats motor back to the docks. The day has cooled little, despite the setting sun.  

“Do you go swimming right here?” I ask, wondering what the water and substrate qualities might be.

“Nah,” they reply.

“This looks like a popular fishing spot—I might want to wear my sandals so I don’t get fish hooks in my feet.”

“Yeah, you’ll definitely want to do that.”

I never did get around to swimming.

It’s clear the lake is heavily used—some trash is strewn across the shoreline, but far less than in a place where no one cares. People love and take care of this place. Lots of them. Every once in a while, I pick up a waft of an old, familiar smell: lakeshore on a warm summer evening, algae blooms mixed with fresh oxygen and unrealized vacation dreams. 

A beautiful trail winds through the aspen, but I’m instinctively drawn to the marshy lakeshore where frogs, snakes, and turtles might be. Here, where there are no fisherfolk or boats, I soon find the wildlife. Robins forage in the mud between the rocks, and a juvenile—still in the awkward, ugly stage holding onto its spots with little color—forages behind its parent. A swallow gleans bugs off the water, then banks into the trees, dodging the young that are fully grown but still demand a free meal. I wonder if their parents just starve them until they take the hint. Maybe the conflict between human teenagers and their parents is also a natural process of preparing to leave the nest. I think about my parents as the road trip to visit them stretches out before me like the years between now and back then. Thousands of miles to go, many thousands of days since, and we finally get to meet on the other shore.

A western gull swims leisurely, enjoying its alone time as much as I am. The shallows move and I see the wake left by a fish swimming to deeper water. A flutter of freshly hatched moths hover just above. Someone should tell the fish.

Chipping sparrows, with their broad copper crowns, graze the rocky shoreline with the robins. Bluebirds flutter among the aspen branches, fleeing their hungry, oversized young, just as the swallows do. A detest for one’s offspring past childhood is a sound adaptation—the selfish genes cannot be passed on if we exhaust ourselves feeding the first-born for too long. There is so much embedded in our DNA that we shouldn’t take personally.

Approaching a dock and the humans abuzz on it, I turn around to take the trail back. Initials are carved into the tender aspen bark, forming deep, black scars. More carvings inspire more humans to imitate; like begets like.  I come across a pair of initials encircled by a heart, with a large X across them. It’s easy to judge what I assume is young, fickle love. I hope they didn’t get matching tattoos. The aspen didn’t get a choice.

As if in a duet with the osprey I watched 24 hours and a day’s drive earlier at sunset on Yosemite’s Tenaya Lake, another hunts nearby. I can see the fish dart away from the large bird beneath the glassy water, dodging its repeated dives, and the raptor tries yet again in a continual game of cat-and-mouse; osprey-and-trout.

At the cusp of nightfall a steady breeze sets in, rattling the aspen leaves like a million tiny tambourines. “Quaking” is not a word I would use for this rattle. These trees do not tremble; they vibrate like breath through a harmonica.

An interpretive sign tells me I’m walking along the “Old Spanish Trail,” a 1,200-mile trade route originating in Santa Fe; winding through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada; and ending in Los Angeles. The sign says the trail was used by “Ute Indians and American adventurers… in search of gold, slaves, horses, and land.” There seems to be a lot the sign is leaving out. Isn’t it likely that indigenous people built and maintained much of the trail long before the Spanish were even a speck on the horizon? Isn’t it more likely the indigenous people were the ones being enslaved rather than doing the enslaving? A brief search indicates both these hunches are indeed true.

I imagine a more honest, earlier version of this sign, toiled over by a public lands historian, perhaps. Then, the timid bureaucrat ranked far above the historian, who has never seen the trail, but edited the sign nonetheless to obscure its real lessons. The resulting trail marker tragically considers slaves just another natural resource to be found in the North American cornucopic bounty, diminishing its horrific reality. Often what isn’t said is more damning than what is. Increasingly, I cringe to read interpretive signs in natural areas, nearly all of them rife with colonial sentiments that reinforce the settler-colonizer ideologies embedded in conservation. There is still so much work to do.

I see the osprey perched now, near dark, on the snagged crown of an aspen. I stand beneath the tree to snap a blurry photo, and the osprey chirps and spreads its wings as it looks down at me, as if to say, “Keep walking, buddy. Nothing to see here.” It’s understandable. I, too, live in a vacation destination where a moment of my daily life can easily become part of a tourist’s snapshot. I walk back to my house-on-wheels in the dark, hundreds of miles from any place I’ve ever called home, glad to have seen some old, familiar avian friends, and sobered by the history of this place.

The road trip of imperfection: California to Utah

Warning: this story contains no unicorns or rainbows; but there are horses and beams of light.

It’s been a long time since I drove cross-country. Twenty years ago, I was always driving back and forth, it seemed, between Arizona, Washington, Colorado, Michigan, and California. Since settling in California, though, only half the length of the state is my usual long-distance road sojourn. Road trips are hard: on the body, mind, and vehicle. I haven’t had the urge to drive cross-country in a very long time.

I’m not sure what prompted me to take the road trip this summer—probably much the same as many other folks—a post-vaccination desire to get out and make up for the cloistering of 2020. Wanting to see friends and family, and really spend time in a place—more time than I usually am afforded when I travel by air for a visit. 

And so it started. On the heels of a work trip to Yosemite, where I led an eDNA training and participated in a mountain yellow-legged frog reintroduction, I started east on highway 6 from Lee Vining, winding through the hills and national forest, until I came to Nevada, where the land opened up in vastness and scorching heat.

The Nevada desert is always hot in summer, but with yet another Western heat wave on top of it, I was concerned about the ability of my truck and its tires to withstand the heat. Would the coolant give out? Would the hot pavement melt the tires? With no cell coverage and more than 50 miles at a stretch with no services, if you break down in the desert, you are at the mercy of whomever happens to drive by. It happens in Death Valley every year—people break down, and instead of waiting by the road for help, wander off into the desert for the last time. 

Route 375 is apparently near Area 51.

I have more advantages than the average traveler, though—I have a camper (shelter) that can carry 15 gallons of water—enough to keep me alive for a few days. And some food. I’m not really afraid of the desert—we come here on camping vacations every winter to get away from it all and get some much-needed space for ourselves. We carry plenty of food and water. We have a full-sized spare. We tell family where we are going and for how long.

So on this long drive through the desert the other day, I tried to calm the low-level anxiety of the real dangers of the undertaking by taking in the landscape—noticing everything. What I noticed was death.

The desert is not a void. It is teeming with life, if you know where to look. There are living crusts perched atop the soil; and plants and creatures specially adapted to living in high temperatures and low moisture. But it’s a delicate place. “Busting the crust” by trampling it can undo millennia of the slow buildup of biodiversity. Pumping precious groundwater steals from the plants that have astronomically deep tap roots to reach it, and sucks dry the oases and springs that plants and animals rely on.

It began with the wild horse. Miles from any town, alone, it wandered across the desert. Its chestnut coat was surprising—it looked healthy. Maybe it had escaped from its well-tended pasture? Either way, it was not doing well. Its head hung low, and it sauntered on, slowly, presumably in search of water. What was going to happen to this poor creature?

Wild horses are controversial in the West—introduced by Europeans, they can denude desert vegetation and spread disease to native ungulates. Public lands agencies have conducted roundups to sell them, and even resorted to giving them birth control to try to control their populations. They have their advocates. And why not? They are picturesque symbols of the idyllic silver-screen version of the Wild West in our imaginations. Twelve inches tall at the shoulder, the native North American horses (Eohippus) went extinct in North America more than 10,000 years ago. It may be nice for some people to see horses wandering the desert when they are healthy; but when they have no water, it becomes clear how out of place they are. By keeping them around, we are causing more suffering, not alleviating it.

Miles beyond the horse, it was the cattle. Why it was decided that the fragile desert was a good place to graze a European forage- and water-guzzling ungulate is a mystery. Out on the range or locked into dense pens next to the highway, the poor creatures had no shade in the 114-degree heat. Many times, there was no water in sight. In some places, they stood, heads held low like the horse, awaiting their fate, either to die of thirst or wait it out till slaughter. Either way, it was clear they were miserable. They seemed to avoid areas around their fallen compatriots, if they could. A dead one lay by the side of the road every dozen miles or so. Is this just the price of doing business? Why, again, are we allowing grazing of animals on public lands (almost entirely Bureau of Land Management) in such a fragile ecosystem?

Before leaving Yosemite, I got some travel tips for crossing the Nevada desert into Utah from some friends who do the drive often. “Stop for gas in Tonopah,” they said, “then get the hell outta there.”

I was intrigued. What could be so bad about Tonopah? Just last week I was watching an LA-based show that involved the protagonist taking a trip to Tonopah in winter. It didn’t look so bad on TV.

Upon asking this, I got more reasons than I could count from my friends. I decided to make up my own mind on the drive through. Gassing up was easy enough, and I was happy to see Nevada prices at the pump. Driving into town, I noticed a nearby hillside had been reduced to rubble. This is an old mining town. As my friends had described, the suburban housing at the edge of town was actually built on mining tailings that had been graded flat. Is that safe? Is it legal? Once the mining boom was over, a town still needed to survive somehow.

Tonopah. The name sounded familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. It sounded familiar when I heard it on TV last week too. Tonopah. Why would I know this place?

On the approach to town, I remembered. Far out into the desert was an eerie sight—a giant tower with an extremely bright light at the top of it. Extending out from the light on either side was more light—two shimmering reflections floating in space. It looked like a dystopian future on another planet. I knew exactly what it was. This is the state of alternative energy development on present-day planet earth.

Solar energy is good, right? Sure, but what proponents neglect to tell you is the true cost. For example, solar panels are filled with heavy metals that, when burned—as when a wildfire comes to your neighborhood—turn the area into a toxic site that needs to be remediated with proper equipment and disposal.

The way plants like the one near Tonopah work is that mirrors arrayed around the tower reflect the solar energy back at the tower, where it is concentrated at a central point. Remember those two reflections I saw outside the tower? That is superheated air. When birds fly into it, it incinerates them.  It’s easy to think of solar energy as free, but it’s not. Everything has a cost, and we can’t sweep the true costs under the rug, or they will catch up with us eventually. 

Bejezus, Dr. Adams—I didn’t want to read the Bummer Blog! I wanted to hear about how fun your road trip was, all the cool things you saw!

I know. That is what I expected to write, too. We’ll get there. In the meantime, let me say that becoming an ecologist and natural historian—someone that can read the landscape and what happens on it and interpret its implications—is akin to taking the red pill.  I don’t regret knowing what I know, because it brings me closer to reality. The closer to reality I am, the more empowered I am to create change. Ignorance can be bliss, but I am responsible for helping take care of the corner of the world I call home.

Perfectly imperfect (but clean) rest area bathroom outside Tonopah, Nevada.

Stubborn gladness: Yosemite in Springtime

“We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

— Jack Gilbert, "A Brief for the Defense"

Yosemite Valley dogwoods in bloom.

I rolled into Yosemite Valley on a Sunday evening in early May. All along the route, the dogwoods outstretched their boughs of blossoms through the pines, as if welcoming visitors along the winding path.

We don’t deserve this, I thought to myself.

All the ways we’ve just about loved this place to death, and it exudes beauty nevertheless. Stubborn gladness embodied.

I’m here to study frogs; an administrative campground in upper Yosemite Valley will be my home for the next month and a half. My campsite is cradled in an elbow of the Merced River; the high flows rush up at night and drown out all the campground noises, lulling me to sleep. Bears walk past the campsite regularly—three different individuals I’ve counted so far—donning the radio collars and brightly colored ear tags the park biologists use to keep track of them. Lumbering along in the tiny creek that flows past my camper, they are oblivious to the racket they make stomping in the water, crushing sticks with each step in the woods, pulling apart logs to look for grubs. Making oneself scarce is not a necessity here. 

A tried-and-tested campground food storage locker helps keep human food away from bears.

“We’ve created this unique situation in National Parks,” a Bear Crew biologist told me one day, after firing a shotgun blank to haze yet another bear out of the campground. “Outside, there are hunters; here, they have no fear.” She says the average life of a black bear living outside of the national parks in California is about 8 years; in Yosemite, it is closer to 30. The Bear Crew is responsible for keeping bears away from food and people, and training humans to make sure it stays that way. These days they mostly haze bears; in the 1990s, at the pinnacle of the “bear problem”—actually a human problem caused by careless food storage—it was the demoralizing job of the Bear Crew to euthanize a disturbing number of bears. The extraordinary efforts of National Park staff to fix the human problem has resulted in far fewer human-bear conflicts and set an example for managing these conflicts all over the world. (Recommended reading)

Living in Yosemite Valley is about as nice as it sounds. At 4,000 feet, it’s usually cool at night, and warms up for swimming weather during the day; an occasional afternoon thunderstorm will settle in, providing a welcome change in the weather. After a long, hot day at work, I jump in the icy Merced. Cold plunge therapy is gaining in popularity for everything ranging from depression to obesity; while Scandinavians and alpine backpackers have quietly known the life-changing effects of fresh, cold water for a very long time.

Wilderness stalwarts and horde-avoiders alike are apt to denounce Yosemite Valley if you ask them whether they visit. “Too crowded for my taste,” they will say, often bitterly. I was among these before I first came to work here in the fall of 2019. Upon my arrival, my colleague gave me a tour of what would be my field sites for the next few months. We drove the loop around the Valley, dodging cyclists and strollers, distracted drivers and habituated deer who couldn’t care less about what the humans are doing. Everywhere there were people—on the trails, off the trails, on the roads, in the corners, under trees, in the trees, in the meadows, on the beaches, in the river—everywhere.

“How do you get work done here?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There are…just…so many people!”

“You get used to it,” he said, adding, “This isn’t a place for purists.”

Half dome and meadow, Yosemite Valley

He was right, of course. Working (or living) in Yosemite Valley requires a radical change in perception. Many have wasted a lot of time wishing Yosemite Valley could be something it is not—pristine, unaltered, less-visited, quiet. But it hasn’t been that way since before 1890. The Valley has been blasted, built upon, invaded, paved, poisoned, and generally trampled for well over a century. The fact that it still stands as an internationally-renowned symbol of natural beauty is a testament to what the National Park Service has done right to take care of it—from piping all of the sewage from millions of annual visitors several miles downstream to El Portal for treatment, to all of the wildlife research and management that ensure the visitors aren’t destroying the landscape, the hard work shows. It is always easy to find what’s wrong; but what I’ve loved most about working in this park is learning about, and appreciating, what is going right. 

Like the monumental efforts to reduce human-bear conflict that set an example for the rest of the country and the world, reintroducing frogs to the Valley is another effort that is going right. In 2016, the endangered California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii) was first introduced to Yosemite Valley from a private pond in the nearby foothills. Since then, they have been doing well—migrating to new habitats, breeding on their own in the wild, and taking up residence in the quiet backwaters of the Merced and adjacent meadows. It still amazes me, but despite all of the people around, the frogs seem to be thriving.  

California red-legged frog with radio transmitter in Yosemite Valley, 2019.

I had the opportunity to conduct research with some of these introduced frogs in 2019. I would spotlight for them at night in the river, ponds, and meadows, nestling down in the dewy grass to sample them for Bd while the visitors slept. On a full moon, the light reflecting off of El Capitan was so bright I didn’t need a headlamp. I made peace with the visitors during the day, accepting crowds as just another part of the landscape, and at night it was just me, the frogs, an occasional field partner, and the deer that I occasionally pissed off by disturbing their evening meadow respite. One night, two bucks bedded down next to a pond we were working in suddenly got up and bounded directly toward us. After they passed—fortunately without skewering us with their antlers—my field partner said, her voice shaking, “That is the most afraid of an animal I have ever been,” while I climbed down from the tree I had just leapt into.

On this spring research sojourn, though I’m living in Yosemite Valley, I’m working outside the park in Stanislaus National Forest, where foothill yellow-legged frogs (Rana boylii) are still present. Yosemite Valley had foothill yellow-legged frogs once, but they haven’t been seen here since the 1970s. It’s likely that they were extirpated by the invasion of the amphibian chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis; Bd); and by the introduction of non-native American bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) in the 1950s. Bullfrogs, native to the eastern United States, are voracious predators and competitors of their more diminutive, native counterparts, and the local frogs often disappear when bullfrogs show up.

Foothill yellow-legged frog, Rana boylii.

The timing of my visit is aligned with the Rana boylii breeding season. Reintroducing frogs back to the Park might be possible, but before we can do that, we need to know if there are enough to go around. So, I came to count the egg masses, which serve as a fairly good proxy for the number of individual adult females in a population. Because an adult female will usually lay just 1 clutch of eggs every spring, we can take that number and multiply by 2 (because of an assumed 50/50 sex ratio) to estimate the total number of breeding adults. Are these frog populations outside the park barely hanging on, or can they spare some eggs for restoring the species in Yosemite? That is what we are hoping to find out. 

Rana boylii egg mass.

Egg masses are tightly clustered eggs sealed in a protective jelly. Because foothill yellow-legged frogs lay their eggs in streams, the jelly is pretty tough—somewhere between silicone and your grandmother’s Jell-O mold. The female attaches the egg mass to a rock, where it remains until the embryos hatch out into tadpoles, which swim free to start their next phase of life. Rana boylii egg masses can have 400-1000 individual eggs; and perhaps half of these will successfully hatch out into surviving tadpoles; 50 or so will metamorphose into tiny frogs; and statistically only 1 of those baby frogs might live to a fully breeding adult. So really, to get from a tiny fertilized egg to a fully grown, breeding adult laying her own eggs is nothing short of a miracle. Egg masses are tiny packets of possibility—on the roulette wheel of evolution.

Tuolumne River.

Tasked with counting these egg masses, I identified all the places where we think the species is still present in the Tuolumne and Merced River watersheds. We based this on information from colleagues at the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and other land management agencies; as well as from environmental DNA (eDNA) samples taken in the streams last year. Everything living sheds DNA into the environment—like our skin cells that can be used for forensics. We do wild animal forensics in the same way—by taking a water sample and using molecular techniques to determine whose DNA is in that water sample.

The sites I’m visiting are very unique from one another—from large and medium-sized rivers with giant boulders and deep pools, with old-growth trees fallen across them, to tiny creeks, that even in early May weren’t much more than a trickle, thick with alder and Himalayan blackberry vines. I walk upstream, looking under rocks, in crevices, and especially on the sides of boulders and cobbles for egg masses. Sometimes, in the larger rivers, I snorkel—a survey technique I am new to this year but am planning to take up as a sport, because it is so much fun. While snorkeling, I can cover a large area much more quickly, and see the rocks so much better. I also get to see what all the other underwater creatures are up to—beds of freshwater mussels tucked under the edge of a boulder, filter feeding. Large trout lurking in the deepest pools. Suckers appearing to play in the swift of water at the base of a waterfall, attaching themselves to a rock. Thousands of caddis fly larvae, each in their own unique cocoon of found items.

Rana boylii egg mass (left) with newly hatched tadpoles.

The breeding season has now wound down—the egg masses counted, the tadpoles hatched out. This year’s severe drought is likely to be hard on them; some will probably get stranded in small pools before they have time to fully metamorphose into air-breathing frogs. This is part of the program in a drought year, unfortunately.

For the next month or so, field crews will do another round of eDNA sampling in streams where we are still looking for more Rana boylii, hoping to find additional populations we didn’t know about before. Even though the species has declined from 70% of its range, the places where it still hangs out can teach us a lot about what the species needs, and how it can persist in the face of invasive pathogens, invasive predators, and climate change.

Though the frogs may be thrown into Jack Gilbert’s “ruthless furnace of this world,” there is reason for pragmatic hope. There are frogs left in the Stanislaus. They are still breeding. Next year, we will take action to give them a leg up, holding egg masses in rearing pens to protect them from their natural predators, so that each egg mass has a chance to produce more than one adult frog.

With their tiny packets of possibility, the frogs have given us a way to help them out. We can make amends for the diseases and predators we humans have spread around; the habitats we have altered. Just as the dogwoods have forgiven us, we can forgive ourselves and move on, helping a disappearing species recover, and delight in the work itself at the same time.