Day 9

 June 23rd of 2025


Day 9:

    We woke up at 6:00 and got breakfast ready. I'm back to having the same breakfast I've been having for the whole trip. We had to get into the suburbans by 7:30 so we could go to Sand Springs Deschutes National Forest! It was like a 2 hour drive so we had time to take our mini naps before arriving. Once we got there, we were introduced to someone new.


    Marlo Fisher, who has been a District Botanist in Dechutes for 15 years and grew up in the North West of Indiana. She is a very nice woman who seems very passionate about her job and went right into introducing us to what we would help her with today.


    Marlo explained to us that we would be looking for a rare plant named the Pumice Moonwort, or the Botrychium Pumicola. Once we all introduced ourselves, we delve into our work! Marlo handed us all flags so when we would find the Pumice Moonwort we could place the flags down in that area. What we did was we lined up in a straight line about ten feet from each other and started looking for the plants. It took a while for me to find one but in the end, I found about 32. Everyone then took a lunch break but I decided to skip out. I was feeling a little lightheaded but had also lost my appetite. I will most likely eat dinner but who knows still. 


    After lunch was over, it was counting time. We went to go pull out all the flags in a certain area and counted the flags but also counted the plants that we didn't flag. I have to say, that part was really fun. It reminded me of an easter egg hunt trying to find all the eggs. Although, when we had gotten to Sand Springs, they has said that the Pumice Moonwort was a rare plant so the first thing I thought was, "Oh gosh... this is going to be a long day"... It turns out, we found 611 of those plants within the area. Marlo, Jessica, and Monet were very excited as they had never seen so much of these plants in previous years. After we counted, it was time for us to say our goodbyes so we said goodbye to Marlo and headed to the library, where I am currently writing this blog! I won't have anything for Night 9 until I can post another blog. I do hope that we have a chill night though!

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