Sunday afternoon

It's been a great weekend, and after I finally settled into the simplicity of everyday life, I really enjoyed it. The review was a good one, Kit and I are learning each other's style and by the time the week came to a close, it felt a lot more like we were in it to get the job done, rather than some sort of job review for me personally. As usual, I have a lot on my plate to make sure everything is done to spec, that everything is caught up, but I'm not in it alone, and I feel like I have a good team. It's taken a while, for sure. Here's a shot of my crew, with Kit on the left. He's the review team leader, my technical lead. Next from left to right is John Rule, the one who will not retire and wants to be pushed over into a soil pit when he dies in the field. Dean is next, he is the MLRA project leader from Chico who has been detailed here to work for me during the field season. Ben is a soil scientist from Montana who was in my group at the first Basic Soil Survey session that I taught a couple of years ago. Alison is from Chicago, and has been a soil scientist for a few years, but hasn't had much chance to actually map soils. I miss Stacy a lot for good reasons and some not so good reasons. I ran out of black ink for the printer on Friday, and that's a bad reason. I depended on her too much, I think. She kept track of ink, while soaking in every possible thing she could learn about soil survey, I still never ran out of ink.

John and I have learned to give each other room for our personal style as well. I let John do what he needs to do, and have learned to just get all the good that he has to offer in his own unique way, and he has quit fighting me and my authority. We seem to have figured it out most of the time at least.

Ben and Alison are just a kick, both of them here for the short run, but willing to work hard and they both are fun to be around. They have managed to coerce me into doing a zip-line up at the Mercer caverns some weekend soon. geez. Back to that old thing of cultivating young friends. Ha! hard on the bones, though. LOL.

They both are a little bit daunted by the depth of all the soils around here, and just how much digging is required to see them as deeply as we need to see them.

On Wednesday, I had them go with us for our mid-week break to Table Mountain. Kit said it was like blasphemy, we all went to the mountain without shovels. That was my plan, actually. I always make a new soil scientist walk their ground without a shovel when they first start to map an area because I want them to really SEE the landscape and look at the landforms and come up with their theories before they get their heads caught up in the details of the soils themselves. Kit teased me about this, but he got it. This part of Table Mountain is about 1600 feet in elevation and the part that we mapped last year is only about 1000 feet high. It's amazing how this landform snakes all the way to the top of the Sierra's. Inverted topography at it's best.

http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/ghayes/Table%20Mountain.htm

It was a good day and a good week, and it has been a good weekend. Spring in this part of the world is certainly a lovely thing, with green everywhere, flowers blooming, cool nights and warm sunshiny days. Who could ask for more.