Canadian, not dead
obligatory apology-for-not-having-updated: Yeah, yeah, I haven't written anything in this LJ for approximately eight bajillion years. I am deeply sorry.
Now that that's over with...
I realized recently that many of you have no idea where I am or what I'm doing, and so I thought I should try to remedy that.
I am in Bamfield.
The Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre is a marine station at the mouth of Bamfield Inlet. Bamfield is a tiny-ass town (pop. 300) at the edge of freaking nowhere on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It is divided into two halves by the aforementioned Bamfield Inlet; one half is slightly more out of reach than the other. East Bamfield is only accessible by logging road: 2 hours of twisty, winding, gravel road, one-lane bridges, and fully loaded logging trucks. West Bamfield is only accessible by boat. Each half boasts one general store and one restaurant; the east side also, thank God, has a pub. Basically, this means I do my grocery shopping via rowboat and sing to myself when I'm walking alone at night to warn bears that I'm coming.
Lest I protest too much, the place also boasts humpbacks, porpoises, bald eagles, snowy mountains in the distance, and scenery like this
(that was a view from the library) and this (the rest of my Bamfield Flickr set).
You may ask yourself: what the hell is she doing in Bamfield besides gawping at the scenery and the photogenic charismatic megafauna? And I will tell you: I am torturing starfish. Basically, I'm looking at the properties of their tube feet with varying wave exposures. What this means is, I go out in a little tiny boat and scrape starfish off rocks and bring them back to the lab and pull on their feet. It's a rough job, and nobody's got to do it, but I am anyway.
I'm living in a cabin with three other graduate students. We got the good cabin: our walls are actually sheetrock, instead of unfinished chipboard. The weather thus far has been flat-out gorgeous (for Vancouver Island), but it's still Vancouver Island, I'm still in a place that gets three meters of rain per year, and I have become intimately familiar with the joys of raincoats, rainpants, rubber boots, and getting wet anyway.
While the place is seriously isolated, there are still a lot of people who come through here: students of the marine station, sport fishermen, people who are hiking the West Coast Trail, adventurous mountain bikers, and so forth. The social life revolves around 1.) Happy Hour on Friday afternoon at the station, which is run by the grad students -- the beer is cheap and you cannot beat the scenery, 2.) the pub, where last call is at midnight, and 3.) the monthlyish Fire Hall dances. These are put on by the Bamfield Volunteer Fire Fighters' Association, and happen in (duh) the Fire Hall, which in any other place would be known as the Fire Station. This is because in any other place, the Fire Station would not include a bar and a stage. If you know nothing else about Bamfield, know that the town is fully aware of how to throw a party.
So that's where I am, and that's what I'm doing. My dad would refer to it as "summer at the beach with pay," although the water is really too cold to go swimming. It's a hell of a place -- I spend a lot of time just looking out over the water. The nightcrawler in the apple, of course, is that Matt is still in Edmonton, and I won't see him until mid-August. If only Bamfield had a major engineering firm...
till next time (and God knows when that will be), I miss you all, and have lots of space for anyone who wants to come visit. Lots.
Now that that's over with...
I realized recently that many of you have no idea where I am or what I'm doing, and so I thought I should try to remedy that.
I am in Bamfield.
The Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre is a marine station at the mouth of Bamfield Inlet. Bamfield is a tiny-ass town (pop. 300) at the edge of freaking nowhere on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It is divided into two halves by the aforementioned Bamfield Inlet; one half is slightly more out of reach than the other. East Bamfield is only accessible by logging road: 2 hours of twisty, winding, gravel road, one-lane bridges, and fully loaded logging trucks. West Bamfield is only accessible by boat. Each half boasts one general store and one restaurant; the east side also, thank God, has a pub. Basically, this means I do my grocery shopping via rowboat and sing to myself when I'm walking alone at night to warn bears that I'm coming.
Lest I protest too much, the place also boasts humpbacks, porpoises, bald eagles, snowy mountains in the distance, and scenery like this
(that was a view from the library) and this (the rest of my Bamfield Flickr set).
You may ask yourself: what the hell is she doing in Bamfield besides gawping at the scenery and the photogenic charismatic megafauna? And I will tell you: I am torturing starfish. Basically, I'm looking at the properties of their tube feet with varying wave exposures. What this means is, I go out in a little tiny boat and scrape starfish off rocks and bring them back to the lab and pull on their feet. It's a rough job, and nobody's got to do it, but I am anyway.
I'm living in a cabin with three other graduate students. We got the good cabin: our walls are actually sheetrock, instead of unfinished chipboard. The weather thus far has been flat-out gorgeous (for Vancouver Island), but it's still Vancouver Island, I'm still in a place that gets three meters of rain per year, and I have become intimately familiar with the joys of raincoats, rainpants, rubber boots, and getting wet anyway.
While the place is seriously isolated, there are still a lot of people who come through here: students of the marine station, sport fishermen, people who are hiking the West Coast Trail, adventurous mountain bikers, and so forth. The social life revolves around 1.) Happy Hour on Friday afternoon at the station, which is run by the grad students -- the beer is cheap and you cannot beat the scenery, 2.) the pub, where last call is at midnight, and 3.) the monthlyish Fire Hall dances. These are put on by the Bamfield Volunteer Fire Fighters' Association, and happen in (duh) the Fire Hall, which in any other place would be known as the Fire Station. This is because in any other place, the Fire Station would not include a bar and a stage. If you know nothing else about Bamfield, know that the town is fully aware of how to throw a party.
So that's where I am, and that's what I'm doing. My dad would refer to it as "summer at the beach with pay," although the water is really too cold to go swimming. It's a hell of a place -- I spend a lot of time just looking out over the water. The nightcrawler in the apple, of course, is that Matt is still in Edmonton, and I won't see him until mid-August. If only Bamfield had a major engineering firm...
till next time (and God knows when that will be), I miss you all, and have lots of space for anyone who wants to come visit. Lots.