How time flies! I can hardly believe that the end of my internship has already caught up to me. While I tie up the last loose ends of my summer projects, I am stuck wondering how it all came and went in a flash. Each event, each project, and each outing run through my mind as I do what I can to grasp each one of those experiences tight. Part of me is excited to keep experiencing new things beyond HFF, to apply all the things that I have learned here to another project, but the other part is uncomfortable letting go of an environment that has been so kind to me. It is a feeling I will have to get used to, I fear, as things have only looked up since the (affectionately noted) dark ages of high school.
Flowing into the early years of adulthood, I have noticed a lot of little caveats in common phrases. The one I find myself most stuck on is “it’s only up from here.” This sentiment is true, but nobody ever stopped to tell me that sometimes you find a stretch of “up” so beautiful that you wish you could settle for a while. I have stopped surviving as a stressed, eccentric teenager and started living as a passionate, enthusiastic adult. Here is an important tidbit that I have learned from that teenage-to-adulthood transition: It takes a while to get used to living if you have gotten used to merely getting by.
A regular occurrence as of late.
This internship has meant more to me than I could ever describe in a brief blog post. Getting to experience eastern Idaho is just the surface. I have made so many connections that I hope are lasting friendships, I have gotten to share this part of my life with people I love (most recently my mom and stepdad!), and I have gotten to see the value of my own artistic work in a collaborative setting.
Unfortunately, I cannot spoil all the illustrations I have made just yet (and describing the process does not provide much intrigue), but I can provide a long list of summer highlights and a taste of what is to come. Starting strong, I completed all my tasks this summer. I had my doubts that I would be able to accomplish all the wonderful communication ideas HFF had ready for me when I first arrived. As someone who has never done illustration in a true professional setting, this was no joke for me. It is also a professional victory to get that necessary timeline experience essential to any future career in scientific illustration.
A sample of my idea-to-illustration process.
The connection highlights could go on forever. From the cat who greets us in the alley behind HFF to the colorful community members I met in Jackson, there seems to be overwhelming personality within two hours in any given direction. My time spent day-tripping with the other interns to farmer’s markets and art exhibits, hanging out with staff on floats and over meals, and the odd field day working on the water are some of my favorites… though I am almost embarrassed to admit how much money I have spent on gas to visit Idaho Falls and Driggs on a weekly basis. But the trip is always worth it for some fresh air, a good lunch, and welcome company! This last weekend was a little different: an intern adventure to see as much of Yellowstone as we could in a single day. Even though I have visited plenty of times, I always seem to forget just how much wonder lies in that national park until it hits me square in the face.
A small collage of my favorite Yellowstone pictures.
I would not have been able to experience all of this without the support of so many kind people, and I want to take a moment to acknowledge that too. Thank you to every single one of you who has helped me expand into what living really is: friends, family, mentors, advisors, donors, peers, and beyond. I feel so lucky knowing that I loved this experience enough to really miss it.
Every year since 2017, the Henry’s Fork Foundation Science and Technology Team has produced an annual technical report that documents all of our data collection and analysis activities for the year. Water and irrigation year 2025 was a very active year for the team, given one of the hottest and driest summers on record, our 11th year of aquatic invertebrate sampling, and the 20th year of monitoring the rainbow trout spawning run in the Buffalo
Hello! My name is Otto Lang, and I am a postdoctoral researcher with Boise State University and the Henry’s Fork Foundation. I’m working alongside Rob Van Kirk at the HFF, Lejo Flores, Professor in Geosciences at Boise State University, and Sarah Newcomb at Trout Unlimited. Together, we are in the midst of a two-year WaterSMART project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to improve predictions of snow water supply across the Upper Snake River
To address angler concerns about decreased hatches, particularly at Last Chance and the upper Ranch, and holistically assess ecological function throughout the mainstem Henry’s Fork, we implemented a statistically rigorous, quantitative study of aquatic invertebrates in 2015. This followed implementation of a watershed-wide water-quality monitoring program in 2014 and prompted subsequent expansion of stream gaging. After our 11th year of sampling in 2025, we had a set of 56 independent observations of macroinvertebrates collected at
As it is the afternoon of December 31, I am closing the year with my annual fish-of-the-month blog, this one at the end of my 11th year of catching a fish in my home waters in each month of the year. To spare you the math, that’s 132 consecutive months of catching a wild trout or whitefish (and in some years I’ve fair-caught suckers and shiners, too) within a three-hour drive of my home in
