Colden Baxter Item Info
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Colden Baxter:My name is Colden Baxter, and I'm a professor at Idaho State University. I'm principally an ecologist of streams and rivers and I but I also study the linkages between water and land, and in recent years have taken to doing work that links the social sciences and ecological sciences and that are to better understand the relationships between people and rivers.
And I got started working back here at the Taylor Branch at this field station. I actually came here. I kind of like this story because it is a little emblematic before I even moved into my office at Idaho State University. My predecessor, Wayne Mitchell and I, within days of my arrival at ISU, came back in here and made a visit.
And it was actually it was like November. But I was so excited about the prospect of getting to know this place and beginning to do science here and connect what I was thinking about doing to what he had done for decades back here in the Middle Fork Salmon River Country, and specifically out of Taylor Ranch. And big part of my enthusiasm for that, that job and my excitement at getting that opportunity had to do it with this place and the prospect of making that connection.
And that was the fall well of 2004. And so I've been coming back in here regularly ever since then, not only for to carry on the long term monitoring that documents Al and his students began in the late 1980s, but also to collaborate with and work with an array of undergraduate and graduate students who use this as a base for doing various research projects.
So for me, the continuity of the long term monitoring and consistently having students working here has meant that this place and the surrounding river drainage has become a real home space for me and for my community, both my family and the community of people that I work with and ecology is the science of home like that's actually what the word originally means, right?
And so I think of places like this as particularly meaningful context for doing doing ecological research, because come to think of it as a home place and so and, and so the science we do here and the culture, the community of people that interacts here is, is rich and and deep. And it extends back before my having even visited this place.
So that's a little bit of the back backdrop, I guess for for why this place is why how I'm connected to this place and why it's special to to me and to my family.
Jack Kredell:You're you're pursuing a study of home in a place that has become a home. and I. I noticed while observing your, your students today that that science scientific production for you is both, it's. It's also a family affair, as much as it is a scientific one. And there's this interesting overlap between personal and professional worlds that is not often there in science.
And and I was wondering, well, while watching you guys, like, you know, maybe this is good for science, actually, maybe maybe the data is is enriched because there's this deep personal connection to the place where it's being understood or collected.
Colden Baxter:Yeah, I think so. I have learned a lot from Sadako Mitchell, who just passed away a couple of years ago, became a very important mentor to me and friend and, and especially in this place, that sort of multi-generational potential for our community of scientists became was, was realized. But also he was someone who always involved his family in the science that he did, and that resonated with me as well.
And I and so I began by bringing my family along and work that we were doing here, you know, in a field station field station context in general, I think lend themselves to that sort of, kind of familial and home connection to place, which is often lost or, or at least is not realized in other, in other contexts.
And that's part of what makes them special. That's definitely true of this place. And I do think that that is a, that is a the science of ecology and, you know, natural sciences in many respects. I feel like our are still very much maturing, evolving and maturing. Ecology is still kind of a young science, but one of its real potential, I think, lies in the possibility of it's becoming a place and community of rooted science, and that is that connects and investigates connections between people and landscapes and so I don't know, this is a bit of a, this is a complicated place to do that because it's wilderness which is meant to be a
place where people are excluded right in you go to be away from the influences of people and yet the place is, it's a place that we connect to deeply as a community. And so I, I don't know. I work closely with partners with the tribes in Idaho, particularly the Shoshone Bannock Tribes. And over the years I've also learned from my partners that they're my collaborators, that this sort of vision of, of ecology for a variety of reasons, resonates more with them as well.
And I, I respect and appreciate their perspectives on that and I think there's a lot to learn from from that. Ecology actually has a lot to learn from thinking about and casting the work that we do in that sort of context that doesn't separate, we don't separate separate ourselves from the place that we're that we're we're working to understand right?
Jack Kredell:Maurice Hornocker, when I interviewed him, said that, a good, a good scientist should, should feel or a good field scientist should feel their, their object. And it, what you're saying makes me think that in a sense it's difficult to apply the human sensory apparatus to, like remote sensing data. For example. it's hard to personally connect to it.
and on the opposite end of the spectrum, this is a landscape that we're, we're a river scape, as you've called it. Yeah. Then you've gotten to know very intimately over time, parallel to the, the, this long term dataset that you produced. And so I feel like it it allows you to feel that data in a way that adds actually rigor, scientific rigor to the set.
Sure. Do you think that's true?
Colden Baxter:Sure, yeah. And having spent a lot a lot of time, like with my head stuck under cut banks and that kind of thing, and behind boulders in Big Creek and, you know, watching fish in the middle of the night and, you know, and in all of these years of close observation, I mean, that like, for example, a remote sensing data set may still actually be really valuable.
But it's often the case that, like that I can, because of this experience and these connections and intimate knowledge of the place, I can look at a different data set like that and, and I'll see or notice things that maybe other people wouldn't play opposite is true to. Sometimes people who are strangers to a place will notice things that folks who've been there for a really long time haven't.
And that's a reason why. That's one reason I really value, of course, bringing students here. Students see and ask questions about things that I might not have ever really even considered. Right? So I love that sort of constant introduction of new people to this this situation. It's not just like my family comes in here every year and we all do exactly the same thing.
There's a there is that core like role that that rope of tradition, but it's always like the cast of characters is shifting that, you know, what people are paying attention to and asking questions about is shifting. And that's healthy for the science. Of course.
Jack Kredell:What do you think your your undergraduate students take away from these experiences of just, you know, bushwhacking along, cutting all this stuff? Yeah. That, you know, they seem observing them. They seem really happy and content to hike in here and then to do this difficult work.
Colden Baxter:Yeah, well, definitely for some of them it's, some of them have a lot of outdoor experience already, and they are learning then to become field scientists. Really, which to be a field scientist involve us being cultivating a kind of comfort in the, in that in oftentimes harsh and conditions so that, and so that you can focus on that science, not on just like just on your own personal comfort or your like your next meal or whatever your, your gear, equipment or whatever it might be.
Right? But you have to develop a an ease with being in the in the backcountry, for instance. And some of them are they're all at different stages in that. And you know, but for some this is the first time that they've ever walked that far, for example, and that sometimes that rocks their world and but sometimes sometimes that's kind of it can be a little rough, but it's generally yeah I mean it's a life altering experience changes people's perspectives to and changes the way they might think about themselves and their own potential in some cases.
I had a one of my first graduate students working here and we developed a pretty ambitious project. By the end of her project, we estimated she walked the equivalent from here to the ocean in back to the and was like, you know, I was that was really impressive for, you know, on all counts. Right? But I know that for her that became a part of her identity.
And she in the sort of her ability to approach, you know, all kinds of other challenges that she experienced in her life in the years since then, you know, And, so that's a roundabout answer to your question, but that is to say, there are all kinds of different, every students different in terms of their experience of this place.
And the undergraduate students are usually only here for, you know, short periods of time or it, whereas the graduate students get a deeper dive usually and in terms of their, their experience of the landscape and nonetheless, it also sets a kind of frame of reference for them. Many of them will go on to be natural resource scientists and managers and to spent time in wilderness in and along a wild river affects your frame of reference.
It's a frame of reference that's vanishing. And and without that, you know, I, i, it concerns me that, that we might, that natural resource managers might lack that perspective. so, but it's also a really rich social experience, right? This is probably what you have to do these days to have a group of people put away their phones for a while and interact like really interact with one another, pay attention to their surroundings, really interact with one another.
They tend to really to connect to with one another and with the place. And that becomes a kind of lesson in itself, right. About, you know, how to make that happen elsewhere at places other than Taylor Ranch and the Wilderness. But at least I like to think so. I know it's been that way for my daughters.
Jack Kredell:So yeah, it's funny that or it's ironic that that one of the few places where this can occur in our modern world is a place in which we've we've decided by excluding ourselves.
Colden Baxter:Yeah, that's what I was alluding to that earlier, is that's strange. And, you know, like I mentioned, my collaborations with tribal partners and I feel like honestly, our vision of and the way that we think about wilderness is something that is still maturing and changing and, as is our relationship with nature in general. I'd like to think that it has, that it will kind of continue to mature.
Yeah, right. Yeah. And, big important steps along the lines include, you know, seeing and cultivating relationships between yourself and, and places like, like this and not just like, experiencing them as a playground, a recreational kind of playground or as some kind of, like, purely utilitarian, thing either way.
Jack Kredell:But yeah, a place full of non-human others.
Colden Baxter:Yeah. And that in a place that where you can and should be thinking about sort of reciprocal relationships. Right. And that's, those are idealistic I suppose perspectives, but certainly some of my hope in a way for this sort of thing, the context lends itself to thought to people spending time thinking and including myself. Right? So I'd like time to actually, yeah, think.
Jack Kredell:I know you're probably getting hungry. Maybe just one more. One or two.
Colden Baxter:Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Kredell:What what would you like to see for Taylor's future?
Colden Baxter:Yeah, well, first of all, I hope that it will continue to be a field station and because there have been times in the past where I was worried that it would not, that, that it wouldn't continue and that I'm really pleased that the University of Idaho seems to clearly value the place now. And I, I guess what I would like to see for its future is that, people who are responsible for its management and decision making associated with it are consider carefully what its actual strengths and and real areas of potential are because there's always a you know, there's a little bit of a tendency to imagine that a place could be turned into
something that it's not or that it's never been, and that this place has gone through several iterations of that kind of, quote, visioning that wasn't really very well informed, frankly, from my perspective by its history or it like lived experience here, lived experience here can be used to inform like and like the planning and goals and strategies. And I think it's I'm a little bit biased along these lines, but I really think that there's a lot to be learned from the model that I was describing of sort of building this, that this, this role of tradition and and history, but also always having new people coming and going.
Right. And but so how and that is part of the its, its tradition is that they're from its beginnings as a science outpost. It has its it's focused on work that especially could only really be done in this sort of context. And as explored this commonly. Well hello! This combination of the sort of a long term monitoring and then, you know, creative, you know, short term studies, superimposed on that.
I don't think it's a great place to like try to in making do what? It's not like I remember a visioning a time at one point where it's like, what we really need is get some really smart scientists here from like Princeton and, you know, other people who are like really high powered researchers, right? So there was that theory phase and then there was a phase of like and that didn't pan pan out.
It was like and during that time it was kind of frankly, it was like for Doc and myself and others, it was like, what are we chopped liver? I mean, so to speak. So but and then there was another phase was like, what we really need to do is have this be this wilderness classroom that we bring people from all over the world here.
And, and especially like really wealthy East Coaster is frankly right. And you know, some of that, you know, there are elements to each of those that maybe could work out here. But those things have come and gone right and with varying levels of success. They're not really a sustainable model for this place. and neither one of them actually, is my, my perspective.
It's not a place to host really large numbers of people. It's a place to to sustain rich experiences for small for individuals and small groups of people doing science and also providing context for interaction. And with respect to the latter there, although I appreciate that modern amenities of the place, I think we probably gone about as far as we should along those lines.
I prefer in general when I have my students back here, we keep busy and we don't spend a bunch of time. I don't like going into the lab and finding like the whole group of students watching Netflix or something like that. That's not what we're here for. You know, the Internet needs to be used. It's for should be for things like important communications and so on.
Just because you're here for, you know, a longer period of time doesn't mean that you should suddenly switch over to like a lifestyle that like importing a the lifestyle of that kind of thing. Like, I don't know, that seems to sort of cheapen the experience a little bit. I'm a little bit of a Luddite when it comes to that kind of thing, too.
Jack Kredell:So, well, based on what you've been saying, it it feels like a place that's perfectly situated for the contemplation of the very small scale and the larger scale and the geological. Yeah, you know. Yes. as well as.
Colden Baxter:That, you got to get out in it too. I mean, I've noticed some patterns here In the last May, when I first started working in here, it was a lot more common for students to really be like a fairly decent number of students to be out every day covering territory, right? And then for a period of time, the pattern was kind of the exact opposite.
People would come back in here and hang out, but the trails looked like nobody had even been on it. Right. And like, what do you do in watching Netflix? Get out there, get out into this landscape and, you know, this is a base from which to experience the the wilderness. It's not in and of itself the wilderness. So, you know, that's a little bit of critique commentary, I guess I, I, I.
Jack Kredell:Know you'll be happy to know that Grace Pevin kicked my ass when I checked on this, but that was probably a five mile bushwhack, Maybe a thousand and a half. Yeah. Elevation. You know.
Colden Baxter:That's more of the style of. I mean, this place. I'm not saying that's the only kind of person that can, can should be here or that thrives here. But, I mean, we need to facilitate that kind of thing, because that was a whole skill set and a set of abilities that is underdeveloped and becoming more rare. Right? And so Taylor has a unique I mean, if it's Taylor Wilderness Research Station, part of what you're training are people who have what it takes to conduct work in fairly challenging environment like this.
And, you know, I think that's, that's still something that the world and science needs are people with those, those skills and abilities. So I'm glad that I'm glad to hear it and, and to see that that's still being nurtured.
Jack Kredell:But and then lastly, you often mentioned Dr. Wayne Mitchell, Doc, as you call him. can, can you just talk about the importance of his work to you and his work to this place?
Colden Baxter:Yeah, I can. So Doc was one of the world's leading experts on the ecology of streams and rivers, and he, Yeah, he. He could his career could have taken any number of different directions. But in the late 1970s, early 1980s, he really sort of discovered doing field science in the Middle Fork Salmon River country, and he got hooked on it himself and it became a part of his and his family's lifestyle.
And so and it became a home place for for him then, so much so that in he not only did sort of traditional stream ecological research, but then when he retired, he turned to focusing on what had been sort of a hobby for him in the years prior to that. Investigations into the history of human history, recent human history of of the drainage and which he he wrote up and self-published a couple of books on that on the topic.
And so I bring that up because the ecological work that he that he did in year and his students did in here was sort of was informed by that this continuity and like, year after year coming in here and the deep knowledge of the landscape, its geography and like, you know, this stream I remember, you know, three years ago, you know, this log was not here, it was over there, right?
And you could add it. We might have the data for that, but it would also be in your memory and in your mind. And that and that. Like I say, that that experience, that lived experience of these places was part of what then? Not only made the science, he was doing excellent, but it contributed to, the sort of the there was also this group culture community first thing.
I mean, when he passed away, his students came from all over the country to a memorial that we had, and almost every one of them told stories, especially of their time, whether their thesis research was done back in here or not. Almost all of them had stories to tell of their relationships with him and with one another that came from their time coming in here every summer to to help with the long term monitoring work and I think that says something that, you know, those were really you know, those were influential experiences, powerful, rich experiences for them as they've continued to be for for my students and my family.
And so, yeah, the science that he did just a little bit of commentary on that. wow. Cat, tell you what I really got a little claw. A little just a little bit of claw. So I think some of the really important science that that Doc and his students did in here and elsewhere, like Yellowstone, too, but were then key to contributing to a change in the way that scientists and society views the natural dynamics of an environment.
And they made nature's dynamics in general like and wildfire is a classic example of that, something that we imagine and experience as a kind of catastrophe. And it certainly has those elements to it. This place is absolutely you know, it's a great example of it, right? But ecologically, the lesson of studying wildfire in this place overall has been that, wildfire and dynamics like landslides and debris flows and in in a big complex connected, free flowing river network like this is something that, you know, it's a good thing.
It's a part of, it's a part of the home. It's, it's a characteristic of the home, right? And not like, you know. So his work helped us see that like a static condition for nature was not a static and a neat kind of park-like condition for nature is not actually the way things work, right? Nature like a healthy stream and river is a messy one and one that is changing and dynamic all the time.
Right. And his science helped contribute to that sort of, you know, maturing ecological perspective. And I learned from him and others of his generation that those types of lessons and continue to try to use this context to learn more about that dynamism itself, essentially.
Jack Kredell:Doc also seems to have pioneered this ethic or method where you, you, you know, when a chair has been moved in your home.
Colden Baxter:You know. Yeah. That log used to be there, now it's over there or it's gone or, you know, this boulder, you know, was only you could only just see the top of it. And now, like, now look at it. You can see the whole thing, right? But it took a decade for that to happen. And so, yeah, being, you know, paying close attention to things of that sort and and gathering data so as to essentially be in a position to notice when that happens.
That's not the the long view is not even ecologists have not necessarily, you know taken the long view even though their science the science of ecology really at its heart and it's the spirit of it really ought to inspire that Even ecologists haven't really taken the long what I'd describe as the long view. Long view and he did, you know, and then he was really enthusiastic about the idea that that together we were actually getting a longer view.
Right. That instead of you know, one professor retiring and then a new professor moving in and just building everything from scratch that we were going to share our lived experiences, that there was going to be this translation of, of background experience and culture. Right. And and shifting and yeah. And that, that and, to me that's, I know of a handful of circumstances like that that have occurred around the world in, in the science of ecology.
But I think that's one of its real potential. There is a potential that is somewhat untapped, like how do you actually turn ecology into a multi generational effort, right? And I hope a place like this, if it's really dedicated to this in the long haul, right in the end has the long view. It has the potential to be the kind of place that nurtures that.
Right. And I'd like to see more of that. Yeah, like Jim Peek's long term monitoring as well and others, you know, other repeating studies that students did 30, 40 years ago, that kind of thing. There's a lot of potential for that here. But yeah, so I hope I hope to see more of that kind of thing. And I feel privileged to have been introduced to the place by Doc and then and Jim and Holly Akenson, who were just also really inspiring people to interact in might.
And in that first years that I was working back here and, they really, sort of fueled my enthusiasm for, for this sort of thing. So I really appreciate that and appreciate the opportunity to keep coming back here every year.
- Title:
- Colden Baxter
- Creator:
- Jack Kredell
- Date Created:
- July 31, 2022
- Description:
- Jack Kredell interviews Colden Baxter, a professor at Idaho State University. Colden talks about his research and when he first came to the Taylor Ranch.
- Subjects:
- people rivers
- Location:
- Taylor Wilderness Research Station
- Latitude:
- 45.1028
- Longitude:
- -114.8517
- Source:
- Voices of Taylor - Jack Kredell Interview Project funded by the U of I Library and the College of Natural Resources
- Type:
- Image;MovingImage
- Format:
- video/mp4
- Preferred Citation:
- "Colden Baxter", Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive, University of Idaho Library Digital Initiatives
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/taylor-archive/items/colden.html
- Rights:
- In Copyright. Educational Use only. Educational use includes non-commercial use of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. Digital reproduction permissions assigned by University of Idaho Library. For more information, please contact University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu.