Posted by: Kim
As a rule, I think the training of field
ecologists needs to include some creative problem solving instruction. Thinking outside the box is often required and is an excellent life skill in general. For us, the
2-3.5 hour drives to our sites with very little available to us once we leave Meanook,
encourage both thinking ahead and thinking on the fly… it is a long drive back if you forget
something, or if a problem arises that you must fix on-site. We have no electricity, very few
gas-stations, and a host of unknowns every time we go out. It is good to be prepared. For example, I was cleaning out my field pack
this morning and the contents include: rain jacket, rain pants, 2 spare resin tubes,
sunscreen, 2 headnets, granola bar, 4 sharpies, 1 pen, 2 pencils, one notebook,
duct tape, electrical tape, 2 flathead screwdrivers, 2 nutdrivers, 1 blue Juice
multi-tool, 5 zip ties, an adjustable wrench, 1 Loupe on a BIOGEOMON lanyard, a
pair of work gloves, a pair of lab gloves, a tape measure, light in the rain matches, chemical hand warmers, a bandanna 1 carabiner knife, one baseball
hat, electric fence insulators for both t-posts and tree-posts, nails, a
three-way-stop-cock, flagging tape, a crank-wire setter, tissues, 4 band-aids, stretchy
medical tape, lip balm, and an orange. This motley assortment of gear has been
getting me through the days.
That said, sometimes you think you are ready
for a situation, and you find that you are not.
There are occasions when even in the safety of our lab back at the field
station, sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. Two days ago, a time-sensitive project
involved grinding over 150 very small samples of peat into a fine powder over a
very short period of time. Our fancy
$1500 glorified coffee grinder, it turns out, is rebellious and needs 10
minutes of rest for every minute it works.
And to boot, for such small samples, it wasn’t very talented. Lazy and inefficient, the grinder was a
frustration. We were spinning for
solutions. The mortar and pestles had
all burned in the fire two falls ago, there were none in Athabasca, and golf
balls and kitchen bowls were too frictionless to do anything useful. After 6 hours of using blunt ends of hand
tools to rub peat through screens overlaying sieves, our arms and hands
suffered, but we were making progress. Unable
to continue to grip the knife sharpener we procured from the kitchen, achiness forced new innovations. Why we didn’t think of it sooner is beyond
me, but simply squeezing and rubbing the samples between our gloved fingers and
then sifting it through the three layers of screening was the solution we’d
been struggling for for days. Who needs
expensive equipment? Who needs even
small hand tools? All we really needed
was ourselves for perfectly homogenized peat powder. Gloved hands:
$2.50. Sweat equity: $0. Ground
moss: Priceless.
And so while many of our colleagues are based
out of labs and run electricity to their sites and go home at the end of the day, Meanook is our summer home, we drive all over creation, we tough it out, and we MacGyver. That is what
we do. We take pride in knowing we can
handle much. We know Home-Depots like the backs of our hands, can drive quads,
use chain saws, run pumps, use fire hose and sprayers, navigate mud-slop in 4WD,
and safely man power tools. We are
electricians, plumbers, carpenters, lawyers, writers, scientists, students, and
we know how to hammer. We are
ecologists.
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” –Albert Einstein
As a rule, I think the training of field
ecologists needs to include some creative problem solving instruction. Thinking outside the box is often required and is an excellent life skill in general. For us, the
2-3.5 hour drives to our sites with very little available to us once we leave Meanook,
encourage both thinking ahead and thinking on the fly… it is a long drive back if you forget
something, or if a problem arises that you must fix on-site. We have no electricity, very few
gas-stations, and a host of unknowns every time we go out. It is good to be prepared. For example, I was cleaning out my field pack
this morning and the contents include: rain jacket, rain pants, 2 spare resin tubes,
sunscreen, 2 headnets, granola bar, 4 sharpies, 1 pen, 2 pencils, one notebook,
duct tape, electrical tape, 2 flathead screwdrivers, 2 nutdrivers, 1 blue Juice
multi-tool, 5 zip ties, an adjustable wrench, 1 Loupe on a BIOGEOMON lanyard, a
pair of work gloves, a pair of lab gloves, a tape measure, light in the rain matches, chemical hand warmers, a bandanna 1 carabiner knife, one baseball
hat, electric fence insulators for both t-posts and tree-posts, nails, a
three-way-stop-cock, flagging tape, a crank-wire setter, tissues, 4 band-aids, stretchy
medical tape, lip balm, and an orange. This motley assortment of gear has been
getting me through the days. 
That said, sometimes you think you are ready
for a situation, and you find that you are not.
There are occasions when even in the safety of our lab back at the field
station, sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. Two days ago, a time-sensitive project
involved grinding over 150 very small samples of peat into a fine powder over a
very short period of time. Our fancy
$1500 glorified coffee grinder, it turns out, is rebellious and needs 10
minutes of rest for every minute it works.
And to boot, for such small samples, it wasn’t very talented. Lazy and inefficient, the grinder was a
frustration. We were spinning for
solutions. The mortar and pestles had
all burned in the fire two falls ago, there were none in Athabasca, and golf
balls and kitchen bowls were too frictionless to do anything useful. After 6 hours of using blunt ends of hand
tools to rub peat through screens overlaying sieves, our arms and hands
suffered, but we were making progress. Unable
to continue to grip the knife sharpener we procured from the kitchen, achiness forced new innovations. Why we didn’t think of it sooner is beyond
me, but simply squeezing and rubbing the samples between our gloved fingers and
then sifting it through the three layers of screening was the solution we’d
been struggling for for days. Who needs
expensive equipment? Who needs even
small hand tools? All we really needed
was ourselves for perfectly homogenized peat powder. Gloved hands:
$2.50. Sweat equity: $0. Ground
moss: Priceless. 
Work updates:
Plot layout- complete!
Fertilizations have begun.
Installation of collars, and resin tubes, and water samplers, and crank wires is all in
progress. Science is happening. Along
the way, flowers are in bloom, and we’ve all seen bears out our fast-moving truck windows. Most of us
have seen moose, coyote, snowshoe hares, sand hill cranes and a host of other
wildlife that keep us occupied on our travels.
