My field season continues on, explaining my blog absence (blogsence?) for the past 2 months. I'm going to be out tearing up the forests, alvars and wetlands of Ontario (in a good way!) for another month or so, but I have stories spilling out of my head (and actually in an ever-growing little list on my iPhone that I add to every time I do something stupid) so I figured while I had a few minutes I might start to share them. Be assured they are filled with a) Kristyn getting herself into ridiculous situations b) heartily making fun of many people including myself c) interesting nature tidbits. If that sounds appealing, stay tuned for a few short stories which I'll try to spit out over the coming weeks to get everyone "caught up" on my foibles :)
Wednesday, August 15.. a day that shall live in infamy. I was off to the field by myself, my intern being occupied elsewhere, and figuring that since I'm a toughie, and now I know Carden like the back of my hand, I am all set to take on a daunting day of tasks. They included 1) 5 hours of driving to and from Carden (round trip) 2) monitoring a conservation easement with a landowner 3) installing some signage 4) seeking out a rogue DSV plant that had been reported and spraying it 5) spraying a patch of the non-native Common Reed which keeps getting BIGGER.. and BIGGER.... 3 years and I've still not "gotten" to it.. so watch out Phragmites, here I come. Regardless of the size of my list, I was energized and ready to go!
I had mentally booked about 1.5 hours to monitor this easement. (easement = landowner owns the property but 'promises' (legally) not to do certain things like cut down trees, dump garbage, build structures, etc. - we monitor them annually to ensure their compliance). So, back to this property. A giant trail goes through the middle of it, it's never used, has a total of two anthropogenic features on it and is in great shape - aka. an easy one! However, for some reason, the landowner became obsessed with my new GPS unit which displayed the property boundary over top of an air photo and he wanted to make it his mission for the day to seek out each corner of the property - did I have time? he asked. I sort of stammered - um, hey, ya, well maybe we can walk back along the north boundary and not trudge through that giant wetland, is that a good compromise? He looked disappointed. I felt anxious. He was at least 80 years old. I felt confused. His wife had to be at least 80 as well - she only smiled brightly at me. So off we went on a bushwacking mission and ended up in a long discussion about the inaccuracy of Ontario's parcel boundaries and how my GPS was wrong and wouldn't it be better to find the edge of the property and mark that? At this point I could hear my stomach growling loudly at me so I had to pipe up about my mild case of hypoglycemia that makes me extremely cranky/angry/fainty if I don't eat every few hours. He said "oh - well what will you do if we're still out here for another couple of hours?" with a frank stare. Again, stammering, "I.. only.. gave myself 2 hours for this today.. uh.. faint?". Finally we seemed to get on the same page that I indeed had other stewardship work to complete and worked toward completing our bushwack. I ended up at my lunch bag before the point of faint-age, which was good. I am still amazed by these two octogenarians who leapt over fallen logs, crashed through trees and sought out property boundaries with a vigor I'm not even sure I was feeling that day. My favourite moment had to be when I lost sight of Eager Landowner #1 and yelled, jokingly, through the trees "Marco!". To which his wife replied: "His name is Steve". Le sigh!
Sign hanging went great! Feeling energized, fed and free, I zipped down to a 1,400 acre property and decided to start my Dog-strangling Vine seek and destroy mission from the south end of it. I had my trusty GPS (sans air photo this time, but a giant red point indicating where I was to head), a backpack sprayer with a couple of liters of Roundup, ready for whatever size of DSV patch I may encounter, and a grocery bag with some essentials like my blackberry, my emergency satellite messenger and a half small bottle of water. I figured 25 min walk in, spray for a few minutes, and out I go another 25 mins back to the car where I could chug some water. Sounds good! Well of course the dot is located in a giant patch of low trees and junipers, which are extremely difficult to crash through with a big clumsy backpack sprayer on your back. The satellite signal on the GPS sometimes takes a moment to "catch up" to where you actually are, making the whole thing kind of a funny charade of going "ok, just a few feet north", and then looking down at the GPS to see you've walked right over where you need to be, and turning around, and overshooting again. After about 10 minutes of this nonsense, circling this red dot, and eventually closing in on it, I looked up. At a DSV plant (or so I thought)!! I, in my crazy way, said it to it "no one invited you here!" while I grabbed my sprayer wand, throwing my gear to the ground (very dramatic, I assure you). Just as I was about to spray I noticed a woody stem on the plant. Uh, what? DSV has a soft stem. I grabbed the plant, and upon closer inspection found that it was just ANOTHER vine with opposite leaves and a twining growth pattern. Not, after all, the evil DSV. Relieved because this property is fantastic and I don't want to see DSV on it; annoyed that I walked 30+ minutes out here to find this falsie; ready to head back. I grab my GPS from the ground and found... dead battery (and it's a rechargeable one that needs to be plugged into a power source). Ah yes.. since I stayed out longer than intended this morning, my half day of battery life had passed me by. No worries - I'll just grab my compass and head south. I should bump into the trail that leads me back to my car in just a few minutes. Unfortunately my hand reached back and touched (did you get here before me?): backpack sprayer. Oh crap. Compass is in car with the rest of my regular backpack and I have ABOSLUTELY. NO IDEA. WHICH WAY I'M FACING. All I see in every direction are junipers. I look up.. at the clouds. Can't see where the sun is. I walk 2 minutes in one direction, feel it looks wrong and nothing like where I came in, and so I walk 4 minutes back in the other direction. It looks, somehow, EXTRA wrong, so I go back in the original direction (are you counting.. that's already 10 minutes and I've made no progress). The pesticides on my back slosh around, laughing at me. I decide I better just go for it and go one way or another, knowing I'm either going north or south since I'm following a rough road allowance that runs through the property. Walking.. walking... starting to think that things look familiar from my trip to the north part of the property earlier this season.. hoping they don't.. checking the time on my phone.. it's been another 10 minutes. Another 5 minutes go by and I KNOW I just walked past the Gray Jay habitat which is VERY far north.. but I choose to pretend this is NOT the Gray Jay area, it just looks like it (but now my nagging question is: where is the damn road allowance that I was supposed to connect with if I was going south?!). Lo and behold: a sign. No, an actual physical sign, a property sign - that tells me I'm exactly where I dread to be: on the north part of the property, moving steadily further away from my car. However, with no compass, and no idea what part of the road allowance to follow to ensure I continue heading south (as this was a meandering journey to say the least).. I friggin just keep going north because at least I know where it goes. I burst out of the property on a local road that I KNOW is THREE kilometers away from my car. I have since emptied the backpack sprayer on some poison ivy that looked at me wrong (health hazard for trail walkers if anyone wants to challenge me on that - I'll box you) but it's weighing heavy, and .. of course.. the sun comes out from behind the clouds in a full blaze. I'm in pesticide gear: rubber boots, rubber gloves, long shirt, long pants. Oh joy.. sun. My death march had the tone that you're picturing (if you're picturing rage, muttering, half laughing and death stares to anyone who dared look at me funny) and I have never been so relieved to see my car. Oh man, was there nothing I'd like better than to get home to a shower, comfy pants and my couch. It was already 3:30, I'd been going since 7, and still had a 2.5 hour drive in front of me. I'm no masochist - time to call it quits!! I let myself off the hook from Phragmites spraying (I'll get to it.. I swear!) and decided to just call it a day.
On the way down the 400 it started raining. I turned on my wipers. They flicked once, then twice, then on the third swipe, the driver's side windshield wiper blade detached from the base and flew behind me, back down Hwy 400 while I sped away from it at 120 km/hr. Yup.. that's what you want to happen. I called Jeff to ask his advice, peering through the rain (which is picking up intensity) on the passenger side of my windshield as the phone rang. As soon as I heard his voice I promptly, expectedly burst into tears as the weight of the day hit me. He agreed I should call CAA and get towed to get a new wiper as the radar was showing nasty thunderstorms ripping through Barrie for the next hour or so. I made it to the service station McDonalds, called CAA, ate a comfort double cheeseburger and put on my best "STOP LOOKING AT ME" glare to anyone who glanced my way (as I'm always quite a sight after fieldwork, sweat soaked clothes, wild hair and, often, wild and angry eyes lol). Somehow, however, luck shone through along with the sun, and after I called Jeff to double check that the storms had moved past Barrie and the west was clear, I cancelled my call to CAA, hopped in the car and continued my marathon journey home. Props to Dawn for talking to me for the remaining 1.5 hours of the drive to stop me from driving straight into a ditch and calling it a day (and life); and to Jeff for giving me strict instructions to sit on the couch and not move all night once I was home. I guess that's the moral of my little tale: tough days are always made better by the people who love you. And always, always, always bring your compass into the field. Oh and a granola bar for unexpectedly long field visits. ...And carry a spare windshield wiper in your trunk bc you just never know. That's a lot of lessons for one day. Here's hoping for a lesson-free remainder of the field season (ha!).
