Walking through Gothic after peak aspen season tunes the senses into what lies beneath the golden canopy—relationships. On October 6, I joined RMBL docent Emily LeClair a mile north of campus. LeClair educated me about the relationships underlying our citizen science programs, which the Association for Advancing Participatory Science now calls community or participatory science, since not everyone contributing to science is a citizen.

For LeClair, a sense of belonging came instantly when she first volunteered in 2023. “What I love most is this incredibly welcoming community inviting me to give to RMBL however I can. There are so many ways to give back to these mountains we love—you can pick up a piece of trash on a hike, be a docent, or come as a young scientist living with an outhouse all summer.”

With a Yale graduate degree in nursing, three decades as a hospital midwife in Boston and Colorado Springs, a crash course from RMBL docent co-coordinator Dr. Dick Davis, and years of hiking and biking the Upper Gunnison Basin, LeClair channeled her love for science and this place into service.

According to Davis, community scientists contributed one hundred volunteer days in Summer 2025. Davis elaborated that RMBL community scientists “have made key contributions to butterfly surveys as well as enhancing and preserving key specimens for future work.  While new technologies including drones and sophisticated monitoring are and will have dramatic impact on studies at RMBL, the contribution of the public as citizen scientists—as RMBL eyes, ears, and hands—will remain key to scientist’s work and the overall education of the public.”

In 2025, LeClair joined high school community scientist Ellery Jedlicka to volunteer for Columbia PhD student Rachel Cohen’s study of pollination. When pollinators mix-up pollen between different plant species, it can waste seeds and hurt reproduction. Rachel Cohen’s work asks what mechanisms might be responsible for this, and how they contribute to limiting hybridization between species. According to Cohen, “under the constant barrage of foreign pollen that occurs in the diverse meadows around RMBL, I am trying to understand what mechanisms limit hybridization and potentially impact fitness negatively.”

RMBL’s diversity of wildflowers makes it an ideal place for Cohen’s experiments. “Having access to tens of sympatric species—so many flowers growing together—is rare anywhere else.”

LeClair reflected on what the work gave back to her. “Pollinating the test flowers is meditative. I’m outside, carefully dissecting fragile parts of a flower. My mind must be quiet. I have to be so focused.”

Cohen agreed that community science extends beyond data. “Having Emily and Ellery pushed me to make my science accessible. They were genuinely excited, but I knew if I got too technical, that excitement could fade. Having them there—one whose daughter married in these wildflowers, one whose grandfather always points out Crested Butte flowers—made the work more personal and beautiful.”

As I walked back from Cohen’s site with LeClair, leaves twirling to the ground, RMBL accountant and winter caretaker billy barr biked up to us. Deep in preparations for the coming winter, billy called this time of year “a race to the beginning.” A community scientist since he began monitoring Gothic snow fifty years ago, barr’s records form one of the West’s most significant climate datasets. “It’s just observing stuff,” he said. “You don’t have to be a scientist. You go out, look at things, write them down. It provides a lot of information.”

When I asked about the meditative side, he laughed. “It’s meditative unless you hate doing it, and I do not love going out at five in the morning in a blizzard. I like it when the weather’s good. Early winter mornings are cold, especially if it’s windy—but I have to go, or my data becomes invalid.”

LeClair smiled at barr’s honesty. She knew how lucky she was to spend bright summer days dissecting and pollinating elephant head lousewort (Pedicularis groenlandica) flowers. Reflecting on it all, she concluded, “The quality and caliber of the people so deeply involved here, every day and every year, is incredibly impressive.”

-Article written by RMBL Director of Story & Strategic Partnerships, Dr. John Hausdoerffer

John Hausdoerffer moved to the Gunnison Basin in 1992 seeking deeper snow and now joins the RMBL team to help protect it through the lens of climate science. A professor, author of six books, and leader in environmental humanities, he directs Western’s Philosophy Program and is the founding Dean of the School of Environment and Sustainability. Beyond work, John skis year-round with his daughters in the Elk Mountains.

Photo Credit: Rachel Cohen