Mara Reed

A pine marten is hidden in a talus field partially capped with snow.

Find the pine marten!

about what people are doing and teach others about what you’re doing, then it still matters. Re: people who can’t respect everyone’s time, I do wish the audience all got a little clicker that if enough people clicked, a trap door would open under the speaker and everyone could move on. 😅2/2

Ah. Yeah I’ve found eight minutes to be pretty tough, especially when I have to make time for background stuff because my field is tiny and the audience is almost always unfamiliar. But you can still craft a short story in that timeframe and if you see conference talks as an opportunity to learn 1/2

I certainly understand and retain more things from well-crafted and well-delivered talks, and would argue the ability to tell a coherent story matters. Unless I'm misunderstanding your point here.

It seems like the number of things I misplace or forget to do has grown exponentially in the last couple years. I don't know if it's increased cognitive load from living in the collapse of a democracy or something more normal, but wow do I feel incompetent as a human.

10/10 name, 10/10 sounds, 10/10 smells. Total package.

HELL YEAH

A visualisation of forest canopy height in Shiretoko National Park, Hokkaido, over shaded relief

A visualisation of forest canopy height in Shiretoko National Park, Hokkaido

A visualisation of forest canopy height in Shiretoko National Park, Hokkaido, two ways. Which do you prefer? I can never decide. What I can say is that Shiretoko is beautiful. And windy. And the sika are unafraid. Also, hot waterfalls.

#rayshader adventures, an #rstats tale

My brain has an easier time parsing the right than the left.

What's it like inside your head?

meme from the office of two photos being shown. the first says 'the result of a trillion variables since time began, leading to something wholly unique and beautiful' and the second says 'you'. the viewer is instructed to spot the difference but in second panel pam says 'theyre the same picture'

you are proof that love is real

At the empty USGS booth at GSA. More out of view on both sides

Several regional NPS and USGS science centers gutted if this goes through. Gahhhhhh.

New albums from Tame Impala, Of Monsters and Men, and The Barr Brothers this month and they're all fantastic. How am I supposed to hyperfixate on one song with all these options?

It is the end of the 2nd day. I drove a friend to the airport, tidied the house, and finished slides for the modules I'll teach this weekend at an orientation to cave rescue course.

Pink-orange light tinges dark clouds above a scene with several buildings and white SUVs.

Uncertainty ahead, but the sunrise and the day’s work were good. And I unexpectedly got to talk to 6th graders and undergrads on field trips today. Difficult to tell which group was more excited!

Thanks for this. Feeling many feels today.

I uh… text *my* parents like this 😅

Would he appreciate you publicly punching down like this? I’d be pretty upset if my advisor posted something like this to social media.

Before fully waking up I thought it was a push alert for something local in Yellowstone and started planning what an earthquake response work day would have to look like…

Phew. 😅

Myshake is still set to give me alerts in the Bay Area so I just got woken up haha—all ok?

A person dressed in a NPS field uniform and red safety vest stands on dry travertine terraces wielding a long pole to retrieve trash from a hot spring. This photo by Sam Hilburn was recently published in a USGS Caldera Chronicles article.

A caver in blue corveralls stands in the center of a group of cave formations including several stalagmites and a very tall draped column. The caver is wearing special clean boot covers in order to stand off trail without damaging the pristine flowstone. We received permission to shoot this photo depicting a caver off trail.

For work, I take trash out of geyser basins in Yellowstone National Park and am working on improvements to the park’s geyser monitoring project.

For fun, I’m learning cave survey and practicing my cave photography.

It's 2025 and I'm tired, but not *so* tired that I can't encourage you to vote for calcite by posting my cave photos. Here's a view from a cave system that straddles the Montana/Wyoming border.

If you want to see photos from the deepest point in Carlsbad Caverns, calcite has to advance... #MinCup25

Still not a ton of caver activity on here, as far as I can tell. The older folks seem stuck to Facebook and the younger ones have sworn off social media or stick to Signal or Discord.

Hugs, friend.

Yes, there was a M3.7 earthquake in Yellowstone today. No, there is no impending volcanic eruption. No, I didn't notice it romping around outside in the Old Faithful area while my coworkers inside got a good building rattle :'(

The Hawaii rainbow is hard to beat, because rainbow.

I *wish* I could show up to a Hozier concert in that fit. Absolutely go for it.

So far setting boundaries and adhering to my principles has led me to pretty lonely places.

This has been your Saturday angst post.