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Published: September 22nd 2011
welcome to Alberta, big sky country
with a new camera to test out some fancy tricks onIt was near the end of a long and cold winter, we were making lots of new friends and generally having a fun time exploring Toronto, Jen was settling into her Toronto job nicely but I was getting increasingly annoyed and downbeat by my lack of success on the job front. There had been a couple of nibbles here and there for interesting ecology jobs, but nothing ever seemed to eventuate. And then one day, I got a call from Alberta - "want to be flown from site to site in the remote boreal wilderness undertaking biodiversity protocols??" And so a decision was made, a birthday/farewell party was enjoyed, Jen stayed in Toronto, and I flew 3 provinces and 3500km away to the home of wild roses, cowboys, big skies and heavy industry.
The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (or just ABMI) is a biomonitoring project funded in part by government, academia and industry. Their mission is to monitor a range of biodiversity indicators every five years at over 1500 sites spaced across the province. Still in the building stages, the project isn't running at full capacity just yet, but nonetheless is a pretty ambitious, large-scale monitoring effort. At our base,
'Meanook' (a research station just south of Athabasca), we spent the first 3 weeks of work undertaking all sorts of training courses and just trying to remember the names of each of our 40 or so new co-workers. Basically this meant riding quad-bikes, or learning chain-saw techniques in the morning and watching the hockey playoffs or sitting around campfires getting to know one another by night. Some certificates were obtained, some good parties were had (see the zombie photos!) and the training was a whole lot of fun, but by the third week we were all itching to get into the field!
The Spring field season began with a drive up through Fort McMurray, the rapidly expanding capital of the controversial lower Athabasca region tar sand mines. The size and number of oversized trucks carrying large steel contraptions up the highway into 'Fort Mac', coupled with the countless new, overpriced housing developments springing up all over the place gave a hint to the pace of change going on in this part of the world. We avoided downtown Fort Mac (on later trips we weren't to be so lucky) and made our way straight to the airport, where we loaded
copious amounts of field gear, food and camping supplies onto a tiny charter plane, and up and away we went, over tar sand mines, through raging wildfires and across the Athabasca River delta into Lake Athabasca, and into remote Fort Chipewyan.
The next morning we were up in the air again, this time in our day-to-day mode of travel, an A-Star helicopter. Out from Fort Chip and straight into the wilderness of the mighty Slave River and Wood Buffalo National Park and surrounds. My field partner for the Summer, Erica - a straight-talking forestry masters student from Prince Edward Island - and I made up crew 'RA3'. R for remote, A for Aquatic (or awesome) and 3 for that number between 2 and 4. For much of the 'Spring Protocol' our task was to 'establish' sites for the terrestrial crews who were coming through behind us. Essentially this meant being dropped off by the helicopter in the most open area possible (almost always knee deep in water in a bog or fen) then bush- and bog-bashing our way to an exact GPS coordinate. From here we would set out lines of flagging tape in all sort of directions, get
our tape measures in copious numbers of knots and curse at the trees and shrubs poking our eyes out and the ever increasing insect populations swarming around us. Three-quarters of the way through a site establishment we would invariably hear the helicopter coming in the distance, and race frantically to finish the site and bash our way back to the 'helipad' to move on to the next site. Nights were spent camping in the nearest dry spot (if available) to the helipad, eating freeze-dried meals, whilst I would ask Erica numerous 'what-if' questions in the case of coming across a bear or an angry moose or bison. Good times!
Thankfully as the Spring Protocol went on we had the chance to do some of the real biology work. I joined Scott and Mae's terrestrial crew for a few days, and got to do a few bird surveys. This meant getting up before sunrise (which itself was around 3:45am) and solo bush-bashing to 9 survey points in a 36ha grid, setting up heavy audio recording gear to capture early morning songbirds and take note of the ecosystem characteristics and species encountered along the way. With the exception of the several
Zombie Beersbee
A beer in hand, a frisbee, and a metal stake with an empty bottle on top make for a very entertaining party game times I tripped over submerged logs, landing face first in bog, and the one time I got stuck waist deep in the mud for 5 minutes alone in the middle of nowhere, this was really good fun!
Somewhere in there we had a 4-day weekend where a bunch of us headed out to the Rockies for some sight-seeing and hiking. Within an hour of arriving in Jasper National Park we were driving alongside a massive grizzly bear as it walked down the side of the highway! Saw some glaciers and waterfalls, and then in Mount Robson Provincial Park (over the BC border) went on a phenomenal two-day hike of amazing vistas and awesome wildlife.
Back out in the field for another 10 days of Spring Protocol and then it was time for another long weekend. With this being right in the middle of the contract, I splurged and booked a flight back to Toronto, where gorgeous Summer weather and a lovely Jennifer were awaiting for 4 days of good times and catching up with some friends.
Back in Alberta and back to training, this time for the more exciting Summer shift. Blow up your boat, paddle here,
Zombies and zombie slayer
trucker zombie Jeff, 90s volleyball zombie Bryce, denim xombie Simon, bedtime child zombie Tim and cowboy zombie-slayer Scott paddle there, measure this, measure that and work on a tan. This is living!
And so the Summer shift began, and at first on a super windy afternoon on a big lake, things weren't looking so great out in the boat. But things certainly improved, as glorious sunny day after sunny day came our way. Whilst I was out floating away without an insect to bother me (they don't like the open water) poor Erica, as the non-boat plant person in the crew, was getting eaten alive onshore, as she trudged her way through dense reeds and unpredictable floating fens. When the weather was really nice in the evenings (and the winds down) I would head out on the boat at dusk, watch the sunset and lazily paddle along as I made an early start on the next day's work of making water depth measurements, detailing the ecosystem types and catching aquatic insects. Pure field work bliss!
Another long weekend, then one more final 10 day stint in the field and amazingly the Summer field season had flown on by. Back at Meanook we had a grand end of season party, then whilst most people took off for
some adventures further a field, a bunch of us stayed behind to take it easy and enjoy our last days at the station - you know, more campfires, swimming in the lake, recording some music, movies on the projector, home made sweat-lodges and going shootin' - those sorts of things.
For the final month of the contract we relocated to the bright lights of Edmonton, where we stared into microscopes by day (sorting and identifying our aquatic invertebrate samples, mosses and lichens). Nights were spent living in the residence at the University of Alberta, playing soccer games, baking bread from scratch and exploring Edmonton's more interesting bars. With the exception of the hours spent behind the microscope, August flew by at an astonishing speed and before we all knew it we were all saying goodbyes to our amazing new friends (boooooo!). But thankfully there was someone to say hello to! A few days before we all departed, Jen arrived from Toronto, got to meet all my friends, and explore a bit more of Alberta as we went river tubing with AJ, Chelsea and Claire, and saw the northern lights and had a few more parties!
And there it
Fort McMurray
brand new housing developments are going up in all directions in the tar sands capital is. A fantastically fun and adventurous Summer living in Alberta, which I couldn't have planned better if I tried. If you're still reading, here are some more highlights and lowlights of this little chapter in Canadian living:
The Highlights -
'Bear Aware' training - went something along the lines of, 'If a bear charges at you, make sure you hold your ground.. Most charges are just a bluff. Unless of course it is a predatory charge.. Then you have to fight back.' Geez, glad I'm certified in that!
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riding in helicopters Definitely makes heading to work a lot more fun. Great views of the boreal forest, saw a big herd of bison from afar, almost landed on a massive bull moose in a creek, and best of all you get to sound like a pilot when you talk through the headset!
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awesome animal sightings In every ecology field work scenario there happens to be one person amongst the group who sees all the animals, whilst everyone else becomes jealous. Thankfully, that person happened to be me! The best sighting by far, occurred whilst I was eating my lunch out in the
boat one day, admiring the damselflies mating on my leg, when all of a sudden a river otter poked its head out of the water next to me. It jumped back a bit, but then swam its head and chest out of the water to check out this strange creature in front of it, calling at me as I called back! Then it snuck over to where Erica was working on the shore to try scare her into falling in the water... When we saw another otter a few days latter, the other crews were near furious at our luck. I also saw a few beavers, including one which breached out of the Slave River just metres away from me, sounding just like a whale! And yes, my co-workers rightly ridiculed me for imaging up a freshwater whale.
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Canadian Shield The Canadian Shield is a big rock. A really big and really old rock. In fact its sort of the foundation for most of the North American continent. However, ‘the Shield’ only pops to the surface in bits and pieces throughout Canada, and one of those areas is the north eastern corner of Alberta – right
where a whole bunch of our sites were. Now the best thing about his rock, is that it is a rock. Not a lake, not a bog, not a waterlogged grassy fen. Solid rock. Solid rock which you can easily walk across. Solid rock which you can put your lunch down on and it won’t sink of float away on. Solid rock with patches of nice and squishy lichen which you can put a tent over and have a dry night’s sleep. So yes, the Canadian Shield is a very practical landscape to do field work, but is also a very picturesque place, with all of its shades of lichen and its shape (in an otherwise very flat surroundings) and its pine trees and bear scat everywhere. In our final shift of the season, Erica and I were lucky enough to camp at five Shield sites in a row, whilst poor Simon and Claire (the other aquatic crew in our region) didn’t get a single one all shift! Great to rub in at the end of shift…
- Speaking of which, the
end of shift was always a fun time. Meeting up with humans other than your one
field partner and the voices in your own head was always refreshing. Then there was the sharing of stories - 'what??? how many bears ran through your campsite?' and of course, a hastily arranged end-of-shift party back at Meanook!
The Lowlights -
the infamous tempest of the first Summer shift - after having gorgeous weather for the most of Spring and the first week of the Summer shift, things began to go awry late in the shift. Blue skies all of a sudden gave way to grey, and sunshine gave way to three days torrential rain. Getting out of the tent in the morning became increasingly difficult, and when the lightning forced us off the water and back to the tents, the mosquitoes were going berserk, and then the lightning eased so we went out again, only to be forced back again and by now I was feeling the pain of the poor mosquitoes taking refuge in my tent from the wild conditions outside - so I stopped swatting them, for a minute of two. It was also during this storm that I learned that my rain jacket wasn't exactly waterproof. But thankfully, the end of shift
the flight to Fort Chipewyan
see the line to the left of the heart-shaped lake? In the winter this becomes the only (ice) road north into Fort Chip was near and soon enough each crew was back in soul-less Fort Mackay sharing stories of who had the closest lightning strikes and who managed to keep any spare clothes dry from the tempest. It turns out Bryce won in the underwear stakes, having enough dry pairs that he was able to fashion makeshift socks out of undies, after having drowned all his socks...
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overbugged moments - for the most part, annoying and biting insects were a constant throughout the field season. Some sites had slightly more, some slightly less. Some had black flies, some didn't, some had horse flies and deer flies, some didn't. Everywhere had mosquitoes, and some places had a whole lot of everything. Generally one accepts these annoyances and gets on with the job, despite the black flies flying kamikaze-style into your ears and eyeballs and horse and deer flies attacking limbs in force. There were however, moments of psychological collapse, when the endless buzzing, biting and itching all became too much and I'd go into a fit of swatting and dancing and swearing and WHY WON'T THEY JUST STOP ALREADY!?? Then a few deep breaths, regain composure and back to work we
go...
- On now for a short rant about the
Tar Sands Flying over boreal forest wilderness in northern Alberta was amazing and awe-inspiring. Flying over several of the tar sand mines around Fort McMurray was not. In fact, seeing the scale of these massive industrial complexes was nothing short of depressing. Perhaps worse, was the extent of exploration trails criss-crossing and fragmenting vast areas of forest further afield in the Athabasca basin - perhaps a sign of the scale of tar sand mining in the future? Alberta, you are beautiful. I hope you come to your senses before it is too late...
Now, for reading this far you get a real treat! For the first time, this blog has a musical component. Follow this link and you'll get to the song, Tremble, which was inspired, written and recorded amongst the trembling aspens at Meanook!
http://www.reverbnation.com/jeffincanada
You'll also find a bunch of songs which I recorded when Jen was my sugar mumma in Toronto too. Enjoy!
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