Saturday, August 29, 2009

That was actually not my last day at Toolik.

As it turns out, we decided to stay an extra day to finish field work and to give us more time to pack the truck. We made that decision on Thursday, so Friday the 21st turned out to be my last day at Toolik.

Once we had decided that, we didn't feel so rushed and frantic, and my last day turned out surprisingly well. Although it mostly consisted of packing the truck during the day, another camp T-ball game was scheduled for 8:30 Friday evening, and I got to join in.

Camp T-ball consisted of any number of staff, students and RAs per team, using the camp pad between the carpenter's shop and the dining hall as the playing field. Out of bounds were where the towers (outhouses) and residential buildings began, and bases were made from old truck mudflaps. The T-ball apparatus itself consisted of an orange construction cone with some kind of pipe stuck through the top, onto which a largish foam Nerf-like ball was placed for hitting with a hollow plastic bat. Rather than the usual 3 outs, there were 5 outs per side, and after both sides had a few beers the outs and score counts got rather random. It reminded me of the kinds of games I used to play in the street with my sister and brothers and our school friends outside our house growing up in Chicago (minus the beers). At that time of year at Toolik the game was played basically during a two-hour sunset, after which true darkness came on and the temperature dropped. We all went inside the dining hall to warm up, and I stayed to chat with people, something I usually didn't do when a full day of work awaited the next day.

I would have been perfectly content to end my last night this way, and was pleasantly surprised when I was told some people were going on a boat ride on Toolik Lake and I was welcome to join them. As an RA for tundra vegetation studies, all of my work was carried out on dry land, and though numerous opportunities to swim or boat had presented themselves all summer, the fact that I have zero boating experience as well as zero swimming ability meant I'd had pretty much no interaction with Toolik Lake during my stay.

We left just before dark, and the clouds to the west had parted revealing the last of what must have been a magnificent sunset. The air was quite cold and the boat traveled through the water at a speed that was just a hair's breadth from scary, but since I had spent the entire summer with the guys who'd invited me and had seen far dicier situations turn out for the better, I accepted the beer that was handed to me and took a sip without failing to notice that the far shore seemed to leap frantically into view. We stopped for a few minutes at a tiny island on the far shore before racing home, banking the boat at an incredible angle. Scott, the camp's carpenter and overall mechanical guru, sat in front like some mad expedition leader, insisting we all stick a finger into the water to feel the energy of the boat propelled through the water by Shelby, another of the camp's mechanics as well as its fire marshall. I declined, as the air was plenty cold and only magnified by the sight of the Brooks Range looming white across the lake. We got back in one piece, and though it was no doubt just a lark for the guys, for me it added a much needed dash of excitement, and something to always remember.

But I think they knew that. This is how the people of Toolik are. Generous to a fault, talented as they breathe, hard working, and always ready and willing to have fun.

When we left in the morning, they, and the remaining RAs, were there waving to us goodbye.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Today is my last day at Toolik.

We leave tomorrow morning, an 8 or 10 hour drive down the haul road to Fairbanks. I will stay the weekend with my employers at their home while I look for apartments. So far I have zero appointments to view apartments. They keep getting rented. It's hard to secure an apartment when you're several hundred miles away and can't beat other potential renters to the punch by getting an earlier appointment. You can only send an email expressing interest and hope they haven't rented by the time you get back to civilization.

On top of it we still have fieldwork to do this afternoon. I'm less than thrilled by that, I was hoping to have a day of relaxation, take care of personal business, do some sketching and such. I have to help finish not only the field measurements but the packing of the rest of the lab. Last night I came back from gathering samples to find everyone in camp playing a lively game of T-ball. I would have loved to join in but couldn't possibly have done that with my employers working away in their lab until 10:30. I've been on the clock a lot here. Sigh. I'm ready to leave and yet kind of sad about it, trying not to beat myself up about whether I could have had more fun instead of keeping my nose to the grindstone and trying to be good.

You only get one chance to do whatever it is you do. So I guess whatever you've done it's best to be OK with the result and move on.

I will miss walking on the spongy, springy, often wet, fragrant tundra. The many hours I've spent on a clear day walking alone through this landscape surrounded by its vastness, happily distracted by its unique and endless detail, were some of the best I've ever known. It's weird, but the other day I went up to one of my favorite spots and told the land how much I love it and how much I will miss it. This is the thing I fell in love with, so dumbly and blindly, with no hope of it ever returning my love.

So now that I've said my goodbyes to my dear tundra, I can't wait to get home and see my dear husband and family. It will be brief, because in a week from now Joe and I say goodbye to our friends and family and drive up to Fairbanks. It seems I've succeeded in figuring out a way to be near my beloved wonderland.

In truth, I'm still scared. But it's OK to be scared and go through with it anyway.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The mission is over!!

What a great sound, the helicopter coming into the pad. Right at dinnertime too!!!

Our friends must be so hungry. They will have a great dinner tonight.

YAY!!!
Finally, the clouds have lifted and the rotors are spinning. They are taking off to bring Sarah and Casey back to camp.

I hear the helicopter now. We can actually see it from my boss' office in the lab. He's just left the pad.

Good luck guys, come back soon!
They are ok. As of lunchtime they spoke to Mimi by satellite phone and were hunkered down playing cards in their tent. We can still see fog obscuring the view of the mountains west of Toolik Lake.

Bad weather this morning.

At 7 am rain and thick fog. They will have to wait just a little longer.

At breakfast today people were still able to make jokes (they're missing some good desserts, they should have taken a raft etc). I suspect this is just a way of coping, of saying out loud: everything's still OK.

I'm a born worrier, and though I don't want to make it worse than it is, I'm starting to find the jokes a bit irritating.

I think because it could have been any one of us. So every hot cup of coffee, every mouthful of hot food, has a different taste in my mouth today.

He's Back--Again!!

He's coming!

He descended so, so slowly in the near dark, and Mimi shone the headlights of her truck on the pad for him to land.

The rotors are in low rotation now. I imagine they will be shut off shortly.

This is what I mean about a backbone of steel. This is not the kind of job for everyone.

I imagine that he feels as badly as the rest of us about the other group, and knows he's the only one in camp who has the ability to rescue them. It has to be a heavy thing.

Shutdown.

The first group are all back.

This is as much as can be done at this point.

It's pitch dark out now, at 12:26 AM Alaska Time

I glanced at my window and I can no longer see it. I have been used to seeing the sky all summer through the single small window that faces south towards the Brooks Range, but it has completely blended into the darkness at the other end of my weatherport, and not even the screen of my laptop can illuminate it.

Perhaps his plan was to land at the river while there was still some light, and pass the dark hours with the rest of the Itkillik group. Perhaps he has brought some extra food and gear for them. In the morning I imagine his first thought is to try to get the two others at Anaktuvuk.

I guess all we an do is wait until dawn.

Still Waiting...

With my space heater fan turned off I hear the wind rustling nervously at the fabric of my weatherport. A truck passes on the haul road uphill from camp, a faint sound that registers simply as "not the Toolik Taxi". I'm getting colder, but I have heat at my fingertips. The two people at Anaktuvuk will be very cold tonight. They have a tent provided with their emergency gear, but I can't imagine it is enough. The National Weather Service calls for:


TONIGHT...CLOUDY. RAIN LIKELY AFTER MIDNIGHT. PATCHY FOG AFTER
MIDNIGHT. LOWS AROUND 40. SOUTH WINDS AROUND 15 MPH.
.TUESDAY...RAIN LIKELY. SNOW LEVEL FALLING TO 2000 FEET.
ACCUMULATION OF 1 TO 3 INCHES POSSIBLE. PATCHY FOG. TEMPERATURES
STEADY 35 TO 45. VARIABLE WINDS LESS THAN 15 MPH.

The forecasts here cover such a huge area they are often sketchy. It could be 40 on average but locally some parts of the tundra could be much colder. Or, possibly, warmer. I hope it stays dry for them.

Jonas Has Gone Back for the Others..

I heard him approach, then the sound died away. Itkillik Group 2 must be down to 4 now, so he should be able to get all of them back, assuming he can fly back at this point. From the sound he's to our South and West, tracking the Itkillik North. Of course he has a GPS unit but from what little I understand about these things the pilot has to be able to see terra firma in order to fly.

I just can't sleep until I find out what happens next. Until then I'm rather a nervous wreck. I turned off my space heater to be able to hear Jonas' approach, and now that he's gone I can turn the blower back on, but I don't want to miss anything. As with the generator, I imagine that I can still hear the faint hum of the Toolik Taxi.

I guess as I have quite a stomach ache right now and it would be hard to sleep.

It's not quite a MASH episode.

Being real life, it's much more complicated. On my way over to our lab trailer I saw someone hauling some gear and found out she was taking some warm clothing over to the dorms to some of the people who'd returned. Jonas (I wasn't going to use people's names, but I have to say I couldn't not use his name in my last entry, seeing as I've shared meals and movie night and wisecracks with the guy) brought 5 people back (the normal load is 4) and has gone over to Galbraith airstrip to refuel. I asked one of the PIs if he's really equipped to fly in the dark and the answer was that he's really not, but it turns out the Itkillik group is only 14 miles away, and he may be able to use the river's reflection of the twilit sky to get the second group. Two of the people in that group now waiting by the river share our lab with us.

The other two people, at Anaktuvuk, are much farther away and impossible to retrieve at this point. I know one of them slightly, and just recently met the other, who is here for only a short term.

Meanwhile, those that returned have been provided with warm clothes, food, and have been moved to the warmer trailer dorms rather than the vinyl weatherports to spend the night in. The camp manager said that he has re-stoked the sauna too.

Re-fueling will take about a half hour, and at this time of night it's not completely dark (2 am is "solar midnight" up here when the sun is at its lowest point).

I hear him. At least I think it's him. It's way darker now too. Jonas be careful, be safe!

Yep, that's him, he's coming back. I'm sure he's been in contact with his flight coordinator on what he should do next.

THEY MADE IT!!!

The helicopter just flew past my weatherport. I heard the flight truck roar out to the road to go meet them. Since there are a total of 11 people it remains to be seen how many returned, and whether the pilot will go back for the others.

The rotors are still on, so it's possible he might hot offload that group and go back out. It's sometimes hard to tell because for hot offloading as well as for shutdown the rotors are kept revolving at a lower speed, so he will shortly now either shut down or rev up again to get the others. HE'S GOING BACK!!

It's got to be extremely risky doing that, but he's going for it.

Godspeed, Jonas!

Monday, August 17, 2009

It's autumn on the tundra.

In what seems like no time at all the foliage has turned all shades of red, gold, purple, orange, and the weather has alternated between brilliantly sunny and mild to bouts of rain and snow.

It is my last week, and after something like seventy days, life has settled into a rather comfortable and predictable routine for the most part. The week started like every other that I've seen since I came to Toolik. You wake up, have a hot breakfast and begin your day. This may consist of long hours in the field, or it may involve a long stretch in the lab at your computer or weighing and measuring samples. For two separate groups today it meant a helicopter ride to the Anaktuvuk River burn site. Various projects are being carried out there; we did our vegetation sampling late last month, and practically every week some group has scheduled a flight out there throughout the entire summer.

I didn't see them leave today, I barely remember the helicopter taking off this morning, the sound has become so routine. Perhaps it is for this reason we informally call it the "Toolik Taxi". It was cloudy this morning but the ceiling was high and it was good flying weather. By late afternoon the clouds broke up and it got quite warm and pleasant. My group did some field measurements at a local site, we took a Toolik van and spent about 2 or 3 hours scoring vegetation for the presence of pathogens and herbivore damage before returning to camp for another excellent dinner.

By that time it had become a beautiful clear evening, and shortly after dinner I signed out a camp bike and went for a ride on the local gravel roads. Partly because I had quite a bit of dessert (apple crisp served warm with vanilla ice cream) and partly because the evening was so beautiful I wanted to get one more chance to take a ride on a beautiful evening before I leave camp on Friday. As I rode along I saw some low clouds hugging one of the nearby low rounded mountains just to the north and west of camp. I did my usual circuit of the old camp pad, the end of the old airstrip, and the "japanese garden" where people have built large cairns from the shore rocks along the west end of the lake. By the time I returned the bike, some 20 minutes later the sunlight was veiled over by mist, and in a matter of minutes was completely obliterated. It seemed too quick that the camp had become shrouded in such a thick fog. I tried to remember if I'd seen the helicopter on my way out. The helicopter pad is on the main road near the entrance gate, and I seemed to remember that the pad had been empty. Yes, it was, because on my way out I saw a ladder sitting out there, and thought of the song "Stairway to Heaven" thinking that was kind of funny because the ladder which is normally used by the mechanic to get on top of the helicopter lead to nothing but thin air.

It became clear by degrees that the two groups who had left early this morning would now be stuck in the fog. We kept hearing updates through the grapevine once someone checked in with the flight coordinator, who was in satellite phone contact with the pilot. At the last update at 10 PM there was a group of nine including the pilot camped on the Itkillik River. They had a fire going and everyone was fine and in good spirits. Each time you fly you are given one or two green rubber bags that contain or are supposed to contain a tent, sleeping bag, and some food in case of such strandings. The pilot always brings extra sleeping bags and food, and though there were only three bags and nine people it seemed that their situation was stable.

The other group consists of just two people with a survival tent and no sleeping bags. Their situation is much more worrisome, and although they are at the same burn site, it is such a large area, consisting of several hundred square miles, it would be next to impossible for them to make it to the other group.

They are out in a vast and wild area far from the nearest road (which is the Dalton), it's getting dark, and there are wolves and grizzly bears no doubt roaming around in the near dark out there in search of errant rutting caribou.

I find it especially hard to sleep now. It is the time of year when it gets dark up here, almost pitch dark, and even if the fog were to lift it is now too dark to fly. So they will be stuck there until at least the morning, when hopefully the fog will lift.

Yesterday I rode the camp bike to my favorite local spot and lay down on a dry heath covered hill under the brilliant sunshine. When I returned from my ride a group of people had set up a net near our lab and were playing a lively game of badminton. We had had ham steaks, scalloped potatoes, and bread pudding in whiskey caramel sauce for our Sunday dinner. Life here, up to now, has been rather good.

On my way to my room tonight I heard a humming in the air and for a second thought it was the helicopter. It was the diesel generator that hums away 24-7 at the edge of camp, providing us our heat and hot water and electricity so that we can do our work and eat and sleep in comfort. Up until now I have tuned the sound out of my life here as a kind of white noise.

I'd do anything to hear that helicopter right now. I have the feeling the minute we hear that baby coming we are all gonna run like hell up to the pad to greet them. Like a MASH episode, our MASH episode.

Guys, I hope you're safe and warm tonight. Come back soon!

Sunday, August 9, 2009

I will be leaving camp in twelve days.

For weeks we've enjoyed clear, dry weather with temperatures in the low 70's. Today it is around 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Yesterday evening became windy and rainy and overnight changed to snow! I went to bed with my weatherport rocking in the storm, and woke up to a transformed landscape. The hills around camp are dusted in white, and low clouds to the south are beginning to lift, revealing the crags of the Brooks Range sharply delineated in blues and greys against the pure white of its north slopes shining under the morning sun.

The light coating of snow has a way of bringing out the contours of the tundra much like a charcoal sketch, unlike the velvety effect that occurs at the height of summer when the land is covered in actively photosynthesizing greenery.

I will be leaving camp in twelve days.

To say I have enjoyed my stay here is a poor way of conveying all the I have experienced during the summer. At this point with just under two weeks to wrap things up, I can say that I wish I had more time and yet I am ready to leave. Last night before falling asleep I realized that it has been sixty-two days since I have heard a car's honk, a dog's bark, a child's cry, a jet plane engine, an ambulance or police siren, a car alarm, or the jingling bells of the ice cream men that ride through our neighborhood with their tricycles this time of year.

I have heard very frequently the wail of the yellow-billed loon, the two-note chatter of the siksik (the arctic ground squirrel) which sounds just like its name, and the shrill caw-caw-caw of a small band of ravens who like to come sit on our our chimneys and check us out. I have decided that what they are saying is: LOOK EVERBODY, A WOMAN HAS JUST COME OUT OF THE TOILET!

I've also heard on a practically daily basis the roar of the helicopter, various vehicles, pumps and machinery that are what keeps this place functioning, and at night it's not uncommon to hear banjos, guitars and voices coming from the music tent, or the raucous roar of people whooping it up after hours by the bonfire.

This morning I awakened to the completely new sound of sheets of snow sliding down the sides of my weatherport. This morning in the lab I can hear by my window the patter of water dripping from the downspout as the day warms and the snow, perhaps, decides to pay us only a brief visit.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Helicopters and Food. Oh, Boy!

I wanted to write at greater length about two topics I've already touched upon before: helicopters and food. They deserve a second mention, partly because they are not normally something that you get for free in the course of earning a paycheck, and partly also because they are two of the more sublime fringe benefits of being here.

The pilots will joke that they are glorified taxi drivers taking researchers to their various study sites dotting the tundra, but when it comes down to it, flying a helicopter over mountainous terrain fully loaded with people and their gear that often includes sensitive and costly scientific instruments, live samples, and sometimes dangerous chemicals, has to take a backbone of steel. Just prior to liftoff the cabin of the aircraft vibrates considerably and the sound is deafening (earplugs are always given to each passenger and headphones for hearing and communicating with the pilot must be worn, not to mention seatbelts). At liftoff, the helicopter makes a tremendous effort to get airborne vertically, after which the pilot is able to fly forward and gain altitude. For all that power, takeoffs and landings almost feel like levitation because they are so smooth, and, except for the engine noise, almost barely noticeable. One minute you are flying a couple thousand feet over what looks like a nubby carpet of vegetation, the next minute you see individual tussocks and shrubs just a few feet below, and before you know it you're on terra firma--with nary a bump to to indicate you've just made contact with the earth. If the pilot can't see the ground below, then he will not fly. Several times we had gotten ready to fly and were told we had to wait in camp due to heavy fog. On our last trip--to the Sag-Atigun Valley on Friday for a one-day sampling of four transects with a team of eight people--heavy smoke from a wildfire about a hundred miles south of our location almost totally obscured the view of the mountains surrounding the valley, and the pilot had to hurry to get both groups returned to camp in a timely manner as the smoke and dimming evening light was making it difficult to see. In situations where other groups are waiting out on the tundra for a pick up, we often "hot" unload our gear, with the rotors still turning. During a hot load/unload you are instructed to stand close to the aircraft, have one person in charge of unloading everything from the baggage compartment in the rear, and exit as a group at a 90 to 45 degree angle from the pilot's window, making sure that he sees all of you and gives you a thumbs up first before you leave. Also important is not approaching the helicopter from uphill--lest you run the risk of decapitating yourself!

That is it for now about helicopters. I wanted to say more about the food. Or just at least pay tribute to the fantastic made-from-scratch menu here through a litany of some of the dishes I've had recently:

Bell peppers stuffed with spicy chunks of beef and topped with cheese, Peruvian style; nectarines in sugar syrup with fresh mint over home made shortbread with creme fraiche; tandoori chicken and indian vegetable curry over basmati rice; sesame butter cookies; vegetable lasagne, caesar salad, and classic tiramisu; potato-kale soup; pumpkin pancakes with real maple syrup; apple cranberry muffins; apricot almond scones; arugula with peach poppyseed dressing; mexican chocolate cookies; classic flan; blackberry pie; seared tuna steaks with a black sesame crust; blue corn sourdough bread; African peanut soup (one of my favorites!); cold slabs of jerk chicken; buttermilk pancakes; roast cornish hen in apricot sauce; roast turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce; green bean casserole with french onion topping; carmelitas (mexican chocolate caramel brownies); Korean barbecued short ribs; macadamia nut torte; minted mango chutney over fresh vanilla custard; plum tart.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Anaktuvuk River Fire

For the past two days my workday consisted of a daily commute by helicopter to the Anaktuvuk river valley where in 2007 a large tundra fire burned from mid July until the end of September. From the ground the burned area spreads in every direction as far as the eye can see, all 250 thousand acres of it.

For two days as we rode to our destination I looked down upon the earth's skin. Every wrinkle and fold, vein and artery, was made visible from that elevation: spines of protruding rock, gushing rivers, lakes and ponds and pools dotting the tundra like a never-ending golf course, ice wedge polygons fracturing the velvety green with thin reddish clay gashes, slopes of wave-like vegetation that from above resemble lumps of melted green wax. Some terrain resembled alligator skin: green, hexagonal, disturbingly alive like the hide of a living being.

The burn site itself is now largely covered in vegetation, but the burned black ground still shows beneath. Walking on burned tundra is even harder than unburned, the tussocks protrude even more to trip you up as you lug your gear and survival bags to your point of origin to being the day of measuring and sampling plot by plot.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Mosquitoes: More than you want to know

If you are going to be out on the tundra in midsummer, a mosquito net is not only necessary but vital. Mosquitoes are swarming all over the tundra this time of year, and there are several options for protective gear. One is to go with a simple mesh net with a wide brim that covers the head. This is great if you just want face protection, but it does nothing to stop them from biting you through your clothes or on your bare hands. For full upper body protection nothing beats the Bug Shirt--a pullover made of a tightly woven synthetic fabric that the proboscis of a mosquito can't penetrate. It also features a cleverly constructed zippered mesh face net and long, adjustable elastic sleeves to cover your wrists and hands. My bug shirt works wonderfully and also provides a bit of thermal insulation on cool days (arctic mosquitoes seem to be just as happy to suck your blood at 40 degrees Fahrenheit as at 60). To complete my ensemble and protect my hands I usually wear a pair of neoprene lab gloves and, as you can see from the thumbnail image, I look like a spaceman! Besides the bug shirt's zero style factor, its other chief drawback is that in hot weather (namely, July 2009 on the North Slope) you roast inside it like a chicken in an oven bag. The other drawback is its limited vision. But you adjust, and go about your days looking out at this remote, vast and uniquely beautiful landscape essentially through a black veil.

The other day I was up slope collecting samples and I decided that with the abundant sunshine and cool breezes the mosquitoes weren't such a problem, and I was dying for some ventilation, so I unzipped the head net and cast aside my veil.

I looked around me, and suddenly realized I could see every contour of every leaf for quite a distance with a clarity I can only describe as hallucinatory. Every blade of grass and each leaf and petal stood out in perfectly razor sharp relief all around me for acres and acres. It was like I suddenly had Superman vision!

Before long the wind calmed and the mosquitoes once again found me and began to glom onto me like a bunch of groupies trailing a famous celebrity. Alas, I was just some warm body in a khaki colored mosquito shirt spending the summer in Alaska. I zipped my veil back up and went back to my collecting.

Today I called my family on my computer using Skype, and I was able to take them on a tour of Toolik camp. It was fun to talk to all of them, my dad, stepmom, sister and her boyfriend, and my two younger brothers. I borrowed a pair of earphones from a friend and was able to hear everyone's voice so clearly. I had a camera in my laptop that allowed them to see pictures as I tramped around camp holding the laptop, and I could picture all of them all gathered around my sister's computer though I could not see them. We chatted for about a half hour, and I hated to say goodbye. Luckily the camp was quiet today due to so many people out on hikes, but after we said goodbye I had to have a moment in the wash house to wipe my eyes. I had recently been offered a year long position in Fairbanks, and my husband and I decided I should take it, so we announced to our families about a week ago that we are moving to Fairbanks in early September. My folks were surprised and also thrilled at the news, and said to me today: You sound like you really love it up there. And so I do. But I also realized how great my family is and how much I am going to miss them.

My girlfriend had warned me that I would fall in love with Alaska the way you fall in love with a lover. It's completely true--I would do anything to make this relationship work! And already I can see it's an unequal partnership: Alaska says jump and I jump. It will turn beastly cold and dark after the middle of September so I will be flying home to my husband at the end of August to pack our things and rent a vehicle to drive across the vastness of North America together to begin our new life in Fairbanks.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Time is going by much faster than I thought it would.

Sometimes it's a shame to go to bed on a beautiful sunny arctic evening. Summer up here is so short, you just want to savor it as much as you can.
For the first few nights I counted the days I would see my husband instead of counting sheep. Now I'm counting the hours in the day hoping I have enough time to get everything done! We typically work 10 to 14 hour days, and some people probably work more. It just becomes natural when there's 24 hours of daylight: it's hard to explain but you just don't feel as tired when it's 10 PM and the sun is shining over the lake and the mountains are glowing to the southeast and songbirds are flying about and the yellow billed loon pair that lives here are singing their weird, wolflike duet as they glide over the water like an old married couple taking an evening stroll together. On such evenings the grad students and REUs are kicking up the dust of the camp pad in shorts and tee shirts playing a lively game of soccer in front of the lab trailers, and some people usually end up the next day wearing bandages or duct tape on their glasses.

Two days ago our beautiful 70 degree weather was washed away by cloudy skies and a strong gale that hammered away at the tents early in the morning. The wind was so strong it shook the platform under my bed, and I scrambled to look out the window and saw the through the curtains of rain that the ground around our tent city was covered in a few inches of water. It subsided, but ever since the weather has been chilly, rainy and foggy. The flowers that were so profuse and colorful have begun to fade, and were coated in droplets of bright cold water that reminded me of October in Chicago. I took my camera while collecting samples and tried to capture images of the droplets covering the foliage like tiny diamonds, and I realized how much I love it here, rainy or foggy or bright and sunny, windy or still and humming with mosquitoes.

We have not seen the mountains for the last 48 hours. The valley has been ringed by thick clouds that look like they are touching the green tundra just a few hundred feet away. When you can see the Brooks Range it is probably going to be a decent day. In about seven days the sun will begin to drop behind the horizon and we will have a taste of the long darkness to come.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Prudhoe Bay: Are We There Yet?

Yesterday I was lucky enough to find myself in a van with 10 journalists headed due north of camp to Prudhoe Bay. The journalists came to Toolik as part of a two-week Polar Science Fellowship administered through the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. One of the journalists had an interview scheduled at Toolik that day and gave up her seat on the tour, and I happened to be walking by just as she was trying to figure out what to do about the open spot. The next morning I had a seat in the tour van which left camp about 8 am and took the haul road north to the Sagavanirktok ("Sag") River valley and on to the Arctic coastal plain. It was a clear sunny morning, and the colors of the sky and mountains against the bright green tundra was almost hallucinogenic; before long we began to see all kinds of wildlife along the road: herds of caribou, a couple of moose, a short-eared owl, some jaegers and gulls, a snowy owl, several tundra swans and Canada geese, a golden eagle, a few snow buntings, and finally, at our destination, a plastic goose decoy at the checkpoint gate to the Arctic Ocean.

Prudhoe Bay is run by British Petroleum in partnership with ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. The entire area consists of the oilfields and the adjacent unicorporated town of Deadhorse, which is where the housing and medical facilities for the workers are located, plus a couple of hotels for the tourists: the Caribou Inn and the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. This part of the world very graphically illustrates the dichotomy of the manmade and the natural: onto a vast and primal and poorly understood landscape have been thrust all manner of pipes and wells and buildings and construction rigs, retention ponds and bridges and all the stuff that humans must have in order to lead a life powered by fossil fuels; if you already feel bad about driving your car, the sight of tundra swans and caribou in the shadow of these things will hurt. The irony is that you need a fossil fuel powered vehicle to see it. Even more ironic, a gallon of gas in Deadhorse is $4.00. You would think there would be some kind of Arctic Mafia up here with secret spigots tapping into the mother load all fresh from the well and all but it doesn't work like that. The oil travels the length of Alaska, gets loaded onto barges in Valdez to a refinery, and probably has traveled half the world and seen more and done more in most people's lifetimes before it gushes into the gas tank of your average Alaskan. This rather complicated extraction process more or less was explained in an informational video we were obliged to see at the Caribou Inn at the start of the official tour, where each of us had to present our ID to the driver before we could be allowed to board the tour bus. It is informally known as the "blue valve tour" because halfway through you stop to take pictures of the rigs and a blue Schlumberger valve known as a Christmas Tree. Another stop featured a Halliburton facility where it was allowed that we could take a photograph of the Halliburton sign, complete with gold painted rocks sitting on the pavement below the signpost. I believe Dick Cheney sent those up, our driver commented. Were there any shotgun shells in them? one of us asked.

The tour includes driving through a checkpoint that officially tells you you have left Deadhorse and are now on the oil refinery side of things, right on the Arctic Ocean; in fact, the tour officially encourages visitors to remove their shoes and dip a toe into the ocean, just to be able to tell the folks back home that they did. I rolled up my jeans past my knees and briefly felt the combined painful sting of the cold water and sharp pebbles. A couple of the hardier souls in our group actually stripped to their swimsuits and took a dive. In fact, one of the journalists as I recall stripped off her bathing suit top and dove into the water half naked. I thought to myself: does she do that at every beach she visits or just the Arctic ones? But I have to say it was brave. The driver later presented each of us who wanted one a signed certificate from the Polar Bear Dippers Club. In retrospect I felt a little silly accepting it on my half-hearted effort.

Before heading back to Toolik we decided to stop for coffee at the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. The driver had mistakenly told us there was a Starbucks there, and I was dying for some. Boy were we disappointed. It was the same setup as the Caribou Inn: dingy cafeteria and giftshop, plastic flowers, coffee served in white styrofoam cups. But it was free.

On the return trip we stopped a couple of times along the Franklin Bluffs, a formation of colorful sandstone cliffs that stretches north to south along the Sag River. The later stop was to scope out some distant musk oxen and skip the colorful stones into the water. The earlier stop had a very different purpose. Several of the journalists and scientists had gotten together in camp the day before to form an impromptu dance troupe whose goal was to perform the steps to Michael Jackson's Thriller. The news of his death came just as quickly to Toolik as to every other corner of the world. So this makes me wonder now if there are people in remote Mongolian villages as well practicing claw, claw, step step step clap, shimmy? The goal of the earlier stop was so that the journalists could practice and film what they hoped was the most northerly performance of Thriller ever. I stood on the edge of the Dalton with our designated video cameraman and snapped photos of the performance which wasn't bad considering the audience consisted of four humans and about 100 caribou.

And as tonight is the journalists' last in camp, they and several scientists got together out in front of the dining hall, about two dozen strong, for a full dress performance. The costumes consisted of mosquito veils, bug shirts, and xtra tuff insulated rubber boots. The backdrop consisted of the Brooks Range in late evening sunlight. Even without sound, after a minute or two you could figure out that it was the moves to Thriller. It was quite something to see. I wished I had been there for the first rehearsal to learn the steps. But I tend to find myself sometimes running to keep up with the energy around here. It has taken me until 12:15 am to finish this post. Like Alice, just when I think I've got it something new comes along and leaves me a bit bewildered. Did I ever think I would come to the North Slope to see a performance of Thriller? God no! But as someone here told me not long after I got here, everyone's a bit mad.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

It was a MASH episode today.

The helicopter broke, so no one could get in or out to the combat zones. That meant the dining hall was extra noisy and crowded for lunch, but at least the pilot got to eat a hot meal for a change. He had flown 37 separate missions the day before someone said. No wonder the damn thing is broken another said. What about spare parts? another said. The nearest spare part is probably 400 miles away came the reply.

Then in the middle of lunch there was a temporary power outage, and everyone fell silent. But Radar knew what to do, the power went back on, and the doctors and interns resumed their wisecracks.

The end.

Oh and I almost forgot:

The Michael Jackson Memorial Dance is tonight in the meeting hall.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

O the Endless Days, O the Grizzlies!

In just a few short hours the summer solstice is upon us. The sun never sets at this latitude from May 26 to July 17, so there is really no "longest day" this far north. I arrived June 9, and ever since I've been here each night has looked either like a sunset or sunrise when clear or like a very dim late winter afternoon when cloudy. It hasn't been difficult for me to fall asleep either; there's a three hour time difference between Alaska time and CST, and my body would just start to poop out at about 7 pm for the first week.

There are many young folks here, undergraduates, grad students and post-docs, and they seem to have no trouble staying up into the wee hours and showing up for breakfast at 7:30. Mealtimes are strict here: if you miss the meal service the kitchen staff are kind enough to put leftovers in the fridge which you can microwave. One of the best kept secrets about Toolik: the dining hall head cook is a former haute cuisine chef, and we have some of the best meals! There is always fresh fruit and a tossed salad, the dressings are homemade, and there is always dessert. But not just poundcake and a few tollhouse cookies. Oh, no. The other night we had steaming hot berry cobbler with home made vanilla ice cream. That was the night the chef served pasta with steamed mussels, scallops and shrimp. Friday is usually steak night and our chef prepares rare, medium, and well done steaks, and there is always a vegetarian option and now even vegan options. I thought I was going to lose weight this summer with all the physical exercise, but I've actually put on a few pounds. It's partly because the food is so amazing, and also partly because the weather can go from a very pleasant 60 degrees fahrenheit to about 35 degrees up on the slopes above camp when a chilly fog wafts in from the Arctic Plain. You never want to be out working on an empty stomach because you can start shivering in no time, so a bacon and egg breakfast with biscuit and sausage gravy is the way to go. Unless you're a vegan or vegetarian, for whom a hot bowl of cream of wheat or oatmeal with real maple syrup can be a great tummy warmer. Or the blueberry whole-grain pancakes. Jeeze, I'm getting hungry already. And tonight was lasagne with marinara sauce, caesar salad, and chocolate hazelnut torte for dessert. You would think there would be more bears hanging around camp than there are (total observed bear sightings to date: zero).

Oh yeah, bear mace. Part of the normal daily equipment you're supposed to carry into the field strapped to your belt is a canister the size and color of a small fire extinguisher printed with the words: "Counter Assault Grizzly Tough Pepper Spray." It has a safety like a fire extinguisher, and like a fire extinguisher, should never be deployed except in the event of an actual emergency. Bear attacks are usually prefaced by the bear charging at you full speed. In addition to the real ones there are supposedly "bluff charges" in which the bear supposedly stops just short of reducing you to a small greasy spot on the ground and backs off. I guess the bluff charge is distinguished by the fact that you can actually live to tell someone about it.

In all seriousness I had a very good talk about bears with our resident EMT. When he's not bandaging wounds and saving lives at Toolik he lives in the Kenai Peninsula with his wife and children (the Kenai Peninsula is about 150 miles as the crow flies from Katmai National Park where Timothy Treadwell got eaten by a bear). I asked him if he ever saw a bear on his property and he replied: All the time. I asked if they were ever a problem and he said they weren't but he's taught his teen-aged daughter to use a 12-gauge shotgun just in case (since she is also here I asked her if this is true and she confirmed that it is. And since she's no longer a teenager it is probably a pretty good thing her father taught her). Goosebumps aside, he explained that my fear of being attacked by bears is about as rational as an Alaskan's fear of being attacked by a mugger while visiting Chicago. I've lived in Chicago my entire life and (fortunately) have never been mugged. So there you go. Alaskans don't freak out about bears any more than the average Chicagoan would freak out about being mugged. I don't go out of my way to visit a mugger's natural habitat either, nor do I accidentally bump into the mugger in a dark alley, or walk around with my purse hanging open to tempt a mugging, or leave my door unlocked for him to sneak in. And therefore I've never felt the need to carry a gun. But apparently in Alaska, as careful as you may be about not leaving food out, avoiding surprising them, etc--the shotgun, the bear mace--you have to carry them. Just in case.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Walking on the tundra

is a little like walking on wet sea sponges. You're not supposed to walk on the vegetation around camp, because the wear and tear damages the insulating layer and causes the soil to warm which melts the permafrost beneath and changes the soil and thus the plants that depend on it, so the scientists here have built a network of what they call boardwalks around the camp. The boardwalks extend from camp up the hillsides where various experimental plots have been set up. This is not the same boardwalk sung about so melodiously by the Drifters or fought over in the game of Monopoly. Not by a mile. This boardwalk is a bunch of two by fours or two by sixes or if you're really lucky, two by eights nailed together on little stilts, some of which are even with the ground and some of which are a foot or more above it. There's also an aluminum bridge without rails that sits about five feet above a little creek that flows into the lake. I had to cross the bridge fully loaded with backpack and various equipment in both hands twice a day and try not to lose my balance or faint. The first time I thought I was going to fall over, especially since it had rained and the little creek was more of a raging creek. For the first week I was dreading it, especially when I was following a line of people, because the weight of their footsteps made it extra bouncy, and it only made things worse whenever I looked down. I would get to the other end with my heart racing, trying to keep up my end of the conversation as the person in front of me merrily bounded along telling a story. By the middle of the second week (basically yesterday) I crossed for the first time without the butterflies in my stomach and sweaty palms.

The tundra is basically a mat of vegetation composed of different species that grow together in different combinations or communities. Plant scientists here want to study the effects that global warming may have on the tundra by simulating changes in temperature, light and nutrient content of the soil. They also study the effect of species removal of certain plants from the community to see if any particular species take over. "Species removal" is basically weeding for science. You have to squat over a small plot surrounded by these boards and remove certain plants that are growing inside the plot. To get in the middle of each plot you have to kneel over an aluminum ladder bridge not unlike the one I nearly fell off every morning to get to the plots. Fortunately the ladder bridges are only a few inches over the plots. Some plants can be chopped at the perimeter with pruners, others have to be hand plucked. Moss especially was hard, some plots practically required tweezers. I had moss dreams soon after that. Did I mention there are over 100 plots (that they've told me about so far)? But this is the nature of science: to gather and interpret results from a suite of controlled and replicated experiments, in this case over a period of many years. So there is a lot of grunt work involving hauling lots of things around like plastic bags, garden tools, bags of plant material, buckets of fertilizer, plus all your raingear, bugspray, sack lunch, sunscreen, and of course your mosquito shirt. By now you must know that Alaska is famous for its mosquitoes. More on that later. Oh, and remind me to tell you about the bear mace.

I've been here eight days and I'm not dead!

I haven't fallen into the outhouse pit or been eaten by a bear or been struck by lightning. It took about 12 hours to get here. We had to drive north along the mostly unpaved Dalton Highway which passes through the Brooks Range north to Prudhoe Bay. Our destination was about 100 miles south of that, and about 378 miles north of Fairbanks. In those passing hours I saw nothing but forests of spruce and birch and wondered when the tundra would appear. Even at the Arctic Circle there were forests, and I was kind of disappointed to find it looked more like Yosemite than the arctic. Of course, there were no giant sequoias, and gradually the trees became more and more diminutive until we passed a sign near Coldfoot indicating the very last spruce tree before the beginning of the tundra proper. I was a bit skeptical: surely there is at least one other tree north of that spot growing somewhere out there in all that vast landscape? My experience with wild plants is that they grow wherever they feel like it with no regard for our little imaginary lines.

Most of the time I'd spent in Alaska so far had been very warm, and the weather was great until the very last leg of the trip. The pass over the Brooks Range was wrapped in snow under a chilly fog, and once we got to the North Slope the sky turned dark and we were enveloped in a downpour. My boss drove a two ton government issue truck, but in that rain on that slippery bumpy road it felt like a plastic toboggan. As we drove into camp I remember thinking wow, we made it to some kind of civilization! And what a surprisingly large setup it was: a small city of trailers and trucks and barracks set on a few acres of gravel by a small lake. Two helicopters sat on a pad near the lake which was covered in ice. It was about 10 pm and kind of twilit and dreary. I thought of the theme song from MASH.

They introduced me to the camp manager who introduced me to the different buildings where you do the different things (experiments, sleeping, pooping, washing, etc) and suddenly I found myself alone in a rather musty but carpeted "weatherport" complete with boxspring and mattress, a dresser with three drawers and a small table. Not only that I had a small window, a lightbulb, and an industrial grade outlet to plug my laptop in. I turned on my computer and soon picked up the wireless signal. The wireless here is actually better than some internet cafes. The next day I was to report for duty.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Do you think Darwin had this much trouble?

We're supposed to head to the tundra right now, but we can't leave until I fill out a form.

Monday, June 8, 2009

The sky had 3 AM sunset going on...

It is summer in Fairbanks. Most of us think of this as late spring, the cusp of summer, when temperatures can turn cool and a weekend garden party has to have a backup plan. Especially in the Chicago area where it's been a consistently 55 degree bummer along the lakefront this year. Not Fairbanks. It was 85 degrees and almost blindingly sunny today. Summer starts early here, goes full throttle, then by July they tell me it starts to rain and act like it does in August-September down in the Midwest. But tomorrow I leave for the tundra, so this year I get to experience one or two days of Fourth of July heat followed by a nine hour drive due north from Fairbanks to the land of fifty degrees again. Or something like that. This is truly seasonal shock for me this year. Not to mention the sun never set last night. The sky had 3 AM sunset going on when I woke up to get a drink of water and so I never went back to sleep. But instead of setting the sun changed its mind and zoomed back up into the sky. Because of this they say everyone in Alaska gets a bit nuts, running around, getting summer projects done like squirrels on speed, the outdoor cafes and souvenir shops bustling with tourists, the roads and trails populated by energetic joggers and cyclists. I met a few locals on the bus today that were from the lower 48. They told me they came up for school or vacation, and never left. It is incredibly beautiful here. Fairbanks has its strip mall stretches like everywhere else, but the University is situated on the edge of seemingly endless spruce-birch forest, and the morning air was fresh with the smell of evergreen and wild roses that grow in incredible profusion under the trees. So I feel a little like Alice in Tundra Land, everything's subject to change like a psychedelic dream in very short order, and everyone is running around this weird beautiful landscape like a bunch of Mad Hatters.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

I have never been to Alaska, and I can barely grasp what awaits me.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Fairbanks. I'm a middle aged married woman who has just earned a Master of Science degree one year shy of my 50th birthday. I've always been a nature lover but never thought it would translate into a journey to one of the remotest corners of the planet. Watching programs like Nova or Nature made me envious of the people interviewed, tanned and rugged scientists, people with tough constitutions and supercomputing minds. That doesn't exactly fit my description. But I was offered this position, and I may never get this opportunity again. What do I hope to gain? Experience in a remote area studying the effects of climate change on tundra plants. I've worked my way through school at the University for nearly 8 years, and this is my first chance to do a summer research internship. I hope it opens doors, translates into a full time position in conservation biology. I have always loved plants, and could easily spend the rest of my life studying them. I'm not yet decided on whether I want to launch into a doctoral degree. For now I'd like to be outside learning stuff and getting paid to do it!

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in my town, Evanston, which reminds me of Mayberry. I love Evanston, love the two-flat I rent with my husband Joe and I love our 94 1/2 year old landlady who lives on the first floor. Tomorrow I'll be in Fairbanks. On Monday, orientation at the University. On Tuesday, we truck up to the tundra. I'm going to a vast, remote, mostly cold, very wild and unspoiled place. For the whole summer. Am I prepared? My husband stuffed a giant backpack with my clothes, toiletries and sleeping bag. It weighs fifty pounds ("No, it's only about twenty," he said, cheerfully hefting the thing onto his back). I can't even lift it. But he says there will be people along the way to help me. If it sounds like this is my very first trip, it's not. It's just different. And I'll be away from him, our soft bed, our little garden, our family and friends. For ninety days. I had the graduation/going away party, the dinners with family and friends, the farewell bike ride with the gang. I had margaritas and guacamole and fresh fruit salad last night, as I have the feeling these things are pretty rare where I'm going.