Dry Run Into Spring

Just about 3 weeks up here and it feels like a lifetime.  I’ve been coming to Meanook for almost 10 years now and it is like a second home.  There have been years where I’ve spent 3-4 months/year up here and so it is quite comfortable from that perspective.  The people are great.  The weather is generally pretty nice.  Bugs usually aren’t too bad at the station.  Lots of green areas to escape to when things get to be too much and quiet time is in order.  All in all it really is quite nice here.  That is probably partially why it feels like I’ve been here forever this year.  The other reasons are not so benevolent.

The workload this year is pretty high with the new project under way and with new projects come new field crews and new ‘discussions’ (read ‘arguments’ on occasion) on which ways are the best ways and wrong ways and sideways.  Tensions have been high for the most part and that is wearing, but we finally have the construction part of it done – except some shed painting and the crew is happy for that.  Now the watering begins and man do we have some cool equipment.  We could fight some fires, ourselves, with all of our fire hoses and pumps.  We will have 2500 gallons of water delivered tomorrow and need to apply it in 55 gallon aliquots throughout the bog and fen.  In all we have about a km of boardwalk.  It is quite the scene….  Yesterday was our dry (wet) run and the water truck got stuck in the ditch -- hopefully, we will be incident free on our first true application tomorrow with all the glitches all being ironed out yesterday.   

Spring is here for sure now – birds are singing and plants are blooming and fully green.  Several white-throated sparrows reside very close to the communal buildings and make a chorus with the local phoebe that resides outside my bedroom window.  Robins are everywhere; as are ravens, and a host of warblers and sparrows.  I have yet to hear the golden crowned kinglet, but hopefully he’ll be back.  He’s my favorite and usually hangs out in the big pines lining the driveway into the compound.  My first hummingbird sighting was two days ago in time for the lilacs that are just thinking about blooming and adding their scent to the cherries and apples that have started to bloom.   Everything is in a rush to get their fleurs out as fast as possible as spring is squished here and leads into summer pretty quickly.  It has been warm except for a few days –was below freezing this morning, for example --  we know to not take it for granted.  It snowed in June last year.  Everyone is hoping for rain for the fires, but for our fieldwork, the lack of rain has made things move forward quite nicely.

So as we continue to make plans and figure out more logistics and prep equipment, the sun still shines.  We are heading out tomorrow for our watering and then to Fort McMurray… which is still plagued with fire, ash, and smoke.   And so while I will be smelling like a wildfire soon, Meanook is now happily smelling of homemade lasagna (homemade sauce, homemade noodles, and all).  Can’t complain about that!  For now, while the getting is good:  bring on the happy hour.

Bad Air

Back from the field today, we find our activities for Fort McMurray area have been suspended due to poor air quality.  There has been an extreme air quality alert now for the northern regions for the past few weeks due to forest fires (particulates are at extremely elevated levels and that is no good for anything).  Also, there is now a fire very close to a road we need to get to a site and if that road went, we wouldn't be able to get back out.  No good there, either. That leaves us with ONE accessible site.  It is the one we have been spending most of our time with, but still....  we have projects that have come to a stand-still.  Roads around Slave Lake remain shut down.

Meanwhile, our new site is replete with boardwalks and we have installed water samplers in the fen and a few in the bog - still ice there, but the ice lens was not that thick.  We can break through without too much effort, but still... a little rough trying to auger through a half a foot of ice.  We have our bear fence up to receive rain collectors and weather station and our fire-fighting hoses are ready to receive the 2000 gallons of water we need to spread about.  We have yet to build a shed out there, but that will be this weekend.   Lots still going on for sure.

Hammer Time

The fires still burn.  The smoke still lingers.  The crap that comes out when I blow my nose is shocking.  We’ve had 2 solid days setting up our plots in the fen/bog complex and I’m afraid the crew may only have one more good day in them before we collapse into big piles of strained muscles and exhaustion.  Thankfully, that may be just what is necessary to get us to where we want to be and then we can then move on to the next step.  We have moved 800 2”x6”x10’ boards plus another 400 (?) Or so 4”x4”s 100m over upland… another 350m through the fen and now need another 200m or so through the bog.   All along we have been building boardwalks with these splintery bruising boards.  My hammer arm is back, but I’m still slow at it.  While some of the longer armed guys pound in the 5” nails with 4-10 strikes, I’m still swinging usually at 15.  Sigh.

Anyway, it has been a long few days and the end is in sight, so that is good all around.  The site was a little smoky this morning as you can see from the picture to the right (taken from the mostly charred upland with a view into the fen).  It was generally hazy all day, but I suspect the smoke was actually from the Fort McMurray fires to our north as the respiratory situation improved with a shifting of the winds to a more easterly direction later in the day.  Fires are still burning everywhere, though they have Slave Lake mostly under control.  Fires are still north, west, and south of Slave Lake and so roads are still closed to the town and to our sites.  I found a detailed map of fire coverage tonight and if my map-reading skills and memory of site skills are all ok and fires chill out, then, our site may have been spared.  Oddly, I wouldn’t have minded if it had burned for the sheer science potential of it all, but it is a site I really like and so that would be painful, for sure, to see it in such a devastated state.  I look forward to seeing how things look up there when this all blows over.

  And so one more full out hammer-and-move-boards-till-my-arms-fall-off-day and that should get us somewhere good.  Days are a little cooler and it has drizzled on occasion, so that has helped with the fire containment.  I haven’t heard of anything around the field station of late and so I think for now things are good.

Early to bed for me today. 

Fire Continued

image courtesy of NASA-EO

Brief update…  Fires are still burning.  We are fairly sure that our site (our major site with equipment, etc) is toast and the roads north of Slave Lake to our sites are still closed as fires still rage.  No one knows when they may be open again or when the fires will be contained.  I believe that is up to the weather and the diligent efforts of firefighters….  More sites in Fort McMurray may potentially be in trouble as a very large uncontrolled fire burns east of our site near the town of McKay.  McKay is being evacuated of folks with respiratory problems.  Smoke is thick there and Oil companies are evacuating processing plants that are in the line of smoke and fire.   No rain yet, just more hot and more wind.  Ironically, the bugs are now wicked as the heavy snow and ice melt here have the wetlands all brimming with water and bugs.  The uplands, on the other hand – dry as a bone.

Smoke came back with a vengeance last night ‘round midnight, 1 AM….   My eyes are burning and tired.  Seems ok now, but I can’t imagine what the firefighters have to deal with.  Here, it is just brief bits of smoke now and again.  

We are off to haul lumber into our fen site two hours north of here on the way to Fort McMurray – interestingly it is a fen surrounded by burned upland.  We just cleared a path there yesterday to get some quads in and I was a mess – full of soot and fine black powder.   Hard to imagine what walking through a fresh site will be like, but I’ll let you know once they let us back in….

Wildfires

And so here I was with a happy little ditty on Fort McMurray and field work and corn nuts all flippantly written up, only to get back to Meanook yesterday from our first expedition (the field station) to learn that basically, the world was on fire.  I’ve grown accustomed to hearing about all of the flooding problems in the US and Canada, but now it is only wildfires on everyone's lips here.

It is interesting to get a new perspective on things now and again and that plays out nearly every time I head to the research station here in Alberta.  I’ve learned that they don’t realize it is flooding in the US and we have no idea it is flooding in Manitoba, either.  They cheer only now for Vancouver to win the Stanley Cup.  For the most part, we could give two flying flips about who wins.  We go about our lives not worrying about wildfires while they are losing everything to the beasts.  If it isn't water, it is fire it seems, here. 

Fire has broken out everywhere in our area and it seems the whole province is on fire depending on who you talk to.  Reliable detailed information is surprisingly difficult to find.  What we do know is that Slave Lake – population around 7000 was evacuated yesterday only very late in the day.  Fires were around the town and fires are fairly common here and so they know what they are doing with the whole firefighting thing.  They weren’t terribly worried and thought they had the fires contained, but Mother Nature decided to bump up the winds to 70-100 kms/hr fueling the fires;  and by the evening, citizens were being told to find large parking lots and to get as close to the lake as possible.  The fires had surrounded the town.  The three roads in and out of Slave Lake were impassable and everyone was trapped.  They got one road open in part with the use of guide trucks forging a flashing trail through the dense smoke and have since safely evacuated everyone.  The fire still burns, but according to the most recent news report, 40% of the town is cinders.

Athabasca, the small town closest to Meanook is now helping hundreds of refugees who are bunking in the local indoor soccer gym…  600 people and their pets have found a home here for now – just a two hours drive from Slave Lake.  More have been sent along toward Edmonton as we cannot house them all, and south is the only way out.  The roads and town are still not accessible.  Winds have died down, but fires still rage out of control.  Fires have sprung up to the east, north, and west of us and smoke permeates the air here at the field station.  I was supposed to lead a group to do some field work at a site we have near Utikuma Lake tomorrow (north of Slave Lake) and have Zero hope of doing so.  There are literally hundreds of hotspots surrounding the roads we must travel and I give it a good percentage that at least one of our sites has burned and no longer even exists as we once knew it.  Ironically, it was once one of our “fire sites” where we studied carbon cycling in bogs based on age of bog…   perhaps we have just reset the clock.   What this all means to us here at the field station remains unclear and the fickle finger of Mother Nature will keep us on our toes for quite some time, I believe.  The helicopter we hired to load equipment into our new site is now being used to fight fires elsewhere and is indeterminately unavailable.  I see a lot of walking with a lot of heavy stuff for a lot of people in our very near future.  Not until a soaking rain, will these fires all be doused.  I am not holding my breath.   I will be heading into the cinder zone as soon as possible, but for now, it is solidly off limits.   We hope for containment for all the fires everywhere here and for now Meanook is smoky but not in the line of fire. 

Be safe wherever you are.  I will keep you updated. 

Mom Genes

I am a gardener.  Actually, my mom’s maiden name is Gardner and I always thought that was pretty cool and appropriate.  I get, at least partially, my love of plants and garden and flowers from her.  I can spend hours wandering through her field guides and poking through her garden.  My green thumb comes to me honestly.  Plants and flowers and green populated our world from before I can remember, and as a kid, as if by osmosis, I think I learned what makes green things happy… it is second nature to me to be in a garden or planting something or planning something for a future garden.  I got this planning gene from my Mom, too…  She is one of the most organized people I know and is always at the ready with a ‘Kit’ for what-have-you.  I am sure her camping kit, for example, is all ready to go right now including kitchen ware, spices, field guides, and plenty of tent pegs for those who may not have enough.  She is a girl scout extraordinaire at the ready for just about everything.   In this vein, I am much more cluttered and I am ok with a bit more of a mess but that gene is there in its own ramshackle sort of way and has manifested itself, for example, in my garden notebook .  I catalog what plants work, what doesn’t work, what blooms when, maps of where things are planted and when, time-lines for germination and so on ad nauseum.  This cataloging gene is definitely from my mom and I thank her for what bits of it made it to me. 

And, like the gardening thing, we both feel very much at home in the kitchen.  Unlike me, though, my Mom is an excellent baker.  She can whip up pies, for example, that completely stymie me.  I am afraid of pie crusts.  I am fairly confident they have something against me. I can whip up a crumb crust, but beyond that, I have limits....       What comes out of my oven are often lumps not even half as good as the delights that come out of hers.  As I scientist with a creative side, you would think I would be better at it than I am, but in general, I am solidly dismal.  As one example of many I could share, my bread-making resolution this year has yielded not one great loaf of bread yet….   It is a mystery to me.  I am sure, if my mom decided to bake a battard, it would come out perfectly.   She is organized and methodical and I’m sure this helps.  I have lovely memories of cookies and cakes my mom has made over the years, and every time something comes out of the oven halfway decent in my kitchen I think I may be one step closer to that, but know I will never quite get there.  That magical sort of sweet hot aura surrounding a fresh baked cake doesn't happen very often in my kitchen.  I am more often looking at recipes as simply a guide or inspiration and then go my own way -- this works so much better when I am not baking.  Savory dishes are more my cup of tea.  My off-roading mentality lends itself nicely to creative meals and so it all works out well when we get together and cook.  I look forward to her pies and cookies, and I think she enjoys sharing my creative meals.

 

And so, Mom…   I look forward to the next time we cook and to seeing your garden and showing you mine.  Happy Mother’s Day a few days late for the Blog world, but I feel so very happy and lucky to have you in my life for not just the above-mentioned traits you so deftly passed along to me.  You are a source of unending support and love and I appreciate and love you whole-heartedly.  May your kitchen and garden be filled with delights.  I hope to share them both with you very soon.

Pepper Prep Day

With Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers keeping me company, it's a beautiful day to be here in the garden.  My irises began blooming today (my tree peony is on its way out) and I'm prepping the garden to receive some peppers.   After hardening my plants this past week, it is finally about the right temp for planting (over 55 F at night) and gives me just enough time to make sure they are happy and stable pre Canada fun.  

It is a beautiful day, and with music blaring, dirt under the nails, and plenty of green potentials:  what could be better??  I can tell you....  a bigger garden, I think, and maybe some friends and a beer!  I'll have to work on the friends and beer part.   

If you get a chance, check out Cross Country Nurseries in Rosemont, NJ (http://www.chileplants.com/).  They are a hop, skip, and jump from me, and also cater to the mail order crowd.  They have a fantastic selection of every kind of pepper you can dream of.  According to their website, they have 500 types of peppers, 175 types of tomatoes and 50 types of eggplant. I ended up with 13 pepper plants and 8 kinds of basil.  One lonely tomato (Coyote Tomato) made it into my flat along with an eggplant.  We shall see how my garden grows and if they will all fit in it.  Every year my eyes are bigger than my garden, but believe it or not, I actually scaled back this year.   I look forward to several types of bell peppers, a few types of jalapeno, a few Thai standbys, an Ammazzo, a Limon, and a Sheepnose pimento.   I have no idea what some of these are going to be like, but what's the fun of knowing exactly what you're going to end up with?  Bring on the Capsicum.