It’s that time of year again. Buds decorate the trees, shoots are pushing their way up through the soil, and birds are sounding the first tentative notes of spring. And at universities all across North America, field biologists are rushing around like headless chickens getting ready for the field season.
Each year, the advent of spring makes me think about the beginning of my first field season – specifically, my first journey out to the Queen’s University Biological Station. I was driving my supervisor’s pride and joy: an ancient and enormous blue van, inexplicably named Pooh, which retained many aspects of its previous life as a travelling library, including solid wood bookshelves in the back. The heat didn’t work, the radio produced only static, and the brakes were less than trustworthy. I had never driven a vehicle that big before, and as I navigated the twists and turns of the extremely curvy road to the field station, I was both terrified and more than a little nauseous. (Opinicon Road was, in fact, the first road to teach me that it is possible to get carsick even when you’re the one driving.)
Travelling in style: me and the very trustworthy Pooh.
Luckily, I made it safely to the station with both my breakfast and my supervisor’s precious field vehicle intact. (Although, to be accurate, the vehicle wasn’t exactly intact, it just wasn’t any less intact than it had been at the start of the journey.) And by the end of that summer, I had become extremely comfortable with both the road and the vehicle. In fact, perhaps too comfortable: one of the cottagers on Opinicon Road actually called QUBS to complain about the maniac driving the huge blue van.
Since that trip, I’ve done fieldwork at sites across the continent, and along the way, I’ve come to an important realization: in many cases, just getting out to a field site is more than half the battle.
Coming in for a landing on the Sable Island Beach
I’ve donned a bright orange survival suit to helicopter in to a remote tundra field station, covered my eyes in a small plane headed for a landing on an empty stretch of Sable Island beach, and convulsively gripped the passenger door on a high speed night drive along Carmel Valley Road in California – well known for its blind curves – trying not to worry about the fact that my boss did not seem terribly concerned about driving on any particular side of the road.
But if I were awarding prizes for most arduous journey to a field site, first place would go to an unexpected place: a small island in the middle of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba.
When I agreed to work as a field assistant for my friend, helping her to catch some of the terns nesting in the large colony on Egg Island, I didn’t think much about the journey. After all, Manitoba was certainly not the farthest I’ve travelled for fieldwork. I figured one short flight and I’d be ready to go.
My journey from Kingston to Egg Island started at 5:00 a.m. one hot June morning, when I boarded a tiny prop plane at the equally tiny Kingston airport. In Toronto, I changed to a bigger plane for the flight to Winnipeg. After arriving in Winnipeg, I jumped into my friend’s field truck, and – once we’d purchased enough groceries for a month and survived a couple of false starts (a result of my abysmal navigation skills) – we drove the 3 hours out to a ferry dock on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg.
When we arrived at the deserted dock, it seemed almost inconceivable that a ferry would ever actually show up. Apart from a couple of apparently abandoned vehicles, the gravel lot was empty; the only sign of human presence was a trailer that had seen better days and a single man standing outside it smoking. He seemed bemused by our presence, and gleefully informed us that, contrary to what we’d been told by our contacts, the ferry wouldn’t be coming back for at least another day.
How better to spend your time on the long ferry ride than grilling some steaks?
After a panicked conference, we decided to trust our instructions, and wait it out. And after a mere 2 hours, a dot appeared on the lake: our ride was on its way.
There wasn’t really anywhere for passengers to stand on the tiny ferry, so we spent the hour-long ride in the car, watching curiously as one of the ferry crew lit a barbecue on deck and applied himself to cooking some steaks.
The ferry dropped us off in Princess Harbour, a tiny community of approximately 6 souls. We parked the truck beside our cabin, tossed the groceries into the fridge, grabbed our field gear…and then climbed into yet another (smaller) boat to head out to the island itself.
The trip from Princess Harbour to Egg Island took almost another hour, but finally, after the majority of the day in transit, we approached our goal, a tiny splash of sand in the middle of the lake.
As we approached the island, the raucous screams of terns floated across the water, indicating that we were in the right place. However, as we got closer to the island’s only safe access point, we realized there was a slight wrinkle in our plans: part of the island had flooded, leaving the small beach where the boat could land cut off from the main body of the island.
After unsuccessfully circling the island to look for other access points, we landed on the beach and clambered out to inspect the flooded area. It turned out that the water was shallow – relatively speaking. Before my friend even opened her mouth, I could guess what was coming. She pulled on her waders and strode cheerfully into the lake, quickly becoming submerged to the knees.
My very determined friend dons her waders and heads straight for the tern colony.
Unfortunately, as a terrestrial bird biologist, waders are one of the few items of field clothing that I do not own. I stared blankly after her for a few seconds, before realizing there was nothing else for it: I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants, and followed her cautiously into the water.
It was mid-June, and the lake was still quite cold. I couldn’t see the bottom through the murky water, and the sand shifted under my feet with each step, making the journey quite perilous – especially considering that none of the expensive equipment in my backpack was waterproofed.
Halfway across, I slipped and nearly fell face-first into the water. Although I managed to regain my footing just in time, my pants began to unroll themselves. Since both my hands were occupied with field gear, there was nothing I could do about it as the cuffs unrolled towards the water. As they hit the surface, they began absorbing water, which wicked rapidly up my pants, ensuring that by the time I reached the main part of the island, I was soaked through to my underwear. I’ve never been so happy to step onto a beach – even if it was covered in bird guano and ringing with the screams of terns.
For the next three weeks, every day began the same way: a bumpy, windy boat ride to the island, followed by a nerve-wracking wade over to the colony. Despite my best efforts, my pants always unrolled themselves halfway across, and every day I sloshed up onto the beach soaked and swearing.
But every day, the sunshine and light breeze dried me off quickly, and by lunchtime, I would be warm and content on the beach, munching my sandwich and relishing in the fact that we had the entire island to ourselves. And I think that’s the real lesson here. Field scientists get to experience places that many other people don’t, and that often involves a long, arduous, and frustrating journey. But once you’re out there, there’s no doubt that the journey was worth it.
Dispatches from the Field 