So here I am at the end of another field season. As always I feel an interesting mixture of emotions. I'm relieved that the incessant travel will now come to a close and I can enjoy being at home with Jeff, Bailey, my fridge, my treadmill, my PVR, my hot tub, and all the things that make my life mine, versus the slightly unsettling feeling of being displaced all the time.
But I also feel sad because the onset of beautiful October* means that an incredible few months of summer has come to an end and the inevitable cold, dark, snowy winter is around the corner. I've been reflecting on fieldwork a lot. In spring it is the thing I am most excited about, likely because it is intermingled with the end of dark, cold, and snowy and the beginning of light, warmth, and life. So I'm never sure if I am excited to do fieldwork or am I just excited for winter to be over?
So, 2016. It was one of the most difficult field seasons I've encountered. It wasn't the field season in which I was away from home the most, or doing particularly challenging fieldwork, it was just that my work was focused entirely on invasive species removal. My stewardship staff person is pregnant and therefore unable to use herbicides. Send in the childfree woman! ;) Honestly, I didn't really mind stepping in to do this work – I'm pretty damn good at spraying herbicides, identifying invasive species issues, and treating them successfully. And there's a saying in my world that a bad day in the field is still better than a day in the office. But something in me felt a bit broken this year. Perhaps it's the fact that I actually was broken – I developed an issue with the soft tissue and muscle in my right foot after too much walking for too long and rubber boots (to protect me from herbicides of course), followed by a nasty meniscus injury in my left wrist, followed closely by one of the worst cases of tennis elbow my physiotherapist has ever seen from me cutting the seed heads of the invasive plant, Phragmites. On one of my last days of fieldwork in 2016 I could be found hammering stakes into the ground to secure newly planted trees to on a beautiful fall morning, and I was full of rage. I was seriously fuming at how much pain I was in and how incapacitated I felt (and a little bit at the volunteers who left about 50% of the stakes dangling out of the ground...). I started to think that the office might be where it's at.
This isn't to say I won't relish the opportunity to go visit the incredible places that I get to save through land acquisition from time to time, but I think my time is done. I think I am truly broken down and done with fieldwork. I have put in a solid seven years of fieldwork at my job at NCC as well as two field seasons during my masters and an additional field season prior to that at a summer job during my undergrad. Let me tell you some lessons I learned along the way about the field.
It is not the glamorous stroll in the park that many people might picture. There is rarely strolling involved. There is often not a trail involved. I am frequently throwing myself against tree branches which are desperately trying to keep me out of the direction in which I intend to go, resulting in many scratches, bruises, cuts, poked eyes, missing equipment, and general frustration. On the days when I'm not in the forest you can sometimes find me in the wetlands – in those cases I am often being swarmed by black flies or mosquitoes and if I'm not under the shade of trees (as often is the case in wetlands) I am being burned to a crisp by the sun. When I am outdoors in the field I wear long pants, long sleeves, a hat that shields my face, head and neck, sunglasses, sunscreen, bug spray, hiking boots, socks pulled up halfway along my shins with my pants tucked into them, and there is not a single comfortable or glamorous thing about any of that.
There are threats in the fields that keep us on our toes at all times – this can be anything from tiny black legged ticks which transmit Lyme disease to pencil eraser sized wood ticks which you simply just don't want to have lodged behind your ear (speaking from experience- that night was a screamer); black bears which are interested in eating not typically you but often the food in your bag though is sometimes hard to tell the difference when they're following you through the field; there are thickets of hawthorns and black locust with 2" razor sharp needles that poke you every chance they get and carry harmful bacteria which can cause skin infections (speaking from experience),and when you're walking on the rock barrens of eastern Georgian Bay coast thinking that it is the most beautiful place you've ever seen, you have to watch every footfall to ensure that you do not step on a Massasauga Rattlesnake, Ontario's only venomous snake.
On some days the work I'm doing is beautiful, easy, and feels like a dream come true. The days when I have my feet up on the edge of the boat as it sails across beautiful blue water – those days are days I cannot believe I'm getting paid for what I do. Other days, like when I'm carrying a 10 L jug of herbicide in each hand along with an additional 10 L on my back and my backpack on my front, and I have started work at 7 AM because the temperature is set to climb to 38°C that day, I do not feel that I have it better than someone in an office.
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| Well of course we have a bit of fun with it... when the plant is 12' tall you have to show it who's boss! |
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| Killin' some shrubs, rockin' some gloves |
When I started NCC I was so jealous of the field workers, so excited when I got to become one myself, and I thought fieldwork was the ultimate answer and the ultimate reward. But.. it's true... something has broken. I can't tell how much is physical, how much is psychological, or how much is simply me looking for a change after over a decade of throwing myself into some of the most interesting, wild, crazy, harsh, beautiful, treacherous, etc. landscapes in Ontario. I do think humans thrive on change and I imagine after a decade in office or maybe even just one year in office I will be back to writing about the good old days of fieldwork and how I had it so sweet to be out under that sun (that burns me to a crisp), among the wildlife (that are trying to infect, eat or kill me], and deep in the heart of Ontario's incredible nature (that is absolutely full of challenges). But I suppose only time will tell. From where I'm standing right now the end of field season feels as amazing as it always does – the sweetest homecoming that ever existed. A chance to start reading again. A chance to start exercising regularly again (tennis elbow = finally remastering the 5k run!). A chance to spend time in my kitchen experimenting with new recipes and cooking healthfully for myself instead of hitting the McDonald's drive-through like an exhausted fieldwork zombie at the end of so many long days. And, oh, my back will be so happy to get away from those long car rides for just a little while.
What's interesting though, that I haven't mentioned yet, is that this is actually the end of fieldwork for me. It's not just the usual end of the season - though my brain is having a hard time differentiating. What I do feel is a mounting excitement. The idea that my time and my schedule can become my own again, and I won't be at the mercy of plants' growing cycles, birds' migration schedules, invasive species best management practice treatment times, and the eventual end of life again in the fall, fills me with an absolute thrill. I feel like it's a chance to take back the reins of my life that nature has been holding for a decade. Even as I'm saying it I can't believe I'm celebrating the end of fieldwork. But this season it was brutal, and it hurt me physically, and I worked through some of the worst physical conditions that I have faced in my career. I grew disheartened by the invasive species and how small I feel next to a patch of Phragmites. This doesn't mean to say that I am any way devaluing the importance of controlling non-native invasive species. This is one of the most important things we as Ontarians can be doing to protect our biodiversity and ensure our natural areas stay in great condition moving forward. It's imperative that we stay on top of these battles in the land trust world to ensure that the land we protect stays worth protecting forever and ever and we don't lose the important things that are there because of these aggressive invaders.
But what it means is it's time for me to stop. For me to take a step back. For a space to open up to be filled by the next Kristyn, the next conservation biologist. This will give me a chance to flex some different muscles that have been underused as I've tried to perform the duties of both the Conservation Biologist and Program Director of my job. Now I get to focus on securing land, the first pillar of what we do (the second pillar of course being stewardship). This job is either just as important or more important than stewardship and it's something I have the opportunity to dive into deeply now at this point in my career, and I need to embrace that. I haven't had a chance to embrace it fully with stewardship taking up at least 50 to 60% of my time (+ way more than that during the summer months), so here I am. The Program Director ready to start acting like a Program Director. An old woman at 33, ready to come indoors. Later things may change. I may change, and what I want may change, but I thought it was important to capture my thoughts at this period in time when the contrast between being out there, being away, being deep in nature as my job -- and being comfortable at home with my people, my things, my office, my desk, feels just so wonderfully right and comfortable and secure and where I am supposed to be. There won't be anymore going home at 7:30 p.m. because I found a new population of invasive species that needs to be treated and I only have three days out there so what else am I gonna do. Now I will always have the chance to put down the mouse, to walk away from my keyboard, and always go home at 5 PM or whenever the hell I want to go home actually, and return to whatever office-based issue I was tackling the morning of the next day. That is pretty amazing. That kind of flexibility truly does fill me with excitement. And to think about the things I'll be able to do now that I'm not being pulled in a million directions could be a turning point in my career.
I will end this rambling (and it is technically rambling as I'm using a dictation program due to my tennis elbow). I'll just say I'm glad I had a chance to reach down deep inside my soul and find out that there is a part of me telling me I am done. The excitement that comes with fieldwork largely has to do with the excitement of spring and summer. This old grandma is ready to come indoors and focus on acquiring land for conservation, which is just another variation of living the dream. And if anyone thinks they're going to keep me out of the boat on Georgian Bay at least once a year they have another think coming. No one is keeping me off the boat - just try me!!!
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| Beautiful G-Bay |
* post written in October
