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 27, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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