Up at the Biostation.

The Biostation orientation (2007) went off without too many problems. The largest one posed was the rain; it threatened to cancel the rafting and shorted out the electrofisher. However, I think most people had a good time, even though it was pissing down at times. (One of the buses got stuck in the wet sand, but that didn't really affect anyone, and it was easily taken care of with a wrecker.)

We don't really get much of a chance to get out of the urban/agriculture mix of Southeast Michigan too often, and any opportunity to just be out in a recovering (from 19th Century clear-cut logging) forest is just fun (even though there is the possibility for rain). As one of the faculty says, "When it's sunny, we go out, when it's raining, we go out." And we did.

Of course, wind and rain does provide an opportunity for really nice mornings, and although the first morning was gray (foreshadowing the downpours to come), the second morning was beautiful. And although the rain made the first night's campfire end up all for naught, and the winds of the second night made the smoke unbearable in one direction, the mood was generally festive (although many newbies did turn in early - possibly early risers).

Of the new "crop" of SNREds (pron. "snerdz" - hey, if Culzean is pronounced "cull-ANE", then we can have "snerdz"), we had the largest incoming class since I started. Since the M.S. programs officially split from "RPB" and "REM" into eight different tracks (Aquatics, BEC, ConBio, EI, EJ, EPP, SusSys, and TerrEco) last year, it is not surprising that many people have entered into these different tracks. (Okay, so that's circular logic, but I think it makes sense, and, no, it's not important to know what all the acronyms stand for. If you are really that interested, you can check out the website yourself.) However, no matter that SNERds are becoming legion, they are still a great bunch of people.

I'm sure that I will be writing more about them in postings to come.