February 22, 2007

Greetings!

Perhaps some of you have been concerned that I had dropped off of the face of the Earth. Never fear! I am still alive, kicking and keeping busy. Things are good, although this has been a rather trying academic quarter for me, and I am enjoying my spring. It seems like an incredibly long time ago that I returned from Madagascar and reacquainted myself with my life. I’ve kept myself focused and have made some progress with my Malgasy research ideas. I will probably be returning to the “red island” this summer and/or next winter to actually do some research and collecting. Right now, I am interested in plants. There are some very strange plants in Madagascar and not a whole lot is known about them (including what many of them are). So, this seems like it could be an interesting focus for me, at least temporarily. In the end, it all fits in to my “big picture” of understanding lemur ecology since they eat the plants…

What else... Winter break was nice. I got to see some of my family down in Florida and Matt’s family in Pennsylvania. It was a very nice and much needed break but that also seems like ages ago. This quarter, I have kept myself quite occupied with school and that’s pretty much all I have been doing. Days zoom by when you keep all of your hours and minutes full of things to do.

We HAVE been having a very nice, mild winter here in California, so there have been some opportunities to get outside and enjoy some fresh air. This is in stark contrast to last year, when it rained almost every day for 6 months or so. I’ll be sending along some photos so you can see where I have been hiking. The first was a really nice hike down at the north end of Big Sur at a place called Garrapata State Park. This was a very beautiful hike but it had a major vertical component (somewhere around 2,000 feet) and the wind was unbelievable. Matt and I basically clung to the ridge we were hiking on because we were afraid we were going to blow away. Regardless, it was a great experience and the valley at the end of the hike was really beautiful.

Our second hike took place at the Salinas River National Wildlife Sanctuary. Another really nice place. It still amazes me that it is possible to find a completely peaceful and deserted beach in Monterey Bay- but it is. This was a really nice place, full of birds and a shipwreck. Really nice sand too. It has actually been hard for me to be motivated to do much on the weekend since I have such full weeks. Generally, I need Saturday to recover and Sunday to complete the work I need to do before Monday.  However, writing about this makes me want to go another hike! Last weekend, we had a three-day weekend, an incredible treat! That gave me an extra day - one day to recover, one to do work and one to relax and do something fun. So, taking advantage of some really beautiful weather, I made sure I spent a fair amount of time outside and wandered around Santa Cruz and it’s coastline. I really haven’t spent a lot of time walking around Santa Cruz recently and it was great getting out, visiting the Santa Cruz Boardwalk (a 100-year old amusement park on the beach) and enjoying all of the springtime flowers.

Now, I am near the end of a four-day week and I am a bit tired. It looks like the weather is done being beautiful for a bit and I have some work to do. I hope that you are all doing well and that this winter hasn’t been treating you too poorly. It’s almost Spring!

Brooke