“How I spent my summer vacation”

By Sarah Bearup-Neal
Sun Contributor

If Kerry Korpela wrote a back-to-school essay entitled “What I Did On My Summer Vacation,” she said this would be her first sentence: “I had an incredible time at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, appreciating nature and changing my life.”

Pretty glowing assessment for somebody who spent her summer in the weeds.

Up until June, when she began her internship at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL) as an invasive plant remover, the Battle Creek woman had never set foot in the park.

“So I came into this with fresh eyes,” said Korpela, 21, a senior at Michigan State University. “I came here not knowing it is as wild as it is.”

Korpela is right. The park is wild — with both native and alien creatures. The aliens, however, are a problem. Non-native plants have no natural competition. Without this indigenous check, there is no balance and alien plants put down roots. They make themselves very much at home, displace the natives and threaten the habitat.

According to the SBDNL, “Many (plants and seeds) came in grain shipments, ships, crates, ship ballast water, or the personal belongings of people as the U.S. was settled. Many others have been intentionally introduced by flower gardeners, seed and plant companies.

“ …The plants often have spreading root systems or produce seed crops in the tens of thousands. And the end is not in sight! Just go to any garden magazine and you will find a whole host of flowers and plants from other countries that are noted for their ‘hardiness,’ ‘ability to grow anywhere,’ ‘deep spreading roots,’ or ‘huge’ seed crops.”

Countering this vigorous threat requires many hands and a plan.

For the better part of this summer, Korpela, a team of four other interns and park personnel have been up to their knees in Spotted Knapweed, Baby’s Breath and Garlic Mustard, Toad Flax, European Marsh Thistle and Leafy Spurge — to name just a few of the non-natives. MaryBeth Garmoe is the park’s Invasive Plants leader. Each year, she puts together a removal and restoration plan, which guides her crew of interns. Developing a strategy involves studying maps of the park and taking into consideration visual sightings reported by “people on the ground.” These people include interns like Korpela.

“We survey, walk the area and find dense patches, evaluate how thick it is that year,” Korpela said. “We can’t always get every plant, but end up assessing the situation and and come up with a game plan.”

“Generally, our goal is not eradication, but control,” Garmoe said. “Eradication is a dream, but not always realistic.” The goal, she said, is to keep invasive populations from getting out of control, and that’s done through a combination of digging, herbicides and developing working relationships with park neighbors.

“There are some areas that we’re treating where we’ll look south of the park’s boundary and see the same plants we’re treating growing on private land,” Garmoe said. In situations such as this, the park works to develop a collaborative relationship with home gardeners in the hope of eliminating point source invasion.

“A lot of the work gets done in June” before plants go to seed, Korpela said. And, a lot of that work gets done by interns. According to SBDNL Volunteer Coordinator Matt Mohrman, the park receives up to 80 applications each year for its various, seasonal internships. It’s a competitive process, he said, with a 10-15 percent acceptance rate.

Although the park’s internships are unpaid, there is a $20/day stipend for food. Dormitory style housing is also provided.

Korpela learned about the opportunity through her college’s career advising office. Even though she hadn’t been thinking about a summer internship, it struck her as a “golden opportunity to get behind the scenes and see what’s really going on,” she said.

Internships are “a great way to get young, enthusiastic students and post-grad students into the park. Interns bring a new perspective on things. And, they allow us to get a lot more work done. Internships … give them great job and life experience,” Garmoe said. Kerry Korpela couldn’t agree more.

Korpela is working toward a degree in Environmental Geoscience, a “cross-over science” concerned with “the caretaking of the earth in all its forms.” Completion of her degree requires Korpela “to know a little bit about everything to take care of the earth,” she said. Her SBDNL internship “is a good resume builder”; an internship at a national park tells people who read resumes that the applicant is grounded in “what it means to work outdoors,” Korpela said.

Which is what she did on her summer vacation. “My crew leader once told me that every summer it’s like weeding a giant garden out here … a lot of hard work and sometimes it feels like that work never ends,” Korpela said.

As far as Michigan State University is concerned, Korpela was engaged in an independent study this summer, a way to earn a couple more credits toward her degree. Turns out, her internship provided another, unexpected independent study.

“Despite having visited so many parks out of state, this is one park I never made it to before my internship,” she said. “(People) had told me, ‘Oh, there’s nothing interesting there.’ How do I know that? I haven’t been there?”

So, she came and she saw and she experienced the SBDNL firsthand. If Kerry Korpela wrote a back-to-school essay about her summer vacation, she said the last sentence might be, “There’s lots out here; that’s the best surprise of all. This park is really awesome.”

The seventh in a series of articles prompted by the National Park Service’s centennial celebration of its founding in 1916. One of the NPS’s birthday initiatives is Find Your Park, a multi-pronged program that invites people to discover the National Park in their backyard. Throughout 2015, the Sun is publishing stories about the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and some of the people in our community who have developed a relationship with it.