July 2026 (One Month - One Picture)
Explore Landscapes #118
The calm before the storm. Seed collection volunteering with the BLM’s SOS and NPS in Sequoia National Park before my Trans-Sierra backpacking trip.
Reciprocity Rx™ team members volunteering and supporting a BLM SOS and NPS seed collection project in Sequoia National Park
July 2026 | Hong Kong | Taipei (Taiwan) | Seoul (South Korea) | Sequoia National Park
Last month was as hectic as the previous few, and saw me traveling to Asia ‘again’ for work. I covered that in my last post (Glimpses of `Hong Kong’) so in this post I want to focus on the last few days of July.
I gave some background to, and highlighted some of my preparations for, my Trans-Sierra backpacking trip in a previous post.
At the end of July I joined the Reciprocity Rx™ team in Sequoia National Park for a seed collection volunteer project (which also served as altitude acclimatization for our backpacking trek to Tumanguya (Mt. Whitney), led by TSX Challenge).
Reciprocity Rx™ is the brainchild of Sydney and Barry Williams (aka Hiking My Feelings® and WITW Consulting). Sydney and Barry are good friends, and I’ve been on a number of their wilderness wellness retreats (which I highly recommend) - as an attendee and also as a JTNPA volunteer in Joshua Tree National Park.
On a beautiful clear day in Sequoia (after having been delighted with a visit from a Mama bear and two cubs at the Wolverton Volunteer camp at breakfast), we spent a relaxing couple of hours on a trail near the Giant Forest collecting two types of seeds for the Seeds of Success program.
Seeds of Success (SOS) is the national native seed collection program, led by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in partnership with a variety of federal agencies (including the National Park Service) and non-federal organizations. SOS’s mission is to collect wildland native seed for research, development, germplasm conservation, and ecosystem restoration.
The long-term conservation outcome of the SOS program is to support the native plant materials development process, by which the BLM increases the quality and quantity of native plant materials available for restoring and supporting resilient ecosystems.
For this seed collection project we were focused on collecting seeds from Phacelia and Whiskerbrush flowering plants—with a target of collecting about 80,000 seeds during our time there.
I was on team ‘Branching Phacelia’ (Phacelia ramosissima) and after a briefing from the Seeds of Success (SOS) team we carefully collected dry seeds from no more than 20% of the population in the area where we were.
It was satisfying, and also therapeutic, to carefully remove the dry deeds from the shrubs (which separated easily from their stems) and drop them into a paper bag.
After so much air travel I welcomed being out in the fresh air and enjoyed the mix of seed collection while taking in the beautiful views of Sequoia National Park.
