What I liked
Wallowa County has a small population (around 7000), so the community is closely-knit. The networks between the different organizations in the county and with residents, many of whom are farmers and ranchers, are rich with potential and actual collaboration. In my internship, I enjoyed shadowing various staff of Wallowa Resources in addition to the district water manager, and I enjoyed field work such as measuring the flow rate of streams. I also appreciated having my own independent projects to work on at the office -- I gathered data on the energy use of the county and wrote a survey on soil health management.