Lauren Fins Item Info
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Lauren Fins:So my name is Lauren Fins, and I was a professor at the University of Idaho and the College of Natural Resources, which probably back then wasn't called the College of Natural Resources. It was probably wildlife, forestry, Wildlife and Recreation, maybe. Anyway, I had heard about Taylor Ranch from probably the time that I first got to Idaho. You know, to the college.
And lots of people were going in there and they were saying how gorgeous it was and what a wonderful experience. And here it is. This station in the middle of a wilderness area. Anyway, I was, I was anxious to just sort of experience it. So at some point, my daughter was either ten or 12. We decided that we would hike in and we decided not to go, that the long road along the river.
We decided to hike over the mountains and down. And so we hired a plane, landed at Cold Meadows, and then hiked in to Taylor. And it was really a wonderful experience. I mean, it was really remarkable to see the station in the middle of a wilderness area. And I think Janet Pope had started on the new cabin by that time.
And if she hadn't already started it, it would come soon after that. And I was I was just astonished that all this research was going on in the middle of this wilderness area, that there was this station with an actual you know, with houses. And it it was so antithetical to my idea of a wilderness area because wilderness areas that I had been in before didn't have structures.
So it was it was an interesting blend of serving the scientific purpose and this wilderness station that that we could learn so much from.
Jack Kredell:Was it the wilderness experience that that motivated you and your family to want to hike in? Were you kind of seeking that?
Lauren Fins:Yeah. Yeah. Dave and I had hiked in Desolation Wilderness when we were in California, and I just loved that experience of just being away from people. Of course, in Desolation, you're not really away from people very much, but there are moments. There are moments. Yeah. This whole idea of wilderness is just really intriguing and appealing to me. I mean, you can see where I live.
there aren't a lot of houses around here. There aren't a lot. There's not a lot of traffic. I like the quiet, so that I that idea of being in the middle of this amazing, huge number of acres, miles and miles of no traffic except the occasional airplane was was really intriguing. I mean, I wanted to be there.
And, and so I think part of the appeal of doing the whitebark pine research that we did later was that we would be able to do it in the middle of this wilderness area. So it doesn't get better than that.
Jack Kredell:Do you remember anything about the hike in anything you saw animals or.
Lauren Fins:We didn't see a lot of critters going in. It was arduous. I remember it was arduous. And we were carrying I was probably carrying 50. Dave was carrying 75, Tracy was probably carrying 35lbs, and then Dave had to offload about 10lbs to Tracy because I couldn't carry anymore than I was already carrying. So I felt I feel really guilty about loading this extra 10lbs on our ten year old, ten or 12 year old.
But Dave couldn't do it anymore because he had the shin splints. So do you remember that? That was a that was a tough thing to do, but just hiking and, you know, just the experience of going through the woods and and and again, the quiet of that and the sense that, you know, you're making progress toward this end and and yet you're in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, it was late, but we didn't I don't remember seeing critters we did later.
Jack Kredell:You mentioned rattlesnakes.
Lauren Fins:Yeah. Yeah, they're along the river. There's a huge number of rattlesnakes and and, probably in my memory, this rattle, this one rattlesnake has gotten exaggerated, but it seems to me it was this big around, and and I saw it sort of literally snake in, you know, out of the grass and back in again and just scared the bejesus out of me.
And Holly had anybody that came to the camp had to do work you had to sort of earn you keep and so she had us pulling spotted and that we nap we'd so she had a project where she was measuring how much nap weed was there and how it decreased over time. So every year she had whoever was there and the interns that were there would pull nap weed and put it in big plastic bags.
I don't know if she told you about this, the big black plastic bags. And then she would keep track of how many per year. So I was there, my daughter was there, and my daughter told me later that I almost stepped on a rattlesnake when I was in there pulling knapweed. And she saw it and Holly saw it.
But they didn't tell me because they were afraid that I would scream and jump and startle the snake. So I was just blithely pulling half without noticing anyway. Yeah. And I also remember there was I think he was an undergraduate student who was looking at how far the rattlesnakes travel from their nest. Did they tell you about that?
And and at the time that I was there, he had measured a distance of I think it was two miles, which was way farther than they ever thought, that rattlers traveled from their nest. So what what a great project for an undergraduate for anyone, actually, but particularly for an undergraduate.
Jack Kredell:Yeah. Holly and Jim are both really big on, a wilderness or an experiential education. They're always referring to all Idaho. And in their conversation about Taylor, about about wanting to teach, like the old ways of, of self sustenance, whether it's hanging with a team of mules or just, teaching like basic hydrological principles and, all that stuff.
And, did was that ever discussed with you guys or was it just, it was just like work?
Lauren Fins:well, we could see that. And, and I knew that they were doing that with the students and I didn't have to do any of that. But yeah, I was, I was just astonished at how they could make a life out there. You know, some supplies were brought out. Obviously, some supplies were brought in, but they were just really making it work and they would stay there for months at a time.
And, made a life there. It was it was remarkable. And and they were teaching students how to bridle animals and how to hook them up. Yeah. Just how to be more self-sufficient. I'm sure for those students, it was life changing.
Jack Kredell:To Taylor is, as you've kind of noted, it's a place of comings and goings, people flying in and out all the time. Yeah, with the exception of Jim and Holly or whoever is managing it. and I'm wondering what, what stays with you when you're when you leave Taylor and you've, you've gone back to civilization. Is there anything that remains with you?
Lauren Fins:How? Well, you know, using Taylor as a base, I was able to get to the whitebark pines and their higher up. And just being in that environment is an inspiring, so just, this is going to sound weird, but it just feeds my soul and it's very emotional. so to, to be able to have a place that you can fly into, which still astonishes me and use that as a base and, and then be able to hike up in just a few hours and be in those high places with those very old amazing trees that don't they don't grow everywhere, you know, And and they're also in danger because the people thought that
they didn't get blister rust because blister us hadn't reached the higher elevations yet. But when we were there we we did see blister rust. So to know that they were in danger also, it's a keystone species. So to know that I was there, that, that I got to be there, experience those that environment, those trees while they were still there is, is pretty amazing.
Jack Kredell:Was that so is blister rust. and introduced it was yeah. It's, it that makes me think of wilderness again and that it's it's a space that we've defined as untrammeled by man. Yeah and here you are probably on the top of Dave Lewis Peak or somewhere. Yeah. Way up there. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a good hike to get to the whitebark.
Yeah, It's like, I don't know, 3000, maybe 4000 feet of elevation.
Lauren Fins:That was a that was a tough hike. I only did that once, but my student did that more than once.
Jack Kredell:And here you are. You get to the top after a couple of hours and there's blister rust, and it beat you to the peak and it was introduced by by somebody, even though we've we've excluded them in the abstract from wilderness.
Lauren Fins:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:Well, what is that. What does that say about our idea of wilderness. Yeah.
Lauren Fins:Well, I. I probably know too much because the whole idea of wilderness is sort of pseudo European, you know, white person, colonial kind of concept. Because Native Americans were here long before we were. And and so that's one thing. And, and the idea that landscapes remain unchanged for eons of time is ludicrous. Anybody who knows anything about ecology and succession knows that things change over time.
So that's one thing. But the fact that blister rust was introduced and did so much damage in such a short period of time is disheartening. You know, with certainly in western White Pine, we've changed those the Idaho forests enormously through blister us and then also through harvesting of course. I don't think that blister rust is going to do as much damage in whitebark pine as it did with western white pine, because I don't think blister rust is happy up at those elevations.
But still. Yeah, it's sad. It makes me sad for lack of a better that's not very eloquent, but yeah, it's disheartening. On the other hand, there's still there is still there and nature does have a way of rebounding. and it may not be the same as what it was, but but it comes back, you know, that idea that nature abhors a vacuum.
That's really true. So it would be interesting to come back in 100 years to see what it looks like.
Jack Kredell:Then You were there. Were you there before the fire? In the fire was 2000, 2001.
Lauren Fins:2001
Jack Kredell:Diamond point or the Diamond Creek fire?
Lauren Fins:Yeah, I'm so I remember. I remember Jim and Holly telling about the fire. Let me. Okay, so it was in 2001 and this. So that's 21 years ago. And my daughter's 36, so she would have been 15. So we were there before, before the fire.
Jack Kredell:So you need to go back. Yeah, it's already happened. The thing.
Lauren Fins:That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Jack Kredell:My, my idea of Taylor is completely different from yours for that reason.
Lauren Fins:So can you tell me what you see?
Jack Kredell:When I. When I first climbed the cliff above Cliff Creek, opposite Taylor to. To get a good look at the the pioneer drainage. Yeah. I don't think I saw any standing timber. I saw standing dead, but I don't think I saw any live timber. There is some. Wow. But it's in very, very small pockets. Higher up.
But it's, it's completely nuked. caught fire.
Lauren Fins:So did it go into the whitebark pine? Did it get that high?
Jack Kredell:Yeah, I got high. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't get it. I think it's the top of. Of Denver, so I was there. I didn't get above. I don't think I got above 7000. I was just running around trying to get interviews. Yeah, but I feel like you guys should go back.
Lauren Fins:Yeah, and I'm trying to remember when Ben graduate. Did you talk to Ben?
Jack Kredell:I emailed Ben. I didn't get a response, but I'll. I'll find another.
Lauren Fins:One. Yeah. I'm trying to remember when when he graduated because I retired in 2012 and I retired in 2012. I'm trying to remember when Ben graduated and I'm thinking it was 2008, in which case I would have been there. But I don't remember the devastation. I don't remember seeing that. But I should go back anyway. The canon's still there.
I think it didn't it didn't harm Taylor Ranch, Right. It didn't get into Taylor Ranch. They protected Taylor Ranch. Right.
Jack Kredell:There was only one minor structure that burned.
Lauren Fins:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:Yeah. It almost got Jim and Holly.
Lauren Fins:I know. I remember them. I remember Holly was out in the field, and she covered herself with wet blankets. And she was with somebody else. Yeah, it was scary.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, it was a close call. Yeah. Yeah. can you maybe just briefly summarize the research you were doing up there?
Lauren Fins:We were trying to just get a baseline measure of how much blister rust was in whitebark pine and as many populations as we could reach. and just look at levels and variability across the, the Frank Church, that would That's it in a nutshell. and we also looked at Mountain Pine Beetle as well, so yeah, that was and we looked at regeneration also to see how much regeneration there was and whether the less stressed had gotten into the region.
Jack Kredell:Do you remember what you, what you guys found?
Lauren Fins:I knew you were going to ask me that and I was going to look at Ben's thesis and I forgot to do that. So, I mean, what I can tell you is that it was there, it was present, it was variable. Some populations had very little, some had more. it wasn't like western, white, white pine where it was, you know, in some western white pine populations.
It's just essentially wiped out the entire population. It wasn't at that level. So if you if you want to pause, I can go and look.
Jack Kredell:well, is that because of the the elevation or the the temperature you think and not something to do with the host or.
Lauren Fins:No, whitebark pine is very susceptible. It's susceptible. But I think the blister rust isn't happy or doesn't have the conditions for infection as often. It needs moist sort of foggy conditions to germinate generally in the fall. I think the alternate hosts are there, but it just I think it's moving slower. And again, I haven't been there, I haven't been back there and I don't know how much it's invaded since we were there.
And I don't know if anybody's been back to, to re monitor.
Jack Kredell:There is somebody doing a research out there on white parks named John Idle.
Lauren Fins:yeah.
Jack Kredell:But I think it's is his research is kind of sporadic and I don't know if it's ongoing or not.
Lauren Fins:Okay. But I should get in touch with him.
Jack Kredell:Yeah.
Lauren Fins:And because we've got all the GPS coordinates for the the stands that that Ben looked at and so if John is doing any sort of monitoring, he'd want Ben's work as, as a baseline to see how things have changed.
Jack Kredell:Yeah. Yeah. So, when you were there, did you encounter signs of, the indigenous presence?
Lauren Fins:Nothing that I remember. Well, there is some petroglyphs along the river, and we saw those just when we were, when I was there with Dave and Tracy. other than that, I don't remember seeing any. Are there a lot?
Jack Kredell:When I was there, I, I was hiking with a, a hydrologist working on springs. and we did come across some old hunting vines, some stone hunting vine down. And there is just, just down downstream of Taylor, there's, a site that Jim thinks, was a funeral pyre. And I'm. Who knows? But there's, a set of, pictographs below an overhang that's, like, very blackened with soot.
Yeah, it does. Jim is right, And it doesn't feel like a place where you'd ever want to build a campfire to stay warm. It's too exposed. So he thinks it was. It's a I mean, it's obviously a sacred site, but he thinks that it was it was connected to a burial of some kind.
And that's just off the trail. most people don't know about it. Yeah. And then while I was there, the Forest Service archeologist just stumbled upon an 8000 year old spear point on the Bear Creek trail.
Lauren Fins:Wow. Wow.
Jack Kredell:yeah.
Lauren Fins:I just read a book called Origin. Have you read it?
Jack Kredell:Is that by Meltzer or.
Lauren Fins:No, it's by Jennifer Raff. And she, She's reviewing all of the evidence for, how long people have been in the the Americas and then evidence for where they came from. And they know that people have been here at least 14,000 years. And there are some people, some archeologists who think that maybe people have been here 30,000 years.
And apparently there's some people who think it goes back to 130,000 years. And the evidence is pretty clear that people came from Siberia and Southeast Asia and that they used boats to come down the West Coast and yeah, the kelp highway. And I didn't know anything about that until I read this book. I just read it and just finished it probably last week.
Yeah, I need.
Jack Kredell:To read that.
Lauren Fins:Yeah. It's really it's, it's very dense but very informative. It's good.
Jack Kredell:There are good scientists that do Idaho who still think that people have only been in the Americas for 11,000 years. It's pretty frustrating.
Lauren Fins:Now, this I mean, this evidence, good evidence.
Jack Kredell:Refuse to look at it because I think they've stopped reading the articles. You know, you read a bunch when you're getting your write up.
Lauren Fins:Because then you have to teach and do other research.
Jack Kredell:Really frustrating you.
Lauren Fins:You let your graduate students do that and they tell you what's out there.
Jack Kredell:Yeah. Even though there's a site on the Salmon River, it's probably five years old and it's I mean, it's just discovered. But yeah, there they're dating tools and points to 15 to 18 so it's it's obvious now.
Lauren Fins:15 to 18000 years ago. Yeah. Wow. On the Salmon River. Okay.
Jack Kredell:And then. Yeah, And then the footprints in in New Mexico. White Sands.
Lauren Fins:Right? Yeah. She talks about that. Yeah.
Jack Kredell:So I think it's it's. I mean, it's inconvenient. Incontrovertible.
Lauren Fins:Yeah. Incontrovertible. Yeah.
Jack Kredell:There you go.
Lauren Fins:So. So that answers the question about wilderness. I mean, they were there were people there and they made changes, and they live there and they harvested critters and they hunted. Think I don't know if they planted, but they definitely hunted. So we weren't the first. And to put a fence around it, you know, by an imaginary fence. yes, it, it preserves it in a less developed state.
And that's, that's a good thing. But to think that it will never change and that it has never changed is ludicrous.
Jack Kredell:What do you think draws us to that idea or inspires us for some reason? You know what? What is it that that that we find comforting or. Yeah, inspiring. With a concept like that.
Lauren Fins:With the concept of wilderness or the idea that we can sort of go back to, to nature.
Jack Kredell:They might be the same thing.
Lauren Fins:No, I don't think they are. I think I the idea of wilderness encompasses the idea that it encompasses the idea that we're letting nature take its course. Right. And that whatever happens, although although we have in the past put out fires and done other things, but in general, letting nature take its course, whatever happens, and there's something really powerful about that idea and that we can go and visit that and see what that looks like.
Again, a very powerful idea, almost spiritual. yeah, I guess I can say that. The idea of touching nature, I mean, you can touch nature in a park that's probably about it. A bad example here. I feel like I'm surrounded by nature. Bears come through from time to time, Moose come through from time to time, deer come through all the time.
Birds. So I'm. I'm in touch with the the natural world. But this is not a natural environment. So this is powerful for me as a calming place because there are fewer people than in a city, but in a wilderness area. it's bigger, it's vaster, it's I think you get to experience how small you are in the universe when you're in wilderness.
It's humbling and it's beautiful. And I, I'm not a religious person, but my husband keeps trying to convince me that I'm a spiritual person. It's different. but I think there's something very spiritual about that wilderness.
Jack Kredell:Did you have that experience that Taylor and then the Frank Church?
Lauren Fins:I came close to it there. I, I had that experience when I went to the Wallowa, the Wallowa wilderness area, because I was by myself and I think it's easier to get in touch with that when you don't have other people that you're talking to. You don't have a purpose in getting to a place and doing your research.
So it's it's a much quieter, more internal experience when you're by yourself. And if I had been in the Frank Church by myself, I think I would have had that became close. I did have one sort of terrifying experience in a frank church. well, Ben was working in, in one area on the east side of the Frank Church, and I was just going to go in and work with him for a few days, and we were driving along in a jeep on this dirt road and, you know, it's one track, right?
and there was a snowdrift. I think it was, it was June, might have been July. And the snow drifts across the road. We couldn't get through. It was, it was tall enough that we weren't going to be able to dig out. And so I had to back up about half a mile on this dirt one lane dirt road.
And, you know, it's a cliff from this side that's up here on this side and talk about terrified and cottonmouth and I was really, really glad to have done that safely. And Ben was, you know, he was okay, you know, this way, that way. It was very scary. I'm glad to be alive.
Jack Kredell:I don't know where this was. This was out of Yellow Pine.
Lauren Fins:No. What's the town? Is it Challis? yeah. And the east side.
Jack Kredell:Okay. Yeah.
Lauren Fins:And you go in there.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, that's one way to do it.
Lauren Fins:And. And we had driven miles and miles and miles, so we may not. Well, I think the road goes in and out of the wilderness area over there if I remember right.
And we were trying to reach a camp spot that we would hike from, so we didn't reach that spot. We went back camp somewhere else and then hiked to,
Jack Kredell:Maybe one or two more questions.
Lauren Fins:Sure. Yeah.
Jack Kredell:What kind of a future would you like to see for Taylor Ranch?
Lauren Fins:I'd like to see it continue as a research station, and. And, make sure that the university supports it. I think it provides a really incredible and unique experience for students and for faculty. yeah, that it that sort of experience doesn't exist anywhere else as far as I know. So I hope, I hope the college and the university continue to support it.
And it's an opportunity to to observe quietly what changes do happen. Like you said, you know after the fire to to see what changes happen. I mean, that could be monitored year by year, to see what changes know how long it takes, know what comes in. weather. Well, just what form succession takes there.
Jack Kredell:Do you think we can learn anything from observing a change like that as people about ourselves, maybe.
Lauren Fins:Well, philosophically, sure. You know, you're not the same person you were when you were ten. I'm not the same person I was when I was 50. and, Yeah, I think we can learn about resilience. if nothing else, we can learn about resilience. And that whole life, that whole idea that, if it's, if it's not these plants at this time and these critters that this time it'll be something else, as, as long as they're are living things, they will come and occupy and Yeah.
What do we learn, What can we learn about ourselves I guess I guess just that resilience and, and also, you know, things are born and things die and to, to maybe to recognize our own mortality and ponder that and to know that that's not such a bad thing. I mean, I Dave knows I want to be cremated where we both want to be cremated, put our ashes in the ground, and maybe that'll nurture some some trees.
I mean, we actually have designated where we want those to be, but I won't tell you, But then they get recycled. I don't want to be in a box or a metal box and just have to have my my ashes, my nutrients just go to waste. So maybe there's something in that. I think there's something about being a biologist that, that helps you to understand that that cycle of life and how, how wonderful that is, that to think that your molecules are going to go on and and nurture something, something new and different, some little part of you is there.
I don't think our consciousness will be there, but some part of us will be there. It's not comforting. It is to me and I.
Jack Kredell:Yeah, I was just reading a an essay by a friend of a friend who is a biologist, a fish biologist who described a salmon as as a thing which transports metals from supernovae from the ocean up into these, these high drainages right. And it's just like there's just this crazy exchange that takes place over and over and over again.
Lauren Fins:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that Katie Cavanaugh? Especially the one you talk to? Katie was doing that that research when she was here in in Idaho. And she measured nutrients that were deposited from the depth of the salmon when they came up river and they would deposit their eggs and then they would die. And there were lots more nutrients in the places where they were than in the places where they weren't.
And I don't remember if she went where where the rivers were dammed to look at places where the salmon couldn't get to versus where they could. I think she did. and then I just heard on the radio this morning, I think it was a physicist was well, maybe it was. Yeah, he was in as he's an astrophysicist actually somebody who was in, is it the Rolling Stones or.
No, no, it was Queen. One of the musicians in the band. Queen is an astrophysicist. he went back and got his Ph.D.. I think it was either Queen or. Or Rolling Stone. I think it was Queen. And he was saying, you know, Joni Mitchell was right. We are stardust, that all of our molecules are dust that came from the Big Bang you know that from solar.
Yeah. Yeah. So how how cool was that to think about? We are stardust and it gets recycled.
- Title:
- Lauren Fins
- Creator:
- Jack Kredell
- Date Created:
- August 30, 2022
- Description:
- Jack Kredell interviews Lauren Fins, a former professor in the University of Idaho College of Natural Resources. Lauren talks about her early experience with the Taylor Wilderness Research Station, the challenges of supplying the research station.
- Subjects:
- wilderness students geography ecology
- Location:
- Moscow, Idaho
- Latitude:
- 46.7324
- Longitude:
- -117.0002
- 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:
- "Lauren Fins", Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive, University of Idaho Library Digital Initiatives
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/taylor-archive/items/fins.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.