We need to get more seeds in production. That's putting it politely. Two months ago, he had a shouting match with other scientists about what should be done with the site. We drive down the valley to the abandoned Jericho sheep station, where the local ranchers would bring their sheep for shearing each spring until the mid-1970s. Monsen relaxes visibly.
Rattlesnakes love it in here.
It's dark and dusty inside, and the outside quickly assembles itself into blindingly bright splinters of light. I walk as carefully as a monk from window to window, staring at my feet. Monsen is bursting with the happiness of a man with a good story to tell. In 1956, when he was a sophomore at Snow College, he was asked to bring in 1,000 head for shearing, because appendicitis, flu, and a bullet wound to the hand had claimed all the other likely shepherds of his cousin's herd. Monsen was from ranching stock, but his father had spent the years since the Depression as a policeman.