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.