So Much For Catastrophe-free July!

Frig it.  I'm going to have to embrace the fact that I am someone destined for hijinx and the purpose of my life is to go through these ridiculous moments so I may share them all with you and we can all have some good laughs.  Because I have to say.. I laughed out loud at myself SO many times over the past couple of days.. and, shame aside, it felt pretty great. Authentic.  Frankly, how it's gotta be.  My interns Laura and Mike have a theory that everyone does stupid stuff, just no one talks about it as much as I do.  But hiding my mistakes, failures and accidents seems like I'm trying to make myself look like something I'm not - and who I am is someone who is, at the core, honest with very little sense of shame.  So here ya go!

I just spent a glorious 2 days in the Minesing Wetlands.

2014.. not the Jurassic era as you might expect!  Hard to believe places really look this amazing

This internationally significant wetland is located just 15 minutes west of Barrie and contains a mixture of wetland types - your typical marshes (those areas that are wet without trees), swamps (those areas that are wet with trees), rivers, open water, and FENS!  To keep the nerdiness brief, briefly, fens are nutrient poor groundwater fed wetland systems that contain a suite of typical species including the amazing PITCHER PLANT!  Which is exactly what you're thinking - the carnivorous plant that catches and digests insects.  So neat!  I always knew Minesing had a giant fen right at the heart of it, but to date I've only been lucky enough to explore its rivers, swamps, forests, marshes and fields.  It was finally fen time!  July is the time for the Eastern Prairie Fringed-orchid to bloom, so seemed like a great time to get out there, figure out the extent of the population of this endangered plant and do some community classification and species inventory along the way.  I was pretty stoked.

We went out with Dave from our partner organization who is a Minesing pro and all around tough and awesome guy.  Dave said "it's a bit of a hike in - 1.5-2 hours to the fen".  To me, this seemed completely impossible.  How could ANYTHING take that long to walk, especially when it was only a few kilometers on a map?  I walk Bailey 3 km around my neighbourhood on the regs and we can blast that out in like 30 minutes!

Because it's not WALKING.  It's slight forward movement while hoping for the best, through terrain including:

- conifer swamps with a mixture of tall hummocks (humps of ground) and pools of water

- wet grassy fields where sometimes the ground is right there.. and sometimes it is not

- straight up ponds that at any moment can suck your foot down, devouring you up to your thigh

- forests so full of fallen trees that you feel like a tightrope walker, just hoping for the best to get across them

When I'm working in wetlands I like to just give up on having dry feet and wear light comfortable shoes, wool socks (like a wetsuit for your feet) and give 'er.  This year I have been trying my Keane-like water shoes that have a thick rubber sole, some tread, a closed toe but open bits along the sides.  I figured they'd be less water-logged than my hiking boots and therefore easier to lift when wet (amazing how heavy a water-logged foot can feel after yanking it UP all day long!) And the whole look comes together in a HIGHLY attractive fashionable ensemble:

(I just realized Mike has this photo and I will insert it when I get it.. stay tuned.. it's hot!)

So we started our trek out to the fen.  The mosquitoes were epic.  If you slowed down even for a second you'd be being bitten by at least 5 with 20 more buzzing around your ears and 50 more looking for a piece of skin to land on.  So we kept moving, and quickly! We came to a stream that looked a bit too wide to cross.  I said - "I think I can jump that distance" (and typically I'm an alright judge of when I can/can't jump it).  Intern Mike looked concerned and said "are you sure? be careful".  Scoffing, I leapt across it, lost my footing on the landing, had both legs land in the stream behind me and my face plant onto the shore.  Ah, graceful. Then came the deadfall.  Mossy logs are great to step on to keep yourself out of deep water (though I was already pretty wet by this point, plunging into knee deep water just doesn't feel great, especially when the bottom is sticky organic muck that likes to steal even a tightly strapped on water shoe!), so I was using them for most of the way through a cedar forest.  One log looked a bit smaller than probably what I needed, but I decided if I leapt quickly onto it and then off of it, everything would turn out fine.  At this point it was 8:30 a.m. with 6 hours to go in our day.  And I lost my footing, fell completely sideways and lay with my entire left side of my body, not to mention the entire left side of my backpack submerged in brown organic water.  Mike looked on helplessly behind me while I laid there and said "I'm fine.  Oh crap.  I'm fine.  I'm having trouble.. righting myself... I'm fine.  I'm up.  I'm wet."  My entire pant leg including the ass, the underwear beneath, and most of the arm of my long sleeved shirt were completely soaked through with chocolatey swamp water.  Luckily I'd had the foresight to pack my electronics in a dry bag earlier that morning (I just, well, know me...). .... Onward!

2 HOURS OF HIKING LATER we start to see signs that we're getting into a more open habitat.. finally, the fen!

So then it starts to get REALLY good!

Pitcher Plant!

Grass-pink!

Swamp Milkweed alive with all sorts of butterflies

And we're in this wide open wetland, with scattered, stunted tamarack trees and native Phragmites (which is just so weird to walk among, with the non-native one being SO bad) and game trails criss-crossing the fen in every direction.  And you just know that no one has been there in some time.. and likely won't be out there for some time again.  It's just you, nature and 3 km between you and everything else.  And that's part of the reason why this is where the Eastern Prairie Fringed-orchid grows.

"EPFO" as us cool cats call it

It's a gorgeous orchid, sometimes growing as tall as waist high!  What a treat it was to find my first one.. and then 20 more after that.  In total we tracked down about 60 of these guys in 2 days.  Such a gift!

In the fen, I managed to physically, actually lose my shoe.  I had the intern from our partner agency Jess first pulling on me to dislodge my leg from the muck that had sucked it down, then feeling blindly through the water for my shoe.  We had to yank up on that shoe for REALZ to free it up.  This would be the first of about 8 times I lost the shoe over a 2 day span.

I only went down on my hands and knees 2 times (in addition to my sideways nap in the water) on Day 1 which I took as a victory.  It was a cool 19C and sunny - essentially perfect weather.  The bugs mostly left us alone in the cool breezes and we were free to roam and claim the fen.  We were separated from Dave once which was TERRIFYING (you lose someone in a Phragmites patch, you're not getting them back!), but we found him again in no time.

Jess among the Phragmites.  She's short, but not that short! It's at least 7-8' tall mostly.

We staggered out of Day 1 (after having to basically scale the Algonquin Bluffs with our hands, and a 40 minute detour west that I'm happy to report was NOT my fault) with remarks about sore calves, tired hips, achy knees, creaky backs.. but we'd made it out, and that was awesome.  Success!

After a mid-day nap at my hotel I had too much energy to just hang around all night so decided to take my intern Mike up on his suggestion to watch his band, the Barriers (they're from Barrie.. this is the cheesiest band name ever) play at Donaleigh's which is apparently the place to be in Barrie.  I was reluctant to go.  A bar... alone?  In Barrie?  In my "evening attire" that I'd packed of Birkenstocks, ripped jeans, my NCC fleece with the broken off zipper, and my unstyled puffy hair with no makeup?  Then I thought.. what the hell do I care what anyone thinks.. you only live once.  Plus I'm already married haha.  And I trucked off to the bar.  Ok so it's super awkward hanging alone at a bar, for anyone who hasn't tried this gem before.  Mike waved when I walked in but was, you know, playing guitar (p.s. kudos to his poorly named band, they're great!).  And continued to play guitar for an hour while I just kinda hung.  A dude sat down next to me and he was also alone, so I had a sinking feeling of what was coming.  And there it was - the worst pick up line ever: "what's your story?".  I told him my name was Kristyn, I was in town for work and I was watching my intern's band play to pass the time.  He told me his name was Mark and he was divorced and that's where the bio ended.  Oh boy.  He was completely hammered, so I humoured him by talking, told him that no, Mike was my "intern" not my "husband", turned down his offer to buy me another beer (2x) and was very grateful when the band took a break and Mike came over to chat so I could turn the other way!  I was outta there by 11 p.m. but really glad I went instead of reading in my hotel all night like a lame-o!

I started Day 2 feeling pretty fresh.  I was being VERY conscientious about my belongings, as I've discussed since the demise of our beloved GPS unit.  I'm chatting with Dave while putting together my stuff for the day (we call this the "high maintenance 5 minutes" - HM5M) and being VERY organized.. ya me!  Mike shows up while I'm packing up my dry bag and have already locked my car - now my HM5M just awaits me putting the dry bag in my backpack and closing the door - and starts to back his car towards me.  Not knowing where the HELL he was going and sizing up the fact that I was in his trajectory, I quickly slammed my car door shut and leapt out of the way.  The ominous "honk!" that Jetta let out to let me know it was safely locked was my first clue of trouble.  I looked inside and sure enough there was my bag!  ARGGGGGHHHH!!!  Wellllll.... this is why I have CAA.   I figure being halfway between Barrie and Angus, someone should be along to help me in 20 minutes.  They may have, if my clear instructions of "COUNTY ROAD 90 - near ANGUS!" hadn't come across as "County Rd 9".. in Creemore.  Come on guys! I would almost blame myself for being distracted by the GIANT heap of human waste and associated napkins that I suddenly realized was next to all of our cars, but I kept it together pretty well (I did shriek to Dave and Mike when CAA put me on hold and show them the pile.. I mean... the nearest town is literally 1 minute away, this guy couldn't hold it!??!!).  Finally, 1.5 hours later (after I'd sent Dave and Mike ahead to do some work along our path in) Jetta's door was pried open, the keys and bag were mine, and we were off!

I full on fell down about 5 times today.  I told Dave and Mike it was only three times, but it was at least 5.  One time it was two kneecaps on a fallen log.  Another it was hands planted in muck in front of me.  Another time almost a gentle, church-like kneel for no discernable reason. I lost my shoe at least 3 more times.   I did a lot of exaggerated, flailing circling arms as I narrowly clung to logs, hummocks or anything my feet would hold.  I started to notice I was repeatedly pulling out the "rail slide" that skaters used to do in high school where you'd "ride the rail" on your board- instead it was me riding a mossy log on my shoes.  Later I inspected the soles of these water shoes to find they were largely lined with something soft, like felt.  What the FUCK?  In what situation do you want felt-soled shoes?  No wonder I was all over the map and ass deep in this wetland for 2 days! BLAMING THE SHOES!

I'm kind of sorry to say this, but luckily it wasn't just me.  There were times where Mike would just stand, frozen, up to his thighs in water, not sure about his next move. There's something about squirming in muck that gets you deeper in it, so even if you get one foot out, your second foot is now in worse peril. There was the time Dave "pulled a Kristyn" and face-planted forward into the mud/water, soaking his field notes.  Another cool thing about fens: they often have "mats" of vegetation overlying the true substrate and today we were bouncing along on a submerged mass of sedges!  This was made funnier when Mike's leg broke through the mat and he went up to his thigh, describing the feeling of "kicking" underneath and finding nothing!  Crazy!!  Dave also took more mosquitoes to the throat than anyone I've ever met.

But above all the craziness, the 8 hours of slogging in and out of the fen over 2 days, the few hours we got to spend poking around the fen, looking at a place that hardly anyone ever gets to see, hearing the silence of being in the middle of NOWHERE.. it was pretty awesome.  And the joy of sprinting across a bouncing mat of sedges to scream out "I GOT ONE!!!!" when you find a giant, lacy, endangered orchid... welllllll... let's just say I love my job.  I may not be able to walk tomorrow and am already peppered with the blue and yellow of bruises with perma-dirt etched around my toenails...... but I'm still over the moon for what I do. 

Cheers to sharing stories of stupidity among ourselves - I hope to hear some of yours soon :D