Take Off, Eh?

Another successful October field trip to the great white north.  Snowflakes splat against the windshield as we head south from Fort McMurray back ‘home’ to Meanook via the Mariana Fen, and we are all warming our toes after trekking through the very cold and soupy fen that buffers our site just south of the Fort McMurray airport.  Snow fell last night, too, and let me tell you, picking and finding vegetation and collecting water is extra fun with a cover of the white-stuff on everything.  Surprisingly, it went pretty smoothly: black spruce branches make excellent brooms, and thankfully, we restocked on hand-warmers last night.  We’re pros.

But, even for seasoned veterans of the bog world, this trip was oh-so challenging.  Cramming in a gazillion things in so little time with so little wiggle room is a dangerous thing to do, but we seem to seek out the challenge time and again.  To boot, the weather is unpredictable and the forecasters haven’t gotten anything right for the duration of this entire trip.  Thankfully, we squeezed in Utikuma early, though, even then, we barely made it in or out.  We only went sideways a couple of times on the treacherously muddy oil roads and by whatever grace we may have, didn’t end up in a ditch.  Getting stuck has happened before and I’m guessing it will probably happen again, but not this trip.  It makes me uncomfortable when the steering wheel is just a suggestion for tires that are perpendicular to the forward (or sideways) progress.  Agita.   

And speaking of feeling sick….  Fort McMurray was most ugly this time around.  I guess I say that every time, but ugh…. It is so depressing.  Two of our sites are heavily impacted by the pollution and bizarrely, our normally forest-green mosses are turning teal and then dying at the site closest to the processing plants.  Something very bad is happening at that smelly site, and this is nothing any of us has ever seen.  Fort McMurray, once in a most beautiful part of the world, now oozes mud and toxic grey destruction.  They are fucking the Earth up royally and are proud of it. 

And so it is good to be heading back to Meanook.  The forest along the road turns white from trees dressed in crystalline sweaters and dropping temperatures and as we finished up at Mariana, so, too, have we finished up the field season.  We are all ready to head home for good for a bit -- just in time for winter to hit Alberta.  It was a long run this year and I am tired and burnt out – I think we all are, but there is still so much to do in the lab.   As I bask in the white world around me now, I daydream of blue Caribbean waters and warm sunshine on my face and days and days of only having to remember to put on sunscreen.   I am feeling decidedly unhealthy. 

But for now, back to Meanook we go.  And then home again home again soon there-after.  The snow is good, but home is a much better trade-off.  I look forward to it being my island respite for a bit.

Lingonberries, Bogs, and Bears

I just got back from a quick and wildly jam-packed trip to Alberta.  Two days into it and our sense of time was acutely distorted, and by the end we were all spinning.  Exhausting, but enjoyable, these fall trips to the boreal wetlands are usually my favorites.  The trees are turning gold, frost whitens the grasses in the pre-dawn light, and I am reminded that the heat of eastern PA will soon be a memory.  I can deal with some cool after this summer, and wow it was nice to wear a scarf again.

Into the field and along the trails, we foraged with the bears for cranberries, sweet and earthy honkin'-big blueberries, and the best lingonberries I’ve ever had.  Evidence for bears sharing our space was both interpreted and direct.  They were busy leaving piles of evidence everywhere.  I don’t blame them.  Those berries are irresistible.  Unbeknownst to us, a very large black bear joined us at Utikuma as we sprayed our plots with water (a paradox, I know) tromped out in backpack sprayers, and as he wandered into view with his head in the verdure, we took our cue and left the bounties of the bog to our fuzzy and somewhat scary friend.  Our hopes of making a wild-berry crisp that day were thwarted.

 

Utikuma, as you may recall, was burned just over a year ago.  I hadn’t been there since earlier this summer, and since then, the changes in the vegetation are incredible.  The mosses are coming back, the vascular plants are everywhere, and tiny baby spruce trees, all spiky-sprouts, hide among the recovering moss heads.   The charcoal-ed peat no longer stinks, but instead, has a not unpleasant  hint of an old house with a recently used fireplace.  Snares of naked black spruce branches threaten you with bodily harm and impalement (which will only get worse as the dead trees begin to really fall), but on the whole, it is a joy to witness the transformation making Utikuma a highlight of the trip.

 

Because Utikuma is an almost 3 hour drive north and west of our home-base Meanook, we sometimes stay at the Boreal Center where we feel most welcome.  This stay included a side-trip to Marten Mountain, which has been on my to-do list for quite some time.  We scaled the cobbled gravelly road in our F150 and had a vista of Slave Lake and vicinity that you don’t usually get in Alberta unless you’re in a helicopter.  My sense of well-being as we ate good food and drank wine around the campfire that night was palpable; and to boot, the stars were incredible.   

It was a decidedly productive and over-all fun trip.  The day of rain and a little time off today is helping with the re-entry.  Fall is starting to ease in today with an onslaught of grey and rain and wind and it makes me want to start cooking soups again.  I think tonight I will braise.  I am glad to be home.

Giants in the Forests of Vancouver

 

Have you ever wandered small in the shadow of Douglas Firs and Red Cedars?  Humbled and inspired,  my head was full after visiting, just a few days ago, the Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park on the eastern flanks of Vancouver Island.  The grove is part of a wilderness area created to protect the temperate rainforest old-growth trees and the ecosystems of which they are an intricate part.  This Coastal Douglas Fir Ecosystem hosts a great diversity of species and extends fragmented along the coast of the island. 

Mosses dominate surfaces both on the ground and at great height; both horizontal and vertical.  The world is green with them deep into the wood and over bark and branch.  Trees grow wild and strong and play as scaffold to the moss, lichen, and even other trees as stumps of old ancients yield nutrients to new trees sprouting on the fallen.  Nothing is wasted or ignored, and the ecosystem inhales and exhales, as we do, in the cold air.

 

 

 

Ferns throw fronds a meter long into the damp air, competing for the speckled light that filters through the dense canopy.  Mosses cover branches and trunks and rocks and earth indiscriminately making the world seem soft and rounded in contrast with the spiky fronds.  There are worlds within worlds here spiraling in dendritic patterns and the trees are massive and ancient.  These are not the oldest trees in the world, but some saw the days of the crusaders and the Magna Carta, and in our fast-paced world, this constancy and link to past and future makes my head spin.  I assure you:  pictures do not do justice to Fir trees over 9 meters in diameter.

 

 

As we wandered the trails, the heavy trees filtered the low-angled winter sun, birds chirped, and a woodpecker whacked a series of small holes in pleasing patterns.  Snow had fallen earlier that morning in a surprise event, and in light gaps, confections of feather mosses sparkled their tiny wings.  The place was magic and I feel lucky to have seen it.  As we drove home, one of the many bald eagles we saw on the trip swooped low and we looked into its eyes as it angled low to our windshield and veered off into the forest.  It was a fine way to leave the trees.  I hope to be back.