Alexandra Contosta
Non Forest Service
One of my favorite science experiences happened during my first field ecology job. I was working for the USDA Forest Service in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine. The job involved looking at visual signs of tree health to be able to compare them to the amount of nutrients in the soil. Trees are like people in this way. If they don’t get the right nutrition, they can get sick. We were working in remote parts of the national forest, traveling every day to plots that were way off the main trails. I learned a lot about how to find my way in the woods using a Global Positioning System (GPS) and a compass. I also saw parts of the forest that most people don’t get to visit.
One day we were in a section that had a lot of beech trees. They have smooth, gray bark that has always reminded me of an elephant’s skin, which made it easy to spot scratch marks up and down the trunk. I looked up, saw clumps of sticks in the branches, and realized I was looking at black bear nests! I had heard that bears like to build these nests in the fall while they feast on beechnuts but had never seen them, either before or since.
This experience has always stuck with me as a reminder to keep my eyes open for the unexpected. Scientific discovery often happens when I see something I did not mean to look for, like finding bear nests when I was supposed to look at tree health.
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