They say preparation is the key to success, and it is also sometimes the key to having fun. And it pays to read your emails.

A week ago at this time, I was finishing up my annual herd reports, a major annual chore, and then got ready to panic. Thinking about packing for the week-long workshop on sagebrush management in the town just two hours to the west. Had not made any reservations (supposed to be done by 1 June to get into the reserved block of rooms, and get the group rate), and had not packed at all. And planning on rising dark and early and making the boring, straight interstate drive on just a few hours sleep.

So that Sunday night I finally read the emails on the workshop.

And discovered the world was not as harried as I thought. Conference didn't start until 13:00 on Monday.

I had all morning to pack and drive.

Which meant all Sunday night to sleep. Which I did, fitfully.

By 10:30 Monday morning I had reservations (but not near anyone else at the workshop... those two motels were full) was rested, packed, loaded with cash and coffee, had said goodbye to the wife in her office, and was on the road.

The country was still green. True, when I first moved to this part of the continent, I noticed that the summer curing and browning of the range didn't usually hit until the third week of June. But for the past 10-15 years, excluding 1995, the summer brown has been arriving before mid-June. By the end of May in some years, and in 2002 the spring green never arrived at all in some places.

So, being still green at mid-June was a pleasant surprise. But not all places were green. All along the more recently reconstructed stretches of the interstate, I could see the land was actually blue. After about 20 miles of that, I had to stop and check it out.

The shoulders and medians were covered with these.

Miles and miles of 'em.

Didn't learn the name of that plant until Thursday when, on the field trip, I followed a couple range experts onto a recent pipeline right-of-way, also covered with these tall blue flowers. "Lewis' phlox" they said, a common ingredient of reclamation seed mixtures. Didn't ask, but I'm assuming the "Lewis" being honored in this plant's name is probably Meriwether Lewis, of "Lewis and Clark" fame (a point worth mentioning because, besides this being the centennial of their explorations, Clark was distant kin).

The workshop itself was in neither motel. They weren't big enough for the ~200 people attending. So we ended up in...

the county fairgrounds. Specifically the county's Civic Center, otherwise known as an exposition hall. The place they display all the 4-H and horticulture exhibits at county fairs. A great big steel-girdered, cinder block building with painted concrete floors and fluorescent lighting. As you would expect, the acoustics were terrible, but the speaker system worked well enough to compensate, as long as the speakers remembered to put the microphone practically in their mouth.

This caused additional problems, since few were able to spend the entire 40 minutes leaning close to the microphone on the podium. Eventually they took the mike out and held it in their hands. Which caused more problems for many, since they were also holding the remote control for the computer projector, and a laser pointer.

More than one tried to change slides with the laser, or advanced one slide ahead when they were just trying to point with the laser. So, a note to the wise for any future workshops. Either a) use clip-on microphones or b) tape the laser and remote together to free up one hand for the speakers or c) genetically modify professionals to have a third hand.

Powerpoint and slides (yes, we had a couple presenters whose agencies are still in the silver-iodide dark age) were projected onto the blank wall on the right. Worked fine for most, but the cinder blocks showed through on a few light data slides. Presentations themselves were remarkably devoid of technical problems (except a few backwards slides in one fellow's presentation).

It was a full agenda for the entire week, but a couple observations soon came to mind.

At most of these seminars I have attended in the past, speakers are limited to 20-30 minutes for their presentation. This forces them to summarize and be concise. A graduate student finds they need to condense the entire past two years of their life into 25 minutes. So they talk fast, and get to the point. But at this workshop, they allowed 40 minutes for each presenter. Hence, there was no summarization and, worst of all, no haste in their speech patterns. Just. the. same. slow. monotonous. monotone. for. 40. minutes.

For four days. After only the second presentation, one of the fellows at my table leaned over to his neighbor, who happens to be his boss, and asked "Just shoot me now, okay?"

At the morning break of the first day, another biologist was heard wandering the room, offering anyone available $100 to shoot him and put him out of his misery.

The post-lunch narcolepsy didn't help. About an hour into the first afternoon session I surveyed our table. Two out of seven were asleep. We were near the front of the room, but I observed similar sleeping ratios at all the tables around us.

Thing is, some of this information was really neat stuff.

First presentation detailed the taxonomy of sagebrush. May look the same to all of you as you whiz through our states on the highways, but it is really all sorts of different plants. Distinguished by subtle, subtle leaf shapes, variation in plant height and growth shapes, the types of soil occupied, and the precipitation necessary to keep the plants alive.

Two subspecies (not only do you have to worry about different species of sage, since they respond differently to fire, drought and browsing, but in many cases folks worry about subspecies and even varieties) are most easily distinguished by their different reactivity to ultraviolet light.

One fluoresces, one does not. Squish some leaves in a cup of water under a black light, and the water glows blue. Different aromatic oils in their leaves. Get the right sunlight on them when they're wet with rain or dew, and you can sometimes see the differences out on the prairie. Critters certainly know how to tell the difference, presumably by smell.

Will probably record some of my notes from the workshop later on, but a couple things I remember from Day 1.

Thunder just outside the fairgrounds, followed by rain at 14:39. A good, steady downpour. A pleasant enough background noise from the drops pounding on the metal roof. But for some unknown reason, someone got up and closed the front doors. I, at least, was enjoying the cool breeze and influx of ozone.

The thunderstorms ignited a couple range fires locally, which was a little ironic since we were discussing the effects of fire on sagebrush communities. Saw the smoke plume of one off to the west as I exited the workshop, and had to go investigate.

Fire was in taller shrubs on a steep hillside facing the interstate. Stopped several times for photos, and soon found myself forced into driving clear to the next town just to find a place to turn around (yeah, I've been known to dive across the median a time or two, but this was hardly official business, so I stayed on the asphalt).

No one was actively fighting the fire, but I could see several fire vehicles parked on the ridge crest just to the east, keeping an eye on the blaze. Time and a half overtime to sit in a truck in the country, sipping coffee and listening to the radio. Presumably just to make sure the fire didn't crest over the ridge or make a dash down the valley towards civilization.

Dinner that night was chinese, at a well established restaurant with a huge, fat Buddha out front. Cashew chicken.

Happened to run into a couple guys from the workshop there, which threw my waitress for a loop when I disappeared from my table to theirs with my tea. She actually thought I'd skipped out.

Probably should have rubbed Buddha's belly when I left, but I didn't.

And I forgot to go back to the fire after dark, for a chance at photos of a miniature firewurm. But, as was reported the next day, the fire put itself out before dark, so nothing was lost.