A couple inches of snow on the ground and a couple prints, back from the frame shop, ready to hang in the home office. First up, a pair of orangespotted sunfish. One of my first summer jobs was surveying sand-bottom prairie streams, where these guys hang out in slow pools and weedy backwaters. They typically only get two or three inches long, and in the summer males dimple shallow waters with the nests they guard. Several different minnow species spawn over these nests, tended and defended by male orangespots. 

With a couple seasons under my belt, I headed out west and spent a summer working with Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout- they’re feeling the squeeze from a host of human-made habitat alterations, from introduced species to climate change. Lots of time spent hiking up and down isolated little streams, looking for genetically pure, relict populations.  Sometimes the streams were barren, devoid of fish, and we monitored water temperatures and insect populations to see if they would be suitable for introductions of cutthroat trout in a warming world. Others were already occupied with loads of dwarfed eastern brook trout, released from pack trains or dropped from airplanes in a bygone era. 

Each image captures a hundred different memories, from slogging along muddy creeks to watching spruce grouse amble along a deer path. A hundred different experiences, a hundred different lessons, all which shape a life.