A pair of graduate students with New England roots recently completed an internship in the canyons and forests of south-central West Virginia that let them know "wild and wonderful" are more than just words at the bottom of the state's license plate. "It's pretty wild in there," said Franklin Jacoby, after he and colleague Hale Morell completed a baseline survey of a tract of Gauley River Canyon acquired last September by the West Virginia Land Trust. "I've never been in a place quite like that."
Jacoby, who recently graduated with a master's degree in philosophy, focusing on the history and philosophy of science, from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and Morell, a May graduate of Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, spent the past eight weeks walking the boundaries, trails and traces of the Gauley Canyon tract and of a larger property in Fayette County for which an easement is pending.
Jacoby and Morell, who both received undergraduate degrees from the College of the Atlantic in Maine, have worked together on a similar survey for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and both have worked for Maine's Acadia National Park. Morell is a native of New Hampshire, while Jacoby grew up in Maine.
The cliffs, boulders, steep terrain and thick vegetation of the Gauley River tract, which includes 650 acres of land stretched along nearly six miles of canyon between Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park and the Gauley River National Recreation Area, posed a challenge for land trust officials who are required to produce baseline documentation to establish an environmental reference point from which to measure future changes to the property. With staff resources and finances stretched thin, a grant from the Armbrecht Family Internship Fund at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies made it possible to bring Morell and Jacoby to West Virginia -- for the first time -- and spend two months surveying the land trust properties. Friends of the land trust in the Beckley area provided housing for the grad students.
Armed with maps, GPS units, notebooks and cameras, "we walked through the tracts documenting old, human-made features and interesting natural features" and recording observations of plant and animal life, Morell said.
Features denoting human imprints on the land included an abandoned rail bed, along which mile markers and a well apparently once used to replenish steam engine boilers were identified.
"We saw copperheads on the rail bed and saw bear tracks and scat and a few coyote tracks," Morell said. "We're both bird nerds, so we enjoyed seeing barred owls and barred owl chicks, cuckoos, scarlet tanagers and indigo buntings."
"We took lots and lots of photos," said Jacoby. "By taking photos and recording the GPS coordinates of the points from which they were taken and the compass bearings showing the direction in which the camera was pointed, in 50 years someone can take a photo of the same site to see exactly what has changed."
During their days off, Morell and Jacoby often returned to West Virginia's wild side for recreation. On one weekend, they hiked through the Monongahela National Forest's Otter Creek Wilderness with Rick Landenberger, the West Virginia Land Trust's science and management specialist, and board member Dave Clark.
"We both like rock climbing, and in addition to doing that, we did a lot of hiking," Jacoby said. "People down here have some amazing resources available to them. I'm surprised we didn't hear more about them before we came here. There are some incredibly beautiful places here."
"It's amazing how accessible some of the climbing sites are," said Morell. "At some places, you can just park your car, walk a few feet and start climbing." Hiking in the New River Gorge area past the ruins of former towns, mines and coke ovens "lets you see how resilient the forest is," she said.
Now that their baseline survey field work has come to an end, the two are headed back to Maine, where they will help Jacoby's family bring in the crop at their blueberry farm.
"We'll tell our friends about what we've seen and done here, and, hopefully, come back again ourselves," said Jacoby.
"It would be great to come back and do some more work with the Land Trust," Morell said. "They have great vision and they're doing a good job."
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5169 or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.