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| it takes restraint to not forage constantly with ripe and ready blueberries at my feet |
I lounge now in our cool (amazing 68 F this morning) Pville
house all calm and relaxed and thinking about baking zucchini bread. It is a good morning for it after all the
heat. Sinking into the patterns of summer,
I realize that I haven’t written anything for this blog in months. I mean, geeze…. Months!
And so much has happened. I
suppose field-work is mostly to blame, but in general, I just find myself distracted. Garden, kitchen, science, family, friends,
house. Where do people find the time? And I don’t even have kids…. Yet…..
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| Syncrude processing plant with sulfur mounds |
I just returned from Alberta where the days are
long and warm and the bugs are blood-thirsty and vicious. I have remnants of black fly evidence all
over my what was once a head-net-covered maligned melon. The little bastards found
ways to sneak past my defenses while I distractedly did my job collecting plants
from the bogs which flank the center of the oil sands activity north of Fort
McMurray. This is what we lovingly call
our field work.
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| Kel, Cara, Brian, and Nate getting ready |
It was a great trip. I mean, really…. One of the best. How many people get to spend two days helicopter hopscotching from bog to bog hoping
to hop out into sloggy wet? Me thinks
not many. But we were able to get our
entire crew of 14 up at one point or another and it was an experience not soon
to be forgotten by any of us.
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| me. copilot. |
As co-pilot all weekend, I got to hang in the
front of the chopper enjoying great views, but also embracing the occasionally heavy
responsibility of actually finding the bogs and directing us to them, and this
is not necessarily as easy as it may sound.
We naively thought we were totally prepared with gps’ed sites gleaned
from satellite images, but as we flew, it was clear that the bogs were not
going to make it that easy for us. You
see… I won’t go into the details of it all, but suffice it to say, bogs and
rich fens look remarkably alike on satellite images, and man, I can assure you:
there are a lot of rich fens up in Alberta.
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| momma with twins |
Ultimately, we accomplished our goals, and I am
happy to say that in the process, our helicopter befuddled and bewildered 5
moose from our sky vantage. We saw beautifully
big rich fens that stretched to the horizon, patterned poor fens ridged and ringed
with vibrant colors, uplands and bogs and a myriad of greens. Alternately, we also saw the massive destruction
of the processing centers, tailings ponds, slag piles, massive mounds of bright
yellow sulfur with their negative pH’s and spontaneous flare-ups, demolished
landscapes, open flames, cutlines and pads, oozing pipes, oily slicks, great
smelly clouds of pollution. Such contrast
of breathtaking beauty surrounding and yielding to bitter destruction made for
a very sensory and complicated experience.
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| theorhetically, there should be no oil in this mess.... but there is.... |
I hope to again, one day, rise into the sky to
absorb the natural beauty spared from the cumulative efforts we are currently
waging, seemingly hell-bent to destroy these intricate and fragile ecosystems. The Boreal forest is a beautiful thing.
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| patterned poor fen with a tiny little bit of bog maybe....beautiful views |
