The organization I work for is working hard to protect the alvars in an area just east of Orillia, known as Carden Alvar.. known to the rest of the world as cows, fields, forests and "not much"! When I first saw Carden I thought "what's the big deal?" but after two and a half summers on the alvars, I am in love with them. They're a globally rare habitat where the limestone bedrock is right up against the surface, leaving the conditions very harsh, very open, and very conducive to fabulous, rare and gorgeous alvar plants and a plethora of wildlife who love open areas - endangered birds, wide ranging mammals like black bear and moose - Carden is just so great.
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| Alvar |
So when I see someone threatening "my" alvars, my hackles go up. That someone is the non-native invasive plant Dog-strangling Vine, also known as Black Swallowwort, also known as Kristyn's Worst Enemy. I think my mom even mentioned this plant in her speech at my wedding - it's thoroughly pervasive ;) It has recently showed up in Carden and based on its behaviour in the rest of Ontario we know it LOVES alvars and can destroy them in a matter of a few years, so we're on high alert to keep it OUT of those amazing rare systems.
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| DSV in flower - yuck |
I was apprehensive to say the least about the 32C highs with 40C humidices each day. It's already hot enough on a 20 degree day when you're in full gear (goggles, face mask, thick gloves, long sleeves, long pants, rubber boots) and wandering around an open field spraying for/looking for this stuff. I didn't need the extra 20 degrees on top of the norm!!! But with my tight schedule for the summer, the show had to go on!
My intern John and I arrived in Carden on Monday afternoon and got to work spraying the populations I've been hitting for the past few summers - easy afternoon work before we got into the nitty gritty on Tuesday. I was ready to try out my new "hazmat suit" aka. painters coveralls to help keep the 100 gallons of pesticide we'd be using that week off of me. Spraying away... all of a sudden feeling faint, seeing double and feeling my lunch offering to make a return visit, I collapsed onto my butt on the ground, whipped off my goggles and said to John "I think I'm going to faint!". This was VERY unlike me - I'm usually pretty tough when I get going. I was mad at myself, worried for the week ahead (as you'll recall, Monday was only about 25C with a 29 humidex, nothing out of the ordinary really), embarassed that my intern is having to get me water and coax me to stay still.. UGH! So I start working again, stubbornly, only to be overcome by the same sensation. AUGH! So I sat again, drank more water, and stripped off my suit and my attractive man's dress shirt until I was just in my tank top. And INSTANTLY felt better. Investigating the coveralls, I found them covered in my sweat on the inside and apparently not breathing a bit. I ripped off the rest of the one piece sexysuit and instantly felt waves of cool air washing over my body. Oh. It was the suit. I was all set after that, and thank goodness!! No more issues with heat exhaustion or effects from the heat all week - phew!
Not to say there weren't issues. There was the fact that every day after about 1 hour of work (in a 5-6 hour day) my clothes were absolutely soaked through with sweat. Gatorade was my friend. So were the interns from our partner organization who came out with us for two days and did ridiculous things like wiping sweat from our faces, and squirting water into our mouths (I felt like a boxer lol). When you are wearing heavy duty neoprene gloves to your elbows that are drippy with pesticides, you all of a sudden have no use of your hands which is crazily inconvenient! The mosquitoes found defenseless meals in John and I, and the deerflies certainly never stopped their buzzing dance around our heads. Sometime during Day 2 I heard a distinct "squashing" sound from inside my rubber boots and upon investigation found my custom orthotics (which I'd slipped in for added comfort for walking around in rubber boots all week which is generally the opposite of comfortable!!) basically drenched in sweat that had dripped down my legs and .. what.. PUDDLES of my own sweat at the bottom of my boots?! I've never felt more disgusting, and am hoping my $450 shoe inserts recover (they're on top of an AC vent in my house as we speak!). I tore my pants climbing the barbed wire fence in and out of the site (approximately 12 fence hops per day to access the part of the property we needed to get to, so actually one small tear is a pretty good record!). The insides of those thick non-breathable gloves became the home to what I can only imagine would be a bacteriologist/mycologist's dream - because the glove stench was INSANE! It got worse every day to the point that after Day 4 glove removal rinsing my hands, taking a hot shower, and washing my hands three times did nearly nothing to remove the stink! Ack!!! Needless to say I have retired the gloves (rest in peace, nasty gloves).
There were many colourful locals encountered while out and about. Lady one Day 1 (fainty day) who accosted us in the forest with this friendly line "What are you doing in my forest?" which I thought was interesting considering the land is owned by my organization, so by proxy, ME, and that we were indeed doing unspeakable good for the forest. By the end of the convo she was friendlier. Then there was a local landowner whose property we'd been invited to spray on on Day 1, who started the visit by showing me pictures of an angry male black bear that had been found exactly where we were standing earlier that week and apparently weren't the least bit afraid of her 230 lb English mastiff who was barking its face off at the bear. Eek! There was the guy we encountered on the road on Day 3 who said in the most insanely hillbilly drawl "we're lookin' fer bearz" - aka. hunting out of the window of his car. WTF? That's called poaching, friend! Lucky for me, no bears were found, though a mom and 2 cubs are active on the properties we visited Day 2-4. If you're loud enough, bears will be smart enough to stay away, and we were always in a group of at least 3. However, on Day 4, needing to cover some last bit of ground, I offered to spray a fenceline by myself and catch up to the group. While alone, to ward off bears, I sang Irish pub tunes at the top of my lungs. I managed to scare the crap out of a deer with a line of "It was down in Christchurch when I first met with Annie - a neat little gal and not a bi' shy...". The deer actually had its revenge by its flurried movement which I assumed was a bear coming to eat me and stopped in pure terror. Still tbd what I'll actually do when I see one I guess!!!
I don't share this blog with work colleagues, so I can vent a mite about the one "helper" we had on Day 2 and 3 who was essentially a giant weiner... Yes - it's hot. Yes - this work is fairly horrific. Yes - it is a lot of walking. Yes - hopping a fence is annoying. Yes, yes, yes - SUCK IT UP! Which John and our others helpers did magnificently - if I had trophies/medals, I'd hand them out for supreme suck-up-a-bility of everyone this week. It was mainly the heat that made it so bonkers, but if you're in the sitch, you power through - right? Apparently not everyone. Every 10 minutes this person was taking a "shade break" where she sat on her butt in the shade and stared. She would take regular "A/C breaks" in her vehicle when we walked back to the cars to fill our sprayers. (Aside on the sprayers: backpack sprayers that hold 16L - John and I would each fill one to the brim, hoist them up onto our backs and then hike up to 2 km wearing them, all the while smiling and joking about the ridiculous task at hand, and occasionally nearly losing balance while images of turtles stuck on their back, limbs flailing, flashed frantically through our minds.) I offered to let the helpers try spraying on Day 3 (excellent resume fodder, from someone who hires interns!). One was excited and found the work of seeking out and destroying things actually fun (the sprayer wand does make you feel a bit badass). The "softer" of the two started the adventure with an "OH MY GOD THAT'S HEAVY" when I hoisted a half full (8L) sprayer onto her back. She gave up after about 10 minutes of spraying, looking like she might die. She took a long shade break next. I switched with her and while I worked she struck up a conversation with me of what would happen if I told my bosses I refused to work in the heat. Confused, I said that absolutely no one would give me a hard time about not working in the heat, but this was my project and I was so committed to it, I'd work through it if I only had one leg and it was 60C outside (I never exaggerate.. never). I realized later it was probably a passive aggressive attempt to get out of the work, or to perhaps dodge further fieldwork in hot temperatures with her own boss.. my goodness. The last straw for me was when I was working at the end of a 5 hour jaunt on Day 3 in blazing afternoon temperatures in an open field under the scorching sun, with sweat pouring down my face like it was in a race to reach my neck, with mosquitoes and deerflies making a home on my face, ears, neck and hat, while arcing a lovely blue spray of glyphosate onto a patch of over 2,000 evil plants, feeling dehydration keenly but not wanting to stop - when I heard "ahh! a mosquito just flew into my ear! right into my ear!". John said it looked like I might explode at that moment, but I just kept powering through. Because that's what people do. Especially nutcases who have accepted field-based jobs like me....or her.... ahem. I have a whole new outlook on sucking it up after the past week and I don't think I'll soon forget the lessons learned out there!
My last thought is an ode to rubbies. One of my favourite goofy people, Catherine, coined the term "rubby" when she was a competitive swimmer and her bathing suit edges would rub against her wet skin while she trained, causing a small patch of rubbed, raw, red skin. Ouch! Well - I was essentially underwater (a pool of my own sweat - yum!) all week so any edge on my clothing was rubbing the crap out of me - the tops of my rubber boots gave me calf rubbies, my pants gave me a knee rubby from kneeling, and worst of all my underwear gave me bumcheek rubbies!!! Try explaining this to your male intern.. John just looked at me in terror as I tried to explain why I couldn't sit on my ass on the car ride home or while reading later that night. LOL. I called Dawn and said "I have bum rubbies" and her immediate response was "oh no! I'm getting rubbies just from walking around downtown today - you must be dying!". Haha - nothing like a childhood friend to just "get it". I figured out that John was clueless cuz guys wear BOXERS, so I adopted this philosophy and wore a pair of plaid shorts I wear to hang around the house in under my pants the next day in the field - and I was golden!! So any overheating females out there - take heed! I'm happy to report my rubbies are healing nicely and I am very pleased to have been wearing dry clothes for almost 24 hours now!!! Yay!
This week we were lucky enough to stay at a cottage on Lake Couchiching for our accomodations - $400 for 2 ppl for 4 nights? Yes please!!!! It was glorious - fantastic views of the lake, fully equipped, even with a washer/dryer to wash our pesticide-y clothes every day, and a friendly neighbour who took us out for a phenomenal boatride one evening. As I watched the boat spray glisten in the setting sun, feeling the breeze on my face after a long and hot summer solstice, I actually thought there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. So when you're having a tough week - find the little joys and pleasures, even if it's just blasting the car's A/C on your sweaty face, scarfing down dinners of comfort foods like Kraft Dinner and frozen pizza to refill your tank, or admiring the view of the rolling hills of Carden when you crest a hill wearing your backpack sprayer full of 16L of poison. :)
