Field Tribulations
Up in northern Louisiana again. It's a lonely place. It's a place that makes me drive 20 miles further north just to get somewhere I can get cell phone reception and maybe a little internet for a few hours. It wouldn't be so lonely if there was someone else at the bunkhouse. I wouldn't have to talk to them much, but just have them there so I don't feel so isolated. I mean, it's nice to be able to get out and sunbathe in the nude for once, but if only I had someone to sunbathe nude with!
The trails all closed in over the end of the summer and through the winter. Even after going through with two machetes and a backpack sprayer filled with five gallons of Round-up, I couldn't find my trails two days ago when I went out to do my first surveys. Jan and I were up here three weeks ago hacking and cutting and I still couldn't find the trails. Navigating through that kind of vegetation is like swimming against the current in an inlet filled with jellyfish; you know you're close, but you just can't seem to get anywhere and every move you make has a painful consequence. Rubus everywhere, nipping and biting at your morale until you just want to give up... then you realize you're 400 meters in and there's no way to get out but to just take a breath and plunge through harder and faster. And every minute it's getting hotter. As the sun rises the temperature creeps up and the shade of the morning slowly disappears. With the heat come the insects. Fire ants, mosquitoes, and biting gnats.
And you're supposed to be concentrating on the birds.
Knowing how bad it got last summer, and with a brand new, bad-ass machete in hand, I decided I've had enough. I've spent the last three days cutting TRAILS. Real, 5-foot-wide trails with nothing but a mat of dead vegetation within the boundaries. Rubus, Eupatorium, Baccharis, Callicarpa- it all got cut down and back no matter how harmless. I cut them myself, at a pace of about a meter a minute- for over a mile's worth of thicket. Three days later, I can't close my left hand, both because of the blisters and the muscle soreness.
My forearms look like I tried to wrestle ten angry cats at once, the scratches interspersed with little blistery bumps from when I put my field bag on top of a fire ant nest, then put it back on without realizing until it was too late. Those fuckers are tricky in dry weather. In wet weather at least they build mounds above the ground to keep their tunnels from flooding. In dry weather the nests are invisible until you step on them, and if you don't watch the ground for at least ten seconds anytime you want to stand in one place for more than that span of time, they'll pour themselves all over you before you even realize it. And the stings aren't like mosquito bites either. The stings form little pustules, like white-heads that itch for a week straight, and when you scratch them, they scab up and just keep on itching. A local laughed at me yesterday for hiking in knee-high mud boots. When I said it was to protect me from the snakes and the fire ants, he looked at me like I was crazy. I know what he was thinking; why go out there in the first place if you have to wear that kind of gear? For science, man. It'll all be worth it when I get my degree.
So anyway, now I have nice trails all through Site B, what was the second worst site after the infamous Site C last year. I put so much effort into making trails on Site C that it's now my easiest site to navigate. Now Site B is done. My next task is getting Site D into shape. And as for Site A, well, it's always been the kindest to me. I hope that trend continues this year.
So in two more days my first round will be done and I'll start the cycle over again. Then I'll truly get to see how well these new and improved trails hold up.
And hopefully also get to pay more attention to the birds.
The trails all closed in over the end of the summer and through the winter. Even after going through with two machetes and a backpack sprayer filled with five gallons of Round-up, I couldn't find my trails two days ago when I went out to do my first surveys. Jan and I were up here three weeks ago hacking and cutting and I still couldn't find the trails. Navigating through that kind of vegetation is like swimming against the current in an inlet filled with jellyfish; you know you're close, but you just can't seem to get anywhere and every move you make has a painful consequence. Rubus everywhere, nipping and biting at your morale until you just want to give up... then you realize you're 400 meters in and there's no way to get out but to just take a breath and plunge through harder and faster. And every minute it's getting hotter. As the sun rises the temperature creeps up and the shade of the morning slowly disappears. With the heat come the insects. Fire ants, mosquitoes, and biting gnats.
And you're supposed to be concentrating on the birds.
Knowing how bad it got last summer, and with a brand new, bad-ass machete in hand, I decided I've had enough. I've spent the last three days cutting TRAILS. Real, 5-foot-wide trails with nothing but a mat of dead vegetation within the boundaries. Rubus, Eupatorium, Baccharis, Callicarpa- it all got cut down and back no matter how harmless. I cut them myself, at a pace of about a meter a minute- for over a mile's worth of thicket. Three days later, I can't close my left hand, both because of the blisters and the muscle soreness.
My forearms look like I tried to wrestle ten angry cats at once, the scratches interspersed with little blistery bumps from when I put my field bag on top of a fire ant nest, then put it back on without realizing until it was too late. Those fuckers are tricky in dry weather. In wet weather at least they build mounds above the ground to keep their tunnels from flooding. In dry weather the nests are invisible until you step on them, and if you don't watch the ground for at least ten seconds anytime you want to stand in one place for more than that span of time, they'll pour themselves all over you before you even realize it. And the stings aren't like mosquito bites either. The stings form little pustules, like white-heads that itch for a week straight, and when you scratch them, they scab up and just keep on itching. A local laughed at me yesterday for hiking in knee-high mud boots. When I said it was to protect me from the snakes and the fire ants, he looked at me like I was crazy. I know what he was thinking; why go out there in the first place if you have to wear that kind of gear? For science, man. It'll all be worth it when I get my degree.
So anyway, now I have nice trails all through Site B, what was the second worst site after the infamous Site C last year. I put so much effort into making trails on Site C that it's now my easiest site to navigate. Now Site B is done. My next task is getting Site D into shape. And as for Site A, well, it's always been the kindest to me. I hope that trend continues this year.
So in two more days my first round will be done and I'll start the cycle over again. Then I'll truly get to see how well these new and improved trails hold up.
And hopefully also get to pay more attention to the birds.