some would call it crazy.

This is the site of my thesis research.


I sort of stumbled into it, and I think everyone around me went, "Huh? The desert? I thought you wanted to move back to Maine?"
But really? For me its all about the processes, the investigation, the potential for restoration of this landscape. For once, this valley was all grassland.
And then, one day around the mid 1800s a bunch of Anglos rode over the ridgetop, took one look at all that grass and shouted "Great Jehovah! Call in the cows! I"m-a gonna be rich!"

A few decades and few hundred thousand cows later, the grass was gone, and the shrubs moved in, and its been that way ever since, and that's all anyone ever expected it to be again. Its called DESERTIFICATION, folks. Desert-makin'.
EXCEPT! At the site pictured above.... GRASS! Sweet GRASS! slowly returning.
But WHY? That's what I want to know.

Hey, it beats sitting in an office all day, if you ask me.